Domestic violence before and during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic: a rapid review of the context in Romania

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an upward trend in domestic violence cases at the international and, of course, national level. In fact, over time it has been shown that there are links between various natural disasters or pandemics and the increase in these cases. The first part of the study provides a brief theoretical analysis of domestic violence, as well as the main forms of manifestation and consequences for the victim. The second part focuses on the interrelationship between the sanitary measures imposed in the pandemic context and the impact on the evolution of this problem, as well as the identification of general factors that contributed to the emergence and maintenance of domestic violence, before and especially in the first year of the pandemic. Through the secondary data analysis, the third part of the study highlights the trends of domestic violence in Romania in the period between 2016-2020, focusing on the first year of the pandemic (2020), by looking at the statistics provided by the National Agency for Equality of Chances between women and men (ANES). The last part of our paper offers a series of discussions and conclusions on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the evolution of domestic violence cases. The main limitation of the study was a time deficit in the supply of specific statistics for 2021, as well as the general unpredictability of the pandemic in terms of future trends in domestic violence and case reporting.