1. The conference calls on the Irish Government to take a lead, but for all EU Member State Governments, to produce without delay a proposal for a legal base on violence against women, so that an EU wide binding Directive on tackling all forms of violence against women may be drafted and implemented with urgency. 2. The conference calls for adequate supports for victims of violence against women and the implementation of minimum standards of supports in each member state which ensure victim safety and sanctioning of perpetrator.
3. In the light of the conference acknowledgement that prostitution is an abuse of women’s human rights, the conference calls for the extension of the Swedish model of legislation which criminalises the purchase of sex, to Ireland and across the EU.
4. The conference welcomed the presence of prostitution, pornography and trafficking on the Presidency Conference agenda in Dublin and calls for all future EU Presidency conferences on Violence against women to include these themes.
5. The conference calls for violence against women to be seen as and treated as a violation of women’s human rights. It further calls on all Member States of the EU to implement protections for women by the implementation of existing EU and UN instruments (including 1949 UN Convention on Trafficking, UN Protocol on Prevention and Suppression of Trafficking in Women, Council of Europe reports, Framework Decision on Victims etc) and to monitor such implementation so as to show the accountability of all Member States and the EU as a bloc, in the protection and vindication of the rights of women to live lives free from all forms of violence.
Grainne Healy
Conference Rapporteur
May 2004
Cited from: "Recommendations from EU Presidency Conference on Violence against Women," European Women's Lobby, 18 June 2004; "Recommendations from EU Presidency Conference on Violence Against Women, Dublin, May 2004," Newsletter No. 47, The Network of East-West Women-Polska/NEWW, 3 September 2004