Government agrees to set up standing body to prevent and combat gender-based violence

Before commencing the meeting, the ministers held a minute's silence to remember the 15 women killed so far this year, victims of gender-based violence, which means that this year has started dramatically in terms of male violence.

At the meeting, it was agreed to set up a standing operational body, which will consist of a standing committee to evaluate, prevent and combat gender-based violence. This will be chaired by the Government Representative for Gender-Based Violence, the Director-General for the Territorial Evaluation and Coordination of Education and the Assistant Directors for Operations of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

An inter-departmental body will also be set up to coordinate, prevent and combat gender-based violence, with representatives from the four ministerial departments, the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (Spanish acronym: FEMP), the regional governments on an alternating basis and the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups. This body, which will be chaired by the Minister for Health, will operate as a standing committee and will start to work on implementing the regulation emanating from the Sub-committee on gender-based violence. It will also hold quarterly meetings at which it will draft a report on the situation of gender-based violence to be presented to the Council of Ministers.

The government highlighted the need to step up the work on early detection, raise social awareness and the visibility of this scourge. To that end, these two bodies will strengthen the following actions:

• Step up training for all parties involved (healthcare workers, judges, public prosecutors).
• Revise and update protocols for current inter-departmental action.
• Improve prevention through the social media, particularly for young people.
• Strengthen campaigns scheduled for 2017 to combat gender-based violence.
• Assess the effectiveness of protection orders and strengthen measures to protect children.
• Promote external complaints from third parties to help foster early detection.
• Assess risks in coordination with the gender-based violence units of the sub-delegations.
• Review budget allocations at all tiers of government: local authorities, regional governments and ministerial departments.

The government reiterates that the fight against gender-based violence is a State issue and that the whole of society must be involved in breaking the culture of silence on this matter.