Thursday, October 12, 2023

Collaboration between the academic community and investigative authorities against domestic violence

On October 11, 2023, the research team and experts from the Chamber of Investigators in Bulgaria and the Research & Training Point Foundation, implementing the PROTECT project in Bulgaria, hosted a meeting with researchers on the topic of domestic violence from the University of Oslo (UO). Professors Maylen Skilbrei and Anna Ratecska from the UO Law Department participated in working meetings with representatives from the investigative and prosecutorial authorities, as well as the academic community in Bulgaria, discussing key issues related to the investigation and analysis of this crime. A joint team of Bulgarian and Norwegian experts is engaged in preparing a comparative report, assessing the parameters of the crime in both countries, as well as good practices and models from Norway for the prevention and investigation of domestic violence against women, with a focus on the Roma community.

In an interview for the project, Norwegian experts shared that the working meetings in Sofia are extremely useful for exchanging experiences between research teams and finding the most effective approaches to the prevention and investigation of the crime. The differences between Norway and Bulgaria start with the definition of "domestic violence" and the related family and partner relationships in legislation, said Prof. Skilbrei. The institutional structure of investigative authorities also varies, and these differences will be reflected in the research report prepared by Bulgarian and Norwegian experts. According to Prof. Ratecska, cooperation between the university and investigative authorities can take various forms and can be initiated by either party (during pre-trial investigations, as well as in the assessment and formulation of criminal policies), but the objective and impartial view of science on topics like this is crucial to ensuring fundamental scientific results, based on which equal access to justice for all victims of the crime and fair sentences for perpetrators can be guaranteed.

More information about the project, as well as materials from expert studies and the project's information campaign, can be found on the project's website and Facebook.

The project "Inform-Invest-Protect: Countering Violence against Women (PROTECT)," implemented under contract BGJUSTICE-4.002-0011-C01 from October 26, 2022, financed under the "Justice" program of the Norwegian Financial Mechanism (NFM) 2014-2021.