GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADOPTS OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO WOMEN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION

Press Release
PI/1185
WOM/1149

GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADOPTS OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO WOMEN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION

Approves and Opens Legal Instrument for Signature Which Will Enable Individuals of Sex Discrimination to Submit Complaints to UN Committee

NEW YORK, 6 October -- In a landmark decision for women, the General Assembly, acting without a vote, adopted today a 21-article Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women and called on all States parties to the Convention to become party to the new instrument as soon as possible.

By ratifying the Optional Protocol, a State would recognize the competence of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women -- the body that monitors States parties' compliance with the Convention -- to receive and consider complaints from individuals or groups within its jurisdiction. The Committee would then be authorized to request the State Party where the alleged violation occurred to take “interim measures … to avoid possible irreparable damage to the victim or victims”.

The Protocol contains two procedures: (1) A communications procedure allows individual women, or groups of women, to submit claims of violations of rights protected under the Convention to the Committee. The Protocol establishes that in order for individual communications to be admitted for consideration by the Committee, a number of criteria must be met, including those domestic remedies must have been exhausted. (2) The Protocol also creates an inquiry procedure enabling the Committee to initiate inquiries into situations of grave or systematic violations of women’s rights. In either case, States must be party to the Convention and the Protocol. The Protocol includes an “opt- out clause”, allowing States upon ratification or accession to declare that they do not accept the inquiry procedure. Article 17 of the Protocol explicitly provides that no reservations may be entered to its terms.

The Optional Protocol was formally opened for signature today. It will enter into force three months after 10 States parties to the Convention have ratified or acceded to it. Upon entry into force, the Optional Protocol will put the Convention on an equal footing with other international human rights instruments having individual complaints procedures, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention against Torture and other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The inquiry procedure will be the equivalent of that under the Convention against Torture.

Both the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), and the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) had called for the introduction of a

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right to petition under the Convention. The adoption of the Protocol is particularly significant as 18 December 1999 is the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by the General Assembly. Together with the achievement of the goal of universal ratification of the Convention by the year 2000, the Optional Protocol is a major step forward in realizing Governments’ commitments with regard to women’s human rights.

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