Today, 11 May, marks 10 years since the adoption of
the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,
known to the wider public as the “Istanbul Convention”.
The Istanbul Convention rests on 4 pillars:
– Prevention
– Protection
– Prosecution
– coordinated, integrated policy
You can read more about the Istanbul Convention on the Council of Europe website – here.
The need to implement the Istanbul Convention has been substantiated by the Ministry of Welfare. The document prepared by Viktorija Boļšakova, Senior Officer for Children and Family Policy at the Ministry of Welfare, is available here.
The text of the Istanbul Convention is available in Latvian here.
Unfortunately, there is still a considerable degree of ignorance in Latvian society regarding what the Istanbul Convention actually provides for. Instead of critically reading and evaluating the text of the Convention and its objectives, preference is given to the opinion of church leaders that the true objectives of the Convention are to protect sexual minorities and to impose the ideology of genderism. In Latvia, the Istanbul Convention is one of those issues that has split Christian society, much like the results of the US presidential election, the Covid-19 crisis, vaccines, and societal restrictions.
The Ministry of Welfare, which once informed Latvian society about the need to ratify the Istanbul Convention, ran up against the Ministry of Justice, which chose to echo the opinion of religious leaders and religiously inclined experts, rather than to evaluate the text of the Convention in accordance with the duties of a secular State and guided by Article 99 of the Constitution:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. The church shall be separate from the State
Has the Istanbul Convention had any meaning and impact?
To mark the 10th anniversary of the Convention, the European Commission today presents a short documentary film about the implementation of the Istanbul Convention.
The short documentary can be watched here
COE – Istanbul Conv – Documentary – English (1).mp4 from Council of Europe OP Services on Vimeo.