The Women’s Society for Peace and Democracy/Azerbaijan is organizing information meetings for the victims of gender based violence (GBV) as well as trainings on GBV for NGO staff within the frames of UNFPA’s Combating Gender Based Violence in Azerbaijan Project. The major objective of the information meetings is to render psychological, legal and medical support to the victims of violence via organization of victim support groups and victim information meetings.

In addition to this, separate GBV trainings aimed at increasing the capacities of local NGOs operating in Azerbaijan are also held.

Overall, organization of 24 victim support groups and 12 information meetings for victims, and 12 trainings for NGO representatives has been planned in the frames of the project.
 
The work with the victims has revealed that the majority of them were in need of urgent gynecological and legal services. The required services were provided to the women by expert doctors, psychologists and lawyers employed at the Center in the frames of the abovementioned project.
 
According to the Women Society for Peace and Democracy/Azerbaijan, attracting GBV and DV victims to these meetings was not an easy task at the very outset. Just like all victims of violence these women were very reluctant to share problems they have faced with others and find solutions to these problems. However, this challenge was overcome after a series of meetings conducted by experts of the Society.
 
Participants of information meetings organized for NGO representatives were predominantly guided on establishment of effective cooperation with violence victims as well as journalists. One of these sessions was conducted by Sevinj Mammadyarova, a representative of the Caucasus Gender Media Center as well as a renowned media expert reporting on gender issues . Speaking about media coverage of gender issues Mammadyarova emphasised that the Azerbaijani media allocates very little space for GBV in comparison to other countries’ media agencies. Mammadyarova attributes this to the lack of specialized journalists reporting on gender issues.
 
“The number of journalists specialized on gender issues is very small. Of course, this fact impacts the quality and quantity of stories about gender”, Mammadyarova said.
 
She also highlighted the fact that the editors do not consider this topic as an important one for their media outlets.
 
“Editors are not interested in coverage of gender issues and conducting journalist investigations into the GBV topic. In most cases, they consider this as private family issue and think that this topic is not of interest for the audience of their media outlets. I have faced this problem quite a lot while working for various media agencies”, she added.