Source: Tunis Afrique Press
Some twenty experts attended here today the first two-day-meeting of experts on "the State responsibility in eliminating violence against women" in the Middle East and North Africa.

This meeting was convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its causes and consequences, in collaboration with the Tunis office of the High Commissionership for Human Rights.

It is held as part of a regional consultation on the same subject and will be followed by two other meetings in Southern and Eastern Africa, respectively.

"The current meeting will allow, in light of the experiences reported and the recommendations put forward by experts, to work out a national strategy to fight against violence towards women," said Sihem Badi, Minister of Women, Family and elderly Affairs, at the opening works.

She also announced the setting up shortly in Tunis of a pilot centre to take care of women suffering from conjugal violence, adding that this experience will be extended and rapidly generalised across the country.

During this first day works, the experts' meeting insisted on the criterion of "due diligence" as a necessary and even compulsory for States in matters of prevention, fight and penalty as regards violence against women.

Speaking about that, UN Special Rapporteur Rashida Manjoo explained that "in various fields of law, the norms of due diligence have been developed to assess the aptitude of a State or another party such as the civil society, to meet these requirements."

The attending experts, from Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, discussed for their part, the implementation of this due diligence standard, relying on regional and national experiences.

The recommendations of the meeting works and the data collected will help prepare the next report of the UN Special Raporteur.

• Tunisia