Women-rights defenders in Russia and Armenia need support of authorities and media, said participants of debates in Yerevan

The situation with observance of women's rights in Russia and Armenia remains very difficult; while women-rights defenders, who raise this issue, lack support from the state and media. This was stated by the participants of the debates "Ways to strengthen and protect women-rights defenders" held on March 27 in Yerevan.

Knarik Mkrtchyan, the coordinator of peacemaking programmes of the project of the Armenian Women's Resource Centre "European Cooperation in the Name of Nagorno-Karabakh", told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the event was associated with the adoption on November 27, 2013, of the UN Resolution on Protecting Women Human Rights Defenders, aimed at protecting the rights of such women.

Anna Dobrovolskaya, an activist of the International Youth Human Rights Movement and the Voronezh Human Rights House, believes that unlike other countries, where pressure is exerted on the organizations engaged in defending women's rights, in Russia these NGOs work in a freer atmosphere, but the country still sees a lot of domestic violence.

If we talk about the situation with women's rights in Russia, here, in the opinion of Dobrovolskaya, the country "is divided into Northern Caucasus and other regions." The problem of non-observance of women's rights in Northern Caucasus is largely provoked by the fact that the region has predominantly Muslim population.