Ukrainian Parliament passes law on combating domestic violence without terms ‘gender’, ‘sexual orientation’

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has adopted in first reading the draft law on preventing and combating domestic violence with the removal of the words “gender” and “sexual orientation” from the wording.

The decision was supported by 238 MPs, Ukrayinska Pravda online newspaper reports.

The purpose of the bill is to remove inconsistencies in the legislation.

Current legislation lacks the definition of the gender-based violence, which has many manifestations (domestic violence, rape, physical assault, harassment, sexual harassment, etc.).

In addition, the bill provides for the introduction of additional measures aimed at the creation of preventive and protective mechanisms for combating all the forms of gender-based violence.

At the same time, the vast majority of MPs stressed that the word “gender” should be removed from the wording of the bill.

MP Iryna Lutsenko said: “The notion of gender as such will be removed from the wording of this bill. The concept of sexual orientation will be adjusted based on the Christian values of this session hall.”

Deputy Social Policy Minister of Ukraine Natalia Fedorovych noted, in turn: “We are removing the concept of gender from the wording. There are no mentions of sexual orientation in the bill. We will consider all your comments and, actually, the bill is a document that aims to combat violence. There is no concept of sexual orientation.”

In the end, the bill was passed in the first reading with the removal of all references to gender in the wording of the bill.

As Natalia Fedorovych noted, 100,000-150,000 people annually suffer from domestic violence.