23/06/2021 | 11:54:25 I wish to thank all of our five panellists for the first remarks. We will come back to you while we have some exchange of views with our members of parliament. I will try to be fair and to direct some of the issues to each and every one of you. Sometimes it might be a little bit surprising but, hey, this is a hemicycle. You're in the parliament, so you know that you can be a little bit surprised. So, Madam Speaker, Mister Prime Minister, Madame la Ministre, Madam Secretary General, Madam... 23/06/2021 | 11:46:08 Thank you very much. We now turn to our own Secretary General of the Council of Europe, who is the beholder and the guardian of all Council of Europe conventions, amongst them obviously the Istanbul Convention. Madam Secretary General, we all know your deep commitment towards this promotion of the Istanbul Convention, but what is perhaps a little bit less known, is that when you were Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Croatia, you had to tackle the debates in your... 23/06/2021 | 11:38:16 Thank you, Madam Minister. We now come to Ms Dubravka ŠIMONOVIC. Ms Dubravka ŠIMONOVIC is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, it's causes and consequences. Ms Dubravka ŠIMONOVIC knows very well the Istanbul Convention. She was the co-chair of the Ad Hoc Committee CAHVIO, [In French: is that how it's called?], which was the committee that prepared the Convention. So it is to a certain extent, Ms Dubravka ŠIMONOVIC, she is a co-author of it. The United Nations... 23/06/2021 | 11:29:04 I now give the floor to the Minister, Ms Elisabeth MORENO, Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister for Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunities. Your responsibilities, Madam, cover the coordination of the government's work on parity and equality between women and men, the fight against discrimination and against hatred towards lesbian, gay and trans people. One of your priorities is, in particular, to double the efforts to fight violence against women, towards the rigorous... 23/06/2021 | 11:22:34 Thank you very much, Mister Prime Minister. We now move to Madam Anca Dana DRAGU who is the President of the Senate of Romania. She is the first woman in history of Romania to hold this important post being elected in December of last year. She has served previously as Minister of Public Finance, she holds a PhD in economics. Now, Romania signed the Istanbul Convention in 2014 and ratified it two years later, but it was a process that had some challenges. So we look forward to hearing from... 23/06/2021 | 11:16:14 It is now my pleasure and honour to introduce Mr Alexander De CROO, Prime Minister of Belgium, my Prime Minister. Mr Alexander De CROO is the author of a book entitled The Century of Women – a man wrote it – in which he makes a strong plea for full equality between men and women. There is also a chapter devoted entirely to violence against women, which, according to the Prime Minister, is comparable to a pandemic, if not worse than a pandemic. Mr Alexander De CROO combines theory with... 23/06/2021 | 11:14:01 Thank you, Madam Nadia Murad, for this very important message. We will now head into our panel but I would like to first recall each and every one of us that during these two hours that we are together, there will be thousands of women who will be beaten. There's a lot of violence against women at this very instant as we sit here. Even women will be beaten to death as we sit here. Just think about it. We're talking not just some cases, we're talking about thousands, thousands, thousands of... 23/06/2021 | 11:05:10 I'm very pleased to start with a message by Ms Nadia MURAD who is a human rights activist, laureate of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. Recipient of the 2016 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Ms Nadia MURAD is a leading advocate for survivors of genocide and of sexual violence. Through Nadia's Initiative, she advocates for resources and policy changes to protect and support survivors of sexual violence and rebuild communities in crisis. As a member of... 22/06/2021 | 16:02:23 Dear colleagues, please be seated. We will start. We already have a bit of a delay and we only have 30 minutes with our Secretary General, so I'd appreciate that we could start without any due delay. I welcome the President of the Congress who is like a fixed guess to us. Very welcome President. I like that. I like that very much. The sitting is open dear colleagues. The first point is the election of judges to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Croatia. I will announce the... 21/06/2021 | 17:45:55 Thank you, Mister Minister. I understand that the word misunderstanding has been used a number of times by yourself, so you will allow me to have an effort to try to get rid of some misunderstandings concerning the Istanbul Convention also with you. But we will discuss it in the coming hours and we will have a big event on the issue also on Wednesday, where I do believe that we might convince those who today do not see an added value to the Istanbul Convention that there is an added value...