19/04/2021 | 17:41:59 Distinguished Chair, Dear colleagues, 23 years after the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities entered into force, give us the opportunity to go back to fundamentals: to human dignity, inclusion, respect and recognition of minority rights in a changing environment, and to examine how an understanding of equality and non-discrimination may interact with the overall minority discourse. Minorities enrich the societies of each and every country in the world. By working... 26/06/2019 | 10:25:10 Thank you, Madam President. Dear colleagues, We all know people who are affected by mental health issues. Yet, mental illness is still surrounded by stigma and stereotypes and people with mental health conditions or psychosocial disabilities are still subjected to treatment and attention without their consent. I would like, first of all, to congratulate Madam Rapporteur for really her excellent work and excellent analysis of this paradigm. She has shown the harmful effects of an approach to... 25/06/2019 | 18:56:00 Thank you, Madam President. Dear colleagues. First of all, thank you for a really rich debate. It is true that you in your interventions you mostly focused on the Istanbul Convention but I think Béatrice FRESKO-ROLFO explained how actually the two reports are interlinked. Since my report was focusing on how we started from a plan to have really an ambitious agenda for gender equality. Of course, the main idea was to celebrate the 70th anniversary of this organisation and to look back on what... 25/06/2019 | 15:47:15 Thank you, Madam President, dear colleagues, ladies and gentleman. As long as women and men do not enjoy the same empowerment, participation, visibility and equal access to resources, we cannot consider Human Rights to be respected, nor democracy and the rule of law to be achieved. Gender equality is therefore really a central mission of the Council of Europe. Human Rights, democracy and peace are the three key points without which it would be impossible to build the institutional... 10/04/2019 | 16:45:00 I thank all colleagues for taking part in this really fruitful debate. The number of speakers who signed up to speak in it shows how important and timely it is. All the contributions are really useful to me personally, and to the future work of the committee; I really appreciate them. Unfortunately, as colleagues are aware, it is impossible to respond to all of them. That is why I used the break and will use my notes to respond to a few comments, which I have grouped together. In my... 10/04/2019 | 10:06:39 Political leaders have a greater responsibility and a more important role in preventing and combating hate speech and intolerance than others do, because they have broader opportunities to spread prejudice against certain groups. The impact of political speech is greater, because politicians are in positions of authority. Hate speech has an impact on potential offenders, who feel encouraged in their intolerance. Politicians, along with other public figures, have a particularly significant... 09/04/2019 | 19:13:33 The committee strongly supports this report. Sexism, sexual harassment, and violence against women in politics, including in parliaments, are an everyday reality. In fact they are considered, as we heard from some speeches, to be the price to pay for women to be in politics. This is wrong. It is high time we had an Assembly resolution to say this state of affairs is not acceptable and to recommend measures that must be taken without any further delay. The first area where action is needed is... 23/01/2019 | 19:39:29 Yes. As we have heard today, access to employment is one of the most important means of inclusion for all members of our societies, yet many people are excluded from the labour market entirely or have much greater difficulty accessing it because of discrimination. We examined these questions in depth in our committee and, as we have heard, we held two hearings in the Sub-Committee on Disability, Multiple and Intersectional Discrimination, seeking out best practice on which all states can... 21/01/2019 | 19:13:28 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) Since 2012, following a Bureau decision, statistics on the gender breakdown of Assembly positions are prepared every year and included in the progress report on the activities of the Assembly’s Bureau and Standing Committee. These figures provide a picture of the situation for the previous year. The publication of this information aims to enhance transparency and raise awareness. The newest document shows the gender breakdown in Assembly...