The Institute for Women’s Rights presented on Tuesday the project “We Will Stop Child Abuse Together!”, financed by the Ukrainian Women’s Fund. The project is designed for six months and will include all the Moldovan localities.

The Institute Director Elena Protenco announced at the Tuesday press conference at Infotag that “200 girls, aged 14-16 from socially vulnerable families, orphanages, as well as representatives of national minorities and those, whose parents are gone abroad, are involved in the project”

According to her “seven seminars, trainings, consultations, press conferences will be held within the project, as well as informational booklets will be distributed”

“The project aims forming a negative attitude towards manifestations of child abuse and contributing to children and youth knowledge about methods of response to violence to reduce number of the affected children”, said Protenco.

She mentioned that “according to the Ministry of Education data, , over 6.3 thousand cases of child abuse were registered in September-December 2013, while according to the MoI data these are only 867. The cause of such a difference in numbers is not known”.

Protenco believes that “the law enforcement, authorities and the NGOs should pay attention to the problem of child abuse, because only 23.5 % of those affected address the complaints to the police.”

“The main causes of abuse are inequality between women and men, household reaons, lack of parents’ attention to children, institutional and informational reasons, which lead to health impairment, family destroying, restraint”, said she.

Protenco believes that “to actively address the problem of violence against children and women, the authorities should cooperate with the human rights organizations, civil society and the NGOs and only then we will be able to change something”

She urged everybody “to join the project, contribute the project solving and not to remain indifferent, because the indifference contributes to the violence development”

Teacher Veronica Varnic said that “according to the UN, over 40 million children under 15 years, who were abused, were registered in the world in 2006.”

“According to the Ministry of Education, 25% of Moldovan children were abused by their parents, 135 – by teachers, 10% children know those who were abused and 40% of parents use violence in educational purposes”, mentioned she.

According to Varnic, the victims may appeal to the National Center for Child Abuse Preventing in Chisinau, to the Municipal Office for the Protection of Children’s Rights, to the Moldovan Center for Human Rights, as well as to similar institutions in other localities.

The press-conference participants urged the violence victims to report to the law enforcement and corresponding NGOs, while the authorities and NGOs – to an active cooperation.