This initiative seeks to facilitate coordination and collaboration between justice institutions, the Ministry of Women's Affairs and civil society to strengthen the justice system's response to these cases.
Five institutions of the justice sector and civil society, in a joint articulation effort, launched in Santiago the pilot experience of the articulation strategy for access to justice for victims of gender violence.
This initiative seeks to facilitate coordination and collaboration between justice institutions, the Ministry of Women and civil society, in order to strengthen the response of the justice system and mark a milestone in the protection of victims of gender violence and increase the prosecution and punishment of those responsible for these crimes.
The articulation strategy, which will be integrated by the Judicial Power, the Attorney General's Office, the Specialized Directorate of Attention to Women and Domestic Violence (DEAMVI) of the National Police, the Ministry of Women and, representing civil society, the Women's Support Center (NAM), will be supported by the United States government through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The President of the Supreme Court of Justice, Magistrate Henry Molina, described the initiative as a valuable effort that adds wills and actions to prevent and eliminate violence against women, and said that the Judiciary emphasizes the incorporation of the gender perspective in all areas of daily work.
"We must continue working from our individual spaces, from each court, each office and each institution to eradicate all types of violence against women, using all the tools at our disposal," she said.
Likewise, the chief prosecutor of Santiago, Osvaldo Bonilla Hiraldo, stated that: "this pilot plan represents a great opportunity to improve the quality of the services for attention to gender violence, since it provides us with tools to reduce the critical route in the approach to violence", he said.
Lissette Dumit, Senior Advisor for Citizen Security and Rule of Law at USAID/Dominican Republic said: "What begins here today represents an important step forward in the right direction to make access to justice a reality for all victims of gender-based violence in this country.
For the launching of the pilot plan, the highest representatives of the Judicial Power, Henry Molina, of the Attorney General's Office, Miriam Germán and of the Ministry of Interior and Police, Jesús Vásquez, the three institutions of the official justice sector that lead the fight against gender violence, as well as the representative of the Núcleo de Apoyo a la Mujer (NAM) agreed in recognizing the importance of this process of articulation to concentrate efforts and expedite, in a timely manner, greater protection for those women victims of gender violence and that the prosecution and punishment that corresponds to those responsible for these crimes is carried out."
During the activity, the institutions that make up this initiative in the province of Santiago read a Declaration of Intent in which they expressed their firm intention to implement this strategy of inter-institutional coordination for the benefit of victims of gender violence.
