The homepage Woman’s Rights is the joint website of NANE Women’s Rights Association and Patent Association Against Patriarchy created in the framework of a project funded by the Open Society Institue in 2010.
The project Advocating for the Rights of Domestic Abuse Victims implemented by NANE Women’s Rights Association in partnership with Patent Association, is based on a four-year strategic plan to bring about policy changes regarding domestic violence (DV) in Hungary.
The strategy follows a model in which we first collected reliable data on the workings of the justice system in domestic violence cases and we started to build a coalition primarily among practitioners in the DV field (1st year of OSI’s funding). In the following years (years 2 and 3, the current project) we continued to build the coalition of professionals by raising their awareness of victims’ perspectives in DV cases and by actively involving them as stakeholders in the initiation of changes in policy and legislation. Training seminars complemented this process of involving professionals, also providing opportunities to disseminate findings of the first year’s data collection and the draft protocols planned to be finalized by the end of the four-year program. We carried out a strategic litigation program that aimed to influence legal practice by providing precedents and good practices in DV cases. We conducted consciousness raising campaigns with a target group of the general public. The coalition of the various professionals and the media presence were envisioned to support the advocacy activities that directly target decision makers both in the professional and in the legislative field.
The project resulted in a manual on how to effectively handle DV cases and how to deal with victims for legal, mental-health, law-enforcement and other practionioners, in training courses for family and child protection practioners and law-enforcement and legal practionioners conducted throughout Hungary, legal advocate’s training, self-help groups for women survivors of DV and other forms of violence against women, a program for integrated client services and strategic litigation, legal changes in the criminal code to recognize DV as a specific crime, and positive changes in other legal and policy regulations.
The Associations are also active in work against other fields of violence against women, such as sexual violence, trafficking and prostitution, sexual harassment, institutional violence against women giving birth. Both Associations are members of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby and other international women’s rights umbrella organizations and networks. The Hungarian Women’s Lobby is the national coordination for the European Women’s Lobby which advocates for women’s rights on the EU level and also monitors national compliance with EU requirements regarding women’s rights. (See, e.g. the EWL letter to the Hungarian EU-presidency in 2011.)
NANE participated in the consultation conducted by the FRP’s Advisory Panel of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, upon the request of the Rapporteur of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). The consultation engaged human rights NGOs in order to deepen the LIBE committee’s undertanding of the current situation in MSs for its review on the situation of fundamental rights across Member States in 2013-2014. Read the report on the consultation.
Both NANE and PATENT continue to advocate for the rights of victims and survivors of gender based violence and support and empower women towards a society that is safe for women and children.
Some of our publications are available in English.