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Sábado, 26 de janeiro de 2013 II Série-D — Número 15
XII LEGISLATURA 2.ª SESSÃO LEGISLATIVA (2012-2013)
SUMÁRIO Delegações e Deputações da Assembleia da República: — Relatório elaborado pelo Deputado Mendes Bota, do PSD, relativo à sua participação na Conferência Regional sobre “Istanbul Convention: From signature to ratification and implementation – Exchange of experiences and practices”, no âmbito da Assembleia Parlamentar do Conselho da Europa (APCE), que decorreu em Helsínquia, no dia 17 de janeiro de 2013.
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DELEGAÇÕES E DEPUTAÇÕES DA ASSEMBLEIA DA REPÚBLICA
Relatório elaborado pelo Deputado Mendes Bota, do PSD, relativo à sua participação na Conferência Regional sobre “Istanbul Convention: From signature to ratification and implementation – Exchange of experiences and practices”, no âmbito da Assembleia Parlamentar do Conselho da Europa (APCE), que decorreu em Helsínquia, no dia 17 de janeiro de 2013
Relatório n.º 68
No dia 17 de janeiro de 2013, na qualidade de 1.º Vice-Presidente da Comissão da Igualdade e Não Discriminação da APCE, e de Relator Geral sobre a Violência Contra as Mulheres, fiz uma intervenção na sessão de abertura da Conferência Regional supracitada, cujo texto consta do anexo ao presente relatório.
Fiz uma segunda intervenção para responder a algumas questões colocadas no debate que se seguiu.
Usaram da palavra, também, e entre outros oradores, o Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros da Finlândia, Erkki Tuomioja, e a Ministra da Cancelaria do Primeiro-Ministro da Polónia, Agnieszka Kozlowska Rajewicz.
Participaram nesta conferência deputados, altos funcionários, especialistas e representantes de ONGs da Dinamarca, Estónia, Finlândia, Alemanha, Islândia, Letónia, Lituânia, Noruega, Polónia e Suécia.
No dia 18 de Janeiro de 2013, participei numa visita a uma casa-abrigo para mulheres e crianças vítimas de violência doméstica.
Assembleia da República, 19 de janeiro de 2013.
O Deputado do PSD, José Mendes Bota.
ANEXO
Speech by Mr. Mendes Bota, 1st Vice-Presidente of the Equality and Nom Discrimination Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women on the Regional Conference on “The Istanbul Convention: From signature to ratification and implementation – Exchange of experiences and practices”, organized by the Council of Europe Helsinki, 17th of January 2013
A HAPPY NEW YEAR
1. 2013 Dear Chairperson and colleague Susana Huovinen, president of the Finish Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Dear Minister of Finland for the Foreign Affairs, Erkki Tuomioja, Dear Mr. Philippe Boillat, Director General of Human Rights and Rule of Law, of the Council of Europe, Distinguished friends and colleagues, This is not my first time in this room of the Finish Parliament. I had the honour of being here by the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the adhesion of Finland to the Council of Europe, presided by your former President Republic, Mrs. Tarja Halonen, great defender of women’s rights, and by the recently deceased Lluis Maria de Puig, president at the time of our Parliamentary Assembly. I keep a good memory of that day.
I am pleased and honoured to be here at this Conference to represent the President of the Parliamentary Assembly, Jean-Claude Mignon, and to testify of the great importance that the Assembly attaches to the elimination of violence against women.
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Let me start by thanking the hosts, the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Finnish Parliament, for such a timely initiative and for their consistent commitment to promoting women’s rights and gender equality.
Despite what the calendar states, and even the very notice that gattered us here, today is November 25th.
And tomorrow will be November 25th. And year’s end will be November 25th.
Because, just as we say that Christmas is when a man wishes, what prevails on November 25th is the spirit transversal to every day of the year urging us to reject and end the violence befalling women, all over the world, in our country, in our city, in our neighborhood, who knows even within our own homes and families.
Millions and millions of women from all around live in the world and see the main human right denied them: the right to live free from violence. Every effort must be made to protect these women.
And from a special date for all around the year, let e recall another traditional celebration. January is normally a time when people exchange best wishes and make resolutions for the New Year. Coming here this morning, in this beautiful city [covered in snow], I was thinking that 2013 is different from any other year. 2013 is a year of OPPORTUNITIES.
In 2013, UNPRECEDENTED opportunities are offered to us:
to raise AWARENESS on the plight of violence against women, to TAKE EFFECTIVE ACTION to prevent violence against women, protect the victims, prosecute the perpetrators and set up a range of integrated policies to tackle this phenomenon in its complexity.
2013 is going to be a UNIQUE year to UPGRADE THE POLITICAL PROFILE of violence against women, and place it AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE on the political agenda of our governments.
2. Why? This Conference is the first opportunity.
It brings together ministers, parliamentarians, government representatives, non-governmental organisations and experts from countries from a very diversified region. It is exactly these diversified backgrounds, challenges and experiences which will enrich our discussions and the exchange of best practice.
This Conference is the first of a series of high profile events which, around the world, will mark 2013.
[It has already been mentioned that] the main theme of the session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women will be preventing and combating violence against women and girls. The CSW will be a huge platform which will catalyse attention and visibility all over the world, and which will hopefully spark a new dynamism in the fight against gender-based violence.
It is therefore of the utmost importance that the Council of Europe takes part to present the Istanbul Convention and underline the added value of this instrument, which is not only open to Council of Europe member states but potentially to any other country in the world.
In the context of the meeting of the CSW, the Inter-Parliamentary Union will also organise a one-day event, focussing on parliamentary initiatives to combat violence against women. I will do my best to ensure that the Istanbul Convention is given the visibility it deserves in this gathering.
3. The Istanbul Convention But there are MANY MORE events that can punctuate 2013.
These are the numerous, successive signatures and ratifications of the Istanbul Convention which will follow the current ones.
This is the Assembly’s wish for the new year.
This is also our resolution for 2013: that, as members of parliament, we shall do everything which is in our power to promote the Istanbul Convention, to have it signed, to introduce the necessary legal changes in our domestic law, and to ratify it.
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And by the way of ratification, let me call what is happening in Portugal. The Parliament has taken two weeks to approve the proposal of the Government for the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. The President of the Republic has taken one or two days to promulgate the Convention. The Prime Minister has taken one day to referendum the Convention. An meanwhile, the National Printing institute, has taken almost one month to format the text.
This is unacceptable, that the bureaucratic calendar is overlaping the political priorities. Something is very wrong when this type of things happen.
But I have been following the route for ratification, step by step, like a watch-dog, and I am pleased to announce that publication on the Diary of the Republic is expected for next 21st this month. And then, the final stage, is the deposit of the ratification instrument in the hands of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. And even for that, we have to keep pressing officials and members of Government.
I really hope Portugal will become the first Member Estate of the European Union to complete the ratification process. And I urge all my colleagues of the Network “Women Free From Violence” to do the same, because Our new year resolution is that the Istanbul Convention enters into force in 2013.
This is not so much because we want to highlight the leading role of the Council of Europe in the area of standard setting and human rights – even though this does deserve mentioning.
This is because we believe that the Istanbul Convention can save millions of victims from discrimination, suffering, violence and death. The Istanbul Convention can CHANGE the lives of millions of women.
4. The Assembly supports the Istanbul Convention The Assembly has always supported the Istanbul Convention: – it called for such a Council of Europe Convention on violence against women during the ‘Stop domestic violence campaign’, – it actively participated in the drafting process – I was myself the Assembly representative in the CAHVIO and I am very pleased to see so many CAHVIO members amongst us today; – it supported its adoption without any further delay, and its opening to signature at the conclusion of the Turkish chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers, in May 2011.
And now, at the present stage, the Assembly actively works to increase the number of signatures and ratifications.
5. The Network We have set up a specific tool to help us achieve this task: it is the Parliamentary Network “Women Free from Violence”.
This network has a long history, as it was first set up in the context of the 2006-2008 campaign.
I am proud to inform you that currently it is composed of 51 members, from the parliamentary delegations of member and observer states to the Parliamentary Assembly (including Canada and Mexico), as well as of the delegations of Partners for Democracy (Morocco and the Palestinian Legislative Council). Network members meet during Assembly sessions in Strasbourg. We discuss different aspects of the Istanbul Convention with activists, practitioners and experts.
Next week, for instance, we will organise an event in co-operation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to highlight the synergy between the Istanbul Convention and the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. We will listen to experts but above all to victims: one who has endured female genital mutilation and now militates against this evil, and another one who became a victim of violence while in the asylum procedure in Europe.
To explain the Convention in simple terms, the Network has produced a Handbook, which thanks to the contributions of various countries, has now been translated into 10 languages. This handbook is not only addressed to parliamentarians but to all those who want to know more about the Istanbul Convention, without being specialists in this area of law and policy.
[I totally agree with what the Director General, Mr Boillat, has said: we trust that our intensive efforts to make the Convention more widely known will convince more governments to sign it]
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The Network has also published visibility material of various kinds, such as a newsletter, leaflets and posters. It has a Facebook page, which I warmly invite you to consult and join. We post information about Network activities but also about developments in the area of violence against women, with a special focus on Europe. We want to reach out to experts but also to the general public, to increase public awareness and create general support for the Convention.
In 2012, to mark the International Day for the elimination of violence against women, Network members organised parliamentary seminars on the Istanbul Convention, in Sarajevo, Rome, Brussels and Lisbon. I can tell you, as I promoted one of them, that these seminars were very successful as they made it possible for national parliamentarians to familiarise themselves with the Convention. In the case of Portugal, this was instrumental in achieving the UNANIMOUS ratification of the Convention by parliament, which sent out a very clear political message. The organisation of this cycle of seminars was made possible thanks to a voluntary contribution from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany, which I wholeheartedly thank.
6. New year resolutions Dear Chairperson, Minister, distinguished friends and colleagues, Allow me to leave you some messages. First: don’t pay attention to the voices that claim tired of dead papers, never applied into reality. The old story of “de jure” and “de facto”. That might be true, perhaps, partially true. But the “paper phase” is necessary, useful and not replaceable. We need good laws, good and binding rules, good budgets and that can be monitored on its application.
Second: don’t wait until you have in your country everything online with the Convention, everything settled, to start then the ratification process. That’s not the correct approach. If everybody is doing the same strategy, waiting to find 100% purity and readiness, than in seven or eight years we will still be waiting for the Convention to enter into force.
Third: don’t fall in the tendency to minimize the role of the parliamentarians in this process. They are the real mediators between the people, the citizens, the voters and the decision-making bodies. They are everyday in direct contact with people.
I see by myself, when a parliamentarian goes deep on reality, discovers that women killed had already a long historical background of complains and the risk assessment failed. Or that the cases of women caught by the mafias of the trafficking on human beings, follow the wrong direction on courts and police authorities, presented as illegal migrant cases or organised prostitution by pimps, and not as gender crimes as it should be.
Or even that women see subsidies as victims of domestic violence to be deducted on other social subsidies provided by the State. Parliamentarians have a crucial role to play on this domain.
Look: scores of women are held prisoners in abusive relationships. Some of them suffer in silence. Others are not even listened to.
We should work together, hand in hand - parliamentarians, government representatives, non-governmental organisations and experts – to achieve a tangible result for these women, THIS YEAR.
We should make a common resolution, and should stick to it with the greatest resolve and determination.
This Conference is a great opportunity for us to be better equipped when we go back to our countries. We will have more arguments, solutions and good examples to support our demands.
Together, we can make 2013 the year of non-return, the year zero in a process which will lead to the elimination of violence against women.
Together we can make it happen.
IT DEPENDS ON US WHETHER 2013 WILL BE A HAPPY NEW YEAR.
A DIVISÃO DE REDAÇÃO E APOIO AUDIOVISUAL..