Ms Iris Luarasi, President of the Council of Europe Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), is taking over the Presidency of the Platform of Independent Expert Mechanisms on the Elimination of Discrimination and Violence against Women (EDVAW Platform). It will be the first regional mechanism to chair the Platform, following its establishment in 2018 and which has until now been chaired by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences.
As agreed by the Platform, her one-year mandate (from 1 February 2022 to 30 January 2023) will focus on the digital dimension of violence against women at the global level, informed by GREVIO’s General Recommendation on this issue. The EDVAW Platform will also continue to garner public and political support for preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence on the basis of existing international and regional legal instruments, notably the Istanbul Convention.
Introduced by the then UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Ms. Dubravka Šimonović, the EDVAW Platform brings together seven independent expert bodies on discrimination and violence against women. The objective of the Platform is to leverage their work and mandates, ensuring that they speak with one voice on issues of common concern, exchange views emerging from their work on challenges and efforts to address gender-based violence against women and reflect on common solutions to advance women’s rights and gender equality.
Joined in their effort to advance women’s rights worldwide, the newly appointed UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Ms. Reem Alsalem, indicates that “rotating the position of the chair gives the important message that all its members have a vested interest in the EDVAW Platform. Not only does rotating the position of the chair among members of the Platform increase the ownership of all its members, but also ensures that new momentum and new approaches can be injected into the priorities and work of the Platform.”
OHCHR | The EDVAW Platform: cooperation among UN, global and regional women’s rights mechanisms
