PRESS BRIEFING BY CHAIRWOMAN OF COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY CHAIRWOMAN OF COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN

The advancement of women's rights worldwide continued to suffer from the disregard of the universality of human rights and the impact of traditional stereotypes and cultural practices, the Chairwoman of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Salma Khan (Bangladesh), said at a press briefing at Headquarters today. Ms. Khan, accompanied by Committee members Charlotte Abaka (Ghana) and Silvia Cartwright (New Zealand), convened the briefing at the conclusion of the Committee's seventeenth session.

(The 23-member Committee of experts is the monitoring body for the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the only United Nations treaty that deals exclusively with women's rights. The Convention, which entered into force in 1981, has been ratified by 160 countries as of 2 July 1997.

Ms. Khan said that, by holding two sessions this year, the Committee had been able to clear the backlog of country reports it was due to review. It also held two informal meetings with non-governmental organizations, including one with the Committee plenary. Their input, she said, had enriched the Committee's forthcoming general recommendations, which would make special reference to health issues affecting women. Ms. Khan, an economist and author of several books on the situation of women in Bangladesh, stated that, since its creation, the Committee had reviewed 125 country reports; the present session had considered nine such reports. Certain global trends regarding women's issues were clearly emerging. Women's rights were being advanced in many countries, but, at the same time, there was still a disregard of the universality of human rights, which constituted a major obstacle in the Committee's work. Ms. Abaka, former President of the African Regional Coordinating Committee for the Integration of Women in Development, said that the successive reports viewed by the Committee registered advances in developing countries and cited the first reports of Namibia and Bangladesh as of particular interest. However, the existence of backlash in some industrialized nations, once regarded as role models, was evidence that women's rights were apparently being relegated beneath other concerns.

Dame Silvia Cartwright, a judge on New Zealand's High Court since 1993 and the first woman to hold that post, indicated that one of her interests in the present session, as well as in previous sessions, was the development of an optional protocol to the Convention. The draft of such a protocol had been worked on intensively at the last session of the Commission on the Status of Women. "There is a great need for a system whereby individuals or groups can communicate directly with this Committee, in the same manner as under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights" and similar conventions.

One of the great barriers the Committee faced was the fact that although most nations had ratified the Convention, Judge Cartwright continued, in those same nations there were "vast differences" between the legal guarantees of equality for women and the de facto recognition of those rights. "There is a parallel trend which demonstrates that although there is rarely direct discrimination against women, the indirect discrimination, through the impact of policies and legislation, is very serious indeed for women in every country in the world." The importance of the proposed optional protocol would be to bridge the gap between the de jure and the de facto situations for the next phase of the Committee's work. She said she was pleased with the progress made on the draft, which hopefully would be adopted within the next two years.

Responding to a correspondent's question on the increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDS in women and its possible link to women's lack of economic resources or access to education, Ms. Abaka indicated that, due to the political transitions, structure adjustment programmes and economic frustrations in the developing nations, invariably it was the social sectors which suffered. Resources allocated to those sectors, particularly the health sector, were often reduced, which, in turn, decreased HIV/AIDS awareness programmes. All this, she added, "without considering the very expensive treatment that AIDS patients in developed countries have access to, which we don't have". The increase was not specifically high in developed countries, she added, but perhaps it appeared to be high because of the lack of access to resources to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Some practices common in developing countries, such as female circumcision, also encouraged the spread of HIV/AIDS, Ms. Abaka continued, and it was one of the reasons the Committee's forthcoming general recommendations would focus on women's health issues.

Regarding the present Committee session, Ms. Khan reasserted the disregard of the universality of human rights as a long-standing trend that cut across all borders. There was a stagnation or downward trend in many countries regarding the participation of women in the high-level decision- making processes. There were also encouraging signs, such as the introduction of affirmative action measures to promote women in political parties in Armenia, but in many industrialized countries, the participation of women at such levels was still "very unsatisfactory". Violence against women, for example, was a concern in all countries; the level of violence against women was "terrifyingly high" in all countries.

Ms. Abaka noted the global trend towards privatization and emphasized the need to take measures to alleviate its effects on health and education. "How many poor children can attend private clinics or even attend private schools?"

Ms. Cartwright said that another trend in all countries was the increasing impact of religion and cultural practices on women's status in

CEDAW Briefing - 3 - 25 July 1997

society. A number of reports had revealed that while a nation's constitution guaranteed equality to women, "nevertheless there are policies in place which exclude women from positions of authority, such as the courts or certain decision-making roles, for reasons of religion or tradition". This factor had a very serious impact on the participation of women in decision-making processes, including peacemaking processes in countries where there was conflict.

Ms. Cartwright, noting the efforts made in many industrialized countries to increase women's autonomy, said that Italy's programme of welfare reform was meant to reduce the notion of the male as breadwinner. However, it was necessary "to balance ideology against the reality", as it was a fact that divorced women with dependent children immediately became much poorer than the men they had separated from, a process that, in developing countries, meant an intensification of the feminization of poverty. In Australia, the aborigines, who made up a very small segment of the total population and lived in very remote parts of the country, faced particularly difficult problems such as poor health and high levels of violence, all of which had an enormous impact on the women. It was, she said, "an entrenched problem" and a very serious one.

During the present session, the Committee considered the reports of Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bangladesh, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg and Namibia.

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