Country Profile Poland

General Country Information

Summary

There is one national women’s helpline in Poland which is available 24/7, free of charge, and offers limited multilingual support. There are other regional helplines offering support to survivors of domestic violence, including multilingual support. There are 40 shelters accessible to women with approximately 605 beds, two of which are women-only shelters. There are women’s centres in Poland and all 38 specialised support centres for survivors of domestic violence offer non-residential support. There is one rape crisis centre operated by a women’s NGO with a gender-specific and feminist approach. However, there are no other specialised services for survivors of sexualised violence. In Poland, authorities do not recognise or collect data on primary prevention, and no specific budget is allocated to it. There is no available data on women’s specialist services as the government does not distinguish between women’s specialist services and general services providing support to survivors of domestic violence or other crimes. The available data presents all institutions and organisations available to survivors of violence as specialised services for women, although most services are gender-neutral and do not have a gender-specific approach. This data is available upon request.

Women’s Specialist Services

There is one national women’s helpline in Poland called the Emergency Helpline for Women Victims of Violence (Telefon zaufania, tel.: +48 800107777), which is run by the NGO Women’s Rights Centre (Centrum Praw Kobiet – CPK). It provides immediate specialist support to women survivors of violence, especially psychological, physical and sexualised violence, and offers advice to witnesses of these forms of violence. The helpline is available 24/7, free of charge and offers support in Polish, and on Tuesdays (10:00–14:00) and Thursdays (14:00–18:00) in Ukrainian. Therefore, Poland does meet the Istanbul Convention minimum standards for the provision of a national women’s helpline. The helpline is funded through donations and international funding. The Women’s Rights Centre additionally offers a separate helpline exclusively for legal support (tel.: +48 800107777), which is available on Thursdays from 16:00–21:00.

Poland has a national, gender-neutral helpline for all survivors of domestic violence, the Blue Line – Polish National Helpline for Victims of Domestic Violence (Ogólnopolskie Pogotowiedla Ofiar Przemocy w Rodzinie “Niebieska Linia”, tel. +48 800120002). It is run by the ‘’Blue Line’’ Association on behalf of the National Centre for Combating Addictions. The service is free of charge, available 24/7, and provides support in Polish, with multilingual assistance in English and Russian available at specific times. In addition, there is a nationwide emotional support helpline (tel.: 116123), operated by the Institute of Health Psychology. This service is also available 24/7 and free of charge, offering crisis support to all individuals in need, including victims of crime and survivors of domestic violence. While it does not exclusively focus on violence against women, its website provides information on available support services and includes a chat option. The police headquarter also runs a Police Family Violence Hotline (Policyjny Telefon Zaufania ds. Przeciwdziałania Przemocy w Rodzinie, tel.: +48 800120226), available Monday to Friday from 9:30–15:30. This hotline is free of charge and offers advice on situations of domestic violence.

There are other helplines for survivors of domestic violence operating at a local level, which are run by city halls, local support services and NGOs. Additionally, local branches of the Women’s Rights Center, in Krakow, Poznań, Gdańsk, also run helplines in Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other languages. For example, the Feminoteka Foundation runs a free helpline (tel. +48 888883388), available from Monday to Friday from 11:00–19:00, offering legal and psychological support for women who have experienced sexual or other forms of violence. Assistance in English is available on Thursdays from 15:00–19:00 and Fridays from 11:00–19:00. Support in Ukrainian and Russian is provided under a separate helpline (tel.: +48 888887988) on Mondays and Wednesdays from 14:00–19:00. Generally, it is difficult to collect data on regional women’s helplines in Poland because the list of institutions running helplines is not publicly available.

Two women-only shelters exist in Poland, which are run by the Women’s Rights Centre – a women’s NGO with a gender-specific and feminist approach and they only exist in the country’s largest cities. One is located in Warsaw (Specjalistyczny Ośrodek Wsparcia dla Kobiet Doznających Przemocy, SOW) with 20 available beds, the second one is located in Krakow (Krakowski Ośrodek Siostrzeństwa, KOS). Both offer immediate support in emergency situations; however, a previous call is preferred. If no places are available, referrals to other shelters are provided. Women are not expected to pay for accommodation, and they are allowed to stay for up to three months. The women-only shelters provide in-house services including casework, counselling and psychological support, referrals and collaboration with other services, as well as legal advice. Additionally, they provide essential items such as food and hygiene products when needed and ensure the security of the accommodation by keeping its exact address confidential. In 2024, 19 women and 21 children were accommodated in the shelter in Warsaw, and 15 women were accommodated in the shelter in Krakow. Additionally, the Women’s Rights Centre offers protected apartments (mieszkania chronione) in Wrocław – where ten women and seven children were accommodated in 2024.

Additionally, there are 38 state-recognised shelters accessible to women which are referred to as specialised support centres for survivors of domestic violence (Specjalistyczne Ośrodki Wsparcia, SOW) with approximately 605 beds. These shelters were established by the National Program to Combat Domestic Violence and are financed by the state, local governments and donations. They follow a gender-neutral approach and are accessible to both women and men, although survivors in these shelters are predominantly women. All shelters are meant to be accessible 24/7, free of charge, and do not require a referral, although in practice this is not always the case and depends on the shelter. Most shelters are run by the state and only a few are run by NGOs, and three are run by Caritas, a faith-based organisation. Shelters are located in all regions of Poland, including major cities, smaller towns and rural areas. The quality standards and services provided do vary across shelters, and most are not accessible to women with disabilities. There is also a specific shelter for survivors of human trafficking, but no specialised shelters supporting particular groups of survivors nor women survivors or those at risk of specific forms of violence.

There are women’s centres in Poland and all 38 specialised support centres for survivors of domestic violence offer non-residential support. Most of them are run by the state and local governments, and only the Women’s Rights Centre branches in Warsaw, Poznań, Kraków, and Gdańsk apply a feminist and gender-specific approach. Types of services provided include counselling, legal, housing and employment advice, advocacy, and other support services such as representation at court. There are also so-called Crisis Intervention Centres in Poland, however, they are not specialised in supporting women survivors of violence and their children.

Additionally, most centres offer some psychosocial support to survivors of domestic violence, although the type of services provided differs widely across municipalities. The National Programme on Combating Family Violence in Poland has also encouraged local authorities to develop ‘consultation points’ for survivors of domestic violence. In rural municipalities, these services are often the only public services providing psychosocial support to survivors of domestic violence.² However, these services are available to all survivors of domestic violence, and there are no centres providing specialised support to particular groups of survivors nor women survivors or those at risk of specific forms of violence.

In Poland, services for survivors of sexualised violence are extremely limited. The is one rape crisis centre which is run by Feminoteka in Warsaw, at a confidential location. It offers psychological, psychotherapeutic, legal, social, and medical support, as well as accompaniment to police or hospitals. The centre is accessible to women with disabilities, provides translation for foreign women, and follows World Health Organisation (WHO) survivor-centred standards. Access is available via Feminoteka’s helpline (tel.: +48 888883388), which is also the only specialised helpline for survivors of sexualised violence. Both services operate exclusively for women over 18, are limited to the capital city, and rely on donations, grants, and international funding. In addition to direct assistance, Feminoteka trains police officers, while the Ministry of Health is developing new survivor-centred medical guidelines for hospitals.

Some organisations, such as the Women’s Rights Centre, offer services to women who have experienced sexualised violence. Services are however only present in big cities like Warsaw, Gdańsk, Łódź, and Wrocław. There are other specialised services for survivors of sexualised violence. For example, the Foundation FEDERA (Fundacja FEDERA – Telefon zaufania), operates a helpline (+48 226359392) Monday to Friday from 16:00–20:00 (except public holidays) and offers confidential consultations on reproductive health provided by gynaecologists, pharmacists, midwives, psychologists, sexologists, and sexual educators. The Foundation Against Rape Culture – Margarete Hodgkinson (Fundacja przeciw Kulturze Gwałtu im. Margarete Hodgkinson) provides legal assistance and support for people who have experienced sexualised violence, offering consultations, guidance on procedures, and representation before prosecutors and courts, while prioritising listening and respecting survivors’ choices. The anti-violence Helpline SEXEDPL (Antyprzemocowa Linia Pomocy SEXEDPL) focuses on preventing secondary victimisation, offering guidance for survivors and those supporting them, including information on medical care, emergency contraception, HIV post-exposure prophylaxis, psychological support, and legal aid.

Aside from this, there are no other specialised services for survivors of sexualised violence in Poland. Survivors must rely on non-specialised institutions such as the police, hospitals, or social welfare centres, where the quality of support varies greatly. Police and other officials are often untrained in survivor-centred approaches, leading to disbelief, victim-blaming, or indifference; as a result, only around 8% of women report sexualised violence. Because rape is prosecuted ex officio, survivors who seek medical care are often forced into police procedures without consent, and mandatory reporting obligations by doctors or social workers frequently cause secondary traumatisation. Legal protections are also insufficient, as special procedures to avoid re-traumatisation apply only in some cases.

In Poland, public authorities do not recognise or collect data on primary prevention, and the term itself does not appear in legal or policy frameworks. The World Health Organisation (WHO) classification of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention is not applied, and the gendered dimension of violence is almost entirely absent. The Government Programme for Combating Domestic Violence 2024–2030 devotes a chapter to “prevention,” but in practice focuses on secondary and tertiary measures such as victim support and perpetrator programmes. Budget allocations confirm this: over 90% of funds go to shelters, interdisciplinary teams, and perpetrator programmes, while just 0.16% is spent on awareness-raising campaigns. No funds are dedicated to primary prevention, and domestic violence is strongly linked to addiction in state policy, further obscuring its gendered nature. Local initiatives exist, such as Warsaw’s “Human Rights-Friendly School” programme and upcoming civic and health education curricula in schools, but they do not explicitly address gender-based violence.

Primary prevention activities are mainly carried out by feminist NGOs. Recent examples include: the Juniper Foundation and Plan International Poland project on girls’ safety in cities (2024); the Autonomia Foundation and trainers trained by Autonomia which offer WenDo feminist self-defence trainings, reaching over 2,000 women and girls in 2024; and the “Stand Up – Oppose Harassment in Public Places” campaign, implemented with L’Oréal Paris, Right To Be, Feminoteka, and the Women’s Rights Centre, which trained thousands in bystander intervention. These initiatives are innovative and survivor-centred but project-based, underfunded, and not integrated into state policy. Additionally, Krakow is part of the EU co-funded FEMACT-Cities Action Planning Network, which focuses on strengthening the local implementation of gender equality across urban planning and social cohesion.

1. This excludes the beds in the women-only shelter in Krakow, as the number of beds is not available. ↩︎
2. According to the GREVIO Baseline Evaluation Report on Poland, pg. 43. The report also notes that in 2019, there were 503 such consultation points. ↩︎