Today, February 21, 2018, Avram Iancu Hall, at the Parliament Palace, the final conference of the national campaign for the prevention of intra-family violence “Broken Wings” took place.

The construction of the national campaign began in 2015 with the making of of the documentary “Broken Wings” at the Women’s Penitentiary Târgșor, which gave the name of the campaign. On July 1, 2016, the Embassy of Israel in Romania donated its national day to launch our campaign. At the end of 2016 we printed 810,500 preventive materials, the Safety Guide for Family Violence Victims and Posters. In January 2017, all the materials were distributed to all 3537 police stations nationwide. During the year 2017, the 11,600 policemen involved have implemented 9,000 urban activities and 17,300 rural activities involving 5,000 pre-university educational institutions, 12,697 companies, 124 non-governmental organizations, and 977 public institutions.

The “Broken Wings” Caravan, an integral part of the national campaign, has reached 15 counties of the country where we organized awareness raising events, to which we invited local public institutions with attributions in the field and more (health, education, justice), non-governmental organizations , the political environment, academia and the press. The caravan was attended by 441 participants from 136 local public institutions and 94 non-governmental organizations and had more than 150 media outlets.

The campaign had a total of about 3,000,000 direct and indirect beneficiaries, and the total cost of the project was only 77,000 euros.

Today’s event was an emotional one for us, in which we weight the effort and the results. On this occasion, we put on paper and brought to the attention of everyone all the hundreds of thousands of activities, the millions of people informed and the changes that this campaign has caused at the level of local authorities and more.

The event was attended by four deputy ladies interested in the phenomenon of domestic violence, Adriana Săftoiu, Andreea Csep, Florica Cherecheş and Valeria Schelean, who have joined us since the beginning of our efforts and whom we thank for their opening and for the desire to continue working together to change legislation, but also to implement new campaigns and prevention projects.

We thank the Embassy of Israel in Romania and Mrs. Deputy Chief of Mission Tania Berg Rafaeli for the beautiful words she has addressed; we thank Sweden’s Ambassador to Sweden, Anneli Lindahl-Kenny, for wanting an exchange of experience between Sweden and Romania to learn from their best practices. The event was also attended by Ambassador of Austria, Isabel Rauscher, Ms Abigail Rupp, Deputy Head of Mission of the US Embassy and Mrs. Irina Costache from the UK Embassy.

On behalf of the Romanian Police were present at the event,  Mrs. Chestor Ţuicu Carmen Camelia, Deputy General Inspector of the Romanian Police; Chief of Police Antonio-Iacob Cioban, Director of Public Order Department; Mrs. Chief of Police Ramona Dabija, Director of the Institute for Crime Prevention and Research; Mrs. Chief of Police Angela Chirvăsuţă, Institute for Crime Research and Prevention; Chief of Police Dorin Fânaru, Public Order Department.

The event was hosted by the Commission for Equal Opportunities in the Senate and opened by the chairman of the commission, Adrian Wiener, whom we take this opportunity to thank for all the support given both at the event and in our work.

All our consideration goes to Anna-Katharina Scheidereiter, CSR Manager at Kaufland Romania, who believed in us and the potential of our campaign. The one who understood that our chaos is constructive and decided to fund us much more than we dared to ask.

Campaign Results in Numbers:

Conclusions of the entire campaign are largely reduced to:

• Continuing information and awareness campaigns;
• Running a caravan in the countryside;
• Awareness programs for both police and magistrates;
• Campaigns aimed at broad public awareness – social intervention and involvement of all people;
• The need to set up more shelters for both victims and aggressors;
• Implement a system for monitoring aggressors;
• Modifying legislation to punish aggressors who violate protection orders more severely;
• Modifying the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code.