The Advocates for Human Rights, in partnership with two Montenegrin NGOs, SOS Hotline for Women and Children Victims of Violence-Niksic and the Women’s Rights Center, recently released a new report documenting Montenegro’s efforts to address domestic violence.

“Implementation of Montenegro's Domestic Violence Legislation: A Human Rights Report” found that, although the country’s 2010 Law on Domestic Violence Prevention was a “critical step” towards preventing domestic violence in Montenegro, violence against women remains a serious problem across the country. One in three Montenegrin women have suffered domestic abuse in their lifetime and most women don’t feel safe reporting domestic violence due to a distrust of the institutions tasked with responding to the violence. Additionally, according to the report, the police and other officials are often insensitive to victims’ needs due to a lack of knowledge about the dynamics of domestic violence and do not hold perpetrators accountable for their actions.

The report concludes that although some good practices and initiatives have been established, all actors in the domestic violence response system—police, Centers for Social Work, judges, prosecutors, and health care workers—must receive training and standardized guidance on how to best implement the law and respond to domestic violence against women.

The Advocates and its partner NGOs submitted a substantially similar joint stakeholder report to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) for the HRC’s Universal Periodic Review of the human rights situation in Montenegro, which review will take place in January of 2018.

Compiled from: Implementation of Montenegro’s Domestic Violence Legislation A Human Rights Report, The Advocates for Human Rights, SOS Hotline for Women and Children Victims of Violence-Niksic, and Women’s Rights Center (July 2017).