New CD-Rom Documents 25 Years of Work in Eliminating

 

Discrimination against Women

 

A new CD-ROM issued by the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women provides easy access to 25 years of work of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

Following an introduction and overview of the Committee’s work, the CD-ROM provides the full text of all concluding comments issued by the Committee since its first session, organized alphabetically by country and in chronological order.

The CD-ROM contains the text of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol, as well as the Committee’s 25 general recommendations issued on articles of the Convention or cross-cutting themes, and its 1998 statement on reservations.

The Committee celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of its work last year (1982–2007).  Since the inaugural session at the United Nations Office at Vienna in October 1982, the Committee has held 39 sessions, the most recent one in August 2007 at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

One of the major responsibilities of the Committee is to monitor States parties’ compliance with their treaty obligations.  The Committee discharges this responsibility in a constructive dialogue with representatives of the State party, based on a report the State submits in accordance with article 18 of the Convention.  There are now 185 States parties to the Convention.  Over the last 25 years, the Committee examined 401 reports, submitted by 154 States parties.

The French and Spanish language versions of the CD-ROM are forthcoming.

To order a CD-ROM, please contact:

Division for the Advancement of Women

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

2 UN Plaza, 12^th Floor

New York, NY 10017

Fax:  1 212 963 3463

E-mail:  daw@un.org

The CD-ROM will also be released on the Division’s website:  www.un.org/womenwatch/daw.

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For information media • not an official record