Sixteen Days Against Gender Violence

This is the name of an action embracing over a hundred countries, held from October 25 to December 10 for the twelfth time by a number of international NGOs. Recently the Woman for Woman Zhytomyr Center hold a press conference with the support of the Winrock International Ukraine organization to protect women — and not only them — from violence and the support of the oblast state administration. Journalists were informed about city actions, roundtables, training sessions, and interactive discussions to be held in the sixteen days. The goal of those events is to draw public attention to the fact that violence, including that based on gender, cannot be permitted.

In the words of WIU expert and police Colonel Mykola Maksiuta, income from human trafficking, one of the ugliest forms of violence, reaches $8 billion worldwide, which places it among most profitable of all illegal businesses. For Ukraine, he stated, this is primarily a socioeconomic problem, since it is mostly those willing to work abroad, legally or more often illegally, who fall into the hands of clandestine operators, while at present from 3 to 7 million Ukrainians remain abroad for this purpose. While the situation remains unchanged, fighting human trafficking will not be easy. According to Supervisor of the Zhytomyr Department to Combat Human Trafficking of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Viktor Kurbatov, in 2003 eleven criminal cases were filed in Zhytomyr oblast under Article 149 of the Criminal Code, with ten of them going to court. In one case sentence has already been pronounced. A 53-year-old woman residing in Korostyshiv district has received a suspended sentence of five years and three on probation for sending two women to Moscow to become prostituted.

Mr. Kurbatov also stated that twenty out of 73 murders committed in Zhytomyr oblast this year were caused by domestic violence. Natalia Samolevska, Civic Initiatives in Fighting Human Trafficking and Home Violence project coordinator, cited data from scholarly forecasts, according to which Ukraine’s population could decline to 42 million by 2006, with intense migration abroad being one reason. Ms. Samolevska believes that people are leaving Ukraine because they do not see any future for themselves. However, owing to the public efforts it became possible to draw attention to the issues of violence, labor migration, and human trafficking, which gives one reason to hope that the nation will unite to face these dangers, in part by conducting actions similar to the Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.