Today, the Council of Europe Expert Group on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) published its first baseline evaluation report on Iceland.
The report contains a comprehensive analysis of the implementation of the provisions of the Istanbul Convention. It acknowledges the steps taken by the country to comply with the treaty but identifies areas where progress is still needed.
In its baseline evaluation report, GREVIO welcomes the comprehensive action taken by the Icelandic authorities over the past decades to advance women’s rights and gender equality in Iceland. The report assesses the wide variety of measures taken by the Icelandic authorities in the area of preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. These actions have been complemented in recent years by measures that align the Icelandic laws and regulations more closely with the requirements of the Istanbul Convention, such as the introduction of a consent-based definition of rape and sexual violence, the creation of a separate criminal offence of violence in a close relationship and the Act on the Protection of Sexual Privacy, which includes provisions to counter digital sexual violence.
Moreover, GREVIO has observed numerous promising practices such as innovative and targeted awareness-raising campaigns designed to counter violence against women or a yearly status report on gender budgeting describing the situation of women in each public policy area.
GREVIO notes, however, that more efforts are needed in particular to offer more services and policies for women victims of stalking, forced sterilisation, violence related to so-called honour, forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and to include the perspective of women subjected to or at risk of intersectional discrimination in service provision. The report also shows a lack of harmonised data collection and co-ordination between relevant services, in particular the police, prosecuting authorities, the justice sector and the healthcare sector.
