| dc.description.abstract | The notion of domestic violence as a public issue, calling for official response, is
relatively new in Armenian society. Since the late 1990s, a movement of making
domestic violence visible as a societal matter has arisen and expanded, with
support from an international women’s rights movement. A growing amount of
women’s rights NGOs have emerged, that are besides working with awareness
raising, offering social services to victims of domestic violence. No such services
are provided by the state, nor does the organisations receive any support from the
government. The NGOs’ activities have by many been received as controversial
and contentious. When making claims for legal change and official response, the
organisations have been contested with threats, and accusations of destroying
families and ruining national values. Even as the awareness about domestic
violence have generally increased the last decade, there is no clear conception of it
in terms of how to explain its causes, or deal with its consequences. When
applying a human rights framework, the organisations need to reside a form of
‘double consciousness', as they adapt to a ‘universal’ set of principles, but carry
them out in a local context of particular conditions. The study aimed to examine
what conflicting discourses NGOs faced and confronted in their work, and how
this work was conducted. Qualitative interviews were made with NGO
representatives from five different organisations in Yerevan, Armenia, working in
the sphere of domestic violence. The study found that NGO members faced
different conflicting discourses when conducting their work, and that they
sometimes, in a pragmatic approach, needed to adjust their language and claims,
in order to be approved of by a putative target audience. Through these actions of
interpretations and adjustments, NGOs take part in an ongoing collective
negotiation process of how to define and perceive domestic violence against
women as a societal issue. | sv |
