On 22nd February, the European Day for Victims of Crime, we raise awareness on the need to ensure the rights of victims of crime become a focus in the justice systems across Europe.
Since November 2017, we have been involved in a newly-funded project aiming to guarantee that victims of crime have access to the services they are entitled to thanks to the European Directive 2012/29/EU, adopted in Italy on 15th December 2015 through legislative decree no. 212.
SupportVoC – Development of a Generic Support Services Model to enhance the Rights of Victims of Crime contributes to the promotion of the rights and the protection of Victims of Crimes, and works towards the effective implementation of the abovementioned European Directive, in Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Cyprus.
In its two years of implementation, SupportVoC will represent the chance for the partnership:
- to research and report about the status of the implementation of the Directive in each of the project countries and make recommendations for the update of the relevant legal systems,
- to promote the cooperation between authorities and other agencies working in support of victims’ services,
- to learn from the experience of the Spanish services to develop a new model of generic support services for victims of crime that can be adapted to the different country contexts to effectively enforce the minimum standards set by the European Union.
SupportVoC is co-financed by the Justice Programme of the DG Justice of the European Commission.
The University of Barcelona, who also hosted the first meeting of the project in November 2017, coordinates the efforts of the European partnership, made up of a number of organisations including NGOs and centres of support services for victims.
Specifically, the following organisations take part in the project:
- Coordinator: UB – University of Barcelona (Spain);
- KMOP – Family and Child Care Centre (Greece);
- EKKA – National Centre for Social Solidarity (Greece);
- AAF – Animus Association Foundation (Bulgaria);
- HFC – “Hope For Children” CRC Policy Center (Cyprus);
- CESIE (Italy).
For further information, please contact justice@cesie.org.
