Wednesday, April 14, 2021, 1:00 pm EDT (DC), 7 pm GMT+2 (Poland)
Registration
Description
The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) entered into force in August 2014 and now has been ratified by 34 Council of Europe member states and signed by 11 others and the European Union. The United Nations refers to it as the "golden standard” and uses it as a reference standard in its work on combating violence against women and girls. The webinar will discuss how the standards adopted by the Istanbul Convention helped build the international framework aimed at combating gender-based violence and shape the direction of national legislation in most Council of Europe states and the EU, The Commenter will add a US perspective.
Katarzyna Wolska-Wrona (CUA LL.M. 2005), Chief Expert, European Affairs Committee, Prime Minister’s Chancellery, Republic of Poland
Katarzyna Wolska-Wrona has worked on the European Union decision-making process and protection of fundamental right concerning gender-based violence since 2009. She was a member of the Polish government’s delegation to the Ad Hoc Committee for preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (CAHVIO). In 2012–2014, she was the Poland’s legal expert responsible for coordination of the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention). In her career in Polish public administration, she has worked in the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Chancellery of the Prime Minister. From 2018- 2020, she was a Seconded National Expert for the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in Vilnius, Lithuania, working in the gender-based violence program. She received her LL.M. from CUA in 2005. Her Polish master’s degree in law is from Warsaw University.
Commenter: The Honorable Diane Kiesel, (CUA JD 1985), Acting Supreme Court Justice, Supreme Court, New York County, Criminal Term, New York City, NY
The Honorable Diane Kiesel was appointed to the New York City Criminal Court in 1999. Since 2004, she has been an Acting Supreme Court Justice for the Criminal Term, the criminal trial court that hears serious, felony-level crimes. For 15 years, Judge Kiesel sat in New York’s first Integrated Domestic Violence Court in Bronx County where she presided over criminal, family and matrimonial cases involving allegations of domestic violence. Since January 2018, Judge Kiesel has presided in a felony trial court in Manhattan. Since 1992, Judge Kiesel has been an adjunct professor of law at New York Law School, where she has taught legal writing and domestic violence law. She has authored two editions of a law school text on domestic violence law. After receiving her JD from CUA in 1985, Judge Cahill clerked for two US federal district court judges, was an associate for the Wall Street law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and served as an assistant district attorney with the New York County District Attorney’s office where she prosecuted sex crimes, homicides, major felonies, and police corruption cases. When appointed to the bench, she was Deputy Chief of the district attorney’s child abuse unit. Judge Kiesel was awarded CUA Law’s Distinguished Public Service Award in October 2020.