The EU Mutual Learning Programme in Gender Equality Preventing domestic violence with men and boys: Challenges and Opportunities - Sweden - 16-17 September 2019

The Mutual Learning Seminar, in Stockholm, examined Sweden’s recent innovative policy to prevent domestic violence with men and boys. Government representatives and gender experts from 15 EU Member States participated. The seminar was an excellent opportunity to discuss new thinking and approaches to the prevention of domestic violence. The importance of prevention and increased collaboration is emphasised in the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (“Istanbul Convention”), which is currently being implemented by the majority of EU Member States.

The basis for the good practice in Sweden is the National Strategy for Preventing & Combating Men’s Violence Against Women, 2017-2026. The strategy puts an emphasis on targeted work with men who perpetrate violence against women to prevent its reoccurrence through structured risk assessments and treatment programmes. It follows a universal approach to working with all relevant stakeholders in social services, health, education, gender equality, probation and crime prevention, and with specialised civil society organisations, in long-term prevention to address gender stereotypes, in particular destructive masculinity norms.

One successful initiative presented at the seminar is a bystander violence prevention programme with young people in the town of Botkyrka. The project focuses on building trust between young people and the police, social services and schools. It has helped to build awareness of respectful relationships and consent. Another innovative violence prevention programme is run by the County Administration Board of Västerbotten, which is working strategically for long-term crime prevention with four rural municipalities where access to services is very limited.

The seminar discussions focussed on the many opportunities and challenges in engaging men and boys in prevention. Participants highlighted the need for coordinated long-term approaches amongst service providers in national, regional and local authorities and the importance of improving the evidence-base in working with perpetrators. The presented good practice examples showed the importance of building trust in disadvantaged communities, integrating violence prevention into existing programmes and structures and how essential the effective coordination of services around the goal of violence prevention is. Key challenges identified by the seminar participants included the need for better integration of prevention in health services, building awareness about intersectional inequalities and the need for sound methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of programmes. The common agreement was that both targeted and universal approaches are needed and that peer learning can support this.