Welcome

The Co-ordination Action on Human Rights Violations (CAHRV)addresses interpersonal violence within a human rights framework.CAHRV is a broad-based collaborative effort of 22 researchinstitutions in 14 European countries, in cooperation with policynetworks and individual researchers, funded within the EuropeanCommission?s 6th Framework Programme. The coordination is locatedat the University of Osnabrueck, the most successful Germanuniversity within the 7.Priority of this program.

In multi-country comparative studies CAHRV examines theprevalence and impact of violence, the roots of violence in men?sgendered practices, the effectiveness of legal and socialintervention strategies, and protective factors to secure humanrights. CAHRV is building sustainable structures for cooperationand dialogue across different fields and intellectualtraditions.

Violence against women and abuse of children are recognized asserious human rights violations. This framework needs to beextended to include elderly and male victims and to encompassawareness that unchecked interpersonal violence represents a threatto democracy and social cohesion. The field of interpersonalviolence typifies fragmentation in addressing human rightsviolations. Each type of violation has been seen as a distinctconcern; theoretical and practical links have been neglected.

CAHRV aims to understand and overcome fragmentation in research,policy and practice. It integrates parallel research discourses onviolence to:

• unify a theoretical and empirical basis for policy
• survey a wide territory with a case study approach,
• structure co-operation through sub-networks
• identify further sites of excellence.

In a practical perspective, CAHRV aims to:

• build a research foundation for recognizing good practice,
• make standards for services and interventions available on aEuropean level,
• contribute to policy-related data collection,
• improve dissemination and co-operation with NGO?s, agencies andgovernments.