Violence against women has been a common story for thousands of years.
Through the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe has become the guardian of women's right to live a life free from violence. The first woman doctor to sit on the Convention's monitoring group, the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), Marie-Claude Hofner continues to fight against violence and the terrible physical, mental and social toll it takes on victims and everyone else involved, especially children.
Her professional experience has enabled her to highlight the need to include the health care sector in programmes to combat violence, and the importance of collaboration between professions and disciplines in the field and at public policy level. On behalf of GREVIO, she has provided interdisciplinary training in European countries, the southern Mediterranean region and recently in Saudi Arabia. She has also promoted a model for forensic medical consultations and protocols developed in the course of her work, which are now internationally recognised as good practice.
As both a doctor and a feminist, she is more engaged than ever today, when rights fought for over more than 50 years are coming under threat. But she has faith in women and in men, their closest allies, and is confident that, rather than succumbing to fear and the rhetoric of hatred and exclusion, they will defend the rights won by and for women.
The project “75 women in 75 years of Council of Europe history” is organised by the Delegation of the European Union to the Council of Europe with the Council of Europe and the Permanent Representations of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
