The Istanbul Convention is Unnecessary, Dishonest, and Dangerous

Riding a wave of sexual activism, the European Union proposes to endorse the Istanbul Convention, an initiative of the Council of Europe ostensibly to combat “violence against women,” and incorporate it into EU law. Yet the Convention has nothing to do with violent crime. It is a political innovation that promotes radical political ideology. Under the guise of protecting crime victims, it institutionalizes sexual ideology and transfers dangerous powers to activists engaged in gender warfare against the family, religious freedom, civil liberties, and men.

Violence of any kind is a matter for criminal law, and every jurisdiction on earth has statutory criminal prohibitions on violent assault. If a country’s criminal law is ineffective, it must be repaired (though no evidence indicates that this is the case, and even the Convention itself makes no such argument). But nothing suggests that signing an international agreement can make any difference to the efficacy of laws prohibiting criminal assault.

But the Convention cannot possibly control crime. In fact, its political purposes violate basic principles of criminal law: foremost, that law must be clear and specific. Otherwise, prosecutions can be launched over matters that are not understood to be crimes by the accused or those who sit in judgement on them. Even “violence” is defined vaguely and includes matters not comprehended under that term in plain English, French, or any other international language.

Under the Convention, violence need not be “physical” but can be “psychological” or “economic”. What precisely is “psychological” violence? No one knows, because this term can mean anything. It can be stretched to fit anything or anyone a prosecutor or a political pressure group decides to target for criminal punishment. This includes behaviors and people that most of us would not consider criminal – such as religious beliefs and believers. This is a prescription for politicizing criminal law and violating the civil liberties of innocent people.

Instead of law enforcement, the Convention makes violence a matter of “human rights.” Why? No one suggests that other crimes, like mugging or armed robbery, are “human rights” violations. Why domestic violence? By this logic, the criminal guilt and innocence of everyone would be subject to the tug-of-war of “human rights” politics. Domestic courts would become useless and guilt or innocence would be determined by a small group of political activists appointed under the Convention.

As generally accepted by most governments and most people (and, again, plain everyday speech), human rights involves curtailing repression perpetrated by governments, not acts allegedly committed by one citizen against another, which again falls under crime prevention.

Human rights accusations are, likewise, political. Accusing a government of repression does not require a legal standard of proof or due process of law for that government. One can demand that repression be stopped as a matter of policy, without presenting evidence that would meet an evidentiary standard in a courtroom, and without observing due process protections, because no one is necessarily placed in criminal jeopardy. However serious, it involves desired changes in government policy, not a finding of criminal culpability.

By accusing private individuals of “human rights” violations, the Convention removes the due process provisions that protect citizens from unjust criminal proceedings: the presumption of innocence, the right to face one’s accuser, double jeopardy, criminal standards of evidence, and so forth. A citizen accused of “domestic violence” (again, as noted above, a very vague term in itself) is treated as equivalent to a dictator who is torturing political opponents.

The difference is that, unlike the dictator, the private citizen has no public platform to speak in his own defense, and also unlike the dictator he can be criminally punished. With human rights accusations, guilt or innocence is a matter of political opinion, not legal evidence, and guilt can be decided by competition among political activists and interest groups.

confirming this, the Convention itself explicitly removes some standard due process protections: the accused may not face his accuser; proceedings are ex parte (without the accused being present to defend himself); and charges may be entered without proof that an alleged victim even exists.

In the name of eradicating “violence,” the Convention also requires institutionalizing political ideology, including behavior-modification and thought control of private citizens and political indoctrination of children by governments. Signatory governments must “take the necessary measures to promote changes in the social and cultural patterns of behaviour of women and men with a view to eradicating prejudices, customs, traditions and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority of women or on stereotyped roles for women and men.”

Who decides what constitutes “prejudices” and “stereotyped roles,” let alone what people are permitted to believe and practice in their private lives? Are religious beliefs that government officials may consider “prejudices” now crimes? What about “behaviours” in private households where men and women divide the labor according to their own preferences? Are they now criminals? Are people who share the “prejudices” and “stereotypes” accessories to “violence”.

Few of us are free from what some extremists consider “stereotypes”. Indeed, the Convention itself perpetrates stereotypes of its own, foremost the inaccuracy that only women are victims of violence and only men commit domestic violence. Decades of research clearly demonstrates otherwise. Yet no provision exists for violence against men or children. The Convention also recognizes its own Orwellian double-speak, with the stipulation that “Special measures that are necessary to prevent and protect women from gender-based violence shall not be considered discrimination under the terms of this Convention.”

But perhaps most disturbing is the role of domestic violence accusations in breaking up families. Domestic violence accusations are a well-known weapons not only in divorce proceedings but also in accusations of child abuse, and they rationalize removing one parent from the home without any finding of guilt. For this reason, violence against children could be made worse, since it is well known that most child abuse takes place in single-parent homes.

The only possible reason for this Convention is to enable radical activists to make unjust accusations against innocent people and to strip the accused of the ability to protect themselves. This Convention is breathtaking in its abrogation of basic civil liberties, and it has no place as the law governing free societies.

Stephen Baskeerville is the author of The New Politics of Sex (Angelico, 2017) and other books and peer-reviewed articles on politics, law, and theology. Professor Baskerville is scheduled to speak on “How the Istanbul Convention Undermines the Rule of Law, both Nationally and Internationally”at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, Faculty of Law, on March 16. An earlioer version of this article was published on the website of SAVE: https://www.saveservices.org/2022/12/istanbul-convention-is-unnecessary-dishonest-and-dangerous/