Poland to begin withdrawal from international convention on violence against women

The Polish justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, has announced that he will on Monday begin the process of terminating Poland’s ratification of a European convention on preventing violence against women.

Recent statements by ministers that the government was considering a withdrawal yesterday prompted protests by women’s rights groups in cities around Poland under the slogan “No to the legalisation of domestic violence”.

The Istanbul Convention, a treaty of the Council of Europe to prevent and combat violence against women and domestic violence, was ratified by Poland in 2015, under the former government led by the centrist Civic Platform (PO).

The current ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party always opposed ratification. It argued that, while domestic violence should be prevented, the treaty was an attempt to promote “gender ideology” because it defines gender as a “social construct” (rather than a biological one).

In 2014, Ziobro called the convention a “feminist invention that is meant to justify gay ideology”. He declared that “you don’t need a convention to [know that] you cannot beat a woman; you can just read the gospel”.

The current president, Andrzej Duda, said when standing for election in 2015 that he was opposed to ratification. The convention contains “concepts contrary to our tradition and culture”, he argued, while pointing out that measures to prevent domestic violence already exist in Polish law.

At a press conference today, Ziobro said that “we are now moving from words to actions”. He announced that, on Monday, his department would be submitting a formal application to the family ministry to begin work on terminating Poland’s ratification of the convention.

The head of the family ministry, Marlena Maląg, had already declared last week that she would be working alongside the justice ministry to renounce the convention, which she described as “left-wing gibberish”, reports Radio Zet. Yesterday, a deputy prime minister, Jadwiga Emilewicz, also declared her support for such a move.

Following today’s announcement by Ziobro, a deputy minister, Jacek Ozdoba, tweeted that the government was seeking to “protect children from the ideological construct of so-called socio-cultural gender [that is] contrary to biology”.

Ziobro argued today that his ministry has over the last few years “done a lot to show that the fight against violence against women and domestic violence is our priority”.

As evidence, he pointed to a recent law that would allow perpetrators of domestic violence to be immediately separated from their victims. The legislation won the support of all parties in parliament apart from the far-right Confederation.

“We made changes to the law that representatives of the left and liberal groups have repeatedly talked about – but they talked, and we did it,” said Ziobro today, quoted by Polsat News. “We did it in a way free from ideology.”

In response to those who accuse the government of wanting to leave the convention in order to lower the standard of protection for women, Ziobro argued that “Polish law is exemplary in this respect and meets all the requirements in the convention”.

The problem with the treaty, continued the justice minister, is that it has an additional “layer” unrelated to violence, which “promotes LGBT family relationships” and children being “taught that biological sex is archaic”.

Poland’s government has, over the last 18 months, led a vociferous campaign against what it calls “LGBT ideology”, which it claims is seeking to infiltrate Poland from abroad and “morally corrupt children”.

Aspects of the Istanbul Convention have aroused similar criticism in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Among the countries that have signed but not ratified the treaty are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine, as well as the United Kingdom. Russia and Azerbaijan are the only Council of Europe member states not even to have signed the convention.

Criticism by right-wing groups led the Council of Europe in 2018 to issue a statement accusing opponents of “misrepresenting” the convention in order to “fuel controversies” and “discredit its goal to end violence against women”.

It clarified that the treaty “does not seek to regulate family life and/or family structures” and that its references to “gender” are not intended to “replace the biological definition of ‘sex'”.

The Polish government’s arguments have also been rejected by leading women’s rights organisations, who argue that efforts to renounce the convention are in reality a means to water down or remove protections against domestic violence.

Yesterday, protesters gathered in Warsaw to protest outside the family ministry and the offices of Ordo Iuris, an ultraconservative legal group that has led the campaign in Poland against the Istanbul Convention.

The demonstrators – a group of whom dressed as handmaids from the dystopian Handmaid’s Tale – chanted “We will not be victims” and “Protect your daughters, educate your sons”. They called for Maląg, the family minister, to resign. Similar demonstrations took place in other cities.

The government and ruling party have been “gradually appropriated by religious fundamentalists”, Robert Kwiatkowski, a left-wing MP, told TOK FM. He described Ordo Iuris – which is linked to the Brazil-based Catholic organisation Tradition, Family and Property – as a “sect”.

An MP from the agrarian-conservative Polish People’s Party, Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski, however, accused the government of using this issue to distract from and “cover up serious problems”.

Like with abortion – where the ruling party has so far failed to fulfil repeated promises to tighten the law – there is “no chance of this [withdrawing from the convention] being carried out”, argued Bartoszewski.

Main image credit: Jacek Marczewski / Agencja Gazeta

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.