Abdo Khal

Okaz

Incidents of domestic violence have been on the rise recently. Every day we hear or read about a case where the victim is beaten up or deprived of the right to live a normal life or get married or get educated. There have been many such cases and at times they have become fatal too. Yet, we do not see any new initiatives to curb this menace.



Perhaps this is because the means used to fight domestic violence have not changed. We see victims accepting all forms of violence in silence. They know if they talk or draw attention to their cases, they will be ostracized by their families. No one will help them if the families know that they have spoke up.



The problem with social institutions is that they deal with each domestic violence case separately. They do not have any strategic plan to combat the problem as a whole. More often than not, they have failed to act in the initial stages and react only when things have exacerbated. These institutions should take preemptive measures and not come onto the scene after violence occurs. To do that, they need to have a system in place to prevent family members from all forms of violence.



Social protection centers cannot help a domestic violence victim if the victim does not report the incident to the police station first. No center enjoys the power to go to the victim’s house and save him/her. But what if we gave these centers more powers and allowed them to respond to any domestic violence case as soon as the victim reports the case to them? Such preemptive steps will allow those centers to combat violence effectively  



The Ministry of Social Affairs should develop new mechanisms to fight violence and provide its centers more powers. I strongly believe that if the ministry develops a strict mechanism, it will succeed in reducing the number of domestic violence cases.