Domestic Violence and Gaps in Access to Justice at Hawassa City
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Date
2017-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This thesis examines domestic violence and gaps in accessing justice. To this end, it employs
qualitative data obtained from semi-structured interviews and data gathered from Hawassa City
Police Stations as well as legal reviews. This thesis principally scrutinize gaps of access to
justice in domestic violence cases at Hawassa City going through both formal and informal
administration of justice and taking legal protection, legal awareness and remedy as components
of access to justice. The writer contends that the non-ratification of Optional Protocol to
CEDAW and Maputo Protocol would have provide additional avenue for victims of domestic
violence to access remedies. The Criminal Code is just implying something is being done rather
than reflecting interest of the health and safety of individual women by regulating the wide swath
of violations in addition to physical violence. There is both financial and expertise constraint,
lack of training methodology to evaluate the attitudinal change of stakeholders and low level of
civil society involvement in addressing legal awareness about the available remedies and
avenues.
This thesis also finds out that the discretion of the police to initiate investigation, resource
constraints in evidence gathering, the usual base of the public prosecutors evidence only on the
statement of the victim and high withdrawals of cases to the informal administration of
justice/mediation starting from the police to the trial, unavailability of victim support service are
the common problems faced in the criminal justice system. Besides, lack of enough expertise in
enforcing custody judgment of the court and absence of strong legal aid provisions up to
representing the victim in civil suits are the focal issues in the civil justice system.
So much so that, the thesis proposes for the ratification of both Optional Protocol to CEDAW
and Maputo Protocol, the enactment of comprehensive law in addressing physical, sexual,
psychological and economic violations as a crime in addition to the provision of different civil
remedies. Allocating adequate budget in addressing awareness creation, cooperation with civil
society organizations in addressing support services as well as legal aid services for victims of
domestic violence are also some of the way outs sought by the thesis.
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Law