There has been a dramatic fall in domestic violence among new immigrant families
over the past five years since the Welfare and Social Services Ministry and
Immigrant Absorption Ministry jointly launched
Gesher, a program aimed at
tackling the problem, the two ministries announced Sunday.
Released ahead
of a one-day symposium for social workers to learn how to work effectively
within various cultures to reduce violence, the figures show that the number of
Ethiopian immigrant women being murdered by their spouses has fallen and the
number of Ethiopian men seeking treatment has increased.
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also undertaken to recruit more social workers who speak Russian or Amharic to
work at its family treatment centers, and has encouraged Hebrew-speaking social
workers to be more culturally sensitive and aware of the difficulties facing new
olim, the Welfare and Social Services Ministry said, in a statement.
“We
are constantly striving for zero tolerance for violence,” Welfare and Social
Services Minister Isaac Herzog said Sunday. “From what we have been told by
members of these communities, the problems [of domestic violence] run very deep
and as we are aware, migrating is a factor that increases the natural tendencies
to violence. Fitting in with a new society and dealing with the language
barriers or cultural difference only add to these
difficulties.”
Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver said: “I have
given this issue top priority in my office and even though we have seen a
decrease in domestic violence in the last five years, this does not mean we can
rest just yet. We must do all we can to continue with this
program.”
Created in 2005 to deal with the relatively large numbers of
domestic abuse cases in both the Ethiopian and Russianspeaking immigrant
communities, the Gesher program is run today in some 30 locales where there are
large oleh populations and is serviced by some 40 social workers of various
backgrounds.
Police figures confirm that there has been a drop in the
number of immigrant women being murdered by their partners or spouses in the
last five years. While in 2005, reports showed that four Ethiopian women and
three Russian-speaking women murdered by their spouses or partners, by 2009 there
were none.
However, 2010 has already seen one Ethiopian woman killed by
her husband and two immigrants from the former Soviet Union being killed.