Gender-based violence

Gender-based violence is recognised as a human rights violation. In 2011, the member states of the Council of Europe developed the “Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence”, also known as the Istanbul Convention, which is the most comprehensive human rights treaty against gender-based violence to date. The Istanbul Convention came into force in Germany on 1st February 2018.

Gender-based violence is violence that is directed against a person because of their biological or social gender. It includes all forms of violence, such as physical, sexualised, psychological and economic violence. Women, for example, are disproportionately often, but not exclusively, affected by sexualised and domestic violence. Gender-based violence against women is used as a means of warfare, takes place on a daily basis in private households and in situations characterised by structural power inequality and financial dependency.

The Convention uses the term “woman” to explicitly include girls under the age of 18 (Article 3 f). The central target group of all measures is therefore made up of all heterosexual, lesbian and bisexual women and girls. This includes all people who identify as women, for example intersex and trans women and girls, as well as non-binary people.

The implementation of the Istanbul Convention requires a large number of state measures in the areas of prevention, intervention, protection and sanctions. The obligations are aimed at public authorities acting at federal, state and local level. Overall, the Convention assigns civil society a strong role in the implementation process. Germany has already implemented a large number of the Convention's obligations. The Istanbul Convention also provided important impetus for the reform of sexual offences law in Germany in 2016 with the unanimous decision to implement the “no means no” principle.

The Convention formulates numerous, sometimes very specific obligations, and there is still much to be done in Germany in this respect. In order to improve protection against gender-based violence, a comprehensive range of support and assistance services is of primary importance. Women with disabilities, female migrants and asylum seekers, homeless women and undocumented women find it particularly difficult to demand protection from violence and need a comprehensive, low-threshold and non-discriminatory support system in order to assert their rights.

In August 2020, Germany sent the first state report to GREVIO, the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. The group of ten to 15 experts monitors the implementation of the Istanbul Convention by the states parties. In September and October 2021, the experts visited Germany for the first time to review the implementation of the Convention. The first evaluation report on the implementation status of the Istanbul Convention in Germany was published in October 2022. In addition to some positively evaluated measures, such as the sexual offences legislation reform, the report contains a number of recommendations, some of which are urgent (see “key concerns” below) and are not considered to have been sufficiently implemented in Germany.

What does the National Rapporteur Mechanism on gender-based violence do?

• Link to the YouTube video