On 30 October 2025, Latvia’s parliament voted to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention – the Council of Europe’s treaty on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence – only a year after ratifying it. The decision, pending the President’s signature, marks a serious setback for women’s rights. It also exposes a deeper problem: when international instruments adopt vague or activist-driven terminology, the protection of women and girls becomes hostage to ideological disputes.
When the Istanbul Convention was drafted, feminist experts and women’s organisations worked to build a robust legal framework to prevent and prosecute violence against women. Yet during the negotiations, ILGA-Europe entered the process as an observer and successfully lobbied for the inclusion of “gender identity” in the Convention’s non-discrimination clause – a term without clear definition or agreed legal status. Silvan Agius, then ILGA-Europe’s Policy Director, and Nigel Warner, ILGA-Europe Council of Europe Adviser, represented the organisation in the official CAHVIO meetings that drafted the text.
This addition – seemingly technical at the time – has had lasting consequences. The concept of gender identity entered international law without definition or consensus. Fifteen years later, opponents of the Convention exploit this ambiguity to claim that it promotes “gender ideology”, obscuring its intended purpose: obliging states to prevent, protect and prosecute male violence against women. Latvia’s withdrawal is a direct consequence of that confusion, turning a life-saving convention into a political battleground.
Other states have followed similar paths. In Bulgaria, the Constitutional Court ruled in 2018 that the Convention was unconstitutional because of its indeterminate terminology. In Slovakia, parliament rejected ratification in 2020 on the same grounds. In Hungary, lawmakers blocked ratification the same year for identical reasons. These developments are not confined to Europe: in 2016, Colombia’s entire peace agreement was voted down due to the inclusion of gender identity in the text.
These developments reveal how strategic institutional lobbying by a small group of bad actors – and negligence by decision-makers – carry real political costs. Feminists have long argued that gender in law must describe stereotypes, social hierarchies and sex-based power, not inner identity. By ignoring that warning, negotiators left the door open to ideological exploitation – turning an instrument for women’s safety into a source of division and eroding the sex-based rights of women. Every time a ratification stalls or is withdrawn, it is women and girls who lose legal protection, shelter access and justice mechanisms.
It is time to re-examine how women’s human rights frameworks are negotiated, whose interests shape them, and how to ensure that no political ideology – however well-intentioned – undermines the safety and dignity of all women and girls.