Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and consequences, Dubravka šimonović at the Conference on Monitoring the Implementation of the Istanbul Convention: New synergies

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
20 October 2015

Your excellences, Members of the Parliament,  NGO representatives, GREVIO experts, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me begin by thanking the Government of Bosnia Herzegovina in the context of its Chairpersonship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for inviting me to participate in this important conference on the new synergies in the implementation of the Istanbul convention and to address this topic form the angle of my mandate as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and consequence.

My appointment as Special Rapporteur in June this year by the UN Human Rights Council is both a great honour and a great responsibility.

In my new capacity as Special Rapporteur, but also as the former Co-chair of the CAHVIO Committee that drafted the CoE Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, I am very glad to see that the Istanbul Convention is fully operational and that its monitoring committee,  the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO)  has just started its work. I would like to recall very constructive role player by representative of BiH Ms. Samra Filipović Hadžiabdić, the Head of Gender Equality Agency during the drafting of this Convention.

I would  like to use this opportunity to congratulate all Council of Europe (CoE) Member States that have ratified the Istanbul Convention, for their political will and commitments to turn the standards it has set up into reality at the national level.

I  call all those CoE Member States that have not yet ratified the Istanbul Convention to reexamine the reasons for delaying such ratification and to consider speeding up the process of its acceptance.

My mandate as Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences is a general and global one based on a comprehensive and universal approach to the elimination of violence against women in all UN Member States. Using this approach, I am also instructed by the Human Rights Council to “formulate, implement and promote […] relevant regional instruments pertaining to the elimination of violence against women”.

The Istanbul Convention provides a relevant instrument for the mandate to support implementation of the States’ obligations to prevent and combat violence against women at the national level.

Its adoption strengthens the European regional framework on preventing and combating violence against women, while its implementation will accelerate the implementation of the global instruments on ending discrimination and violence against women, but above all, it will accelerate ending violence against women  and girls, which is sadly still universal and widespread, systemic and structural.

One of my key priorities will be to work on the implementation gaps of the existing international and regional instruments on violence against women and to accelerate their full incorporation and implementation at the national level.

It is very timely to look at the implementation challenges of the Istanbul Convention, since implementation gaps present the main challenge at the global, regional and national level, to accelerate ending of violence against women and girls. In this sense, we need to address this challenge at all levels.

This year, 2015, is a stock –taking year and also a vision making year for women’s rights.

At the global level, we have just adopted the new UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development with 17 transformative goals including the stand-alone Goal number 5 on achieving gender equality and empowerment of women that requires elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls in the public and private spheres.

We have also reaffirmed our commitments to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPA), adopted 20 years ago and have commemorated the 15th anniversary of the Security Council resolution 1325 (SCR 1325), based on the Study on its implementation and recommendations to move ahead the Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda.

Today, there is a significant number of legal instruments, policy documents and monitoring mechanisms, both at the global and regional levels, mandated to combat discrimination and violence against women, but in spite of the existing framework, there is a huge implementation gap and violence against women is still likely to be marginalized in domestic and other legislations.

Today, there is also a fragmentation between the implementation of global and regional policies dealing with gender equality and violence against women. I consider that insufficient and fragmented application of both global and regional instruments at the national level is one of the main reasons for these persistent gaps.

Indeed, there is a lack of full incorporation of the international standards set out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Convention), the Beijing Platform for Action (BPA), the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (DEVAW) and the UNSCR 1325.

I believe that we must try to achieve synergies between the implementation of the BPA, the CEDAW Convention and its Optional Protocol/DEVAW/UN SC 1325 and follow on resolutions/ as well as regional instruments on violence against women such as the Istanbul Convention at the national level and to support establishment of a coordinated and comprehensive national system to combat and prevent violence against women.

We also need to enhance cooperation between the international and regional monitoring mechanisms in order to close the existing human rights protection gaps and to identify synergies among the different systems, including the promotion and follow-up to recommendations of each system.

Regarding violence against women, we can see a growing synergy between the CEDAW Convention and the Istanbul Convention, in which the Istanbul Convention specifies in more details and complement the existing global CEDAW standards and contributes to their reinforcement. For example, the Istanbul Convention contains detailed norms on prevention, punishment of perpetrators and protection of victims, detailed provision on shelters and protection orders, as well as guidance related to standards required on criminalization of rape and female genital mutilation. It also codifies and prescribes some good  practices developed  by the UN CEDAW Committee  like the role of NGO,  role of IHRI and Parliaments in implementation of the Convention.  In addition of the fact that the Istanbul Convention is open for accession to Non-member States of the CoE under the condition of Article 76, its detailed standards have a universal value and all States can use them to improve their national legislation.

Going back to the implantation gap, I believe that my mandate has an important role to play in promoting  synergies between the existing international and regional instruments and systems on violence against women, with the purpose to achieve and accelerate their full implementation and ending violence against women and girls.

The right to life free form violence should be reality for each and every woman and girl.

I thank you for your attention.