NTDVP announces upcoming studies on familial homicides in Jordan

AMMAN — The National Team for Domestic Violence Protection (NTDVP) on Thursday announced that several government entities plan to conduct case studies on familial homicides that occurred in Jordan this year. 

“We received a report from a local organisation indicating that there has been an increase in family murders, so we decided to examine and analyse these cases,” said National Council for Family Affairs (NCFA) Secretary General Mohammad Miqdadi.

Miqdadi referred to a report that was prepared recently by Solidarity Is Global Institute (SIGI) indicating that there were 16 reported instances of familial homicide in the first six months of this year, and that 25 per cent of the homicides in Jordan are committed within the family.

“It is obvious that there has been an increase in murders this year, so we want to study the family environment where these murders happened so that we can plan our future strategies,” Miqdadi told The Jordan Times.

Miqdadi added that a team comprising of the NCFA, the Ministry of Social Development and the Family Protection Department who are all part of the NTDVP, will examine the root causes behind family violence such as economic status and if there was drug abuse.

Established in 2017, the NTDVP works under the umbrella of the NCFA and is meant to provide technical advice for national projects related to family protection. 

The team, which includes representatives from governmental and non-governmental institutions, also supervises the implementation of the National Framework for Family Protection and the national strategy for family protection. 

Women’s rights groups in Jordan have held several activities over the years to address the issue of family violence, and have made several recommendations in this regard.

Some of the recommendations called for raising public awareness of the importance of ending domestic violence and rejecting any justification or acceptance of acts of aggression within families.

Other recommendations called for improving the quality of services provided to victims of violence, while at the same time, increasing the efficiency and number of employees in the field.

Other recommendations included introducing stiffer penalties for repeat offenders in family violence cases and establishing a national monitoring system to document and analyse familial homicide cases in Jordan.

The activists also called for the reactivation of the Family Protection Law, and abolishing families’ ability to waive their legal rights when the perpetrator of a crime is a family member.