A report compiled by The Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) on the French justice system finds insufficiencies in its implementation of the Istanbul Convention, an international convention on violence against women. The main issues GREVIO found include the classification and definition of rape and the correlation between homicides and domestic abuse. GREVIO critiques France’s judicial practice of bringing rape cases to correctional court, since this reclassifies them as sexual assault, which minimizes the seriousness of the crime. GREVIO also took issue with France’s definition of rape which focuses on the “use of force” instead of “absence of consent.”

The correlation between homicide and domestic abuse is high. A recently released report from 2015-2016 found that out of 88 murders or attempted murders related to domestic violence, two-thirds of the victims suffered from domestic abuse. France has one of the highest domestic violence rates in Europe. On Saturday, November 23rd, women marched in Paris to publicly denounce violence against women and to call for more government investment in the issue. New measures such as seizing firearms from people suspected of domestic violence and improving police training in relation to domestic violence reports are expected to be made public November 25, 2019.   

Compiled from: Chadwick, Lauren, Violence Against Women: New report highlights insufficiencies in French justice system, euronews (November 19, 2019).

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Compiled from: Charleton, Angela and Camus, Thibault, Paris Protesters March Against Deadly Domestic Violence Towards Women, Time Magazine (November 23. 2019).