I was lucky enough to not have my annual summer holiday to Cyprus affected by Covid19, although open to visitors this wonderful island has been severely economically affected with tourist numbers down by 98%.
Whilst I was there, I reached out to the Cypriot police to understand how they cope with domestic abuse and violence. In the UK we have a population of about 60m and hundreds of thousands of people are affected by domestic abuse every year. With a population of only about 1m I was keen to understand what the landscape is like there?
I met with an incredible woman called Kyriaki Lambrianidou, Superintendent and Criminologist. Kyriaki heads up the Cypriot police department responsible for Domestic Violence, Children, Racism and Xenophobia.
She started in this role at the beginning of 2020 and quickly discovered that there was a lot of work to do especially with a looming, global pandemic on the not so distant horizon.
The increase in domestic abuse cases because of lockdown has also affected Cyprus, the Association for the Prevention and Response of Domestic Violence (SPAVO) report a 30% increase of violence through Covid restrictions, this is considered an under reported figure.
The abuse and violence in Cyprus are the same as the UK but the response from the police is very different. Over the past 10 years the police here have put considerable investment into training, logging and reporting, Cyprus are at the beginning of this journey and having met Kyriaki I know they have the right person for the job.
Mark Groves CEO