Withstanding domestic violence against women in the jurisprudence of European human rights courts

Domestic violence against women is a global phenomenon. Domestic violence which was not traditionally considered a human rights issue has entered the UN agenda due to the efforts of human rights activists, Movements of women and active academics in this field. With General Recommendation No. 19 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, violence against women was recognized for the first time as a form of gender-based discrimination and integrated into the system of elimination of discrimination against women, which did not explicitly accept violence against women. Finally, governments have been obliged to combat violence against women, which is recognized as a form of discrimination based on gender in international human rights law, whether in the private or public sphere.
According to these obligations, not only is the government obliged to protect the victims of violence and punish the perpetrators, but also to eliminate the causes of violence. The results obtained from the study on domestic violence against women in the framework of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights show that the decisions of the European Human Rights Court consider this form of violence incompatible with the European human rights law and oblige the member states to undertake obligations in line with prohibiting and preventing violence against women and put it on their agenda.