Today, the Council of Europe Expert Group on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) published its first baseline evaluation report on Netherlands.
The report contains a comprehensive analysis of the implementation of the provisions of the Istanbul Convention. It highlights the long history of addressing domestic violence through holistic policy and legislation, including the multi-agency approach of the current multi-annual national action plan "Violence does not belong anywhere” (2018-2021) and the one-stop domestic violence programmes ("Safe Home”). Efforts to raise awareness of the need for healthy intimate relationships among youth are ongoing and there has been a significant increase of budget spending for child and domestic violence programmes.
However, GREVIO has identified a number of areas in which improvements are required in order to comply fully with the obligations of the convention. These relate, among others, to the need to review the gender-neutral policy approach which masks the gendered nature of violence against women, the need for gender-disaggregated data on violence against women and domestic violence offences and the need to take domestic violence into account and step up efforts to uphold the safety and well-being of children when determining custody and visitation rights.
