Review article
https://doi.org/10.54070/hljk.28.2.7
Assessment of the First Ten Years of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence
Darija Željko
; Pravni fakultet, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
This paper aims to assess the actual achievements of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (better known as the Istanbul Convention) following the ten years since it was opened for signature in May 2011 in Istanbul. Besides being a symbolic anniversary, the topic is relevant since on 1 July 2021 Turkey, as the first signatory, was also the first state party that left this key regional treaty which guarantees the protection of women from gender-based violence. Taking into account EU Member States such as Hungary which still strongly oppose ratification and/or ones like Poland that periodically announce their withdrawal, the paper discusses the often-neglected role of the European Union in the promotion of the Istanbul Convention as the most important and comprehensive instrument of its kind. The EU has already signed the Convention, doing so in June 2017. At the same time, the EU Commission in its Gender Equality Strategy for the period 2020-2025 explicitly states that one of its priorities is combating gender-based violence in the EU. The Commission considers the EU’s accession to the Istanbul Convention as an important step in this direction. If this does not happen, in the same Strategy, the Commission insists that the EU should find alternative legal measures to achieve the objective of the Convention.
Keywords
decade of the Istanbul Convention; gender-based violence; GREVIO; probability of EU accession to the Istanbul Convention
Hrčak ID:
272801
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2021.
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