FAQs

If your country has signed and ratified the Istanbul Convention, the progress will be monitored by the GREVIO committee. 

Below, we have provided some answers to questions you may have about the Istanbul Convention and the process of reporting to GREVIO. 

If a country ratifies the Istanbul Convention, it agrees to the minimum standards set by the treaty to end violence against women. By ratifying the Istanbul Convention, a country agrees to make it law to end violence against women and provide, among other things, protection for victims of violence in the form of policies. 

Perhaps you have invested all of your time in the important work you’re doing and aren’t aware of the structures in place that could help your organisation. The GREVIO Committee is there to monitor the implementation of the Istanbul Convention in your country and seeing as PPs are explicitly mentioned in the convention, the GREVIO Committee is there to analyse situation of PPs in your country.

In fact, most of the problems faced by PPs could actually be tackled through GREVIO reporting and recommendations and this would hopefully lead to a better situation in the future. Perhaps your PP is suffering from a lack of funding or resources from the state side, or perhaps there are issues you need settling on a nationwide level – now is your chance to have your say about what is working and what needs to be improved.

You can check the status of GREVIO country monitoring here.

It’s not true that the reporting process is only something that only big NGOs, women’s services or state institutions can be involved in. Perpetrator Programmes are an important part of the Istanbul Convention and it is therefore essential that their performance is included in the reporting process. PPs may be isolated and excluded from other stakeholders and so you may not feel listened to in some situations. This doesn’t mean though that you won’t be listened to when it comes to GREVIO reporting.

The experience and analysis of PPs is needed in this reporting process in order to improve the situation for the future and provide a well-rounded summary of your country’s performance.

Perhaps you are unsure of the procedure or you think that writing this report is a huge job and unfeasible for your organisation. Perhaps you’ve viewed some of the other reports that have been written and simply don’t have the time to write something that comp.

The report doesn’t need to be 50 pages long – even 2 or 3 pages is better than nothing! Having your experiences written in the report will be invaluable and luckily, we’ve created a template to help you with the structure and content.

Whilst writing a report about your organisation/the situation of PP in your country can seem daunting and like it will make problems visible, the report you provide for the GREVIO report can actually be kept confidential.

You may be worried that making things like the lack of legislative ground for PPs visible would endanger the relationship between your programme and national state institutions, or that highlighting problems with your PP will endanger the relationship with women’s NGOs, but these things do not need to be made public if you don’t want them to be.

Even if you feel like the input you can provide isn’t relevant because GREVIO is interested in the implementation of the Istanbul Convention in the whole country, the reporting is not limited to nationwide data.

Some countries don’t have a national network and PPs are not that well connected on a national level, but this doesn’t mean that your contribution isn’t important and essential for the development of a future strategy for PPs in your country.