VAWA-Style Policy Stalls in Europe: Rejected in Slovakia and Bulgaria

SAVE

The European version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), known as the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against Women, has been rejected in Slovakia and Bulgaria. The decisions followed intensive efforts by broad-based coalitions in each country.

Opposition to the Convention has centered on claims that the document would undermine the traditional family structure.

Slovakia

The Istanbul Convention provoked widespread controversy in Slovakia, where protests were staged by citizens who saw the document as a symbol of “gender ideology.”

Slovakia’s government had signed the 81-article document in 2011. But on February 21, then Prime Minister Robert Fico announced he would not ratify the Istanbul Convention because it is at odds with the country’s constitutional definition of marriage as a heterosexual union.[1]

“As long as I am prime minister and the questions over the interpretation are not satisfied, I will never agree to ratifying this document,” Fico said.

Bulgaria

On July 27, 2018 the Bulgarian Constitutional Court declared the Istanbul Convention to be unconstitutional. Eight of the 12 judges on the Constitutional Court voted against the Convention.[2]

Key groups, including the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the United Patriots, had opposed the treaty.

The Convention’s critics claimed that the document was a Trojan horse aimed at introducing ideological agendas. Prime Minister Boyko Borissov originally submitted the Convention for ratification in January, but language around gender roles triggered an uproar.

The controversy centered on the treaty’s definition of ‘gender’ as “social roles, behaviors, activities and characteristics that a particular society considers appropriate for women and men.”

“We will adopt the Istanbul Convention only if there is a consensus in Bulgarian society,” Borissov declared.

Other Countries

The controversial Istanbul Convention was first introduced by the Council of Europe in 2011 and entered into force in 2014.

To date, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Britain, and Ireland have not signed the Convention. In Croatia, thousands of people protested in the city of Split on April 12 against the Convention, but the government ratified it anyway.

In the United States, SAVE has developed language for the 2018 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that curbs gender ideology and promotes family stability.[3]

[1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/future-eu/news/after-bulgaria-slovakia-too-fails-to-ratify-the-istanbul-convention/

[2] https://www.euractiv.com/section/future-eu/news/istanbul-convention-unconstitutional-in-bulgaria/

[3] http://www.saveservices.org/wp-content/uploads/VAWA-Re-Write-5.7.2018.pdf