In the last months of each year, two important anniversaries are promptly remembered and celebrated throughout the world, respectively the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women” and the “World Human Rights Day”.
Two events that follow one another on the calendar a few days apart from each other, as if there were a common thread between them that makes them even richer in meaning for the values they actually represent. And, in reality, that’s exactly how it is.
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Violation of human rights
Because discrimination and gender violence is a phenomenon which, in addition to having a negative impact on the mental health and psycho-physical well-being of women, is also represented as a phenomenon responsible for the violation of human rights. And which has repercussions on the entire community. Responsible, we were saying, for the violation of those rights that are specific to women as such. And which in addition to the right to equality between men and women include, among other things, the right to human dignity, to life and to the integrity of the person, the right to individual freedom as well as the right to security and non-discrimination. Without forgetting the rights to sexual and reproductive health.
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This was the main new element of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women, also known as the Istanbul Convention, opened for signature in 2011. In the Convention, in fact, the parties agree oblige to protect the rights of women who are the main victims of gender-based violence. A Convention, in fact, which is the first legally binding international instrument aimed at recognizing male violence against women and domestic violence as forms of discrimination and violation of human rights. Therefore, aimed at creating a complete regulatory framework to protect women against any form of violence.
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Every individual must be able to live free from violence
In the Preamble of the Convention, which recognizes that violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between the sexes, it is clear that the aspiration is to create a Europe free from this type of violence. And the principle according to which every individual has the right to live free from violence in both the public and private spheres is enshrined in the Convention.
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“Only when women and girls no longer live in insecurity, fear and daily violence will we live in a truly fair and equal union”, declared the Commissioner for Equality of the European Union after the accession of Union with the Istanbul Convention. She reiterated how “all this must be put to an end”.
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Italy signed the Convention in 2012, ratifying it a year later and declaring to apply the Convention itself “in compliance with constitutional principles and provisions”. The Convention entered into force in our country on 1 August 2014. In the European Union it has only been in force since 1 October 2023 having encountered multiple obstacles in the accession process which already took place in 2017.
It is undoubtedly a fact that one of the primary objectives that has particularly engaged the member states of the Council of Europe for several years has been to protect the human rights of women, promoting their sexual and reproductive health. However, despite notable results achieved, sexual violence and domestic violence still constitute daily threats for many women in Europe. And there are many women who pay for the end of a relationship with their lives.
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Measures to protect women
It should be highlighted how strong the work that the Council of Europe and the European Parliament are currently carrying out together is, implementing important measures to better protect women and girls from violence whether at home or in the workplace, on the street or online. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the agreement recently found on a European Union directive, the first legislative act of the Union, which establishes, among other things, minimum standards relating to the definition of crimes and specific sanctions to combat this form of violence by introducing aggravating circumstances for acts of violence against vulnerable people or minors.
Furthermore, establishing the rights of victims of all forms of violence against women or domestic violence and providing for the protection of the privacy of victims and preventing repeat victimisation. With the new directive, Member States should take important measures to collectively oppose these serious crimes by focusing especially on prevention. In particular, adopting specific rape prevention measures.
The rift over the act of rape linked to ancient Greek myths
The agreement mentioned above, and on which the representatives of the member states of the European Union should have expressed their opinion in the Council, split, as they say, the lines of view of the representatives of the states precisely on the definition of the act of rape. For the European Union, sexual intercourse without consent is rape, but not a crime. As if to say that rape is not a “Eurocrime”. A compromise that surprised
This so-called “consensus issue” in relation to the definition of the act of rape which has already involved the most aggressive associations and movements in the feminist world, dividing the different lines of thought of public opinion, will certainly constitute the subject of a broad and interesting debate on the tables most representative of the institutions and civil society.
A debate that can begin, why not, precisely from the meaning that was already expressed in the Greek myths, that is, of an act that becomes “the exercise of a divine right and will”. An act, rape by a God, who in the Greek imagination was judged by its consequences. A conduit, among other things, through which we can guarantee a half-divine lineage. A “heroic act” that can be experienced by those who suffer the abuse even as an “act of honor”. An act which for all these reasons is treated in the myth as an “almost sacred fact”.
A debate that brings attention, in particular, borrowing the words of Alberto Manguel, to “the status of Europe as an identity which is constantly questioned by new perceptions”.
Professor Emilio Piccione is emeritus of Gynecology and Obstetrics, University of Rome Tor Vergata