II SÉRIE-D — NÚMERO 6

6

First of all, I wish to congratulate the Parliament of Serbia for completing the process of ratification of the

Istanbul Convention. This is the kind of encouraging news that I am happy to learn!

I am thankful for the invitation, because this conference gives me the opportunity to ask such competent and

committed people a question that often comes to my mind:

Why is violence against women so widespread? Why have we not yet succeeded in eradicating this

scourge, when we all agree that it’s unacceptable and cannot be tolerated in the civilized world that we think we

inhabit?

I would be happy to know your opinion on this, and I am ready to give you mine:

Violence against women is so widespread and deep rooted, because it develops and perpetuates itself

through a vicious circle.

The vicious circle of gender inequality and violence against women

Violence against women is the effect of a power imbalance between women and men. This applies both to

the individuals involved in a single case of violence, and to society at large. There is an imbalance of power

between the victim of violence, who in most cases is a woman, and the perpetrator, who is generally a man.

There is also an imbalance of power between women and men in the workplace and in other spheres of daily

life. To put things very simply: whenever, within a couple, one of the partners earns less than the other, or has

no income at all, she or he will be weaker and less able to defend their rights.

We all know that - in most cases - the partner with a lower income is the woman.

Gender inequality makes violence against women more difficult to acknowledge even by their victims, more

difficult to report and therefore more difficult to address.

The Istanbul Convention recognizes this idea and states in its preamble that violence against women is a

manifestation of historically unequal power relations between women and men, which have led to domination

over, and discrimination against, women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women.

At the same time, violence against women is a major obstacle to gender equality. As long as violence

against women exists, there cannot be equal opportunities between women and men - much less de facto

equality. I don’t have much to add to this statement. Or perhaps I can put it in simply: what is the point of a

woman being able to participate in public life, working and even – hypothetically - receiving the same wage as a

man, if when she comes back home she is the victim of violence at the hands of her partner?

This is the vicious circle that we face: violence against women is the result of gender inequality; in turn,

unequal gender relations generate more violence against women and impunity for perpetrators.

We must break this vicious circle.

How can we do it? By addressing the two elements of this equation at the same time. Tackling gender

inequality and combating violence against women must go hand in hand.

It sounds like a difficult task, you might say, and it certainly is.

However, I have good news to share with you. The Istanbul Convention provides us with a wide range of

tools and measures to work on these two fronts. The Convention was designed with exactly this aim in mind. Its

preamble says explicitly that the realization of de jure and de facto equality between women and men is a key

element in the prevention of violence against women.

In fact, the first two aims of the Convention listed in Article 1, are to:

— “Protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against

women and domestic violence;

and

— “Contribute to the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and promote substantive

equality between women and men, including by empowering women”.

In other words, States parties to the Convention have a duty to act on both fronts to break the vicious circle I

have already mentioned.