GREVIO: report on trends in combating violence against women

GREVIO, the Council of Europe’s independent expert group responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention), has published a new report on trends and best practices in efforts to stop violence against women. The report covers a period from June 2019 to December 2020 and is based on 17 countries in Europe.

Experts place particular emphasis on the significant impact that the pandemic has brought to light pre-existing gaps concerning specialist services, impacting significantly on women’s and girls’ ability to access specialist support services for the different forms of violence they may experience. Indeed, although most countries have developed wider and stronger networks of specialist support services to assist domestic violence victims, services for victims of other forms of violence – from sexual violence and female genital mutilation, to forced marriage and sexual harassment – are available, if at all, in “much lower numbers”. Therefore, GREVIO often addresses the need to set up specialist support services for other forms of violence other than domestic violence.

Other concerns, which also apply to Italy, include gaps in care for specific groups, such as women with mental health problems, victims with a history of substance abuse, women with intellectual or physical disabilities, irregular migrant women and women from ethnic minorities, in particular, Roma and Sami women.

The report is available at the link below.