Key stakeholders discuss how to improve women’s access to legal aid and assistance

ORDU, 18 Might 2022 – Every person is equivalent prior to the regulation but not every person has equivalent alternatives when it arrives to access to justice. Gals confront different boundaries, which might be financial, social or cultural, limiting their capability to get pleasure from their rights as equivalent citizens. Girls do not usually report currently being victims of violence, nor look for guidance from institutions for causes that may possibly be connected to fear of retaliation, not being aware of how and where by to ask for assist or missing have faith in in judicial authorities. Lawful help and guidance, thus, participate in an crucial function in eradicating limitations to women’s accessibility to justice.

With this in mind, the European Union and the Council of Europe’s Joint Motion on “Fostering women’s obtain to justice in Turkey” held the first of a series of multi-stakeholder meetings in the province of Ordu on 18 May, to elevate awareness of barriers to women’s access to justice and aid exchanges among the critical stakeholders on how to improve their access to authorized support and assistance.

Associates of the Union of Bar Associations of Turkey, Ordu Bar Association, Ordu University, general public organizations and civil culture organisations attended the conference and shared their views on issues concerning women’s entry to justice and doable options for advancement.

In her opening speech, Vice President of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations Atty. Sibel Suiçmez pointed out that “A single of the aims of this venture is to make improvements to women’s obtain to justice by increasing gender sensitivity and eliminating limitations, whilst at the identical time furnishing good quality legal support solutions. For this function, “Women’s Access to Justice” training was offered to 270 lawyers in our four pilot provinces – Ordu, Muğla, Diyarbakır and Nevşehir – via the Council of Europe Aid (Human Legal rights Instruction Application for Lawyers) programme. The trained lawyers will use their expertise and recognition on these concerns while providing legal assist solutions for girls. In this approach, I hope to continue doing the job together to be certain gender equality and remove violence against gals in Ordu, exactly where cooperation involving the public authorities, civil modern society and the bar association is robust.”

Also talking at the opening session, Cristian URSE, the Head of the Council of Europe’s Programme Business in Ankara, highlighted the value of getting rid of existing boundaries to obtain to justice and supporting area co-operation and multi-stakeholder partnerships to enrich the availability and good quality of authorized assist and authorized assistance for females, in line with European standards.

Prof. Dr. Kadriye Bakırcı from Hacettepe College drew awareness to the issues in women’s access to justice, these kinds of as deficiencies in accessing good quality legal support, inadequacies in knowledge collection, problems in accessing rights, and the current legislation becoming applied differently between provinces. She recommended the present good observe and pressured the relevance of widespreading this excellent observe and improved collaboration in the industry.

The conference was an essential stage in setting up regional tactics and partnerships in Ordu, which is one of the provinces exactly where the number of situations of violence against gals is greatest, and to make improvements to access to judicial products and services, which includes authorized aid for gals, in particular victims of violence.

Related conferences will take position in 3 additional provinces (Diyarbakır, Muğla and Nevşehir) right before the conclude of Oct 2022.

The action also allows to build the potential of attorneys to present gender-sensitive authorized support services for women of all ages in these 4 pilot provinces, and to give modest grants to tasks implemented by civil society organisations aiming to maximize women’s authorized consciousness and capacities as legal rights-holders.

The action entitled “Fostering women’s obtain to justice in Turkey” is aspect of the European Union and the Council of Europe’s joint programme entitled “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”.

 

Agenda