The main objective of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (The Istanbul Convention) is to establish a legal and policy framework to tackle violence against women and domestic violence through four main pillars: prevention, protection of victims and the prosecution of perpetrators and integrated policies.
To this end, the Convention covers a broad range of measures, ranging from the obligation on State Parties to raise awareness and collect data to the establishment of substantive legal standards criminalising forms of violence against women, reflected in State Parties’ legislation.
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) is an independent centre and the primary source for information on gender equality in the European Union. EIGE provides research, collects, and analyses data on gender equality with an intersectional perspective.
EIGE also develops measurement frameworks and provides data and information on violence against women (VAW) and domestic violence (DV) in addition to the collation and management of gender statistics.
Under several EU Directives, Member States are required to regularly provide data on different forms of violence against women, to varying degrees of specificity:
- the Victims’ Rights Directive,
- the Directive on the European Protection Order (EPO),
- the Directives on combating trafficking in human beings and on sexual abuse of children,
- and the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence.
EIGE has developed sets of indicators on intimate partner violence, femicide and rape, and is developing a cyberviolence measurement framework to support monitoring of the Victims’ Rights Directive, the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence and the Istanbul Convention.
The following sections explain the work that EIGE is engaged in, with reference to specific articles of the Istanbul Convention, to support the European Commission and Member States.