Istanbul Convention and the potential effect of its ratification on the legal system of the Republic of Latvia

Abstract

This thesis undertakes a critical analysis of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention), the legal arguments against its ratification and the observable effect it has had on the countries that have ratified it. This is done in order to evaluate the effect the ratification of the Istanbul Convention could potentially have on the national legal system of the state concerned. In this regard, the thesis takes Latvia as a case study, while noting that the discourse on the necessity and validity of the Istanbul Convention is near identical in most of the countries which have yet to ratify the Convention and even some which have already done so.