The Istanbul Convention: a missed opportunity in mainstreaming cyberviolence against women in human rights law?

The monitoring body of the Council of Europe (CoE) Istanbul Convention, GREVIO, has recently adopted its very first General Recommendation which is specifically devoted to the ‘Digital Dimension of Violence against Women’. This development is important considering that the text of the Istanbul Convention had no direct or indirect reference to cyber forms of violence against women (CVAW). This post discusses whether this move of GREVIO can be interpreted as a strong commitment of the CoE to address CVAW or another occasion of a missed opportunity in mainstreaming CVAW into the legally binding frameworks concerning violence against women (VAW). This study pursues answers to this question by evaluating the difference between the normative value of soft law and legally binding (i.e., hard law) instruments.