The version of Article 336 of the Criminal Code on the definition of rape, as proposed and put out for public consultation for some days (only in Greek), has been a particularly unpleasant surprise for the Diotima Centre:

Not only does the draft of the new Criminal Code fail to adopt a definition based on the absence of consent, a longstanding demand of feminist movements and humanitarian organizations worldwide, but it also replaces the already outdated and problematic definition of rape. Until now, the definition requires the use of physical violence of the threat of serious and immediate danger. Thew new definition is even worse, still referring to the use of physical violence and limiting the threat only to the legal value of the victim’s life or physical integrity.

The proposed definition seems to completely ignore the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention), which has entered into force in our country. Article 36 of the Convention refers to the voluntary consent of individuals to any sexual act or behavior, which should be a product of free will.

Any adoption of the proposed definition, therefore, is contrary to the obligation of our country to take all necessary measures regarding the criminalization of any sexual act performed non-consensually by both participants in it.

The proposed definition of rape not only violates the serious commitments we have made as a State but is also socially unacceptable and full of stereotypes (such as the ‘dragon’ perpetrator and the ‘ideal’ victim), against which the feminist movement worldwide has been fighting for many years.

If this definition prevails, it will continue to obscure a significant percentage of rapes where physical violence cannot be proven, where the rape was not committed by using violence, where the victim knows the perpetrator, or even worse, where there is an intimate relationship between the victim and the perpetrator.

We hope that this incomprehensible choice, which has no justificatory basis, will be reversed, and that the Minister of Justice will understand the urgent need to amend article 336 of the Criminal Code based on the absence of consent, so that this heinous crime of imposition and power is finally made visible and punished as it deserves.