Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he plans to encourage the Polish Government to remain a signatory to the Istanbul Convention.

The UK accords a high priority to promoting gender equality and women's rights across the world. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office officials regularly raise gender issues, including domestic violence, in multilateral fora such as the UN and the Council of Europe. The UK signed the Istanbul Convention in 2012, signalling its strong commitment to tackling violence against women and girls; this Government remains committed to ratifying it. We encourage the Polish Government, too, to maintain its commitment to the Convention. The British Embassy in Warsaw is active on this agenda and supports NGOs working on women's rights. Later this month, the Embassy will be hosting a public webinar with British and Polish experts on lessons learned in dealing with domestic violence during the Covid-19 pandemic and will follow this with smaller group workshops with NGOs from the UK and Poland at which they will share experiences.