The Platform for Gender Equality and the National Coalition “Life without Domestic Violence” are demanding the continuation of gender units within the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection. They asked the Ministry and the Center for Implementation of Reforms not to disband the Policy Division for ensuring gender equality when they prepare the Ministry’s new structure and regulations, IPN learned from a press statement of the Platform.
The Platform and the Coalition say that reducing the division’s stuff or merging it with another division will undermine the implementation of gender equality norms in government programs and policies and will seriously hinder state policies in this field.
“Recent achievements in promoting gender equality and preventing domestic violence, as well as the challenges in front of us, require a continuous collaboration and rigorous coordination of our efforts. This confirms again the need to have a specialized unit within the Ministry. A decision against the Division would be very regrettable and won’t be supported by the National Coalition “Life without Domestic Violence” and the Platform for Gender Equality”, reads the statement.
According to it, the Moldovan government is obliged to strengthen the existing gender equality mechanism in accordance with the 2013 CEDAW recommendations to Moldova. The NGOs hope that during the process of merging ministries, the authorities will consult other stakeholders, such as the National Coalition “Life without Domestic Violence” and the Platform for Gender Equality.
