Prague, Nov 25 (CTK) – The Czech Republic will sign next year the international convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence and will amend the relevant legislation accordingly, Human Rights and Legislation Minister Jiri Dienstbier (Social Democrats, CSSD) said yesterday.
Yesterday is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The proposal to sign the document known as the Istanbul Convention will be submitted to the government by the year´s end.
The Czech Republic is one of the last eight countries of the Council of Europe that have not yet acceded to the convention even though women´s organisations have repeatedly called for the government to sign it and criticised its hesitation.
They said by this the government made it clear that it does not consider violence against women in their homes any problem. According to a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 32 percent of Czech women have experienced physical or sexual violence.
“Violence against women is a really serious problem on which we have to focus and clearly stand up against it. Violence is never acceptable as a way of dealing with problems, it betrays a lack of self-confidence or other problems in society,” Dienstbier said.
According to the convention, countries should protect their inhabitants from violence, practice prevention and prosecute and suppress acts of violence, contribute to putting women on an equal footing with men, prepare a plan of measures to protect the victims and support the institutions and organisations that focus on combating violence.
It fights physical and psychological torture, stalking, rape, sexual harassment, women´s circumcision and forced marriages, abortion and sterilisation.
The convention took effect in 2014. It has been ratified by 19 countries. The Czech Republic should sign the document in the first half of next year and parliament should get it for ratification by mid-2018.
“With some slight exceptions, the Czech legal order is already now in keeping with the convention requirements, that is why the signature will be rather a political gesture that will confirm the Czech Republic´s stance on home violence,” Barbora Rampasova, from the crime legislation section of the Justice Ministry, has said.
The government approved in February a plan of fighting domestic violence and gender-based violence until 2018 that includes 70 measures.
One of them is the foundation of an asylum home with a hidden address in every region.
