It is estimated that in Croatia a woman experiences violence every 15 minutes, and the number of femicide cases is still very high, putting Croatia in third place in the EU, it was said at the launch of a campaign called "Shield" at the Europe House in Zagreb on Saturday.

The purpose of the campaign, which includes a song of the same title and a video clip authored by musician Ida Prester and the Arterarij organisation, is to encourage women to seek legal and psychological help and to prompt greater action by state institutions in preventing violence and protecting women against violence.

“We must unite at the level of the media, institutions and everyday communication in dealing with the problem of violence against women,” Prester said, adding that it was important to include men and public figures in the campaign, launched on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

“The system is slow, the punishments are lenient and we must make effort to make sure the number of femicide cases is brought down to zero,” said Romano Nikolić of Arterarij, an organisation for the inclusion of members of marginalised and stigmatised groups in art productions.

Dunja Bonnaci Skenderovic, an independent consultant on the prevention of violence against women, said that the World Health Organisation has called violence against women an epidemic and a public health problem affecting one-third of the world’s female population.

The UN has said that the number of femicide cases is the highest in the last two decades, she added.

In her independent research she has discovered that in Croatia there have been 55 cases of femicide since 2016, most of them were intentional and the perpetrators were most often partners or family members.

Bonnaci Skenderovic said that in 33 of the cases the victim was killed in her own home and the most frequent motive for the murder was the woman’s decision to leave the killer.

“I believe this campaign will have a positive effect on the change of the mentality in Croatia,” she said.

EU resolute in fight against violence against women

Member of the European Parliament Predrag Matic, who is also a member of the EP Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, commented on problems arising from the fact that women abusers also include police officers.

“Victims cannot trust the system that does not protect them and that sometimes abuses them,” said Matic, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

He added that the SDP Mayor of Sisak, Kristina Ikic Banicek, had opened a safe house for women in her city but noted that the problem of violence against women should not be dealt with at the local but at the national and European levels.

Many member states are against including rape in the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence, which is incomprehensible to me as an EU citizen, said Frances Fitzgerald, an Irish MEP and co-rapporteur for the Directive, who added that she is glad the Croatian government has supported the inclusion of rape into the new EU law because it guarantees an equal level of protection against the gravest forms of crime in the EU.

The head of the European Commission Representation in Croatia, Andrea Covic Vidovic, said that with the ratification of the Istanbul Convention this year the EU has sent a strong signal that it is determined to prevent, condemn and fight any form of violence against women and girls.