Today, on August 1, 2014 the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) comes into force.
Through its activities, the Institute for Youth Development KULT contributes to achieving gender equality, and, every month, takes a firm stand against gender-based violence by celebrating Orange Day, a global campaign for preventing violence against women and girls.
When it comes to violence against women and domestic violence, the fact that this document has entered into force is the most important historical event since December 18, 1979, when the CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women entered force.
11 member states of the Council of Europe, including BiH, ratified the Istanbul Convention, taking on the obligation of introducing legislative and other measures for providing a legal, institutional and organisational framework for preventing violence against women, protecting victims of violence and sanctioning perpetrators of violence.
The research conducted worldwide and in BiH confirmed that violence against women and domestic violence are not isolated occurrences, like other types of criminal acts, but the result of systematic gender inequality and the power imbalance between men and women.
This convention is the first document to recognise gender inequality as the cause of violence against women and domestic violence, and defines the ways of eliminating this underlying cause.
In order to ensure a consistent and coordinated implementation of the Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence in BiH, the Gender Equality Agency developed a Strategy for the implementation of the Convention, representing a comprehensive framework defining the manner of implementing the Convention in BiH and harmonising the legal and institutional framework with the Convention’s stipulations.
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