The Una Quando Centomila Foundation "views with great concern what is happening around the Istanbul Convention. Once again a game is being played on women's bodies that favors balances of power to the detriment of hard-won rights".
"Since our country ratified the Convention in 2013 - we read in a note -, many of the measures listed have formed the basis for being able to legislate against violence against women. We are certainly far, especially in the field of prevention, from the legislative and cultural standards that the Convention requires but having them as objectives has produced tools for social and political sharing and institutional expression in achieving them or in deciding not to deny them".
"The indignation is growing - we read further - in noting that after the efforts of these ten years to seek and obtain certain results (from law no. 119 of 2013; moving on to law no. 69 of 2019, the so-called red code; up to the law n.12 and n.112 of 2023) today there is an attempt to go back in time. We are, as always, the sacrificial object".
"The European directive, proposed in March 2022 as an indispensable institution for applying sanctions to member states in the presence of non-compliances in the process of being approved, eliminates the article that defines, and therefore sanctions, the crime of rape as sexual intercourse in the absence of the explicit consent of the woman - underlines the foundation -. Sexual harassment in the world of work and as regards online violence are no longer included: the victim should prove the damage suffered by the circulation of their private images".
"For us this is a sensational step backwards compared to a Convention which must be aspired to in its completeness and certainly not reduced in its instruments", concludes the note -.
And what strikes us most is the lack of political debate. If in Europe at the moment there is discussion , in Italy, however, it is not known what our country's position will be on the matter. A deafening silence, that silence that women are asked to break and which the institutions instead feed on."
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