WUNRN
European Women’s Lobby – EWL
http://womenlobby.org/news/ewl-news/article/ewl-observatory-on-violence-7053?lang=en
[Brussels, 21 December 2014] The Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence
(Istanbul Convention)is an internationally recognised, visionary
treaty with great potential to become an effective tool for ending violence
against women and girls. This new Council of Europe Convention is an extremely
important step towards equality between women and men, and considering this, we
believe the process of monitoring this Convention should be transparent, and
take into account the views of NGOs and experts with full understanding and
knowledge on violence against women.
The Convention’s monitoring mechanism will be key to guarantee that it realises this potential.
To ensure an effective monitoring mechanism, civil society and particularly
women’s NGOs will play an important role at several levels:
1. Advocating among States Parties to the Convention for the nomination of
strong candidates to the “Group of Experts on Action against Violence against
Women and Domestic Violence” (GREVIO);
2. Active contributions to the monitoring process (through, for example,
shadow reports to GREVIO);
3. Advocating for a meaningful application of the new mechanism to involve
national parliaments in the evaluation and monitoring (as described in Article
70 of the Convention).