PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIR OF WOMEN’S ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE

PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIR OF WOMEN’S ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE

Briefing correspondents at Headquarters today just ahead of tomorrow’s conclusion of the thirtieth session of the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Committee, Chairperson Ayse Feride Acar (Turkey) said that the persistence of discriminatory stereotypes and entrenched patriarchal attitudes had led to grave and systematic violations of women’s human rights across a whole spectrum of nations.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which is a human rights treaty body of the United Nations, monitors implementation of the 1981 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.  The Committee is comprised of 23 experts who serve in their personal capacities.  The 175 States parties to the Convention report to the Committee every four years.  Under the Optional Protocol, which entered into force in 2000, the Committee can consider petitions from individual women or groups who have exhausted national remedies.

During the thirtieth session, which began on 12 January, the Committee examined the reports of eight States parties:  Belarus, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Germany, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal and Nigeria.  Those included initial reports from Bhutan and Kuwait.  In examining those reports, Ms. Acar said the Committee found certain “common features”, such as the enactment of new laws and legal reforms, as well as efforts to strengthen the national machineries for women.  Overall, efforts to implement the Convention had been significantly enhanced, she said.

She said that the stereotypes manifested themselves in both traditional and modern ways.  Whatever the different symptoms, the persistence of discriminatory stereotypes and disadvantages for women were common, owing to everything from traditional practices to segregated market conditions.  At the same time, significant steps were also being taken to incorporate the Convention’s principles into domestic law.

Work during the session had also focused on the Optional Protocol, she noted.  That new international instrument had given individual women the right to complain to the Committee.  In fact, the Committee had registered three complaints during the session and their examination was continuing.  The Optional Protocol also provided for an inquiry procedure in the case of systematic and grave violations of women’s human rights.  In one case, that procedure had been triggered.

Also, she said, the Committee was moving towards adoption at the current session of general recommendation 25 on temporary special measures.  Those were tools that governments could adopt in various areas, such as politics, education and health, to accelerate “de facto” equality.  Those could also take different forms, such as the establishment of quotas for the underrepresented sex in political participation.

Concern over the various forms of violence against women had emerged during the examination of every report, she said.  The Committee had observed that, in the eight States parties that had just reported, more and more States were adopting laws against gender-based violence, including domestic violence.  Further work should be done in that regard at the national level, she urged.

Replying to a series of questions about the source and nature of the three complaints, she said the procedure dictated that that information would remain confidential until the Committee ruled on the outcome of an individual complaint.  She hoped information would be made public at the next session.

She explained that there were two different procedures associated with the Optional Protocol -- the complaints procedure and the inquiry procedure.  Once individual complaints were registered, the Committee examined them and then issued a summation or result.  The inquiries procedure permitted the Committee to conduct investigations.  Its findings and/or recommendations were then conveyed to the State party in question, which then had six months to respond.

Concerning questions about the negative population growth in Belarus, owing to the Chernobyl incident, as well as signs of trafficking of women there, Ms. Acar said the Committee devoted a lot of time to the trafficking issue during its examination of all States’ reports.  It had recommended stepped up international cooperation, punitive measures against the perpetrators, and efforts to reintegrate the women into the communities.  The Committee’s specific recommendations for Belarus would be issued tomorrow in its concluding comments.

Asked if it was true that Kuwait was the only country that had not granted women the right to vote, she said she had the feeling that Kuwait was one of the very few countries that had not granted voting rights to women.  That had been taken up in the open session of the Committee during its constructive dialogue with the delegation.

Under the Convention, the Committee could ask the State party to repeal all those laws that were in contradiction with the treaty, and that had been done in dialogue with the Kuwaiti delegation, she said.  Kuwait had a reservation to the Convention on that point, so the Committee had asked it to do everything possible to remove its reservation, including by amending the law.  Efforts had been made in Kuwait to repeal that law and the delegation had expressed its own commitment to doing that.  Perhaps collaboration with the Committee in that process might also “strengthen their hand”, she added.

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