14/09/2005 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
At a hearing on men's involvement in equality projects that took place in Reykjavik on 13 September, the Icelandic Social Affairs Minister, Arni Magnusson, underlined the importance of "men taking action, hand in hand with the women, to make the necessary effort to create a just society for our daughters as well as our sons". Iceland is the country which first elected a woman as a president in general democratic elections, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, who stayed President for 16 years.
23/04/2005 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
“In the past few months, arrests have been made in some of the cases of ‘feminicide’ in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico), including in ‘cold’ cases going back several years, thanks to a co-ordinated prosecutorial effort on state and federal level. However, too many cases remain unsolved,” the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly’s Rapporteur on the murder and disappearance of women and girls in Mexico, Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, said today. “It is urgent to move from audit to action in order to end the climate of impunity for gender-based violence still prevalent in the region.” The Socialist parliamentarian from Switzerland has just completed her second, five-day fact-finding visit to Mexico City and Chihuahua, where she met with victims’ families, fellow parliamentarians on federal and state level, prosecutors, NGOs, the Governor and Mayor of Chihuahua and the new Head of the State Women’s Institute, among others.
09/03/2005 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
Minodora Cliveti, (Romania, SOC), Chair of PACE's Committee on Equal Opportunities, said she was shocked by the pictures of members of the police forces striking women and young people demonstrating in Istanbul last Sunday. “Such pictures are not only unacceptable for the excessive use of violence they portray, but are also harmful for Turkey’s image in our member states. It is a matter of deep regret that the extraordinary process of reform being implemented by the Turkish authorities, including in the field of women’s rights, should be tarnished by acts which have no place either in Europe or anywhere else in the world,” said Ms Cliveti.
28/02/2005 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
"The draft Convention on action against trafficking in human beings is still far from guaranteeing the effective and adequate protection for victims which was the Committee of Ministers' objective when it instructed a group of experts to draft a convention which would have the added value of protecting the rights of the victims as human beings". Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold (Switzerland, SOC) was speaking in Paris on 28 February during a meeting of the Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men. The PACE’s opinion on this draft Council of Europe Convention, based on a report by Ms Vermot-Mangold and adopted unanimously in January this year, called for 50 amendments to be made. Only two of these amendments - concerning victim protection and the binding nature of the Convention - have been incorporated into the text, however.
24/02/2005 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
The integration of migrant women in Europe will be the theme of a hearing to take place on Tuesday 1st March in Paris. Organised by PACE's Equality and Migration Committees, the hearing will bring together around a hundred participants: parliamentarians from 46 European countries, experts and NGO representatives as well as the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe Maud de Boer-Buquicchio and the Council’s Commissioner for Human Rights Alvaro Gil-Robles.
14/01/2005 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
Parliamentary Assembly member Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold (Switzerland, SOC), who is responsible for presenting an opinion on the Council of Europe’s draft Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary General of the 46-member Organisation, on 14 January made an pressing appeal for better protection of victims. “The draft convention is unsatisfactory; it gives the impression that states refuse to distinguish between illegal migration and trafficking in human beings”, said Mrs Vermot-Mangold at a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Equal Opportunities between Women and Men in Paris.
12/01/2005 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
"The disaster in South Asia has made thousands of children and young women an easy target for traffickers of human beings. After drugs and arms, trafficking in human beings is the third biggest form of trafficking worldwide and a scourge undermining human rights that must be stamped out," said Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold (Switzerland, SOC), who has the task of presenting an opinion on the draft Council of Europe Convention on action against trafficking in human beings. The draft Convention is to be presented to the press on Friday 14 January at midday in the Paris Office by Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe and Mrs Vermot-Mangold, Assembly rapporteur.
25/11/2004 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
Speaking on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, PACE rapporteur Jean-Guy Branger (France, EPP/CD) recalled the Assembly's appeal for a pan-European campaign to combat domestic violence. “Every day, European women are being battered, abused and subjected to sexual or other forms of violence – usually by men who know or have power over their victims,” said Mr Branger. “Domestic violence is happening in every single Council of Europe member state, and it is happening now. This must stop.” Awareness-raising was vital, he said, stressing that the coming Third Summit would be “the ideal occasion” to deal with the question of domestic violence.
19/10/2004 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
A young woman forced by her father to marry a stranger told parliamentarians at a hearing yesterday how she helped with preparations for her own wedding – without realising it. “Everybody knew except for us,” said Hafida B., who was married along with her sister. “I didn’t want this marriage and I didn’t want this person. It was all about my life, yet it wasn’t me who was deciding.” She is still in hiding from her family. The hearing, on forced marriages and child marriages, brought together PACE members with local authorities and associations which help victims.
15/10/2004 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
Victims of a forced marriage and a “marriage of convenience” related their experiences to European parliamentarians at a hearing on forced marriages and child marriages in Antwerp, Belgium, on Monday 18 October 2004. The hearing was organised by the Sub-committee on violence against women of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
13/09/2004 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
European faiths can still do much more to promote women's rights, according to four specialists representing the German Council of Evangelical Churches, the Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) and the NGO "Catholics for a free choice". They were taking part in a hearing on women and religion in Europe, held in Paris on Friday by PACE's Equality Committee. Manuela Aguiar (Portugal, EPP/CD) is preparing a report on the subject.
13/08/2004 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
At the end of a fact-finding visit to Mexico from 9 to 13 August, Swiss parliamentarian Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold (SOC), who is preparing a report on "The disappearance and murder of a great number of women and girls in Mexico" for the Assembly's Committee on Equal Opportunities for women and men quoted two concrete cases of what she said should be called 'feminicides'. “On 28 February 2002, Clara Hernández Martines and her four children die in a fire set by an uncle in Ciudad Juárez. He declares he set the fire because she called him gay. On 22 September 2002, the body of Erika Pérez Escobedo is found at the side of a road in Ciudad Juárez. Despite the fact that the body shows signs of secual abuse and strangulation, the state prosecutor asserts she has died from an overdose and closes the case. These are only two of the over 300 cases of women and girls who have disappeared or been murdered in in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua (Mexico) since 1993," Mrs Vermot-Mangold said.