Poland ratifies convention combatting violence against women

WARSAW, Poland – Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski on Monday, April 13, ratified a landmark European convention combatting violence against women, despite opposition from the country’s powerful Catholic Church and his right-wing rival in the May presidential elections.

The centrist Komorowski, tipped to win the upcoming vote, said at the signing: “One must respect principles and support the victims, the abused and the weak.”

“We must not make political or electoral calculations in these kinds of cases,” the 62-year-old added at a centre for women’s rights in the capital Warsaw.

Poland’s centrist-dominated parliament voted in February to adopt the Council of Europe’s 2011 Istanbul Convention, the world’s first binding instrument to prevent and combat violence against women, from marital rape to female genital mutilation. 

Its critics allege the treaty links violence to religion and tradition. The Polish episcopate said the convention is based on “extremist, neo-Marxist gender theory.”

The Church has recently used the English word “gender” as a catch-all term referring to a range of issues including contraception, abortion and homosexuality.

Komorowski’s conservative rival Andrzej Duda, 42, criticized the  ratification of the convention as a “very bad decision.”

An opinion poll published this weekend showed Komorowski with 46% of popular support, well ahead of the 24% for Duda.

Should no candidate score at least 51% of the popular vote, at the May 10 first round of the presidential election, round two will go ahead on May 24.   

Parties to the Istanbul convention have an obligation to “prevent violence, protect its victims, prosecute the perpetrators” and to provide adequate shelter to domestic violence victims.

One in three women in Europe has experienced physical or sexual assault, according to a report last year by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights.

The agency interviewed 42,000 women aged 18-74 from the European Union’s 28 countries, producing the world’s most comprehensive study of its kind to date. 

Nordic countries came off badly, with 52 percent of women in Denmark saying they have suffered physical and/or sexual abuse, while the rate was 47 percent in Finland and 46 percent in Sweden.

At the other end of the scale, the report found that 19% of women in Poland said they had suffered in the same way, 22% in Spain and 21% in Croatia.

Over a dozen countries from across Europe have ratified the Istanbul convention: Albania, Andorra, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, France, Italy, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. 

Nearly two dozen have signed the text but not yet ratified it. – Rappler.com