Cabinet expects Istanbul Convention to be ratified in 2022

Olga Stefanishina, Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration. Photo: liga.net

The Istanbul Convention will be ratified in Ukraine in 2022, said Olga Stefanishina, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, in a comment to Interfax-Ukraine.

“As Deputy Prime Minister coordinating this process in the government, I believe that the right time should be chosen for ratification. At the beginning of 2022, we will concentrate on the communication campaign, on working with the parliamentary corps, and we will spend the first half of the year under the auspices of debugging the consensus on the ratification and further submission of the law to parliament,” Stefanishina said about her immediate plans.

Stefanishina also said she’d received a letter from the Secretary General of the Council of Europe explaining that the Istanbul Convention does not address gender identity issues. The Convention will be submitted to the Verkhovna Rada with certain reservations.

“These reservations are the quintessence of all discussions with different sides – with the conservative wing of society, with the religious community and with the expert community. They assume that the provisions of the Convention do not in any way affect the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, that the Convention does not involve any issues of gender ideology or identity, and, accordingly, these reservations remove the discrepancy between the provisions of the Convention itself," Stefanishina explained.

The UOJ wrote that the “Miriane” public union called on to unite against the ratification of the Istanbul Convention and submitted a number of petitions to local authorities so that they apply to the Verkhovna Rada to prevent the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Subsequently, this initiative was supported by the Zaporizhia Regional Council.

The UOJ also wrote that the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations published an official statement against the Istanbul Convention.

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