Article 7 - Comprehensive and co-ordinated policies

The chapter is part of a Commentary, which provides the first comprehensive analysis of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention). In particular, the chapter focuses on the analysis of Article 7 of the Istanbul Convention on ‘Comprehensive and co-ordinated policies’ is part of Chapter II devoted to ‘Integrated policies and data collection’. It stresses the need to put together different spheres of value, scientific knowledge and professional expertise with the aim at preventing and combating Gender-based Violence Against Women (GBVAW) and domestic violence. A holistic and comprehensive methodological approach becomes a powerful epistemological and pragmatic means, capable of connecting social claims with institutional interventions and professional training. In order to better understand the meaning that the concept of comprehensive and co-ordinated policies has in the Istanbul Convention, the analysis is structured into four main parts: (i) a reconstruction of the origin of the holistic approach as a methodological prerequisite for the design of integrated policies, (ii) a description of the innovative aspects inherent to Article 7, (iii) answers provided by interested States in relation to the monitoring work developed by GREVIO, (iv) the potential of the holistic approach to be applied in different contexts and disciplines.