Women Against Violence, Kvinna till Kvinna

Some of the reported results for 2023 in relation to defined intermediate objectives are the following: In relation to: 1. Advocacy, monitoring and services Intermediate objective 1: During 2023 the high level of femicide continued. Due to this, the public discussions, protests and media reporting on the weaknesses within the justice system continued, and led also to high-level activities of Kvinna till Kvinna (KtK) and its partner organisations in Bosnia. The lack of adequate judiciary response was addressed through advocacy actions, and monitoring of legal cases of domestic violence. The public debate on femicide put the spotlight on the need to improve the legislation, the prevention and the protection of women and girls from being exposed to violence. Legal proposals that previously had been drafted were discussed and partner-organisations of KtK were called to meetings with authorities, the EU delegation, EU member-states and the Office of the High Representative. One of KtK's partner organisations: Center for women's rights (CWR) in Zenica, continued their advocacy efforts towards the process of amendments to the Criminal Code of FBiH and its harmonization with the Istanbul Convention. CWR held different meetings with various duty bearers, including a meeting with the Prime Minister of FBiH, who gave full support to the suggested amendments to the Criminal Code. In the Republika Srpska, partners of KtK closely followed the process of the Draft Law on Domestic Violence and Violence against Women. United Women in Banja Luka (UWBL) and Lara foundation, worked together through advocacy actions to ensure that the draft legislation included their amendment to improve funding of safe houses in RS. 2. Movement and Networking: Intermediate objective 2: The high numbers of GBV and femicide-cases in 2023, led to the need of coming together between KtK's organisations, but also with many non-partner organisations and activists. Long term partners like Cure, United Women in Banja Luka, Center for Women's Rights in Zenica and KtK, worked intensively together preparing official demands and coordinating meetings. Newer partners like Crvena in Sarajevo, Initiative Citizens in Morstar and other less formalized partners generated visuals and social media campaigns. Besides doing concrete campaign work together, KtK's networking meeting in 2023 gave important opportunities for discussing the cause of women''s rights organisations in Bosnia and the necessity to cooperate more and to consolidate among like-minded organisations, platforms and activists. Once again it became evident that a more unified women's movement is needed, to counter the backlash against civil society and the increasing anti-gender discourse/ movement in the country. KtK also organised a good practice exchange with Croatia. Five of KtK's partner-organisations met with women's rights organisations and activists with the objective of discussing and learning from Croatian women's rights organisations experiences, the application of EU standards and sexual violence support mechanisms. Successful models for treatment of victims of GBV were assessed and the EU-directive of the European Parliament on minimum standards support to and protection of victims/survivors was discussed. In 2023, the partner organisations of KtK also gave joint input based on collaboration to the annual EU country report, the development of the new Gender Action Plan for Bosnia, the action plan for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 and to the alternative CEDAW report covering 2019-2023. 3. Visibility and communication Intermediate objective 3: Due to the high public attention on GBV, KtK and their partners have had a high local visibility in media during the whole year. The tailored media-training in 2022 for KtK's partners, was proved to be very useful in 2023. The contact and the dialogue with media centers was more easy, and the media coverage was improved. Some of the partners like Trial International and Lara in Bijeljina engaged journalists in a participatory way. Lara published a call for journalists in the RS, to support reporting on domestic violence. Besides this they also engaged journalists representing seven media outlets in a joint discussion on reporting on violence against women and girls. The discussions concluded on the necessity to have a broader collaboration between activists and journalists, and to develop a network. New partners of KtK - Crvena and It's All Witches with a more strong feminist approach - focused on addressing the root causes of GBV. Together with art and informal activist communities, they targeted and empowered the younger generation. They used their social networks but did also perform activities in the public space. The more intensive work on visibility and external communication, has also put the light on the included risks. During the past year, the vulnerability to attacks and threats for some organisations, especially in RS, became evident. The necessity of having closer relationship between journalists and activists and to have a better burden sharing between trustworthy media outlets and activists can be ways to explore in the future.

Long-term outcome: Bosnia and Herzegovina is a democratic society where women's rights are secured, rule of law is effective, and with a vibrant and pluralistic civil society.  Programme objective: Strong and visible Women Civil Society Organisations influence policy and practice regarding response to gender-based violence in both entities. Intermediate objective 1: Partner organisations advocacy is more strategic and effective, through using evidence from monitoring the implementation of practices and policy regarding GBV, data from direct support provided to women victims/survivors and through targeting relevant duty bearers. Intermediate objective 2: Women's organisations, through networking, are more strategic, collaborative and influential in their work in relation to GBV. Intermediate objective 3: Partner organisations work more strategically with visibility and communication around key issues and results (and hence have better chances of influencing policy).