Istanbul Convention: Poland to abandon European treaty on violence against women

Poland will withdraw from a European treaty aimed at preventing violence against women, the country’s justice minister announced on Saturday.

Zbigniew Ziobro said the document, known as the Istanbul Convention, was “harmful” because it required schools to teach children about gender.

She added that the reforms introduced in the country in recent years provided sufficient protection for women.

Thousands of women have protested the move in cities in Poland.

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Ziobro said the government would formally begin the process of withdrawing the treaty, which was ratified in 2015 on Monday.

He argued that the convention violated parents’ rights and “contains elements of an ideological nature.”

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and its coalition partners are closely aligned with the Catholic Church, and the government has promised to promote traditional family values.

President Andrzej Duda was re-elected earlier this month after a campaign in which he described promoting LGBT rights as a “ideology” more destructive than communism.

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Thousands of people, mostly women, took to the streets of the capital Warsaw on Friday to campaign against the withdrawal of the Istanbul Convention.

“The goal is to legalize domestic violence,” Magdalena Lempart, the organizer of a march in the city, told Reuters news agency.