On 17 June, the European Commission recommended that Ukraine be granted EU candidate status as long as the country meets a substantial list of conditions. Numerous shortcomings were hinted at across the 30-page document, among them Ukraine’s failure to ratify the Istanbul Convention.
Barely 24 hours after this list of conditions was published, Ukraine’s government asked parliament to ratify the convention, which it did without further ado.
The Istanbul Convention (full title: the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence) is an ambitious document. Drafted in 2011, it draws on unabashedly feminist analysis of the causes of violence against women and girls to commit its parties to groundbreaking legal and policy changes.
