Family violence prevention: Everyone’s responsibility

The festival for cultural families in Dong Nai province

With effective results from the model of domestic violence prevention and control deployed in Song Trau commune, Trang Bom district in 2008, almost localities in the province implemented this model. The province has so far set up 575 groups of domestic violence prevention and control who are responsible for propagandizing, educating, consulting, conducting conciliation, preventing and controlling all acts involving domestic violence at localities. Moreover, the province also has 850 conciliation groups that successfully conducted conciliation for 698 cases of domestic violence. Many couples have lived together in harmony again and built a happy family after receiving help and encouragement from these groups. The province also established 286 clubs of sustainable development families.

However, the reality has shown that the situation of domestic violence is still complex. In 2010, the province had 777 cases of domestic violence in which victims mainly are women (77.86%), children (6.18%), aged people (4.89%), and others (11.02%). Physical violence accounted for 60.37%, then followed by spiritual and financial violence, and forcing sex. Domestic violence causes or potentially causes physical, spiritual and financial damage to other members of a family, as well as influences the stability in society. As a result, the province had 17 divorces, 58 legal separation, 42 cases in which victims had to be taken care of at public health establishments, especially 5 cases of suicide. Children suffering domestic violence often tend to quit schools and participate in social evils, then easily violating the law. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, because the actual number of domestic violence is much higher due to the fact that many victims still feel ashamed to tell the truth…

Effective groups of domestic violence prevention and control are honored

Many people participating in family violence prevention and control said that apart from such reasons leading to domestic violence as patriarchal behavior, male chauvinism, poverty, illiterate and getting drunk; lacking soft skills, spirit and abilities to solve conflicts and disputes between family members could easily cause domestic violence through a very small conflict.  Le Van Tu, who is in charge of the club of happy families in Xuan Phu commune, Xuan Loc district, said “At present, groups of domestic violence prevention and control often conduct conciliation when family violence occur. In my opinion, effectively preventing and controlling domestic violence need to focus on the task of domestic violence prevention by promoting education and propaganda methods and providing soft skills for young people so that they can know how to behave when facing small conflicts. Widening the model of happy family clubs is also one of effective solutions to domestic violence prevention”.

Luu Thi Phuong, Deputy General of Dong Nai Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, noted “It is necessary to combine domestic violence prevention with the campaign ‘the entire population unites to build up cultural life’, then raising public awareness of domestic violence prevention so that victims dare to raise their voices to protect themselves and others do not ignore family violence”.

Tran Thi Phan, who is in charge of happy family club in Xuan Binh ward (Long Khanh Town), shared “Domestic violence causes great pain for both families and society, so the whole community needs to join hands with each other to solve this issue”.

At the conference to partially sum up 2-year implementation of domestic violence prevention and control model, Vice-Chairwoman of the provincial People’s Committee Huynh Thi Nga emphasized “Domestic violence prevention and control is everyone’s responsibility. Therefore, it is necessary to promote propaganda task, ensuring that 80% of population can have a correct understanding of domestic violence prevention and control by the year 2015”.

Reported by Thuy Lien, Translated by Minh Minh