Italy has ratified the Istanbul Convention, but on the issue of gender-based violence it still has a long way to go. This is what the Grevio report and NGOs say.
The Istanbul Convention — or, more precisely, the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence — is turning ten. A precious instrument that becomes legally binding upon ratification; something Italy did with Law 77/2013. On paper, then, our country prevents violence, protects victims and prosecutes perpetrators. But what is the reality?
It is June 2012 and Elisaveta Talpis, who lives in the province of Udine, calls the carabinieri for the first time following yet another episode of beatings by her husband, who has a problem with alcoholism. After several months of assaults, calls for help and complaints, on 26 November 2013 the man attempts to stab her and kills their 19-year-old son, who had tried to shield her.
This dramatic news story opens a case that implicates Italy's institutions as a whole. Because Talpis decides to turn to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), arguing — in essence — that she had been left alone in the face of an escalation of violence that ended in tragedy. On 2 March 2017 the ruling arrives. Italy has breached no fewer than three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: Article 2 on the right to life, Article 3 on the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment, and Article 14 on the prohibition of discrimination.
The Court reminds the Italian government that it took on very specific commitments when it signed — and subsequently ratified — the Istanbul Convention, and recommends it honour them in a number of ways: by enacting new laws, filling legislative gaps, establishing a dedicated structure, but also by working on education and women's empowerment.
The execution programme provided for under Article 46 of the ECHR thus gets under way. In practice, the convicted state is kept under scrutiny by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe until it can demonstrate that it has implemented everything that has been asked of it.
Italy submits an action plan that is, however, deemed inadequate — first in 2018 and then in 2020. One of the major weaknesses lies in the lack of data: data on protection orders, on the number of complaints received, on the average response times of the authorities, on the number of protection orders enforced. The Committee also notes — with some concern — that "gender stereotypes continue to be present in Italian society" and sets the government a further deadline of 31 March 2021 to respond to the various outstanding issues.
A position endorsed by Di.Re, Donne in rete contro la violenza. "The ineffective and delayed response by the Italian authorities to women's complaints, connected to discrimination in protection against domestic violence, is something we have been denouncing for years," comments president Antonella Veltri.
Pages and pages have been written about how ready our country has shown itself to be in putting the principles of the Istanbul Convention into practice. Ninety-two of them, to be precise: those of the report drawn up by Grevio, a group of 15 independent and impartial experts. A monumental piece of work, the result of two years of monitoring and also of an examination of the shadow reports written in parallel by a number of associations, including Di.Re itself.
The experts reserve positive words for a series of legislative reforms introduced in recent years. The 2009 law on stalking is considered "highly innovative," above all because it raised awareness of how dangerous this criminal behaviour is and how much victims deserve to be protected. Also praised is Law 119/2013 on femicide, "the fruit of years of commitment by women's organisations," but also Legislative Decree no. 80/2015, which offers women who are victims of violence special paid leave, and Law no. 4/2018, which protects the orphans of a victim of domestic violence. These last two measures are highlighted by Grevio as examples to be followed at an international level. Among the noteworthy developments is also the Codice rosso (Red Code), which, among other things, gives a kind of fast-track status to cases of domestic or gender-based violence and — following the very serious stories of Tiziana Cantore and Lucia Annibali — introduces two new offences: revenge porn and permanent facial disfigurement.
Cases like that of Elisaveta Talpis, however, reach such extreme consequences not because laws aimed at protecting victims are lacking, but because threats, intimidation and violence continue for months. In 2018 the Supreme Council of the Judiciary announced that fewer than 20 per cent of public prosecutor's offices and 8 per cent of court registries had adopted risk assessment criteria to enable law enforcement agencies, judicial authorities and courts to prevent the escalation of violence and reoffending.
The Grevio report refers repeatedly to secondary victimisation — that is, all those cases in which the victim is called into question to the point of being led to blame herself. Something that can happen before or during proceedings. "It can happen that the victim approaches law enforcement to report the violence she has suffered immediately, but after a few days prefers to retract because she is not yet ready. This is perfectly normal within the cycle of violence but is not known to those who have to conduct these investigations. The result is that the woman is deemed not credible," explains Elena Biaggioni, a criminal defence lawyer and one of the driving forces behind Di.Re's campaign Violenza sulle donne. In che Stato siamo? (Violence against women. What state are we in?). How can cases like this be avoided? "Training, training, training. The laws are there — Grevio says so too — but training is lacking. We need to rethink our assumptions: the victim does not necessarily have a black eye; often she is a perfectly ordinary person."
Then there is the secondary victimisation that sets in during proceedings. "Let me give a very simple example. The injured party is summoned to court at 9 and has to testify at noon. For those three hours she sits in front of the defendant, accompanied by his family members and those who support him. It is unnecessary suffering that could be spared if only the provisions — very clear ones — of the victims directive were applied. This is a European directive in force since 2015 that works in synergy with the provisions of the Istanbul Convention," lawyer Biaggioni continues.
The Istanbul Convention itself makes abundantly clear how valuable the protection and support services for victims run by women's NGOs are. The activities of anti-violence centres range from managing refuges to support groups, from legal and psychological counselling to employment guidance. In Italy, however, "the different approaches taken in applying the regulations have led to different conditions for accessing state funding and to disparities in the quality of service delivery," the Grevio report states.
The fact that each region follows its own funding mechanisms "has a negative effect on the financial stability of women-focused NGOs and on the continuity of service delivery" and also translates into an "irregular distribution of services across the country" and a "limited capacity on the part of existing structures to respond to the needs of all victims of any form of violence."
Laws, moreover, often come too late — that is, once the offence has already been committed, with all the suffering it leaves in its wake for victims. This is why the Grevio experts delved into Italian culture to the point of declaring themselves "very concerned by sexist hate speech, misogyny and tolerance of violence against women as manifested in public debate, in traditional media or on social media." Consistently, women on the front line against inequality and violence are targeted by "organised campaigns to silence them."
This is why the committee "strongly urges the Italian authorities to implement proactive and lasting measures to promote changes in sexist social and cultural patterns of behaviour, especially among men and boys, rooted in the idea of women's inferiority."