State Secretary for Justice Radomir Ilić has taken part in the debate titled “Violence against women and girls in Serbia – between duty and reality“. He said that the fundamental message of the year 2018, which was the second year of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act application, had to be Identify and prevent violence, recalling that the year before that message had been that the abuser must not remain in the household. “The new message is also equally directed to all public authorities and all citizens. The public authorities are to identify and deal with the issue, not to treat violence as merely a case, while the citizens are  being called on to report violence which, otherwise, most often leads to the most tragic results – the death of women when the people around them had witnessed and identified violence, but did not report it“, Ilić stated during the debate which had been organised by UNICEF, UN Women, UNFPA and UNDP, in partnership with the Government of the Republic of Serbia and with the support of the Swedish Government.

He highlighted that reporting violence could save a life, raising the question of the factual numbers of lives saved with the adoption of the Act on which basis, then, one could speak of the success of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act. He noted that the statute had ensured that the public authorities handle reported cases of violence better and that the overall system became better at identifying abuses of the reporting mechanism, however acknowledging that cases of murdered women remained which indicated that the society in certain parts of the country did not view violence as a matter to which one must respond and report to the competent authorities.