We believe that this series of correspondence should not have been necessary between two partners, however, we consider that from these addresses we have cleared the misunderstandings that overshadowed the partnership of cooperation between us.

Necuvinte Association answer to ANES letter no. 4626/SG/MC/12.11.2017 received today, 14.12.2017:

Nr. 151/A.N./14.12.2017

National Agency for Equality between Women and Men

Mrs. Aurelia Grațiela Drăghici

Secretary of State

 Related to: Response to letter no. 4626/SG/MC/12.11.2017 regarding the Protocol of Collaboration in the field of preventing domestic violence no. 232-20.10.2016/206-21.10. 

Dear Mrs. Drăghici,

We have received your address no. 4626/SG/MC/12.11.2017, the response of your institution to our response to the desire of A.N.E.S. to cease the collaboration partnership. We ask that you explain why this address has a registration number dated 12.11.2017 and was sent to us on December 14, 2017.

We want to start by expressing relief to find that not the cessation of the partnership was your wish, but we continue to be surprised by the whole thing, not understanding where or why this initiative started in A.N.E.S. First of all, we have to specify two aspects:

– our response was to an initiative of ANES, which, as we also stated in the original response, surprised us in a very unpleasant way and it was precisely because of this collaboration that we had to answer and try to clarify some aspects, so your subsequent response can not be categorized as a “right to reply”;

– your letter with no. 4626/SG/MC/12.11.2017 was received by the Necuvinte Association as a reply to the mail sent by us at cabinet@anes.gov.ro, the email address from which we received the initial request from you, so the expression “the right to reply formulated by NECUVINTE Association, posted on their facebook account.” – is one that has no trace of truth in it. We can send you a picture of the Necuvinte Association’s mail account in this regard.

We believe that this kind of dialogue only strengthens our sense of lack of transparency and openness from your coordinated institution, and we would have been glad to be able to communicate briefly and efficiently, but by the answer we see, we need to make further clarifications needed for a proper understanding of both the present approach initiated by ANES and not by Necuvinte Association, and on the phenomenon of domestic violence in Romania.

We do not understand how our answer to an address telling us about your desire to cease our partnership for which we have acted for the whole of 2017 could have damaged the image of the institution. You have to remember that the whole process was initiated by you and we notice a note of malice that should not be placed in any interinstitutional dialogue even more between two partners.

“With regard to the transparency of our institution vis-à-vis your organization and all partners in civil society, we state that ANES, on the basis of all the partnerships it has signed, reserves the right to cooperate with its partners, depending on the specifics of each activity” – we understand from this context that the activity of Necuvinte Association did not fold on any of the activities of ANES in 2017? It is surprising considering the areas of activities of Necuvinte Association. Perhaps you can detail the specifics of the activities carried out in 2017 in order to better understand why we were not a match as an object of activity.

“As regards invoking the lack of support from ANES in the” Broken Wings” national campaign, although you mentioned that the campaign was known by the previous state secretary, you did not take any diligence to communicate your desire to continue the collaboration with the current state secretary and the need to support and involvement of our institution on a timely basis in certain campaign activities. “

Please note that during the “Open Doors Week – ANES in Dialogue with Civil Society”, to which you refer in your reply, Necuvinte Association was present at a meeting with you, where you were presented with a map showing all the activities of Necuvinte Association, including the national campaign to prevent domestic violence “Broken Wings”, and the desire for collaboration within the “National Caravan” that was about to be launched at that time was clearly expressed, but my colleague was invited to leave the office, the possibility of understanding whether this gesture meant an understanding of our request or a desire to ignore the whole approach was impossible. Later on, during several meetings, the opening of the discussion was attempted, but the communication of A.N.E.S. has made it impossible for us to express any points of view other than in writing, when the “National Caravan” was already in motion. We believe that we can not in any way be accused of not having tried to find a way of collaborating in this campaign, but we thank you for appreciating the work of Necuvinte Association and of the national campaign “Broken Wings”.

Thus, we are convinced that this national project, together with other activities carried out by Necuvinte Association  in 2017, will be an integral part of the annual report on the implementation stage of the Operational Plans for the implementation of the National Strategy for Prevention and Combating the Domestic Violence phenomenon for the period 2013 – 2017 and the National Strategy on Gender Equality for the period 2014-2017. In this regard, we will send you the detailed activities so that they can be included in the report by January 15, 2018 or earlier, if you consider necessary.

Regarding the suggestions made by Necuvinte Association about the request to amend Law 217/2003 on the prevention and combating of domestic violence, you state that our point of view was “singular” and “did not bring added value to the proposed project”. Please note that this document was worked on with the support of the members of the Bucharest Bar, supported by legal practitioners, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who partially requested similar changes, if not identical to those mentioned by us.

In Romania, at this moment, there are over 100,000 legally registered non-governmental organizations, the support of a proposal by 20 of them, without the constitutional and legal support of practitioners in law, only leads to what is happening now and namely the blocking of a motion for failing to take into account relevant legal considerations and constitutionality. We consider that by ignoring all the views contrary to what you consider to be valid and not open to a real public debate with participants from all spheres of civil society and ministries with attributions in this field led to blocking a legislative approach that could bring improvements to the situation of women victims of domestic violence in Romania.

The statistical data we refer to are not extracted from a single meeting as you erroneously support. Those data are used by the institution you coordinated in the footnote to substantiate the request to amend Law 217/2003 on the prevention and combating of domestic violence, in public addresses and in almost every public discourse you offer  in the framework of various debates and meetings on the prevention of gender-based violence and equal opportunities.

Thus, at our request under the law 544/2001 on free access to information of public interest to tell us the source of those statistics, you refer to the report of 2016 activity of the Public Ministry, which we know, but please specify the page number in the report that contains the figure you mentioned because we did not find this reference.

However, from the start we need to correct your perception that the number of defendants for an offense, in this case art. 188-189 / NCP, Murder and Qualified Murder is automatically equal to the number of people killed. In a case file on the crime of murder, 5 people may be charged with one victim, or 1 can kill 3 people. It is extremely erroneous to understand national statistics on criminal phenomena, and at the same time, you convey that the Romanian Police statistics are not correct or at least that we deduced from your response.

If the Public Ministry report is the only accepted reference, we are sending you attached page 22 of this report on the phenomenon of domestic violence.

We also encourage you to use as official references statistical data issued by state institutions with attributions in the field, as it is not yet explained the media you have submitted in almost every public meeting and official document on the topic, that of 33 days, as you actually write to us in your letter. We hope that at least from now on we will no longer hear from this average, which is not only not real, but it produces very serious effects among people in need of protection from the state.

Even if the instrument of the emergency protection order issued in maximum 72 hours, registered a phenomenal increase in the number of applications filed and admitted in 2016, as well as the issuance term, we will continue to promote the rights and freedoms of persons victims of domestic violence because this legislative change was just a project in the work of Necuvinte Association and we will move on with our projects of mentalities change, risk intervention and change of the legislative framework, but we appreciate your assessment that such actions are no longer necessary. We are glad to see that there is optimism also at the institutional level, not just among the civil society that goes on feeding only in the belief that things can be changed.

Finally, we are glad that even under this form of communication, we have managed to overcome the misunderstandings that shadowed our partnership and we are convinced that from now on we will benefit from all the openness and transparency of your decision-making as we will continue to provide you with all the openness to collaborate on the projects initiated by ANES.

Best regards,

Asociația Necuvinte

Director Executiv

Simona Voicescu

ANES letter no. 4626/SG/MC/12.11.2017 received today, 14.12.2017:

Nr. 147/A.N./08.12.2017

 

 

National Agency for Equality between Women and Men

Mrs. Aurelia Grațiela Drăghici

Secretary of State

Related to: Response to your request for abrupt termination of the partnership with Necuvinte Association

 Dear Mrs. Drăghici,

We have received your letter no. 4558/DPCVF/DP/05.12.2017 (uploaded below) with great surprise and concern, considering that Necuvinte Association has openly and continuously communicated with the Agency coordinated by you throughout your entire mandate which started in May this year.

Moreover, one can say that this communication has been unilateral; we are still waiting for your response concerning the notice we sent on July 17, this year.

Regarding the transparency that you claim to have demonstrated to our organization, we would like to remind you that you did not invite us to many of the meetings and debates organized by A.N.E.S., that at some of these events we were invited by the partners of the said events, partners who know us and appreciate our work.

Necuvinte Association launched, at a national level, the largest campaign aimed at informing and raising awareness of the domestic violence phenomenon, in partnership with the Romanian Police, the first campaign of this kind that was ever launched in Romania, the national campaign “Broken Wings”. During the deployment of this campaign, we have received no support from you whatsoever, although the previous leader of the Agency agreed on supporting us, and not even the existence of this campaign was recognized by you, insomuch that its total disregard can only be interpreted as being biased. We are convinced, however, that this was not the case, but rather you might not have been informed about its existence and therefore there was no communication from the Agency you are coordinating in regard to this campaign.

Within this national campaign, Necuvinte Association distributed 810,500 printed materials which reached all the police stations in the country, both in rural and urban areas.

Through these preventive materials, we have promoted, besides other useful information, the national line 0800 500 333 – the project of A.N.E.S., contributing thus to the component of mutual promotion of the partner’s activities within our partnership. We will resend you the campaign materials by courier along with this signed letter.

We believe that being the president of a government agency and not of a private company you have the moral duty, not to mention the legal obligation, to be transparent about all your activities and to be open to all partners in civil society.

The complaints you mentioned were related exactly to what we wrote above, the lack of recognition of the projects carried out by our association, the lack of decisional transparency, and our hope that you, from the official position you hold at this time, could bring real improvements to the field of gender equality and prevention of gender-based violence.

Our remarks serve a constructive purpose and even now we are forced to convey our message of concern regarding your statements in public meetings that you are not a feminist. We believe this is a damaging statement for the field you are coordinating and for which both partners in this discussion are doing everything they can to bring improvements.

Furthermore, in the hope that we will now receive a response, and as ruled by Law 544/2001 on Free Access to Information of Public Interest, we would like to take this opportunity to request you to provide us with the source of the statistics you use in both official documents and verbally, in public debates, because they do not correspond to the statistics provided by the Ministry of Administration and Interior, the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police, the Public Ministry, and the Ministry of Justice, the sources from which we obtain statistical data on the domestic violence phenomenon in Romania.

Specifically, we offer two examples, which are not singular:

– You claim that over 200 women were killed in 2016. According to the data from the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police regarding the statistical status of the persons and offences provided by Law 217/2003, 64 crimes falling under the ruling of Art. 188/NCP – Murder and Art. 189/NCP – Qualified homicide were committed in 2016. Out of these 64 murdered people, 40 were women, 17 men, 6 boys and 2 girls.

And even one single life that is lost is a tragedy that neither we, representatives of civil society, or you, can ever bring back. And we must all try, through our actions, to put a stop to these crimes though we need to do this using correct data and real information.

– You also claim that in 2016 the national average for issuing a protection order was 33 days, information which surprised us, given that Necuvinte Association collected and correlated the data on this instrument for 2015, 2016 and the first 10 months of 2017, and since from the data collected from the above mentioned institutions and correlated by us, the Necuvinte team, the national average for issuing a protection order in 2016 was 48 hours, less than the legal limitation of 72 hours.

We are convinced that you are as happy as us to hear about this since it means that the victims of domestic violence have emergency access to protection from the judiciary system.

Since your desire to cease this collaboration is completely unexpected, we would like you to send us a detailed report on your dissatisfaction with a partner who spent the entire year of 2017 promoting the work of the National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men at a national level.

In the hope that we will receive a response from the institution you coordinate, we assure you of our full support in the activities developed by A.N.E.S., by maintaining our status of independent non-governmental organization according to law, and of our participation in all the debates and meetings organized by A.N.E.S., depending on our calendar of activities and, of course, provided we are invited alongside other non-governmental organizations.

Best regards,

Asociația Necuvinte

Director Executiv

Simona Voicescu