by Timothy Jones

Tens of thousands of protesters, most of them women, demonstrated across Poland on Friday amid concerns the government may be seeking to undermine women's rights in the country.

The rallies were triggered by a recent announcement by the minister for labor and social policy, Marlena Malag, that Poland was preparing to leave the 2011 Istanbul Convention, known in full as the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.

In the capital, Warsaw, a crowd of several hundred protesters gathered before the headquarters of Ordo Iuris, an ultra-conservative association that has campaigned against the convention and claims the document's only aim was to impose controversial ideologies about gender.

These views were echoed this week by Deputy Justice Minister Marcin Romanowski, who described the pact as "gender gibberish" and called for Poland to withdraw from it as soon as possible.

Protests were also held in Gdansk, Katowice, Krakow, Lodz, Poznan and other cities, organizers said. Read more via DW