14 | - Número: 001 | 16 de Julho de 2011

been signed by 13 Council of Europe member states: Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. More countries will certainly follow in the coming months.
One of the main reasons why I am so proud of this Convention is that it is very comprehensive, and aims at addressing the plight of gender-based violence in its entirety. In addition to Prevention, Protection and Prosecution, a 4th P was added to the Convention – Integrated Policies – , to highlight the importance of integrated, holistic and co-ordinated policies in this field, without which measures to eliminate violence against women are bound to fail.
2. Article 11 In the part devoted to Integrated Policies, Article 11 of the Istanbul Convention specifically deals with data collection and research.
Under this article, Parties undertake to: a) collect disaggregated relevant statistical data at regular intervals on cases of all forms of violence covered by the scope of this Convention; b) 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, incidences and conviction rates, as well as the efficacy of measures taken to implement this Convention.
Parties should also endeavour to conduct population-based surveys at regular intervals to assess trends in all forms of violence covered by the scope of this Convention.
Parties should provide the group of independent experts set up to monitor the implementation of the Convention (GREVIO) with the information collected pursuant to this article in order to stimulate international co-operation and enable international benchmarking.
Last but not least, Parties should ensure that the information collected pursuant to this article is made available to the public.

3. Addressing a gap

Article 11 of the Istanbul Convention addresses a huge gap.
Violence against women, although a serious human rights violation, is a hidden phenomenon: first of all, because its victims often take refuge in silence; secondly, because it is ignored by statistics.
As the explanatory memorandum to the Convention clarifies, prevalence rates for Europe do not exist. A number of Council of Europe member states have conducted surveys to measure the extent of violence against women on a national basis. An overview of these surveys seem to suggest that, in Europe, one-fifth to one-quarter of all women have experienced physical violence at least once during their adult lives; more than one-tenth have suffered sexual violence involving the use of force. The majority of such violent acts are carried out by men in their immediate social environment, most frequently by partners and ex-partners.
Unfortunately, the explanatory memorandum cannot present more precise information: examples of systematically collected administrative or population-based data in Council of Europe member states are rare; in addition, available data is often not comparable across different countries; it is often not comparable over time in the same country, either.

4. Assessing the information gap

The Council of Europe has been aware for a long time of the importance of research and data collection as an integral part of the policies aimed at preventing violence against women.
Its willingness to cast a light on its member states‘ deficiencies and weaknesses in this area led the Council of Europe to organise, in 2007 in Lisbon, a regional seminar on Data collection as a prerequisite for effective policies to combat violence against women, including domestic violence, in the context of the campaign Stop