engleski

Family violence among women in Croatia: Gap between policy and public health/health promotion actions

Background: Domestic violence is a serious problem in Croatia. According to a recent survey, domestic violence affects one in three families in Croatia, and up to 40% of Croatian citizens know at least one victim of domestic violence. Women are the usual target ; they are perpetrators in 3-12% cases while victims in 70-83% cases. The availability of firearms (a legacy of the 1991-95 conflict) and financial and social crises increase its incidence. Croatia has attempted to tackle this challenge by creating legal and policy framework consistent with EU and UN standards and commitments. However, the main problem is its implementation in everyday practice, particularly the lack of interest and activities among the health care and public health sector. The aim of this presentation is to give an overview of the current state in Croatia and lessons learned through activities in the last 15 years. Methods: As a method to analyse the current state of recognising and solving problems of family violence among women in Croatia, SWOT analysis was used. Legal documents, published data from regional and national surveys, papers on activities in different sectors (police, social work, health care systems, civil society and juridical sector) were accounted. Additionally, the five public health priorities of each Croatian county were reviewed. Results: Croatia has a perfect policy framework and could be a model of good practice for neighboring countries as well as for other well developed states. However, SWOT analyses showed that there is a big gap between proclaimed rules and everyday practice. The weaknesses are mostly recognised in health care sector. Two main problems are: lack of (any) interest of public health workers employed in local Public Health institutions and lack of health professionals’ competency to deal with this problem in primary, secondary or tertiary care. Conclusions: Beside great legal framework, strategies, recommendations, protocols etc, there is a big gap between written acts and everyday practice. Furthermore, there is still a lack of awareness of domestic violence as a public health problem and not only as individual or family issue.

family violence; Croatia; legislation

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