hvg.hu: So far Hungary had only repeatedly delayed the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, but now there is a political declaration saying that its regulations will not be incorporated into Hungarian law. Is there a practical difference between the two approaches?

Spronz Júlia: No practical one. The rejection of the Istanbul Convention was a symbolic step. Since 2017 the government parties (Fidesz and the Christian Democrats) have been communicating this, and Fidesz MP Szilárd Németh declared a few years ago that as long as Fidesz is in power, there is no way the Istanbul Convention will be ratified.

hvg.hu: Hungary signed the Istanbul Convention in 2014. In 2017 it looked like we would ratify it sooner or later, but for the past three years the government has been saying the opposite. How do you interpret this change?

1. J.:We think in 2017 there simply came an opportunity to get out of this. The grassroots group CitizenGo turned up on the scene (who have also held protests against abortion and against a poster campaign featuring gay couples), and then men’s rights activists, who claimed that the Istanbul Convention discriminates men and supports ‘gender ideology’. As a fresh element, the fear of ‘illegal migration’ was added to the excuses, because the Convention says that persecution based on one’s gender should be considered when granting asylum. All this came handy for the government.

At the same time, it has been clear since March 2014 that they have no intention of implementing the Convention in a way that is good for women. If they had, they would have involved professional women’s organizations in the preparatory process. After 2014 the government did set up a working group to prepare the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, but we do not know who were in it and what they did, and now their documentation has been made confidential.  

The same thing is happening now. Minister of Justice Judit Varga declared at the end of last year that the government would now enhance its actions against domestic violence, and she set up a team of experts in February, but we are not involved in that either.

hvg.hu: But Judit Varga even sent a letter on International Women’s Day ensuring women’s organizations of her support and emphasizing that she would cooperate with them in the future.

1. J.:Judit Varga set up two working groups. One is made up of experts, in principle they are doing real work. And then there is us in the civilian working group. It is not clear who is in the ‘expert’ group if not us, because is it not transparent. Women’s organizations are thus not considered ‘experts’ but are in the civilians’ group. In this group there are some 60 initiatives, including several men’s rights organizations who oppose the Istanbul Convention, so you can imagine how efficient it is. So far we have only had one meeting (OK, given the pandemic situation this is understandable) and we had the opportunity to express our opinion, but we have no information whether it has been read or used.

hvg.hu: The government says there is no need to ratify the Istanbul Convention because Hungary already pays much attention to the protection of women and families. As an example, they mention that since 2012 partnership violence has been a separate legal category.  

1. J.: Indeed, domestic violence has been entered into the Criminal Code, although it had to be renamed ‘partnership violence’, as Christian ideology does not consider family and the home compatible with violence. But I would add: the separate legal category was not a government initiative either. Women’s organizations had been lobbying for this change for years, but our petitions were always rejected – not only by the present government but by the previous one too.

However, in 2012 a Fidesz MP called István Varga happened to say that “mothers should return to raising a family, give birth to 2-3 or better still, 4-5 children, there would be a point in respecting each other and there wouldn’t be domestic violence.” This upset public opinion so much that the government had to include domestic violence in the law. I am only saying this because the Christian Democrats are now bragging that they were the ones who introduced this law – yes, but not on their own initiative but due to strong external pressure.

hvg.hu.: Still, it is now a crime if somebody abuses their partner physically or psychologically. So why is it such a big problem if they reject the Istanbul Convention?

1. J.: What is completely missing in Hungary is a unified, systemic approach which would provide effective protection against gender-based violence and which the Istanbul Convention provides. This is what the government parties mock as ‘gender ideology’ and misunderstand completely. The Convention raises awareness of all the role expectations and behavioral models that society connects to men and women. The term ‘gender’, as opposed to biological sex, denotes all the qualities accepted in a society as appropriate for men and women.

One consequence of these is that in patriarchal societies like ours, men have more power than women. And people who are higher up in the hierarchy can abuse their power more easily; this is why male violence against women is a societal phenomenon.

Domestic violence does have a gender. We must understand that on the systemic level and as a tendency it affects women. We should adapt the laws related to domestic violence and all the related services, from shelters through child protection measures to the social service and criminal justice system, to this fact. But it is this very gender perspective that is totally rejected in Hungary, and not only by right-wing governments. When the socialists and the liberals formed the government coalition, they also rejected the gender approach, claiming this is not a ‘war between the sexes’: anyone (including men) can be victims and anyone (including women) can be perpetrators. Therefore, we can conclude – and so does the Istanbul Convention and the Grevio Committee supervising its implementation – that the Hungarian system, which rejects the gender approach, cannot efficiently protect the victims of gender-based violence.

hvg.hu: On first hearing this sounds more like political correctness.

1. J.:Unfortunately, this gender neutrality means that we do not acknowledge responsibility. It is not made clear that as a form of systemic oppression, abuse is meant to create and uphold an unequal relationship. Because this is what violence against women is about. This is not the same as being aggressive in order to protect yourself or your children. Abuse directed at women is systemic, its purpose is not self-defense but oppression. And if we do not make a difference, if we lack this knowledge – which the Istanbul Convention provides us with its gender perspective – then, for instance, men will be let into family shelters, or the parents of a victim of child abuse will be treated equally, with the claim that they are both responsible to the same extent.

Hungarian social services recommend mediation in the case of domestic violence. However, the Istanbul Convention declares that in such cases mediation is unsuitable and even harmful, because it only works if used between equals. Its aim is to reach a compromise, but what an abuser means by compromise is getting his way, while abused women are anxious and afraid, they cannot represent their own interests in such a situation, so they always end up making allowances.

In the Hungarian institutional setting, there are many other examples that show how unawareness of the true motives, nature and mechanisms of domestic violence leaves women and children vulnerable to abuse. This is what our research report System Failure is about. For instance, we know that after the partners separate, the abuser continues his abuse through the children: they use the kids to continue controlling their primary target person. Unawareness of this has made Hungarian courts grant custody to the abusive parent. Now it has also become legal practice to dismiss harassment claims against one’s former male partner if the couple has children, claiming that the man only sent 125 abusive, vulgar text messages a day to inquire about the well-being of his children.

hvg.hu: So, is what bothers the present government the most that the Istanbul Convention considers traditional gender roles harmful? After all, some of our politicians consider it vital for the future of the nation that women live according to their ‘female principle’.

1. J.:What bothers the government is something we can only guess because they do not communicate straightforwardly. Their excuses are made-up, and they probably know that too. They claim that the Istanbul Convention wants to confuse the sexes: it wants to turn men into women and girls into boys, boys will have to wear pink and everyone will be able to choose their gender, which will make Hungary full of transgender people. However, the Istanbul Convention mentions no such things: it only speaks about gender roles.

hvg.hu: We can connect the Istanbul Convention to a recent tragedy: renowned actor István Szilágyi was killed by his own son. You say this may not have happened if Hungary had ratified the Convention. What do you mean?

1. J.:The document declares that in the case of domestic violence the only effective deterrent is time served in prison. Suspended sentences are not only ineffective but harmful, because they send the message both to the perpetrator and the victim that this is OK to do, there are no consequences. István Szilágyi’s murderer had previously abused his father and received a suspended sentence.

The other thing that the Istanbul Convention underlines is that criminal procedures against domestic violence should not be based on a private motion. You simply cannot put the burden of starting a procedure on the victim. I think Szilágyi’s case is a good illustration. Nobody did anything because they were sure the victim would protect the perpetrator. In a well-functioning victim protection system a procedure should not depend on whether the victim is proactive and willing to speak up against someone they live under the same roof with, or on whom they depend on financially etcetera, whom they love or used to love, or who is their child and therefore as a parent they feel guilt over the child’s deeds. And to top this there is the societal norm that a parent cannot report their child to the police. A similar dynamic is observable in the case of intimate partner violence: “I cannot send the father of my children to jail!” So the Szilágyi case clearly refutes the claim that the Hungarian Criminal Code gives enough protection against domestic violence.

In Hungary only the physical forms of partnership violence are prosecuted ex officio; verbal, psychological or economic abuse only on a private motion.

hvg.hu: Does it mean that if I hear my neighbor shouting with his wife every day and I suspect he terrorizes her psychologically, I can report it but the police will not do anything until the wife admits she is being abused?

1. J.:Not quite, but it does mean that the police cannot start an investigation based on your report, only on the victim’s private motion. We at Patent Organization often report abuse, but in cases not prosecutable ex officio they always seek out the victim and ask if they want to start a private motion, that is, if they want the perpetrator to be made accountable. If not, the case is dropped.

The other problem is that private motions must be made within one month of the act; if the victim makes it on the 33^rd day after the abuse, she is rejected. I would like to emphasize that I do not want to talk people out of acting if they see abuse in their environment. Quite the contrary: we encourage professional and lay witnesses to try and take some burden off the victims, find ways to support them without doing harm.

hvg.hu: It is also a frequent criticism that victim protection services are rather weak in Hungary and that ratifying the Istanbul Convention would help this problem too. You have already mentioned that men are allowed into temporary shelters for families.

1. J.: As state services do not talk about women and men, only victims, sometimes whole families arrive in temporary family shelters. In other words, the abuser is allowed to enter too. However, there is a dire need for protected spaces for women and their children, because abused women have usually lost most of their social and support network and really have nowhere to run away to. But there are many other problems the Convention would solve.

hvg.hu: Do we know how many shelters and crisis centers are available now for women in Hungary and where these are?

1. J.:We have absolutely no information. For a long time, we were trying to visit these places and get some information, or just find out how many there are. But we only know that altogether 300 places are available for victims who run away from home because OKIT (National Crisis Intervention and Information Service) and the leader of the Hungarian Interchurch Aid mentioned it in several interviews at the beginning of the year. We did not even have an idea what the crisis support system is like, and we have never met a living soul who got a place in a halfway house. The basic problem is that when the state support services were created in 2005, it was not in cooperation with civil society organizations who have been active in this field for a long time but hermetically closed away from us, regarding us not as colleagues but as rivals. There is a reason the Istanbul Convention prescribes close and meaningful cooperation with civil initiatives: this is the foundation for effective victim protection.

hvg.hu: If somebody calls your hotline and says she must get away from home immediately, what do you suggest?

1. J.:As the state has monopolized the network of shelters and only OKIT is allowed to place anyone in them, we must refer the person to OKIT. There is no central database we could access to be able to tell her where there is a place. Only OKIT has this information and they are the ones in control of the places.

hvg.hu: On the average how many women turn to you for help in a week?

1. J.:About 50 a week, which is quite a lot.

hvg.hu: From ten cases of gender-based violence how many get into court?

S.J.: There are no exact statistics unfortunately; this is also something the Istanbul Convention prescribes. However, based on a 2012 survey of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, in Hungary about 220 thousand women are affected by physical abuse in a year, but only 1-2 thousand cases get into court. My colleagues have calculated that there is a 194-fold latency.