Strengthening Gender Action in Cahul and Ungheni districts with EU support

The EU project ‘Strengthened Gender Action in Cahul and Ungheni districts’ was launched on 13 April 2022 with the support of UN Women and local implementing partner ‘Artemida’ NGO from Drochia, a local project aimed at assisting and counselling service for victims of gender-based violence and domestic violence (assistance for victims of violence) in Cahul and Ungheni districts.

The project will provide assistance and counselling service by the end of December 2022. During the launch of the project, ‘Artemida’ NGO signed two partnerships agreements with local NGOs ‘Clubul Vreau Sa Stiu’ NGO from Cahul and ‘Viitorul Incepe Azi’ NGO from Ungheni, to develop a specialised response system on preventing and combating gender-based violence and domestic violence in Cahul and Ungheni districts, while local authorities will be consulted and involved in the process. At the same time, the project will provide capacity building for the teams of these two organisations to develop specific skills and abilities for working with victims of gender-based violence and domestic violence.

As a result of the assistance, about 50 women and girls (25 women and girls from Cahul district and 25 women and girls from Ungheni district) will benefit from specialised psychological and legal counselling services, psychosocial counselling, access to information during crises and legal services for girls and women affected by gender-based violence.

According to a recent survey ‘Assessment of the functionality of multidisciplinary teams in Cahul and Ungheni’, at the local level, women survivors of domestic violence are not always provided with needed services due to the shortage of service providers for preventing gender-based violence and domestic violence at the local level (one centre in Ungheni and two centres in Cahul). Thus, services provided by the existing centres in Ungheni and Cahul, such as social aid, psychological support, legal counselling/aid, accommodation, medical care, are often needed by women survivors of violence, but they are not always delivered due to insufficient capacity of these centres to help victims of violence.

The EVA Project – ‘Strengthened Gender Action in Cahul and Ungheni districts’ is funded by the European Union and implemented by UN Women in partnership with UNICEF Moldova.