Press Conference on 30th Anniversary of Women’s Anti-Discrimination Convention

Poised to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary on 18 December, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was today lauded by women’s rights advocates for enabling human rights defenders over the last thirty years to successfully demand change in laws that discriminated against women.

Addressing journalists at a Headquarters press conference on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary celebrations was Jessica Neuwirth, Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  She was accompanied by Justice Sujata Manohar, former judge of the Indian Supreme Court, and Regina Tavares da Silva, former member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the treaty body which monitors State compliance to the Convention.  Correspondents were also addressed by several women’s rights advocates from the audience.

Ms. Neuwirth told journalists that the United Nations would hold a special event at Headquarters tomorrow, 3 December, to showcase the effects of the Convention thirty years after its adoption by the General Assembly.  It was to be hosted by the New York Human Rights Office and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). 

She said the Convention was a watershed treaty that helped pioneer the concept of gender equality.  According to its terms, States must modify customary practices based on stereotyped roles for women, and those founded on notions of inferiority or superiority of either sex.  Seen as an international bill of women’s rights, it enjoyed wide acceptance by countries around the world with seven exceptions:   Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga and the United States.

Justice Sujata Manohar said the treaty was used for the first time by an Indian court in 1997, after ruling that international treaties could be used where there were gaps in national legislation.  The court used the treaty to rule in favour of a group of human rights activists in a case of sexual harassment, in which it stated that such harassment was a denial of equality in the workplace.  The case resulted in guidelines being laid down to prevent and take action against sexual harassment.

“Education and economic opportunities are the key areas of women’s empowerment.  Sexual harassment denies to women equality of opportunity in both these vital areas,” explained Ms. Manohar.  Following the outcome of the Indian case, a Bangladeshi high court had recently laid down similar guidelines.

As explained by Ms. Neuwirth, the General Assembly also adopted a protocol to the Convention 10 years ago, signed by 98 countries, allowing redress for victims whose rights under the Convention had been violated.  Regina Tavares da Silva, a former member of the monitoring Committee, said the optional protocol allowed the Committee’s body of experts to hear claims of rights violations from individuals, or from human rights advocates representing them, when it was felt that all domestic remedies had failed.  Quite a number of communications had come before the Committee, ranging from cases of forced sterilization to pension rights in case of divorce.

Ms. Tavares da Silva said the Committee could also launch inquiries on grave or systematic violations of a broader nature.  In 2003, the Committee conducted its only inquiry so far, on the decade-long occurrence of murders and abductions in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez.  After discussions with authorities, victims’ families and human rights defenders, the Committee had recommended that there be an investigation and that the root causes of femicide -- violence and poverty -- be addressed. 

In response, the Mexican authorities had appointed a special prosecutor and commissioner, she said, and there was greater involvement by federal authorities into the killings.  Recently, the Government adopted a law on access to a life free of violence.  But, despite such encouraging action, the problem was not completely solved, and the case remained symbolic of similar situations taking place in other regions, where gender-based violence habitually led to the murder of women.

She stressed that the optional protocol inquiry mechanism “was a very valuable mechanism that has not been used, as it should be.  It should be made known and used.”

Ms. Neuwirth said countries commonly ensured compliance with international treaties by changing their laws, but the reverse could also happen -- that when ratifying a treaty, Governments could place reservations on provisions that would place them at odds with their own laws, thus forming exceptions to certain rules.  And while the Convention was the most widely ratified, it was also the one with the highest number of reservations.   

Ms. Tavares da Silva said many reservations by Governments were on the Convention’s core articles, dealing with nationality, family rights and family relations, and that, in principle, such reservations should not be permitted, because they ran counter to the treaty’s main objectives.  As such, one of the strategies of the monitoring Committee was to discuss those reservations rigorously with all countries, with the ultimate goal of encouraging their withdrawal.

But, even with broad reservations, the treaty could still be used by civil society, judges and lawyers to leverage change, argued former Chair of the Committee, Elizabeth Evatt, who spoke from the audience.  And although it had not done so, the Committee had the power to determine when reservations were not allowed to stand, as other watchdog bodies had done with respect to other United Nations treaties. 

Nevertheless, one official from the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Lee Waldorf, said there had been a pattern of increasing withdrawals over the years, showing that reservations did not form an “absolute obstacle”.  She underscored that many countries had undergone enough change to enable their reservations to be removed.

One example was Morocco, which had ratified the Convention in 1993 with strong reservations.  According to Nouzha Guessous, a former member of the Morocco Family Law Reform Commission who spoke from the audience, recent changes to Moroccan family law had rendered some of that country’s reservations obsolete.  Eventually, in December 2008, the Government pledged to withdraw all reservations.  And, although it was unclear when the Government would live up to that promise, its very pledge was an indication of the treaty’s usefulness in allowing change to take place.

Justice Manohar said India also had reservations to the treaty, whose legal system comprised a myriad body of family law derived from Hindu, Islamic, Jewish and Christian law.  Partly as a result of the Convention treaty and the movement for equality, most of those laws had been changed.

Asked about the prospects of the United States becoming a State party, Ms. Neuwirth said the Obama administration supported ratification, but there was no move towards that end, despite a longstanding campaign waged by civil society.  The United States Senate must muster more than two-thirds of its votes to ratify the Convention.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan, which had newly become a State party, had ratified the Convention without reservation, and was currently preparing its first report to the Committee, said Ms. Neuwirth.

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For information media • not an official record