Women’s March 2022
We demand the ratification of the Istanbul Convention!
We are taking to the streets for the Women’s March to make the state hear our voices and finally ratify the Istanbul Convention*. This step will demonstrate Ukraine’s will to end systemic violence against women and domestic violence.
We, the women of Ukraine, have united around a common goal: to say STOP to violence and to the inaction of law enforcement in punishing abusers.
We are marching to protect women from all forms of violence:
- domestic violence
- sexual harassment
- rape
- stalking
- any other form of it
We demand change now!
We have waited long enough for the state to keep its promises:
- back in 2020, we collected more than 25 000 signatures under a petition demanding the ratification of the Istanbul Convention.
- The President of Ukraine instructed the ministries to draft a ratification bill so that it could be submitted to Parliament. Yet the public has never seen that bill.
- In January 2022, we collected 25 000 votes under a petition with the same demand for the second time.
How many more votes from people who care about women’s safety does the state need before it starts taking women’s needs into account?!
We are told that we are making it up, that there is no violence in fact, and that quarrels and fights inside a family are the family’s private business. We are assured that we provoke violence ourselves, that our clothes, our makeup and our behavior provoke the rapist. Every time we speak about being raped, disrespected, beaten and denied our rights, we hear in reply that it is all made up, or that we take reality too emotionally.
We are tired of hearing this!
Every woman in Ukraine must be protected from violence and confident that she will not be blamed for supposedly being at fault for the violence committed against her. We will no longer put up with condescension, contempt, sexism, sexual objectification and violence.
Enough hiding the systemic inequality of women behind supposed concern for “womenfolk.” Our agenda is not a “women’s issue.” Our participation and representation are not there for a formal show of gender balance. Women are the force shaping a new reality.
Join the Women’s March! Bring your friends with you! Together we have a chance to be heard.
The core values of the Women’s March are sisterhood and solidarity. Only by uniting and feeling each other’s support will we become the force that changes Ukraine! We demand action, not promises.
We demand the ratification of the Istanbul Convention!
*This international treaty, signed by Ukraine back in 2011, places a number of important obligations on our state — to criminalize ALL forms of violence against women and domestic violence, to punish abusers, to protect survivors, to expand the capacity of law enforcement to respond to different forms of violence, and to carry out comprehensive measures to educate the public on eradicating gender-based violence. It also provides for monitoring by international bodies, in particular the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), as well as by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
Ukraine has already taken important steps toward criminalizing domestic violence, but adopting legislation has not fully solved the core problem — the systemic use of violence against women and children and, in many cases, the inaction of the police.
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