by Sue England, Munich IWC and Karen Castellon, AWC Berlin and Human Rights Team Chair
The cause of our time: ending violence against women?
The convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence is called the Istanbul Convention. It was agreed to in 2010 and came into force in 2014.
Quick facts about the Istanbul Convention:
- It is the most comprehensive international human rights treaty on violence against women and domestic violence.
- It is a legally binding instrument that explicitly defines Violence Against Women (written as VAW) as a human rights violation and a form of gender-based discrimination with strong emphasis on prevention, criminalizing the perpetrators and offering survivors’ rights.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in early 2020 that he was concerned about “setbacks to women’s rights, alarming levels of femicide, attacks on women’s rights defenders, and the persistence of laws and policies that perpetuate submission and exclusion.” Violence against women and girls, he said, ‟is the most widespread human rights violation.”
Violence against Women is now called'the ‟Shadow Pandemic.” It is time for ‟peace in the home,” says the United Nations.
Here is an easy-to-read primer on the Istanbul Convention (literally, there are three illustrated sentences per page).