Non-governmental organisations' representatives on the government's council for human rights and gender equality strongly reject calls by Andrej Danko, speaker of Parliament, and the top representatives of Slovak churches to withdraw Slovakia's signature under the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and fighting violence against women and domestic violence. Last Thursday, the leaders of the coalition parties confirmed that they would not ratify this Convention due to the stances of several church organisations.
The Istanbul convention was signed 11th May 2011. So far, seventeen EU member states have ratified this document with Poland being the only Central European state to do so. The main goal is to create a Europe with no violence against women just because they are women and with no domestic violence as such. The convention aims at protecting women from violence and girls by the same legislature in the member countries.
