Domestic violence constitutes a profound attack on individual victims, but also on society. It violates a central value which is of great concern to the Council of Europe: promoting safety and security in the community at large. If the well-being and physical integrity of a large number of fellow citizens is chronically and structurally endangered in their home and family – the very place where they should be able to expect safety and security – then society has a serious problem. Violence in intimate relations is severely disruptive and exacts a high price, both in a material sense and in a non-material and moral sense. It is therefore crucial that measures be taken to curb domestic violence and to address its consequences when it occurs.

Among the Council of Europe member states, there is a growing sense of social and political urgency to develop an effective policy on domestic violence. This heightened awareness can provide the needed impetus for the coming work on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
 

Terms of reference of the Ad Hoc Committee on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence – CAHVIO (2009)1
 

Chapter II.4 of the Action Plan adopted at the Third Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe (Warsaw, 16-17 May 2005) reads as follows:
“The Council of Europe will take measures to combat violence against women, including domestic violence. It will set up a task force to evaluate progress at national level and establish instruments for quantifying developments at pan-European level with a view to drawing up proposals for action. A pan-European campaign to combat violence against women, including domestic violence, will be prepared and conducted in close co-operation with other European and national actors, including NGOs.“
 

The Council of Europe task force to combat violence against women, including domestic violence (EG-TFV), was created to evaluate the effective functioning of the measures for preventing and combating violence against women adopted at national and international level and to make proposals for revising these measures or for adopting new measures.
 

During their 27th Conference (Yerevan, Armenia, 12-13 October 2006), the European Ministers of Justice invited, in the adopted Resolution No 1, the Committee of Ministers to entrust the European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC) to:
a. examine, in co-operation with other competent bodies of the Council of Europe, the measures concerning violence against the partner contained notably in the appendix to Recommendation Rec(2002)5 on the protection of women against violence in order to determine the feasibility of and the need for an additional Council of Europe legal instrument on violence against the partner taking into account the discussions of this Conference;
b. report back to the Committee of Ministers on the results of this examination so that it can decide whether there is a need for the Council of Europe to carry out work in this field, possibly in the form of an international normative instrument to combat domestic violence, in particular violence against the partner;”.
 

In accordance with this Resolution, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe decided in January 2007 to instruct the European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC) to examine whether the Council of Europe should prepare a new convention on violence against the partner and report back to the Committee of Ministers. In June 2007 the CDPC agreed that it would be desirable to start working on a future legally binding instrument in this field.
 

At their 1044th meeting on 10 December 2008, the Deputies approved the terms of reference of the Ad hoc Committee on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
 

Using a transversal approach the Ad Hoc Committee on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence was set up and its first meeting planned for April 2009.