Hungary’s parliament has passed a declaration against signing the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women because it smuggles in provisions declaring gender a “social construct” and allowing “gender-based asylum claims”.
Dr Zoltán Kovács, Secretary of State for International Communication and Relations in Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government, reported that the Hungarian legislature had passed its declaration against the seemingly unimpeachable Council of Europe convention in an official blog post.
“The protection of women and the fight against domestic violence have always been of central importance to the government,” he insisted, noting that Orbán had put domestic violence on a new footing in the criminal code in 2013, after the first of three consecutive election wins — but added that the Istanbul Convention, in his view, goes “far beyond this”.
He noted, for example, that “the Convention defines ‘gender’ as ‘socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men'” — which puts it at odds with the Hungarian constitution, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Adopting the Istanbul Convention with its “social gender” definition would “void” the Hungarian constitutional position that there are “only two biological genders, male and female”, he explained.
Dr Kovács also expressed concern that seemingly laudable provisions of the Convention requiring signatories to “take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that gender-based violence against women may be recognised as a form of persecution” and allow “gender-based asylum claims” are intended to pave the way for more bogus asylum applications by illegal migrants, rendering it “yet another attempt by pro-migration groups to find a way to force the issue of migration.”
“By refusing the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, Hungary, says ‘Yes!’ to the protection of women but ‘No!’ to gender ideology and illegal migration,” he insisted.
This was not Prime Minister Orbán’s first salvo against “gender ideology”, with the Hungarian government having already taken steps to defund gender studies and related courses at universities.
Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen slammed the discipline as “an ideology, not a science” and said it had no economic utility, quipping that “No-one wants to employ a gender-ologist.”
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