Context: In December 2008, the Council of Europe set up an expert committee, the Ad Hoc Committee for preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (CAHVIO). In December 2010, it finalized the draft text of the Istanbul Convention which was later adopted by the Committee of Ministers and opened for signature in Istanbul on 11 May 2011.
Since than many countries have signed, ratified, and put into force the articles of the Convention. Yet today (8, Mars, 2018) this article appeared in the EU Observer. The author (Bridget O'Loughlin) mentions:
A common misconception is that the Istanbul Convention obliges states to have lessons at schools about sexual orientation. It does not.
Some claim that our convention promotes same-sex marriage, but it makes no reference to the legal recognition of such marriage. Certainly the Council of Europe supports LGBTI rights. The convention opposes any form of discrimination. But the subject of same-sex marriage is outside the legal scope of the Istanbul Convention.
Nor does the convention oblige states to legally recognize a third sex under domestic law, as some people mistakenly believe.
(...)
Yet another misconception is that the convention calls for a new "refugee status" for transgender or intersex persons, as has been sometimes erroneously reported. This is not true, either.
Further in the same article there is a link to the list of signatories. At first I was expecting to see countries where importance of religion is higher to be less "whiling" to ratify the agreement. In many ways this seems to be true (see for example: Treaty opposing violence against women will lead to 'moral decay', Bulgarian church says). But I fail to grasp why nations such as Ireland, Iceland, UK, Luxembourg, Greece, Croatia, among others, have not ratified the agreement. Notice that ratification is different from entry into force. I can understand that some nations might need more time to reform, but why not ratify it?
Question: Since the adoption of the Istanbul Convention principles was made of three stages (signature, ratification, entry into force), why haven't some nations reached the second step 7 years after the opening for signatures (ratification: which I interpret as a legal commitment to reform and implement)?
Note: I do not expect to have a single reason to explain the "reluctance" for all of these nations. I will be more than happy to upvote any answer that explains the issue for any single nation (sources are important: demographics, newspaper articles, census, etc.) or accept another that covers a representative sample of nations that could explain what is going on in here.