Luxembourg breaks the anti-record for domestic violence

In response to a parliamentary enquiry by MP Dan Hardy, Ministers Yuriko Backes, Elisabeth Margue and Léon Gloden presented an extensive overview of the situation of domestic violence in Luxembourg. According to them, domestic violence remains a daily reality, affecting all sectors of society and all national communities.

According to the SAVVD (Femmes en détresse) service for victims of domestic violence, men and women from more than 39 nationalities received assistance in 2023 alone. The State has adopted a gender-neutral and multi-layered approach, including victim protection, work with aggressors and awareness-raising campaigns.

In Luxembourg, any victim of domestic violence, regardless of sex, gender identity or sexual orientation, is entitled to free professional assistance. The legal basis for this system is the modified law of 8 September 2003, which defines the chain of action from police intervention to accompaniment by specialist services.

Special attention is paid to minors: in 2023, 937 children affected by domestic violence were officially placed under protection. Specialised structures such as PSYea (Femmes en détresse) and Alternatives (Pro Familia) are responsible for this.

In 2023, the police conducted 1,057 domestic violence interventions - more than in any of the previous years. By comparison, there were 876 in 2014 and 983 in 2022. However, the number of forced evictions of aggressors (Wegweisungen) remains stable: 246 in 2023, the same number as the year before.

Interestingly, 90% of those evicted in 2023 were men and 10% were women. Despite the increase in interventions, the pattern remains largely unchanged: 75% of cases occur in couples, including both heterosexual and same-sex couples. However, the number of recorded interventions in same-sex couples is extremely low: for 2023, 0 out of 246 evictions. In previous years, there were between two and six such cases per year.

According to the ministers, Luxembourg offers a wide range of assistance available to all without exception. Femmes en détresse and INFOMANN accompany victims, and the Red Cross runs the RIICHT ERAUS programme to deal with aggressors. All procedures are clearly structured: if the police order an eviction, the accompaniment and assistance network is automatically activated.