Bangladesh will also develop a National Action Plan on Violence Against Women to strengthen enforcement of its 2010 Domestic Violence Act.

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Or the woman who became a critical force in combating domestic violence, helping to pass the Violence Against Women act in 1994?

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As a goodwill ambassador for the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Kidman drew attention to the stalled International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), a domestic effort to address violence against women globally.

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Since the passage of the Act, annual incidents of domestic violence have dropped by more than 60 percent.

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Vice President Joe Biden, who helped spearhead the original Violence Against Women Act in 1994 when he was a U.S. senator, said Thursday that domestic violence dropped by 64% since then.

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Originally passed in 1994 and reauthorized since, the act provides support for organizations that serve domestic violence victims.

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In the 2005 reauthorization, Congress once again strengthened the Act to improve the health care response to domestic violence, to include a new focus on prevention, and to expand protections for children exposed to violence.

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Supporters credit the act with sharply reducing the number of lives lost to domestic violence over the past two decades.

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Through the Affordable Care Act, women in many health plans will have access to domestic violence screening and counseling as a preventative service without co-payments, deductibles or other cost-sharing.

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For the past 18 years, since Vice President Biden initially wrote the Act in 1994, VAWA has helped to decrease the rates of domestic violence across the country.

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