Committee on Elimination of

Discrimination against Women

850^th Meeting* (PM)

WOMEN’S ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE CONCLUDES FORTY-FIRST SESSION, ADOPTS

PROVISIONAL AGENDA FOR NEXT SESSION IN GENEVA, 20 OCTOBER –- 7 NOVEMBER

 

Wrapping up the forty-first session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women this afternoon, the Committee Chairperson noted the progress made in preparing draft recommendations concerning discrimination against migrant women, as well as article 2 on policy measures of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. 

Also today, the Committee adopted the draft report of its session, as well as the provisional agenda for its forty-second session, which will be held in Geneva from 20 October to 7 November.  It will consider the reports of Bahrain, Belgium, Cameroon, Canada, El Salvador, Ecuador, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mongolia, Myanmar, Portugal, Slovenia and Uruguay.  The Committee also adopted the draft report of the Working Group of the Whole.  The reports and provisional agenda were introduced by Committee Rapporteur Mary Shanthi Dairiam, expert from Malaysia.

The Committee, which monitors State parties’ compliance with the Convention and comprises 23 experts acting in their personal capacities, also took action on matters related to the Optional Protocol to the Convention -– by which individuals can bring complaints of violations of their rights directly to the Committee, once all other avenues have been exhausted -- and reviewed the results of the seventh Inter-Committee Meeting and the twentieth Meeting of Chairpersons, said Dubravka Šimonović, its Chairperson and an expert from Croatia.

In the draft report of their forty-first session, Committee experts made recommendations on the periodic reports of eight States parties, including Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Nigeria, Slovakia, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania and Yemen.  Their findings referred to a wide range of issues pertaining to provisions of the Convention -- often called the “international bill of rights for women” -– in such fields as education, politics, health care, economics, employment, property, marriage and family relations.

Ms. Šimonovic said that, during informal meetings with States parties, the Committee had highlighted its new Convention-specific reporting guidelines, its statement on national human rights institutions and its policy on overdue reports.  It had decided to send reminders with specific timelines for report submissions to States parties whose initial reports were five years overdue -- Afghanistan, Djibouti and the Solomon Islands -– and to those whose periodic reports were 10 years overdue -– Bulgaria, Panama, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal and Zimbabwe. 

The Committee, Ms. Šimonović continued, had also encouraged States parties to take advantage of technical and advisory services offered by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Division for the Advancement of Women and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).  Further, the experts had met with a representative of the Fund, who had briefed them on the Secretary-General’s campaign to eliminate violence against women and on progress towards developing a coordinated database on such violence and indicators to measure it.  It met as well with senior members of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to discuss coordination between the Women’s Committee and the Committee on the Rights of the Child. 

Ms. Šimonović today called on non-governmental organizations and the United Nations system to continue to fully and effectively support all efforts for Convention follow-up and implementation.  She said that the Committee had worked hard to make its concluding observations more concrete and specific by introducing follow-up procedures and adopting titles, or subject headlines, to make concluding observations more user-friendly and easier to implement.

Naela Mohamed Gabre ( Egypt), Françoise Gaspard ( France) and Glenda P. Simms ( Jamaica) served as the Committee’s Vice-Chairpersons at the current session.

The Committee’s members were Ferdous Ara Begum, expert from Bangladesh; Magalys Arocha Dominguez, expert from Cuba; Meriem Belmihoub-Zerdani, expert from Algeria; Saisuree Chutikul, expert from Thailand; Dorcas Coker-Appiah, expert from Ghana; Mary Shanthi Dairiam, expert from Malaysia; Cornelis Flinterman, expert from Netherlands; Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, expert from Israel; Tiziana Maiolo, expert from Italy; Violeta Neubauer, expert from Slovenia; Pramila Patten, expert from Mauritius; Silvia Pimentel, expert from Brazil; Yoko Hayashi, expert from Japan; Hanna Beate Schöpp-Schilling, expert from Germany; Heisoo Shin, expert from Republic of Korea; Anamah Tan, expert from Singapore; Maria Regina Tavares Da Silva, expert from Portugal; and Zou Xiaoqiao, expert from China.

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*     The 849^th Meeting was closed.

For information media • not an official record