Mara Marinaki, principal adviser on gender with the European External Action Service, says it’s long overdue for Ukraine to ratify the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women, which Ukraine signed back in 2011.
The convention, if ratified, would have helped Ukraine to set up legal mechanisms to combat domestic and gender-based violence. Furthermore, ratification of this convention, created and promoted by the European Union, is Ukraine’s obligation under the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.
However, the Ukrainian parliament failed to vote for it last November, basically because of the meaning of the word “gender,” explained in the document. According to some lawmakers, it ruins “Ukrainian identity” and “basics of Christianity.”
Marinaki noted that unless a girl or a woman feels safe and secure, she won’t be able “to explore fully her potential,” adding: “So we again go back to the need to combat violence against women in all forms because it is the major stumbling block for women.”
When Ukrainian lawmakers considered the convention, they attracted representatives of the inter-confessional All-Ukrainian Church Council to the discussion. The council decided that the concept of “gender,” “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” might become a tool to legitimize same-sex relationships in Ukraine.
According to Marinaki, Ukraine seems the only country among the 25 nations that signed the convention to have “any such problems of interpretations of what is included in the convention.”
She explained that it specifies how to protect victims and how to prevent crimes against women.
“The reason for these crimes to have been committed is because these women are exactly women, it’s because of their gender,” Marinaki said. “Gender reference in the convention has the purpose exactly to define who are the victims.”
Marinaki stressed that the gender equality is key to each society if it wants to prosper.
“You can’t expect to make progress and to have things happen …if you leave behind half of your population,” she said. “We need all help we can get in our society, and your best potential is the human potential, you need all of it to get the best effect.”
She urged Ukraine to engage women in all spheres and considers the nation to be “on the right track,” saying that change will happen “rather sooner than later.”
