Criminal liability for domestic violence
Authors: Soroka Svitlana 
Published: November 2023

The peculiarities of criminal liability for domestic violence are considered. It was noted that in many countries, for a long time, violence in the family was not considered a crime, but was considered a form of appropriate behavior. In the 90s of the last century, views regarding the phenomenon of violence against women, which was recognized as a socio-gender problem, changed radically, during which a new vision of it was opened in terms of gender law. Therefore, the issue of gender balance and combating discrimination based on sex has gained wide popularity in all developed countries of the world. As a result, on December 20, 1993, the UN General Assembly adopted the "Declaration on the Eradication of Violence against Women", then on August 1, 2014, the Council of Europe Convention "On preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence", known as Istanbul Convention. The main purpose of which was to declare the protection and support of women who suffered from all types of violence and the eradication of the latter in general. It has been analyzed that this problem is typical for Ukrainian society as well. Today, overcoming violence in the family is one of the priority tasks of the legal state, which is also recognized as Ukraine. Ukraine signed the Istanbul Convention on November 7, 2011, but only on June 20, 2022, the Verkhovna Rada supported the ratification of this convention. At the end of 2017, Article was introduced into the Criminal Code of Ukraine. 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine "Domestic violence", which entered into force on January 1, 2019. In this article, domestic violence is defined as the intentional systematic perpetration of physical, psychological or economic violence against a spouse or ex-spouse or another person with whom the perpetrator is (was) in a family or close relationship, which leads to physical or psychological suffering, health disorders , loss of work capacity, emotional dependence or deterioration of the victim's quality of life. It is noted that the legislation of Ukraine in the field of combating domestic violence enshrines four forms of violence: physical, sexual, psychological and economic. According to the current legislation, persons who have committed domestic violence are criminally, administratively, or civilly liable. Criminal liability is provided for in Art. 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine "domestic violence", however, after analyzing the norms of criminal legislation, we came to the conclusion that the Criminal Code of Ukraine also provides for criminal liability for criminal offenses related to domestic violence in other articles. An important step towards the prevention of domestic violence was the addition of Chapter XIII-1 "Restrictive measures" to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which provides for the possibility of applying certain measures in the interests of the victim of a criminal offense related to domestic violence. It was concluded that the introduction of amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine with the introduction of criminal liability for domestic violence was a significant step towards overcoming the problem of domestic violence in the country, and the ratification of the Istanbul Convention contributes to strengthening the legal protection of victims of violence and will ensure their access to justice.