MEPs approved this Wednesday the accession of the European Union (EU) to the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, urging the six member states of the community bloc that have not ratified the document to do so without delay .
“This is a vote for those millions of women who live in situations of violence, insecurity and fear, and now we say that Europe has zero tolerance for violence against women,” said Swedish MEP Arba Kokalari, co-author of the texts. presented to the European Parliament, quoted by the AFP agency.
“Do it for your grandmothers, for your mothers, for your daughters, for your wives,” encouraged the Polish MEP Lukasz Kohut, also co-author of the texts, before the chamber approved the documents put to a vote by a large majority.
Ratification by the EU will still have to be formally endorsed by the bloc’s member states. However, it is mainly symbolic and its concrete consequences are limited in scope.
The EU signed the text in 2017, but was slow to ratify it due to a lack of consensus among member states.
Six countries – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia – refused to ratify the document, denouncing the incentive to promote “non-stereotyped gender roles” in teaching curricula.
European Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli praised the result of the vote on Twitter, describing it as a “historic step that sends a strong message about the importance of women’s rights in the EU.”
The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention, was adopted in 2011 and entered into force in 2014 (especially in Portugal).
It is an international treaty of the Council of Europe, a pan-European body made up of 46 countries, which establishes legally binding standards to prevent and combat violence against women.
The document obliges governments to adopt legislation that punishes violence against women, sexual harassment, female genital mutilation and forced marriage.
The convention has been ratified by 37 countries, the latest being Ukraine and the United Kingdom in 2022.
Türkiye is the only country that withdrew, in 2021.
One in three women in the EU, around 62 million women, has been a victim of physical and/or sexual violence and more than half of women (55%) in the EU have been sexually harassed at least once since age 15, according to data from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, from 2014 and cited by the AFP agency.
Source: TSF
