OWAAT | ZERO TOLERANCE of Abuse Against Women

THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GEORGE A. SERGHIDES

European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France

First, it is an original idea which serves helpless people, victims of abuse who may also be illiterate, impoverished and need access to justice. OWAAT strives to assist them in vindicating their fundamental human rights and liberties.

Second, it goes deep to the root of the problem of our society because it tries in the simplest possible way to give all the necessary information and legal tools to all those who need it, but they have no other means to find it.

In Golder v. United Kingdom (Appl. No. 4451/70, decision dated 21/2/1975, paras. 34-35), the European Court of Human Rights read the right of access to a court into the fair trial guarantee in Article 6 of the Convention. It also stated that one could not suppose compliance with the rule of law (to which emphasis is placed in the Preamble of the Convention) without the possibility of taking legal disputes to court. Τhis principle supported by many other cases of the ECtHR, including those affecting Cyprus directly, makes the role of OWAAT even more important.

    As Victor Hugo (History of a Crime, Part II, § 10) profoundly observed:
     “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as the idea whose time has come”.
     “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come”.

This holds true with OWAAT’s idea, whose time has come in Cyprus. A University law clinic is established for this purpose, headed by a competent and specialized Fulbright scholar. The results from such an empirical study are expected to be tremendously helpful. Indeed, a rare and significant material is needed for such a dynamic positive change in our society.

New laws and Court’s rules should be enacted and implemented to encompass this essential and novel idea.

Nicosia, 17 December, 2014.
Dr. George A. Serghides
President of the Family Court of Nicosia-Kyrenia”

Federica Pastore from Milan, Italy joined OWAAT in January 2018 to help lead the OWAAT Italian Translation Team. Her leadership and Team efforts made it possible for OWAAT-IT to launch in 2018. ‘In a world where human rights violations are still perpetrated, it is fundamental that everyone puts efforts into the cause, carrying out small and big actions to change the status quo. OWAAT’s goal is to provide support and legal defense tools to women victims of abuse and discrimination and for this reason I accepted with great enthusiasm to join the organization as a volunteer in the Italian translation team.’, said Federica. She holds a Master Degree in Development, Environment and Cooperation – Curriculum Environmental Politics and Economy from the University of Turin, Italy.
Federica Pastore da Milano (Italia) si é unita a OWAAT nel gennaio 2018 per supportare il team di traduzione italiano OWAAT. La sua leadership e il lavoro di squadra hanno reso possibile lanciare OWAAT-IT nel 2018. “In un mondo in cui ci sono ancora violazioni dei diritti umani, é fondamentale che ognuno faccia qualcosa, con piccoli o grandi gesti, per cambiare la situazione attuale. L´obiettivo di OWAAT é di fornire supporto e strumenti di difesa legale alle donne vittime di abusi e discriminazioni e per questo motive ho accettato con entusiasmo di unirmi a OWAAT come traduttrice volontaria nel team italiano. ´, ha affermato Federica. Federica ha una laurea specialistica in Sviluppo, Ambiente e Cooperazione – curriculum Economia e Politiche dell´Ambiente presso l´Universitá degli Studi di Torino, Italia.

Downloads

European Convention On Human Rights

Read or Download in:

English Greek Russian Arabic

Downloads

Ex Parte Application Self-Help Forms – Instructions

Read or Download in:

English Greek Yoruba Arabic

Self-Help Divorce Application

Read or Download in:

English Greek Russian Yoruba

OLUWATODIMU BANKOLE "TODI"

UCLAN Law
human rights activist for the Council of Europe and Amnesty International
OWAAT Yoruba Translator

MIDIEIA MASOUKATIDOU

OWAAT Greek/Russian Translator

OWAAT is aimed at women living in violent environments, providing direct help and counseling in cases that are in the nature of the emergency. Also, OWAAT assists in creating strategies to exit from the violent environment of abuse victims. I feel a great honor and pleasure that I support the OWAAT group which gives us not only great strength, also a hope for a better tomorrow.”

ALISA KHANDYUK

Professor of Russian and Ukrainian Language and Literature
Translator

Before moving to Greece, my children and I used to live in Donetsk, a beautiful city in Ukraine. Currently Donetsk is at war and nobody knows when this terrible situation will end. A year ago I started a new life in Greece and I know how difficult it is for a woman to try and change her life. This is the reason why I work as a volunteer for OWAAT, to help these people in need as much as I can.”

Downloads

What is One Woman At A Time (OWAAT) – Cyprus

Read or Download in:

English Greek Russian

Mediation – Changing The Mindset

Read or Download in:

English Greek Russian

Guide to Good Practice in Respect of Domestic Remedies

Read or Download in:

English

The European Court of Human Rights in 50 Questions

Read or Download in:

English Greek Russian

Ten Points of Light

Read or Download in:

English

SOPHIA PAPASTAVROU

ABD
Department of Social Justice Education (SJE)

OWAAT empowers women and girls by ensuring they receive the support they need so that in the long term become active participants in “rebuilding” their communities free from abuse, discrimination and harassment so that women’s rights are respected. OWAAT’s approach reflects the different needs of the women they serve, as well as meaningfully affirm the rights of women and girls in order to bring forth sustainable and long term change.”

NICOLA SMITH

President, FREEDOM DOLLS INITIATIVE
Web: www.freedom-dolls.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Freedom-Dolls-Initiative
Larnaca
Tel: +357 24201774/96354632
Fax: +357 24626197
Email: nicola@freedom-dolls.com

CARLOS PARTASIDES

Working at the Law Firm of Achilles & Emile C. Emilianides LLC
My special interests are: International Human Right Law and International Commercial Law.

On May, 30, 2015, the U.S. Fulbright Grant funding for OWAAT – Cyprus ends. But the OWAAT footprint to make its mark on Cyprus must continue to spread, grow and flourish as it creates positive social change, from the ground level up.

KEEP OWAAT AFLOAT ON THE ISLAND

Each year UNIC law students involved in OWAAT must continue to be uniquely challenged by legal research and clinical studies performed in a wide range of cutting edge human rights issues that face Cyprus daily. Students need to keep compiling new legal data, performing relevant data analysis on EU Member State Court-created, web-based civil complaint filing systems and continue to learn how to apply human rights law through critical thinking.

Students involved in OWAAT clinics learned first-hand how to create comparative legal analysis, and contrast model EU Court downloadable civil complaint forms to determine whether and how well Cyprus has adopted or begun to develop new modern online complaint templates for self-help assistance to guide women who cannot afford to hire legal counsel. Students find new ways adopted by other Courts which meet the needs of local women, and translate model forms and instructions, in Greek and English. Forms are used to update the OWAAT website, and are made accessible to women seeking self-help means to end their abuse by filing on their own for a no contact protection order.

Women in Cyprus will continually need to know their human rights and how to self-help to file for expedited proceedings to assert their rights to prevent unwanted contact and abuse.

Collaborators will continue to need ongoing guidance from OWAAT on how they, and their local community leaders and social services, can pool their resources and contact information.

Self-represented litigants will always need to know how to access court websites; where they can obtain guidance on when to observe court proceedings; how they may be engaged in a party-driven, out-of-court mediated negotiations; and where they may learn techniques to conduct a successful party-driven alternative dispute settlements for mutual no contact settlement.

Your Donation to OWAAT Outreach Spreads The Word.

Continue To Create And Sustain A Cyprus Holistic Community-Court Collaboration,
Open more OWAAT Community-Complaint Clinics,
Keep open established OWAAT Compliant Centers in Village of Kokkinotrimithia and St. Joseph’s Convent, Old City, Nicosia,
Achieve OWAAT aims to create and sustain the OWAAT Network of collaborators who help to spread the word in every Cyprus city, town and village, at home, in schools and the workplace.

Make Your Donation To OWAAT.

Send your contact information (name and e-mail address) to make a donation through the contact form.

Accessing Human Rights To No Contact Against Stalking Abuse

Read or Download in:

English Greek

patricia martin

Patricia Martin, Esq., U.S. Fulbright Scholar – One Woman At A Time (OWAAT) – Cyprus

Ms. Patricia M. Martin is a U.S. Constitutional law civil rights litigator and international human rights advocate. In 2006, a law school friend specialized in family law called Ms. Martin for guidance on how to self-help to file for divorce. Ms. Martin began volunteering her evenings at local churches and social services to help women self-help to obtain access to court for no contact court orders. She discovered once abused women learned about their fundamental human right of access to court, they were empowered, and wanted to place the law in their hands, and fill out forms to file for protections. Women, even abused women, believed their courts would hear them. And courts do hear. E-access, self-help online forms and e-filings are how modern courts play a vital role to provide abused women information on how to prevent their own abuse within their courts.

Ms. Martin began research for a Fulbright Scholarship application, specifically on countries where legal gaps prevented abused women from gaining court access to end unwanted contact. In 2012, Ms. Martin read REACT to Domestic Violence: Building a Support System for Victims of Domestic Violence, published in 2011 by the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies, (MIGS), Cyprus. REACT findings compelled Ms. Martin to conduct further related research on whether Cyprus courts provide citizens interactive online processes, online template forms or any means for poor abused women to self-help and file pro se for expedited, no contact protection orders. She found Cyprus courts didn’t provide anyone self-help forms online. Martin’s research focused on whether Cyprus court filing procedures created other complexities for litigants, like prolonged proceedings that might be related the court’s non-interactive website, and hand-carried, paper filings. Ms. Martin discovered the court’s outdated procedures triggered other practical obstacles that in effect, precluded abused women from self-representation. Martin found European Court of Human Rights cases where the Court held Cyprus’s prolonged court proceedings violated access to court human rights. Martin then compared her findings to other EU Member State courts and U.S. courts. She found Cyprus courts among the few member-state courts that did not provide forms for self-represented litigants to file civil complaints. Ms. Martin created One Woman At A Time, (OWAAT), a community-court collaboration aimed at empowering women to learn their human rights and place the law in their hands as self-represented litigants who self-help to obtain protection orders which end abuse. OWAAT is designed after like-kind U.S. and EU courts online, web-based, self-help interactive links which work with community-based outreach programs to guide abused women to gain access to court.

On August 1, 2013, Martin reacted to REACT and applied for a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to conduct legal research in Cyprus and facilitate One Woman At A Time (OWAAT) in conjunction with the University of Nicosia Law Clinic Programme (UNIC). In March 2014, the Cyprus community and Cyprus-Fulbright Commission Review Committee Members selected Ms. Martin and OWAAT for funding by a U.S. Fulbright Legal Research Scholarship.

Today, Ms. Martin lives in Nicosia and works in Nicosia, surrounding villages throughout Cyprus and in the UNIC Law Clinic Programme to implement OWAAT. OWAAT community collaborators’ volunteer efforts and enthusiasm have established One Woman At A Time as a household word, where Zero Tolerance of Abuse has placed a strong foothold on the Island. Because Cypriots understand “it takes a village to end abuse”, one woman at a time will be able to end her abuse.

OWAAT offers Cyprus a blueprint on how to link abused women with each other in a community-court collaborative network of support that embodies to precept, “Zero Tolerance of Abuse Against Women”.
OWAAT is raising awareness how mutual understanding to create positive social change from within is how peacekeeping between nations is secured.
OWAAT means Cyprus has “Zero Tolerance of Abuse Against Women.”

Make Your Donation To OWAAT

Send your contact information (name and e-mail address) to make a donation through the contact form.

ROSSELLA SALA

LLM in European and Transnational Law

ONE Youth Ambassador

UNICEF Italy Local Coordinator

OWAAT Volunteer

LinkedIn: Rossella Sala

KATERINA ANDREOU

Child Protection Specialist – Guidance Counselor
BSc (Hons) Psychology – University of Middlesex
MSc Occ. Psychology – University of Hertfordshire
Dip. Working with Young People at risk.
British Psychological Society Registered – UK’

SPAVO

Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family

ALEXIS THEODOTOU

Chief executive, ALEXIS THEODOTOU & Co. LLC
Specializes in Banking and Insurance claims as well as Personal Injury and Corporate Litigation

Helping to improve the quality of life and safeguarding the political and social equality and freedom of our co-citizens, we can greatly improve the perception and reaction of our society in relation to human rights violations in any extent and in any manner they happen. Let us not overlook the fact that in place can be found in the future related to our beloved.

The program “OWAAT – One Woman At a Time” is a citizens’ initiative that aims to tackle such phenomena as the Cyprus society called to recognize and to ostracize, and by the Cypriot state called address them effectively.

DR. ANNA PLEVRI

Lecturer, Department of Law, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, University of Nicosia
Lawyer
Read CV here

ALEXANDRA HADJIDAKI

Front End Developer
CTO & Project Manager for OWAAT Website & Branding
Computer Science Sudent
Fluent in English, Greek and Spanish
Email: alex.had92@hotmail.com

A perfect example would be Patricia and me. Now imagine if technology could connect two people from opposite sides of the world, the potential it can have in such a small community. Knowing that I can make this difference nationally means the world to me, as a woman and as a person.

My hopes are that, through the website, we will be able to simplify and expedite this process for these women and anyone else in Cyprus who wants to learn more about their human rights faster than any other medium.”

Accessing Human Rights To No Contact Against Stalking Abuse

Read or Download in:

English Greek

patricia martin

Patricia Martin, Esq., U.S. Fulbright Scholar – One Woman At A Time (OWAAT) – Cyprus

Ms. Patricia M. Martin is a U.S. Constitutional law civil rights litigator and international human rights advocate. In 2006, a law school friend specialized in family law called Ms. Martin for guidance on how to self-help to file for divorce. Ms. Martin began volunteering her evenings at local churches and social services to help women self-help to obtain access to court for no contact court orders. She discovered once abused women learned about their fundamental human right of access to court, they were empowered, and wanted to place the law in their hands, and fill out forms to file for protections. Women, even abused women, believed their courts would hear them. And courts do hear. E-access, self-help online forms and e-filings are how modern courts play a vital role to provide abused women information on how to prevent their own abuse within their courts.

Ms. Martin began research for a Fulbright Scholarship application, specifically on countries where legal gaps prevented abused women from gaining court access to end unwanted contact. In 2012, Ms. Martin read REACT to Domestic Violence: Building a Support System for Victims of Domestic Violence, published in 2011 by the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies, (MIGS), Cyprus. REACT findings compelled Ms. Martin to conduct further related research on whether Cyprus courts provide citizens interactive online processes, online template forms or any means for poor abused women to self-help and file pro se for expedited, no contact protection orders. She found Cyprus courts didn’t provide anyone self-help forms online. Martin’s research focused on whether Cyprus court filing procedures created other complexities for litigants, like prolonged proceedings that might be related the court’s non-interactive website, and hand-carried, paper filings. Ms. Martin discovered the court’s outdated procedures triggered other practical obstacles that in effect, precluded abused women from self-representation. Martin found European Court of Human Rights cases where the Court held Cyprus’s prolonged court proceedings violated access to court human rights. Martin then compared her findings to other EU Member State courts and U.S. courts. She found Cyprus courts among the few member-state courts that did not provide forms for self-represented litigants to file civil complaints. Ms. Martin created One Woman At A Time, (OWAAT), a community-court collaboration aimed at empowering women to learn their human rights and place the law in their hands as self-represented litigants who self-help to obtain protection orders which end abuse. OWAAT is designed after like-kind U.S. and EU courts online, web-based, self-help interactive links which work with community-based outreach programs to guide abused women to gain access to court.

On August 1, 2013, Martin reacted to REACT and applied for a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to conduct legal research in Cyprus and facilitate One Woman At A Time (OWAAT) in conjunction with the University of Nicosia Law Clinic Programme (UNIC). In March 2014, the Cyprus community and Cyprus-Fulbright Commission Review Committee Members selected Ms. Martin and OWAAT for funding by a U.S. Fulbright Legal Research Scholarship.

Today, Ms. Martin lives in Nicosia and works in Nicosia, surrounding villages throughout Cyprus and in the UNIC Law Clinic Programme to implement OWAAT. OWAAT community collaborators’ volunteer efforts and enthusiasm have established One Woman At A Time as a household word, where Zero Tolerance of Abuse has placed a strong foothold on the Island. Because Cypriots understand “it takes a village to end abuse”, one woman at a time will be able to end her abuse.

OWAAT offers Cyprus a blueprint on how to link abused women with each other in a community-court collaborative network of support that embodies to precept, “Zero Tolerance of Abuse Against Women”.
OWAAT is raising awareness how mutual understanding to create positive social change from within is how peacekeeping between nations is secured.
OWAAT means Cyprus has “Zero tolerance of Abuse Against Women.”

CHRISTINA DEMETRIADES

Life Coach & Careers Adviser

Events Gallery

OWAAT "Ten Points of Light" on Privacy Rights for Abused Women on YouTUBE

WORLD'S FIRST GREEK INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS SELF-HELP WEBSITE FOR ABUSED WOMEN

FULBRIGHT ALUMNA HONORED FOR WORK WITH DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS IN CYPRUS

OWAAT NAMED TOP HUMAN RIGHTS CAUSE 2016

Patricia Martin Gives a Talk on TEDx

First Woman Self-helps For Court Protection Order

OWAAT Interviews on MyCyRadio

OWAAT Community Gallery

MyCyRadio Interview, April 10th 2015

MyCyRadio Interview, October 26th 2015

Opening the first OWAAT Complaint Center, Kokkinotrimithia Village, Cyprus - 22/10/14

Patricia Martin with two UNIC Law Clinic Students - Fall 2014

Downloads

Downloads

Downloads