General Assembly

As delegates from the Lao People’s Democratic Republic shed light today on recent legislation and programmes to improve the lot of women in their country, they faced criticism from the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women over Government policies to address rape and domestic violence.

Recognizing strides made by women in Japan in the 24 years since the country had acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, experts of the Committee that reviews compliance with that Convention today discussed ways the country could overcome entrenched attitudes and other persistent obstacles to women’s equality.

With the General Assembly holding its first ever thematic debate on the responsibility to protect populations from genocide or other war crimes, a diverse panel of academics struggled today during a press conference to find common ground on how the concept, seen by some developing nations as a Western ploy to meddle in their domestic affairs, could ever be fairly or effectively applied.

Following Bhutan’s historic transition last year to a democratic constitutional monarchy, the South Asian nation had harmonized a myriad of domestic laws in accordance with the women’s Convention and created its first national action plan to ensure gender equality in all aspects of economic, political and social life, Bhutan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs said today.

Denmark had established strong institutional mechanisms, including a Minister for Gender Equality and a complaints board, to protect women’s rights in the labour market and curb domestic violence and human trafficking for sexual exploitation, the Deputy Permanent Secretary of Denmark’s Department for Gender Equality told the Committee monitoring State parties’ compliance with the Women’s Convention today.

The responsibility to protect was focused on non-indifference and making it everyone’s responsibility to ensure that no one would ever again have to look back with the mixture of emotions that had greeted the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur, asking, “How did we let this happen?”, Gareth Evans, Co-Chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, said at a Headquarters press conference today.

Spain had made sweeping moves to empower and legally protect women since Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero took office in 2004, including enactment of laws to erase gender inequality and gender-based violence, as well as action plans to help the country’s most socially and economically vulnerable women gain access to health care, education, employment and housing, Spain’s first ever Minister of Equality, Bibiana Aido Almagro, said this afternoon.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, fearing that in the midst of the global financial crisis the rights of elderly women would fall by the wayside, was encouraging States parties to the women’s Convention to mainstream older women’s concerns into national strategies and development programmes, Committee Chairperson and expert from Egypt, Naela Mohamed Gabr, said this afternoon during a Headquarters press conference.

Security Council reform had come a long way since the beginning a new intergovernmental negotiation process in February, the facilitator on that issue in the General Assembly said at a Headquarters press conference today, announcing a third round of talks to begin on 27 August.

This year, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women should seize the opportunity of the thirtieth anniversary of the women’s rights Convention and the tenth anniversary of its Optional Protocol to raise their visibility and strengthen their impact for the sake of women worldwide, with the ultimate aim of getting more States to ratify both instruments and withdraw any reservations to them, Naela Gabr, Committee Chair said this morning.