I have been encountering the issue of violence against women in my professional career for more than 17 years. As a student of the Faculty of Law at Comenius University in Bratislava I worked as a legal counsellor in a free legal counselling centre of the Slovak Helsinki Committee focusing on human rights enforcement and antidiscrimination. Although the issue of violence against women was not articulated as gender based discrimination or a breach of human rights in Slovakia at the time, women experiencing violence in an intimate relationship were approaching the centre. During my solicitor training I also took up the representation and defense of clients’ interests in legal processes. Both of these positions gave me the great opportunity to confront the system and the real experience of women experiencing violence, as well as the way the issue of violence against women is reflected in the Slovak legal system and the decision-making practice of relevant public institutions. With regard to the need to articulate the needs of women and the realisation that a holistic approach is necessary, potentially protecting all women from any form of violence and supporting true gender equality, I accepted the job offer from the Open Society Foundation as a legal expert and project coordinator with a focus on gender equality, women’s human rights and combating gender based violence against women. This enabled me to broaden my scope of activities to include solicitor-related, analytical and educational work. International partnerships have given me the opportunity to confront Slovak practice with international standards and cooperation with NGOs to systematically deepen my knowledge of the issue. I have been working in the position of General Manager of the Coordinating Methodical Centre for Gender Based and Domestic Violence, which is a part of the Institute of Labour and Family Research, a state funded organisation of the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family of the Slovak Republic since March 2015. My team is in charge of creating and coordinating a nationwide, efficient, complex and coordinated policy including all relevant measures to prevent all forms of violence against women and domestic violence and combatting it, as defined in the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
