On 27 April, a conference was co-organised by the Council of Europe and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iceland, addressing the role of men and boys in combating all types of violence against women, including in the digital sphere.
The conference provided an opportunity to discuss and promote the need for concrete strategies and focused on the role of men and boys in gender equality policies and policies to combat violence against women.
Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejčinović Burić, in her opening remakrs, spoke against gender stereotypes that can do “terrible harm to men and women alike”.
Iceland's President H. E. Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson called “on all men and boys to look critically at their own attitudes and hold each other accountable. It's on us to fight against gender-based violence.”
The Council of Europe is working across sectors - through, for instance, the mechanisms related to the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention), the Istanbul Convention and the Lanzarote Convention - to ensure human rights are upheld in cyberspace as well, for all. Under the working group on cyberbullying and other forms of online violence, especially against women and children, a Mapping study on cyberviolence was prepared, with recommendations adopted by the T-CY on 9 July 2018.