Amnesty International voiced strong opposition on Thursday to Latvia's decision to withdraw from the Council of Europe's Istanbul Convention, a key treaty aimed at preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. The rights organization warned that the move could dismantle critical legal protections for vulnerable groups and sets a precarious precedent following successful campaigns by anti-rights groups against gender equality.

Monica Costa Riba, Amnesty International's Senior Campaigner on Women's Rights, urged the Latvian President to veto the parliamentary decision. "We urge the President of Latvia to do the right thing and use his veto to stop Latvia's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention and advance measures to ensure its full implementation to protect women and girls from gender-based and domestic violence," she stated.

The decision came after a lengthy 13-hour debate in the Latvian Parliament, where MPs voted 56 to 32 in favor of withdrawing from the Convention. The bill is now pending the President's approval or veto. Introduced over a month ago, the motion to withdraw has been sharply criticized by women's rights organizations as a move away from international protections and a step back in institutional accountability.

Conservative and right-wing factions in Latvia have argued that the treaty promotes "gender theories" that could undermine traditional family values, a claim that the Latvian Constitutional Court has previously refuted. In 2021, the court affirmed that the Istanbul Convention's provisions were in line with the Latvian constitution and aimed solely at preventing violence against women and domestic violence, without imposing any specific family or marriage models.

Despite judicial support for the Convention, the government's decision to withdraw has been described as "appalling" by observers, especially in light of recent statistics highlighting the severity of gender-based violence in Latvia. A 2023-2024 study by the European Institute for Gender Equality revealed that women constituted the majority of victims in cases of intimate partner violence, intimate partner homicide, and rape in Latvia.

This move to exit the Istanbul Convention follows a worrying trend started by Turkey in 2021, with Latvia showing no specific legal provisions in its criminal procedure to address the criminalization of violence against women independently. This development underscores the critical nature of the situation and the potential impacts on the protection of women's rights in Latvia.