The high price of Lithuania’s hesitancy to ratify the Istanbul Convention
By Gerda Krivaite, correspondent from Lithuania
In 2013, Lithuania signed the Istanbul convention, Europe’s landmark treaty to combat violence against women. A decade later, the document has still not been fully implemented through ratification. Meanwhile, new data reveals that gender-based violence in Lithuania is on the rise, with a glaring lack of support systems for victims of sexual abuse.
In 2020, Lithuania made headlines with its election of a historic women-led government. At 28 percent, the country also boasts the highest representation of women in parliament in its independent history. However, when it comes to gender justice, there is much left to be desired in the Baltic nation: women spend more than double the time men do on unpaid care and domestic work, the country has the second highest femicide rate in the EU, while important data on women and poverty and women’s access to assets remains unmonitored and inaccessible.
Earlier this month, newly gathered statistics revealed that the most insidious form of gender inequality needs to be urgently addressed: violence against women in Lithuania is as prevalent as ever. This year, recorded instances of domestic violence rose by 1.2 percent, with women making up 80 percent of the victims in the 5,872 cases. Meanwhile, a staggering 29 percent increase in registered sexual assault cases was noted. The data begs the question: why hasn’t Lithuania ratified the Istanbul Convention, the most comprehensive document to combat violence against women in Europe?
The Istanbul Convention: what is it and why does it matter?
The Istanbul Convention (officially the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence) is a human rights treaty aiming to combat gender-based and domestic violence. Opened for signature in Istanbul in 2011, the convention has since been signed by 45 countries – however, as of now, only 37 of them have ratified the agreement, becoming legally obliged to adopt the outlined measures. Turkey became the first and only country to withdraw from the convention in 2021 upon President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decree, despite opinion polls revealing that the vast majority of the Turkish public opposed such a step.
A map demonstrating which countries have signed or ratified the convention. In 2021, Turkey became the first country to withdraw from the convention.
Erdoğan used fearmongering to justify his decision, claiming the Istanbul Convention “normalises homosexuality” in a country where political homophobia is rampant; but, beyond that, he was also factually incorrect. The Istanbul Convention does not recognise same-sex marriage or impose any specific education model.
What the convention does is outline several responsibilities of the state, obliging it to prevent all forms of violence against women and protect those who experience it; to promote equality between women and men and encourage mutual respect and non-violent conflict resolution; to investigate allegations of violence and prosecute perpetrators. The document also calls for a coordinated approach amongst agencies and civil society organisations to support those experiencing violence and, importantly, to ensure victims of violence have access to information and support services, including 24/7 telephone lines, rape crisis centres, counselling, and shelters.
Victims of gender-based violence in Lithuania deserve better
While a common argument opponents of the convention use is that the country already has “sufficient tools for combating violence against women and domestic violence,” the facts suggest otherwise. According to Lilija Henrika Vasiliauskė and Elinga Zelionkaitė of Vilnius Women’s House, while Lithuania has one free-of-charge 24/7 women’s helpline and 17 Specialised Complex Help Centres for survivors of domestic violence, there are still “no specialised support services for survivors of sexual violence in Lithuania.”
Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, the current speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) has also emphasised the absence of a system to help victims of sexual violence, stating that Lithuania lacks “a leading institution and coordination between experts to put the fragmented picture together.”
Henrika Vasiliauskė tells the European Correspondent that while Lithuania’s 2011 Domestic Violence Prevention Act helped women feel like they could speak up about their experiences, there is still much preventing victims from feeling safe and from being able to heal their trauma: “The availability of specialised complex assistance to victims is entirely insufficient,” explains Vasiliauskė, “there are too few of these centres, there is a notable lack of staff, and even those with expert status don’t receive state funding due to the short-sightedness of the Social Security and Labour Ministry bureaucrats.”
On a municipal level, the crisis centres that do exist “do not have competence in overcoming gender-based violence” and often leave women dissatisfied, “wanting to escape them as soon as possible.” Under current law, Lithuanian women who have experienced sexual assault or violence may even be “compulsorily placed in such centres for observation if they have underage children and make their partner’s violence against them or the child publicly known.”
The foundation of an essential, all-encompassing Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre that would offer genuine help and protection, rather than control and surveillance, would be a good starting point. Rugilė Butkevičiūtė, Programme Manager at the Women’s Issues Information Centre, cites Iceland’s Rape Crisis Centre in Reykjavik as a positive example of a “stop for women who have been sexually abused” that Lithuania could draw inspiration from.
The ratification in Lithuania: A Sisyphean task?
Lithuania is one of the six EU countries that has signed but refuses to ratify the convention, alongside Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Latvia, and Slovakia. Notably, the situation is not uniform across all Baltic states: Estonia ratified the convention in 2017 when it held the presidency of the Council of the EU, while Latvia is exhibiting public and political resistance to the ratification, with the Ombudsman urging the 14th Saeima to ratify the Istanbul Convention earlier this year.
Three years after signing the treaty in 2013, Lithuania committed to ratifying it by adopting the UN Human Rights Council's recommendations. Nonetheless, when the issue is brought up in parliament, it is eventually brushed under the rug. Most recently, the topic of the convention’s ratification was excluded from the parliament’s spring session in 2022, with ‘resistance in the public sphere’ cited as the primary reason. This decision was supported by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda who has expressed scepticism and has supported a Catholic priest’s critique of the document.
Public opinion and clouds of misinformation
One year ago, the office of Nausėda commissioned a one-question poll allegedly demonstrating that there is insufficient support for the ratification in the public sphere. The question read: “Do you agree that Lithuania should ratify the Istanbul convention?” While nearly 49 percent of respondents expressed disagreement, professor Aušra Maslauskaitė of Vytautas Magnus University pointed out that such polling is flawed and does nothing to spark productive discussion: “the single question, as it is formulated, does not give us the Lithuanian public's opinion on the Istanbul Convention.”
The convention is shrouded in myths and misinformation, with the majority of the public not aware of what the binding document actually stands for. Critics particularly oppose the convention’s definition of ‘gender’ as “socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men,” claiming that such a concept is unfamiliar to Lithuanian national law and paves the way for stronger recognition of the LGBTQ+ community, despite the document enforcing no specific ‘gender ideology’.
Why Lithuania needs to take action, now more than ever
While gender-based violence has always been an urgent matter, the need for the government to address the misinterpretations and ratify the convention is more pressing than ever. Not only do the majority of Lithuanian women agree that violence has increased due to the Coronavirus pandemic, but Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the subsequent flow of Ukrainian refugees to Lithuania – including many women that have been victims of sex crimes committed by Russian soldiers – have made the need for a solid, well-coordinated system of support for victims even more acute. Čmilytė-Nielsen explains that language barriers and legal framework issues only exacerbate this issue.
There are deep-seated problems slowing down the process of the ratification, including overt homophobia and misogyny in a portion of the population. Some still refuse to accept the very concept of “gender-based violence”, while every second Lithuanian still believes that women themselves are to blame for the violence they experience.
But for every day that fake news, fearmongering and antiquated mindsets get in the way of the adoption of such an essential document, more and more women fall victim to sexual and physical violence, with insufficient resources for help. The European Institute for Gender Equality calls for“urgent action (...) to end [the] misinterpretation of the Istanbul Convention and to reinforce efforts to end violence against women” in the country – and it is high time Lithuania acted on this recommendation.
Gerda Krivaite is a Lithuanian journalist currently based in Hamburg, Germany. Having studied German language and literature at the University of Oxford, she is currently completing the Erasmus Mundus Journalism master’s programme. She reports on Lithuanian news for the European Correspondent, with a particular interest in women’s rights.