![Make Europe a safe place for women and girls [Promoted content] | INFBusiness.com](/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/a1c9a53a6173ef69f1dca121390b6a59.jpg "Women victims of male violence face huge disparities across the EU in terms of protection and access to justice. Member States aren’t showing enough commitment to develop a strong and adequate Law on violence against women and domestic violence, including all the aspects on sexual violence and online violence.")
Women victims of male violence face huge disparities across the EU in terms of protection and access to justice. Member States aren’t showing enough commitment to develop a strong and adequate Law on violence against women and domestic violence, including all the aspects on sexual violence and online violence.
Irene Rosales is Policy & Campaigns Officer at The European Women’s Lobby.
Jana (fictitious name) from the Czech Republic was raped by a colleague at a teambuilding retreat. She woke up from sleep realising she was being raped and paralysed in fear. When she reported what happened to her, the police officers asked her why she didn’t have any scratches and didn’t resist. The case was dropped and it was the end of the criminal process for him; and the start of a very hard recovery process for her, as a survivor of sexual violence.
The consequences of violence against women can be fatal. Verónica (32 years old) committed suicide after an intimate sexual video of her was widely distributed to her colleagues without her consent. Tiziana (31 years old) did the same after a long battle through courts to have intimate videos removed from the internet.
With 1 in 3 women in the EU having suffered some form of sexual and/or psychological violence in their lives , thousands of stories like Jana’s, Veronica’s and Tiziana’s still have similar endings because of the lack of adequate protection mechanisms across the EU. Violence like this can be avoided with adequate legislative tools that include effective and concrete measures like specialised services for survivors, free 24-hour national helplines, accessible shelters for women and their children, regardless of their country of origin. Let’s recall that many european countries do not have in place specialist rape crisis centers for victims of sexual violence, despite international standards.
Only last week, the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) welcomed the long-awaited Council’s decision to give the green light to EU’s ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, the Istanbul Convention. This decision came after a long campaigning process and more than 8 years of perseverance, advocacy and civil society mobilisation led by women’s organisations. The Council sent a strong message that the EU commits to a set of comprehensive binding measures to address violence against women, setting the path to achieve the same level of rights and protection for victims no matter where they live.
But the EU’s accession on its own is not enough: implementation is key and concrete legal tools are needed. This is why the EWL very much welcomed the European Commission proposal, released in March 2022, for a concrete Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence: a historic opportunity to get a common approach across the EU to define crimes of sexual violence and online violence against women and to provide specific protection mechanisms and access to justice and reparation for victims.
Unfortunately, Member States are not showing adequate commitment to adopt a robust Directive. This Friday, the Council is going to adopt an agreement that significantly waters down the proposal made by the European Commission leaving out crucial aspects of the Directive, particularly the article on the criminal definition of rape based on the lack of freely given consent. Member States should feel ashamed to agree to backtrack on this Directive which requires a qualified majority to be adopted. EWL strongly agrees with the Declaration made by Belgium, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg regretting the lack of political ambition for the criminalisation of rape.
“This is absolutely unacceptable to women’s organisations. The Council must recognise that rape is a crime that is at the very core of the violation of women’s fundamental rights, systematically used to silence women across Europe”, said Réka Sáfrány, EWL President. “This decision is regretable not only because there is enough legal basis for the EU to legislate on this matter, but also because there is an urgent need to combat rape on a common basis, which is clearly not the case at the moment”, she added.
Victims of rape do not have the same level of protection across Europe as definitions of the crime vary widely. Many Member States do not yet have definitions based on the notion of freely given consent but still retain forced-based definitions that do not offer adequate protection to victims . In this context, only a small number of women feel safe to report and ask for help and therefore a great majority of sex crimes perpetrated by men against women remain undisclosed. If women, like Jana, do dare to report rape, they often face obstacles, judgement and humiliation, having to fight not only against injustice but also gender stereotypes and moral views about women’s sexuality.
“Our EWL members are mobilised widely contacting political leaders and taking action across Europe to seek a robust Directive that criminalises all forms of sexual and reproductive exploitation of women, including sexual violence and abuse over women’s sexuality, and all forms of online violence against women and girls.”, said Mary Collins, Acting Secretary General of the EWL.
We trust that the European Parliament will adopt a strong and comprehensive proposal to enhance the text of the Directive – thanks to the determination of the two rapporteurs MEP Francis Fitzgerald and MEP Evin Incir. We count on the Spanish Presidency to be ready to negotiate internally with other Member States and make significant improvements during the trialogue negotiations. To support our calls, we will be delivering to the three EU Institutions more than 78,000 signatures of citizens asking to Make Europe a safe place for women and girls, organised in partnership with We Move Europe.
We ask all the EU institutions not to let victims down: women in the EU are counting on you today.
You too have a historic opportunity to bear pressure to put an end – once and for all – to violence against women and girls in the EU, including all forms of sexual exploitation and cyberviolence. You too can have your voice heard to put pressure on the EU Institutions by signing this Wemove petition here.
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The European Women’s Lobby is the largest umbrella organization of women’s associations in Europe. Founded in 1990, the EWL works to promote women’s rights and equality between women and men and represents more than 2000 organizations across Europe.
Source: euractiv.com
