Lalrp.org:

BRUSSELS — The European Union is getting nearer to ratifying a landmark European treaty defending ladies from violence.

Lawmakers gathered in Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday accredited by a big majority the EU’s endorsement of the Istanbul Conference.

The human rights treaty of the Council of Europe states that women and men have equal rights, and obliges state authorities to take steps to forestall gender-based violence in opposition to ladies, shield victims and prosecute perpetrators.

The EU signed the treaty six years in the past nevertheless it has but to be ratified by the bloc as an entire due to the opposition of six member nations — Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.

“I need to ship my strongest name to these six remaining member states within the EU, to additionally individually ratify the Istanbul Conference,” mentioned Arba Kokalari, a Swedish EU lawmaker from the Committee on Ladies’s Rights and Gender Equality. “It’s time so that you can stand on the appropriate facet of historical past and to help ladies’s proper to a life free from violence.”

Requested for an opinion by the EU Parliament, the EU Court docket of Justice mentioned in 2021 that the Council — which represents EU member nations’ governments — may ratify the Istanbul Conference with out unanimity.

In line with the EU, one in three ladies within the EU — some 62 million ladies — has skilled bodily or sexual violence, and greater than half of girls (55%) within the area have been sexually harassed at the very least as soon as because the age of 15.

Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Conference in 2021, prompting condemnation from ladies’s rights teams and Western nations. The landmark conference was signed in Istanbul in 2011.

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