Available in Russian
Author: Natal’ya Kravchuk
DOI: 10.21128/2226-2059-2023-3-88-111
Keywords: the rights of the child; domestic violence; Russian Federation; UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; European Court of Human Rights; victim; witness; additional protection; care; criminal process; family and civil disputes
The prevalence of domestic violence, including “educational” violence, in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States is extremely high. Although there is no official statistical information on the prevalence of domestic violence against children in Russia, some statistics indicate that the number of child victims is in the thousands. In Russia there has already been formed a model of family relations based on violence and of bringing up children through the use of violence. The use of violence by parents against their children is justified by the Russian Orthodox Church, governmental authorities (whose discourse has rapidly changed from protecting children to protecting “traditional family values”), and the Russian people. This inevitably affects not only the prevalence of violence but also the possibility of protecting and guaranteeing the rights of children who become victims or witnesses of violence. In the eyes of Russian society, a child is not the subject of rights but the object of care and protection. This conceptual context of “passivity” of the child underlies Russian legislation’s guarantees for the protection of child victims and witnesses of violence. International standards of treatment of underage victims and witnesses, however, consider a child to be the subject of rights and provide for the State’s obligation to ensure that he/she can effectively participate in the process. At the same time, States must ensure the right of the child to special protection and care, including the prevention of re-victimization. For these purposes, it is permissible to deviate from the obligation to provide an accused with the opportunity of personal interrogation of witnesses for the prosecution. The application of the rules establishing child protection measures should not be automatic, but based on a determination of the best interests of the child in each case of the application of a particular protective measure. Russian legislation as applied in practice demonstrates that the rights of the child are not adequately protected. While its provisions apply to children under 16, they are unclear, inexhaustible, and contradictory and leave a significant number of children unprotected. Imperfection of the legislation, however, is not the only reason for the prevalence of violations of the rights of the child by both investigative and judicial authorities. A second reason is the lack of understanding by decision makers of the specific aspects of protecting a child as a vulnerable subject in the context of domestic violence. Existing Russian jurisprudence in the field of civil litigation completes this picture and proves that domestic violence is not seen as a condemned behavior that requires intervention by the authorities.
About the author: Natal’ya Kravchuk – Candidate of Sciences (PhD) in Law, Leading Research Fellow, Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
Citation: Kravchuk N. (2023) Deti i domashnee nasilie: ne tol’ko zhertvy, ne tol’ko ugolovnyy protsess [Children and domestic violence: not only victims, not only criminal proceedings]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 88–111. (In Russian).
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