From Taboo to Awareness: Delving into Domestic Violence in Uzbekistan

Abstract

This thesis explores Domestic Violence from an interdisciplinary approach, from both a social and legal perspective, to provide a holistic analysis of Domestic Violence in its entirety, as well as for its case study: Uzbekistan. The research examines the issue of domestic violence in Uzbekistan due to the country's high incidence of domestic violence and the growing number of cases that are reported there. That is, the puzzle of this research is why Uzbekistan has administrative laws and mechanisms to protect the rights and freedoms of a number of women, and why there are still many cases of domestic violence in society, the main goal of this thesis is to examine laws and policies for women victims of gender-based violence, with a focus on the criminalization of domestic violence in Uzbekistan (2023), to see overall trends in public awareness, the issuance of protection orders in recent years. Often in society, there are other barriers to implementing and fully reaching these goals and targets, of these challenges I would say domestic violence. 2023 on April 11 the president of Uzbekistan Sh. Mirziyoyev signed amendments to the country's legislation on the protection of women and children from violence. Uzbekistan became the fifth country in Eastern Europe and Central Asia to criminalize domestic violence, noted Amnesty International.1 Therefore, the MA thesis theme is directly related to this law, both qualitative and quantitative mixed research methods are used in this paper to examine the effectiveness of this very law whether this new provision is working in practice, and whether there are enforcing mechanisms enough. This research examines the issue of domestic violence, the selected topic is "From Taboo to Awareness: Delving into Domestic Violence in Uzbekistan” through a literature review and aims to proceed with thesis work with mixed methods to examine this topic in recent years in Uzbekistan, initiatives aimed at strengthening gender equality and reducing violence, as well as the protection mechanisms available for those who have suffered from gender-based violence, will be studied, broadly in the context of Uzbekistan. Content validity is used to check the validity of the research, which includes semi-structured interviews with experts, and an interview with survivors of GBV, content, and comparative methods are used. To compare the number of protection orders given to women who experienced domestic violence before and after the law, quantitative analysis specifically, statistics are used and compared, as descriptive and regression analyses. Overall, this study aims to uncover the underlying reasons for the effectiveness of laws, considering societal attitudes, cultural norms, legislative enforcement, and other pertinent factors.