Breaking the Cycle of Violence Project

Brief Description

In 2018, the Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disability partnered with Human Rights and Integration Directorate on the EU project ‘Breaking the Cycle of Violence’. The main aim was to empower and to raise awareness on domestic violence and women with disability through a number of training sessions with women with disability, group and individual tutorials and a seminar with various Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in the disability sector. It was crucial that during these sessions, a safe space was created for all women present.
The awareness raising campaign under this project was launched between the months of October and December 2018, also during the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence. 

This campaign aimed to raise awareness among vulnerable groups of women with a focus on women with disabilities, migrant women, and lesbian, bisexual, trans and interse women, and for them to be informed about support services and protection measures. In order to ensure that the video used for this campaign is accessible for all, it includes captions, and sign language interpretation. This project also included online newspaper banners and features on the social media presenting a message to break the culture of silence which is strongly embedded in the Maltese scenario that violence against women is a private and/or family matter.