Domestic Violence Bill

Brief Description

The Domestic Violence Bill clearly condemns all forms of violence against women, girls and children. According to the bill, “domestic violence” means in general any act of violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, men, or children, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life between parties in an existing or former domestic relationship. The forms of domestic violence include, but are not limited to: 
(a) “Physical abuse, “meaning any act or threatened act of physical violence to a person, physical violence being any behavior that violates a person’s bodily integrity or health; and 
(b) “emotional, verbal and psychological abuse, “meaning a pattern of degrading or humiliating conduct towards a person including any behavior that causes emotional damage and reduction of self-esteem, or that harms and disturbs full development, or that aims at degrading or controlling a person’s actions, behavior, beliefs and decisions, by means of reduction of self-esteem, threat, embarrassment, humiliation, manipulation, isolation, constant surveillance, constant pursuit, insult, intimidations, blackmail, ridiculing, exploitation and limitation of the rights to come and go, repeated exhibition of obsessive possessiveness or jealousy, which is such as to constitute a serious invasion of a person’s privacy, liberty, integrity or security, or any other acts that cause damage to the person’s psychological health and self-determination, or any series of acts which collectively cause a person to fear for his or her safety and life.