Concerned about the impact of the lockdown on the growing number of cases of violence against women, the Committee of the Parties to the Istanbul Convention issued a Declaration on the application of the Convention during the pandemic on Monday.
This Declaration is structured in four parts - Integrated Policies, Prevention, Protection, Prosecution - and is based, for each recommendation, on specific articles of the “Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence”. Concluded in Istanbul in 2011, this first legally binding instrument has been signed and ratified by 34 WCC member states. It came into force in 2014. The European Union signed it in 2017, but has still not ratified it, as is the case for Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech and Slovak Republics.
In its preamble, the Committee of the Parties stresses that the Istanbul Convention “takes on increased importance in the context of the current public emergency” and calls on States “to strengthen measures” to counter violence against women.
Specific recommendations include: - interinstitutional coordination; - financial support to NGOs involved in this cause; - raising awareness through the media and social networks; - training of relevant professionals by means of tutorials, online seminars, and training modules; - support for shelters for victims and their children and for online complaint reporting systems; - the prioritisation of victims’ safety by law enforcement and judicial authorities, despite the slowdown in court activity. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)