It is a setback for centre-right Prime Minister Evika Silina, who joined protesters outside parliament earlier this week. “We will not give up, we will fight so that violence does not win,” she told them.
The treaty was ratified by the EU in 2023, however ultra-conservative groups have argued that the accord’s focus on gender equality undermines family values and promotes “gender ideology”.
After a 13-hour debate in the Saeima, Latvian MPs voted by 56 to 32 to withdraw from the treaty, in a move sponsored by opposition parties but backed by politicians from one of the three coalition parties, the Union of Greens and Farmers.
One of the main political groups behind the withdrawal is Latvia First, whose leader Ainars Slesers has called on Latvians to choose between a “natural family” and a “gender ideology with multiple sexes”.
Latvia’s ombudswoman Karina Palkova called for the treaty not to be politicised, and the group Equality Now said it was “not a threat to Latvian values, it was a tool to realise them”.
Thursday’s vote has prompted an outcry both within Latvia and beyond.
Twenty-two thousand people have signed a Latvian petition not to drop the treaty. Women’s rights group Centrs Marta has called a protest next Thursday, accusing MPs of not listening to the Latvian people.
The head of the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly, Theodoros Rousopoulos, said Latvia had made a hasty decision fuelled by disinformation. It was, he said, an “unprecedented and deeply worrying step backwards for women’s rights and human rights in Europe”.
Since Turkey abandoned the treaty four years ago, femicide and violence against women had risen sharply, he added.
As the vote did not win a two-thirds majority, it means the president could return the bill for another reading, if he has objections.
President Rinkevics said on X that he would assess the decision under the constitution, “taking into account state and legal, rather than ideological or political, considerations”.
Last week another member of the ruling coalition, the Progressives, said it would not rule out appealing to the Constitutional Court.
Women are more likely to be victims of partner violence than men, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), an EU agency.
In its latest figures, external, EIGE said 142 incidents of intimate partner violence against women were reported across Latvia in 2022. This was above the 109 offences recorded in 2021 but below the totals in the previous three years and during the Covid pandemic.