Meeting of States Parties to Women’s                       

 Anti-Discrimination Convention                            

16^th Meeting (AM)

States Parties to Women’s Anti-Discrimination Convention Elect

 

12 Experts to Serve on Monitoring Committee

 

The sixteenth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women this morning elected by secret ballot 12 members of the 23-member body, which monitors compliance with the Treaty.

The experts, to serve in their individual capacities on the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, would begin four-year terms on 1 January 2011 and would replace the 12 experts whose terms expired on 31 December 2010.  The new members were elected from a list of 21 candidates and nominated on the basis of equitable geographical representation of the different forms of civilization, as well as of the principal legal systems.  Before the States parties was a list of the candidates’ names and curricula vitae (document CEDAW/SP/2010/3).

Those experts, though nominated by States parties from among their nations, served in their personal capacity, and not as representatives of their countries of origin.  According to Article 17 (1) of the Convention, nominees had to be of high moral standing and had to have competence in the fields covered by the Convention.  Under an Optional Protocol to the Convention, they also considered complaints from individuals or groups of individuals of alleged violations of rights protected by the Convention.

Those elected, or re-elected, in the first round of voting today were:  Ayse Feride Acar (Turkey); Olinda Bareiro-Bobadilla (Paraguay); Meriem Belmihoub-Zerdani (Algeria); Naéla Mohamed Gabr (Egypt); Ruth Halperin-Kaddari (Israel); Yoko Hayashi (Japan); Ismat Jahan (Bangladesh); Violeta Neubauer (Slovenia); Pramila Patten (Mauritius); Maria Helena Lopes de Jesus Pires (Timor-Leste); Patricia Schulz (Switzerland); and Dubravka Simonovic (Croatia).

The meeting had earlier elected by acclamation Alexander Lomaia (Georgia) as Chairperson of the sixteenth Meeting of States Parties.  Elected as Vice-Chairpersons by acclamation were Bertin Babadoudou (Benin), from the Group of African States; Sonam Tobgay (Bhutan), from the Group of Asian States; Leon Faber (Luxembourg), from the Group of Western European and other States; and Dessima Williams (Grenada), from the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States.

In her opening statement on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Jessica Neuwirth, Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, noted that since the last meeting of the States parties on 30 July 2008, the Committee had held a total of four sessions during which it had examined the implementation of the Convention in 40 States parties.

Throughout 2009, she said, the 30 years since the adoption of the Convention had been celebrated, including through many commemorative events organized at the country and regional levels prior to the global event at United Nations Headquarters on 3 December 2009.  That occasion allowed the Committee to take stock of progress made in the lives of women and girls everywhere, as well as to identify obstacles, which prevented implementation, and to debate concrete action to increase the impact of the Convention.

At its forty-third session, the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Committee on the Rights of the Child had established a joint working group to consider areas of common concern.  That working group had met for the first time in January 2010 to discuss possible areas of cooperation, including the drafting of a joint general recommendation, she noted.  A few days ahead of the forty-fourth session, a joint “CEDAW-UNHCR” seminar examining the particular relevance of the Convention to the protection of women of concern to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) was held in New York.  Recommendations directed at the Committee and UNHCR aimed at strengthening the protection of those women and girls had been adopted and appropriate follow-up measures were under consideration.

Turning to some of the steps taken by the Committee to enhance its working methods, she stated that at its forty-fourth session in July 2009, the Committee had decided to appoint a Rapporteur and alternative to follow-up its concluding observations, and it had adopted a framework for the Rapporteur’s mandate.  During its forty-fifth session, the Committee had adopted a methodology to assess States parties’ reports received under its follow-up procedure.  At that same session, the Committee had decided that States parties whose reports were to be submitted within two years should be invited to follow the “Harmonized guidelines on reporting under the international human rights treaties, including guidelines on a common core document and treaty-specific documents”, approved at the fifth Inter-Committee meeting of the human rights treaty bodies, in June 2006.

The Committee’s Working Group on Communications under the Optional Protocol had, since its inception, held some 16 sessions, she further reported.  It had registered 24 communications, and the Committee had completed proceedings on 13 of those, with seven declared inadmissible, and six found to reveal violations of several provisions of the Convention.

Also, since the fifteenth Meeting of States Parties, one more State had ratified the Convention, bringing the total to 186, and nine States parties had ratified or acceded to the Optional Protocol, bringing that total to 99.  There had been four additional acceptances to the amendment to article 20, paragraph 1, on the Committee’s meeting time, bringing that total to 57, she added.

The 12 members of the Committee whose terms expired on 31 December 2010 are:  Ferdous Ara Begum (Bangladesh); Meriem Belmihoub-Zerdani, (Algeria); Saisuree Chutikul (Thailand); Dorcas Ama Frema Coker-Appiah (Ghana); Cornelis Flinterman (Netherlands); Naéla Mohamed Gabr (Egypt); Ruth Halperin-Kaddari (Israel); Yoko Hayashi (Japan); Violeta Neubauer (Slovenia); Pramila Patten (Mauritius); and Dubravka Simonovic (Croatia).  Ms. Hazel Gumede Shelton (South Africa) was elected at the fourteenth Meeting of States Parties in June 2006 to serve until 31 December 2010.  Ms. Shelton resigned in 2007.  Another member has not yet been appointed by South Africa to replace her until the end of her term.

The members who will continue to serve until 31 December 2012 are:  Nicole Ameline (France); Magalys Arocha Domínguez (Cuba); Violet Tsisiga Awori (Kenya); Barbara Evelyn Bailey (Jamaica); Niklas Bruun (Finland); Indira Jaising (India); Soledad Murillo de la Vega (Spain); Silvia Pimentel (Brazil); Victoria Popescu (Romania); Zohra Rasekh (Afghanistan); and Xiaoqiao Zou (China).

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For information media • not an official record