Members of the Zagreb City Assembly on Thursday evening adopted a city strategy for protection against domestic violence for the period from 2023 to 2025, put forward by Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic.

Rada Boric of the group of deputies comprising the Mozemo!, Zagreb je nas, New Left and ORAH – Green Alternative parties, said that the Zagreb model for the prevention of domestic violence consisted of support to victims through preventive programmes, a network of counselling services, expert assistance to children, accommodation in shelters, and the psycho-social treatment of perpetrators of domestic violence, both men and women. It also includes cooperation with civil society organisations and the education of experts on domestic violence, support to victims after they leave shelters, and securing a housing stock for women victims of domestic violence.

Boric said that in 2022, 13 women were killed, six of them by their sons.

Such a trend exists in Zagreb as well – in the first six months of 2022, 232 crimes of domestic violence were committed, with women being the victims in 206 of them and men in 26.

Nineteen percent of the female victims are women aged above 60, which is why a campaign raising awareness of that fact was launched, Boric said.