Nighina Azizov, program coordinator on EVAW at UN Women Moldova: "The main outcome that we want to achieve is for all women and girls to live a life free of violence"

For International Women’s Day, DevelopmentAid brings forward the subject of violence against women and girls, a worldwide issue which is still under the spotlight of many international organizations and institutions, including UN Women.

It is estimated that 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner (not including sexual harassment) at some point in their lives. In an attempt to curb the phenomenon of all forms of violence against women, the elimination of violence against women and girls (EVAW) was established as one of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 5 – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
To learn more about the progress achieved on SDG 5 in countries where violence against women and girls is still a very common phenomenon, we chose to focus on Moldova, a small landlocked country with a population of 3,5 million, located in South-Eastern Europe.
Moldova is a small lower-middle-income economy and although it is the poorest country in Europe, the World Bank says that it has made significant progress in reducing poverty and promoting inclusive growth since the early 2000s.
However, Moldova is a country with deeply-rooted stereotypes about the roles of women in society and in their families. Reports say that 63% of Moldovan women experienced psychological, physical or sexual violence from their husband or partner at least once in their lifetime. According to a study on the perception of Moldovan men on gender equality, 41% of them consider that there are moments when a woman deserves to be beaten, while 27% think that a woman should tolerate violence in order to preserve the family. On the other side, there are 22% of women who agree that a partner or husband is justified in beating his partner or wife under certain circumstances.
For our interview series ”DevelopmentAid is listening” we invited Nighina Azizov, program coordinator at UN Women Moldova on the elimination of violence against women, to talk about UN Women’s work in Moldova and the progress achieved so far on SDG 5 in Moldova.