News Center: Several agreements were signed on violence against women in previous decades, but in 2011 the first European agreement to combat domestic violence, which women are highly subjected to known as the "Istanbul Convention" was signed.

 Violence against women is still the worst and most violations against human rights around the world, despite the issuance of conventions to combat violence against women such as the comprehensive Convention on the Rights of Women "CEDAW" and the Convention on prevention and combating Violence against women and domestic violence or "Istanbul Convention" and Bakin Declaration and Platform on the conference Fourth World for Women.

 The European Council Agreement on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention relative to where it was signed, is the first European convention dedicated to domestic violence against women, and aid tool for NGOs to eliminate all forms of violence against women and to cause real change in the fight against violence.

Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and domestic violence addresses all forms of violence, and although it is open for signature by all countries that aren't members of the European Council, the Arab countries haven't yet signed the agreement yet.

European Council initiatives and actions:

 The European Council, consisting of 47 European countries, began to prepare a convention to prevent and combat violence against women and domestic by implementing a set of initiatives to strengthen the protection of women from violence since the 1990s in addition to launching a campaign across Europe from 2006 to 2008 to combat violence against women and domestic then established a committee of experts composed of government representatives from the member states in the council, their mission was to search for ways to end all forms of violence against women and domestic violence.

The draft of the convention was issued in December 2010 after discussions and meetings that continued for two years.

Signature and certification:

 The signature and ratification of the convention was opened on May 11, 2011, to receive 13 signatory states. It was entered into force of the convention on August 1, 2014, after obtaining 10 ratifications, eight of which must be from member states of the European Council, the International Amnesty issued a statement requesting the governments of the various European countries and the European Union to ratify the agreement quickly. By October 2016, 42 countries signed the agreement and only 35 countries ratified it, and it was opened for signature by non-member states in the European Council, as well the Union also signed European convention in June 2017.

Implementation of the agreement:

The team of experts on Violence against Women and domestic Violence and the Committee of Parties consisting of representatives of the States parties to the Convention are cooperating with representatives of two separate agencies to evaluate and improve the implementation of the Convention by ratifying countries, and that group is called "GREVIO".

Objectives of the agreement:

 The agreement aims to protect the victims, prosecute perpetrators of violence and implement penalties against them, through 81 articles divided into 12 chapters, which are based on four principles: prevention, protection, supporting victims, prosecution of criminals, and completely policies.

 It also aims to cooperate among states to help survivors of violence, to provide political and financial support for the work of civil society organizations, to recognize the prominent role that non-governmental organizations provide services to victims of violence, and the Convention is based on international human rights obligations.

 The States are obligated to take legislative and non-legislative measures to ensure recognition that gender-based violence against women has an acceptable basis for applying for asylum, so women and girls who suffer from gender-based violence have protection in another country if their country fails to prevent persecution or provides them an adequate protection.

 The convention set a practice that falls within the scope of violence against women and obligated the ratifying states to criminalize the perpetrators of which are "psychological violence, surveillance, physical violence, sexual violence including rape, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, forced abortion, and forced sterilization, and Honor crimes".

The role assigned to the signatory countries:

 Countries that have agreed to adhere to the provisions of the convention should take some of the measures, including providing training service for survivors of violence, implementing regular and consistent awareness-raising campaigns, taking steps to incorporate gender equality in school curricula, and intensifying cooperation with NGOs, and media outlets and the private sectors in eliminating stereotypes and promoting mutual respect between gender. Some of the articles of the convention are as follows:

 Article (11): the parties shall undertake to collect disaggregated relevant statistical data at regular intervals on cases of all forms of violence covered by the scope of this Convention and support research in the field of all forms of violence covered by the scope of this convention in order to study its root causes and effects, incidence and conviction rates, as well as the efficacy of measures taken to implement this Convention.

Article (13): parties shall promote or conduct, on a regular basis and at all levels, awareness-raising campaigns or programs, including in co-operation with national human rights institutions and equality bodies, civil society and non-governmental organizations, especially women's organizations, where appropriate, to increase awareness and understanding among the general public of the different manifestations of all forms of violence covered by the scope of this Convention, their consequences on children, and the need to prevent such violence.

Article (30):  parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that victims have the right to claim compensation from perpetration for any of the offenses established in accordance with the Convention.

Article (37): parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that the international conduct of forcing an adult or a child to enter into a marriage is criminalized.

Article (42): parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that, in criminal proceedings initiated following the commission of any of the acts of violence covered by the scope of this Convention, culture, customs, religion, tradition, or so-called "honor" shall not be regarded as justification for such acts.  

High level of violence against women

 Although some European countries have already signed the Istanbul Convention, a study released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in November 2018 revealed that more than half of the women who were murdered around the world in 2018 were subjected to domestic violence, the number is increasing, and it is estimated that 35% of women around the world have been subjected to physical or sexual violence by their partners or by non-partners.

 According to official and unofficial reports, every three days a woman is killed by a relative in France and 100 women have been killed since January 2019 until the end of August 2019 as a result of violence and sex attempts, the reports say that 121 women were killed in France last year due to domestic violence.

As for Germany, which has reservations about the terms of the Istanbul agreement, the percentage of affected women who submitted asylum to Germany reached 53% between January 2019 and June 2019, and 80% of them were minors, and it was issued in June 2018 about 420 judicial decisions to provide immediate protection for victims of domestic violence as a result of high rates of reporting violence.

 In Turkey, the first country signed and ratified the Istanbul Convention, violence against women was increased in the first months of 2019, as 214 women were killed by their partners, and according to the "We Will End Femicide Platform", 440 women were killed last year, and in 2014, 300 women were killed as a result of domestic violence committed against them in the name of "honor killings".

According to Amnesty International, Spain, which is one of the countries with the lowest rates of violence against women, 44 women were killed in 2018 as a result of domestic violence by their partners.

 On the level of Arab countries that haven't signed the Istanbul Convention, NGOs are working to pressure those governments to sign and ratify the agreement. In October 2016, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network in Tunisia launched a campaign to mobilize in order to influence decision-makers and reach ratification of the agreement.

 As for Egypt, it remained far from the agreement at the level of the government and civil society organizations, at a time when the rates of violence against women in the country increased, 27.7 million women in Egypt underwent the process of female genital mutilation, and reports indicated that there were approximately 750 million women and girls married before completing their 18th year.

With regard to Lebanon, despite criminalizing domestic violence in 2014, rape wasn't criminalized by the partner, and every month, a woman is killed by her husband and in Libya, the criminal law allows a rapist to escape prosecution if he marries the woman he raped.

 Although the states take a series of measures aimed to reduce the phenomenon of violence against women and domestic violence, some penal laws in the world based on male power still give a man or husband a reduced sentence if he kills his "wife, mother, and sister" or he commits violence against her.