09/09/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
PACE Committee on Equal Opportunities today warned that pre-natal sex selection has reached “worrying proportions” in several Council of Europe member states, in particular Albania, Armenia and Azerbaijan where the ratio is 112 boys for 100 girls, and in Georgia where the ratio is 111 boys for 100 girls. In adopting a draft resolution based on the report by Doris Stump (Switzerland, SOC), the Committee calls on these four countries to “investigate the causes and reasons behind skewed sex ratios at birth” and to step up their efforts to “raise the status of women in society”.
07/09/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
The use of pre-natal sex selection in Europe will be the focus of the meeting which the PACE Committee on Equal Opportunities will be holding in Paris on 9 September 2011. Members of the committee will be considering a draft resolution based on the report by Doris Stump (Switzerland, SOC) which severely criticises pre-natal sex selection for non-medical reasons and puts forward a number of proposed measures for the countries concerned to deal with this practice.
23/06/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
“The status of women and gender equality are regressing significantly in Ukraine and have been doing so for several months”, said Olena Bondarenko (Ukraine, EPP/CD) today at a hearing on the situation of women in Ukraine held following a motion for a resolution presented by Viola von Cramon-Taubadel (Germany, SOC). “Political leaders are making more and more sexist comments in public about women and the media are constantly conveying stereotypes that degrade the image of women”, she added.
21/06/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
“The media have a key role to play in challenging the myths that persist in the portrayal of rape, which influence the public’s perception of this crime”, said the Eaves NGO representative Heather Harvey in Strasbourg today, at a meeting of the network of PACE contact parliamentarians actively combating violence against women.
15/06/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
PACE representatives and the United Nations have called on all 27 member states of the European Union – and the EU itself – to sign up to the groundbreaking new Council of Europe Convention on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. José Mendes Bota, Chair of PACE’s Equal Opportunities Committee, said: “Violence against women is a human rights violation born out of unequal power relations between women and men. This convention is a crucial landmark on the way towards ensuring equal enjoyment of human rights, and I urge all those European countries which have not yet done so to become parties to it, so that its great potential can be fully exploited.”
15/06/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Equal Opportunities has urged the European Parliament to help ensure that European Union member states – and the EU itself – sign up to and ratify the new Council of Europe convention on violence against women and domestic violence. Speaking to the European Parliament Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, José Mendes Bota (Portugal, EPP/CD) said that further efforts were needed to ensure that the groundbreaking convention quickly enters into force, as it has the potential to change the lives of millions of women in Europe and elsewhere.
09/06/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
Doris Stump (Switzerland, SOC), rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on pre-natal sex selection, is to visit first Georgia, then Armenia, from 14 to 17 June, in order to assess the situation and its demographic and social effects, with a view to preparing a report on this subject. According to the rapporteur, imbalances have been reported, in these two countries in particular, in the sex ratio, i.e. the ratio of the number of boys to the number of girls being born, which is unusually high.
08/06/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
"Psychological violence underpins violence within the couple, and must be regarded as the psychological equivalent of murder. Unless she has been psychologically prepared to submit, no woman would accept physical violence. It is an irreversible result of such psychological preparation and pressure, such verbal violence, creating a situation of domination, that a human being is first morally destroyed, then subjected to physical violence," according to lawyer Yael Mellul, speaking at a hearing on psychological violence held by the PACE Equal Opportunities Committee.
08/06/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
“Pornography is an industry seeking profits and needing to expand by launching new products. Violent and extreme pornography is clearly dangerous. It threatens not only women’s dignity and their status in society, as ‘traditional’ pornography does, but also their actual physical integrity", Michal Stuligrosz (Poland, EPP/CD), PACE rapporteur on violent pornography, said at a hearing organised in Paris today by the PACE Equal Opportunities Committee.
07/06/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
PACE Equal Opportunities Committee is to hold two hearings in Paris on Wednesday 8 June, one on violent pornography, the other on psychological violence. "While there is no consensus about the damage caused by pornography in general to women's dignity and status in society, the danger stemming from extreme and violent pornographic content is clear, and a response is needed," according to Michal Stuligrosz (Poland, EPP/CD), who is writing a report on this subject.
11/05/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
“Today the Council of Europe has established a crucial landmark on the way to ensuring the equal enjoyment of human rights by women and men,” said José Mendes Bota (Portugal, EPP/CD), Chairperson of PACE’s Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, speaking in Istanbul, where he is taking part in the ceremony for the opening for signature of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
13/04/2011 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
"There is a victim behind every child abuse image on the internet," recalled Agustín Conde Bajén (Spain, EPP/DC), PACE rapporteur on combating child pornography, speaking today at the second meeting of the Network of Contact Parliamentarians to stop sexual violence against children. "We are facing an extremely serious issue and, as parliamentarians, we should make concrete proposals to our governments to combat child pornography on the internet in the most effective way," he stressed.