Czech gov’t rejects EU convention over gender ideology concerns

The government formally ended the ratification process after senators argued the treaty promotes gender ideology by treating gender as separate from biological sex.

Executive summary - Andrej Babiš’s government has revoked the 2023 resolution by which consent was given to continue the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, formally ending the process at the governmental level. - The decision was revealed by the Czech news portal irozhlas.cz – the government issued no press release and made no mention of it at any press conference. - This step is a consequence of the Czech Senate’s rejection of ratification on January 24, 2024, when the proposal fell two votes short of the required majority.

- Critics of the convention, including Senators Zdeněk Hraba and Jiří Oberfalzer, pointed to its ideological character and its replacement of the concept of biological sex with the category of “gender.” - The Ordo Iuris Institute has prepared an alternative – a draft Convention on the Rights of the Family, which protects the family as the fundamental unit of society and is free of ideological assumptions. (Ordo Iuris) — On June 22, the Czech government, led by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, decided to revoke the June 2023 resolution of the previous cabinet of Petr Fiala, by which the executive branch had consented to continuing the process of ratifying the Istanbul Convention.

This decision formally ends the ratification process at the governmental level and – significantly – was taken without any press release or mention at a government press conference. The content of the resolution was only revealed by the Czech news portal irozhlas.cz, which obtained the document, hitherto undisclosed by the government. The justification of the resolution states that the motion for consent to ratification was not considered by the Chamber of Deputies during the previous parliamentary term and that the Senate did not adopt a resolution on the matter – a formal confirmation of the fact that the ratification process had long remained in a state of suspension.

Opposition to genderism on the Vltava The current government’s decision is a consequence of the earlier decision of the Czech Senate. On January 24, 2024, the upper house of the Czech Parliament rejected the draft resolution granting consent to the ratification of the convention – of the 71 senators present, only 34 supported the proposal, two votes short of the required majority. Twenty-eight senators voted against, and nine abstained.

A particular role in the Senate debate was played by the position of the Constitutional and Legal Committee, presented by Senator Zdeněk Hraba, according to which the convention is an ideological document that in practice will not help victims of domestic violence. Senate Vice-President Jiří Oberfalzer, in turn, pointed to the fact that the convention repeatedly uses the term “gender” instead of “sex,” thereby blurring the biological differences between women and men. The Czech news portal “Seznam Zprávy” revealed at the time that at least one of the senators had at his disposal an analysis of the Istanbul Convention prepared by the Ordo Iuris Institute, attached to the international petition “Stop Gender.

Stand for Family,” which was translated in 2020 into 17 languages, including Czech. What is the Istanbul Convention? The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, commonly known as the Istanbul Convention, has, since its adoption in 2011, aroused serious controversy extending far beyond its declared aim of protecting victims of violence.

The most frequently raised objection is its introduction into the legal order of the concept of socio-cultural gender understood as a social construct independent of a person’s biological sex. Controversy also surrounds Article 12(1) of the convention, which obliges states parties to take measures aimed at eradicating the “stereotyped roles for women and men” and traditions regarded as a