THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE ISTANBUL CONVENTION ON PREVENTING AND COMBATING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: AN APPRAISAL

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Combating Violence against women and domestic violence (hereinafter CoE Istanbul Convention), which was adopted in 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey. Entered into force on 1 August 2014, the Convention has been ratified – at the time of writing – by (only) 22 States of the overall 47 of the Council of Europe. We will illustrate the steps undertaken towards the adoption of the Convention, before analyzing the main characteristics of the legal instruments and its major weaknesses, the mechanism established to assess States’ compliance with treaty obligations, and eventually focus on some of the challenges posed by the implementation and ratification of the Convention itself, in particular since the treaty is open to non CoE Member States and the European Union.