Sylwia Szpurek

Former Member of the European Parliament (2019-2024) and Deputy Human Rights Commissioner of Poland (2015-2019), attorney-at-law, law and public policy expert in the field of equal treatment and counteracting violence against women and gender-based violence (domestic violence and cyberviolence against women in particular). In 2003-2005 Dr. Spurek drafted the first Polish law on combating domestic violence, in 2014-2015 she coordinated the ratification process of the Istanbul Convention by Poland, as a MEP she was one of the rapporteurs of the EU Accession to the Istanbul Convention (concluded in 2023) and EU directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence (adopted in 2024). She is an independent researcher, academic, author of many publications in the area of violence against women. She is also advocate for LGBTQIA human rights. Co-founder of two think-tanks: Green REV Institute and European FEM Institute. Currently she is the president of EFI and an International Fellow at the Centre for Protecting Women Online (Open University, UK). She wrote a book „Cyberviolence against women: a new face of an old problem" during her fellowship at Woodrow Wilson Center.