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AFUW-ACT
Inc. Meeting Report
Topic:
CEDAW-- 30 years on -- HUMAN RIGHTS FOR WOMEN
Speaker: Dr Penne Matthews
Dr Penne Matthews spoke to us about the flagship document for women
in the international human rights system -
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women - CEDAW.
CEDAW is one of seven (soon to be eight) major human rights treaties
in the UN human rights system. All are
supervised by committees comprised of experts.
CEDAW tries to frame human rights in a way that recognizes the reality
of women’s lives with regard to obligation of
states, participation in representation of government at the international
level, rights relating to nationality, and on
economic, social and cultural rights and private sphere issues such
as education, employment and health.
There are some gaps in CEDAW however such as domestic violence and abortion
although, it does refer to women’s
equal right to’ decide freely and responsibly on the number and
spacing of their children and to have access to the
information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights’.
Article 16 endorses the family as the
natural and fundamental unit of our society but feminists fear that
the definition of family can be interpreted too
narrowly. For example the debate over the adoption of children by gay
couples and the issue of IVF for lesbian
women.
Questions could be asked about the wisdom of creating a separate treaty
to deal with woman’s issues because there is
a possible ghettoization of woman’s rights. Secondly there is
little in the Convention that acknowledges the
intersection of gender discrimination with other forms of discrimination
such as Indigenous women (with respect to
violence) and migrant women and refugees (impact on women of the absence
of family in relation to temporary
protection visas). Thirdly the model of equality adopted by CEDAW takes
man as the model and seeks to plan women
into global capitalism rather than attempting to build ways in which
the system can be transformed, for example the
work women do in looking after children is not valued as work per se
unless it is in a child care facility.
CEDAW has 185 participating countries which is very good as there are
192 at the UN. The USA is one of the
countries that is not a party although it is a signatory. Other States
which are not party to CEDAW are Somalia, Brunei
Darussalam, Iran, Nauru, Palau, Qatar, Sudan and Tonga.
However countries are able to make reservations when they sign the Treaty
to modify the obligations set out in the
treaty. For example Australia has a reservation on paid maternity leave.
Iraq has one on Islamic Shariah law which
refuses to accord women rights equivalent to the rights of their spouses
so as to ensure a just balance between them.
So what happens? In International Law there is no system of compulsory
adjudication in relation to the treaty.
Disputes on interpretation of CEDAW may end up before the International
Court of Justice. The enforcement
mechanism is a committee of 23 experts who sit in their personal capacity.
The committee is not a court and cannot
deliver binding decisions. In theory other state parties should object
to reservations that are incompatible with the
object and purpose of the treaty. All too often states do nothing which
in effect becomes acquiescence. Is it that states
don’t care enough about human rights? Very few states objected
to Iraq’s reservations - Germany, Mexico, the
Netherlands, and Sweden.
HOW strong are the enforcement mechanisms for those obligations that
have been accepted? As with other 6
committees responsible for supervising human rights treaties, the CEDAW
committee reviews reports by state parties
which they are required to make periodically. The reports often reveal
serious gaps in the information provided to the
Page 2
committee - details of statistics and what really happens is often lacking.
Sometimes the reports reveal a complete lack
of understanding of the meaning of the Convention. For example “With
respect to a profession or occupation, (our
religion) permits women to pursue any respectable profession, provided
her husband agrees ‘.
Treaty committees like the CEDAW committee do not simply accept this
from states.
They aim for constructive dialogue whereby it is hoped they will change
their attitudes the laws and practices of those
states. This can be a long process because neither committee nor states
can keep up with the reporting process.
The Committee has recently been given the power to hear complaints from
individual women or groups of women
under the Optional protocol. The committee can examine reliable information
of grave or systematic violations. It
issued a long report on Mexico after it received evidence about rapes,
murders and disappearances of young women.
The Committee’s case law has shown that it is particularly good
when dealing with issues of domestic violence. For
example a woman in Hungary suffering domestic violence, and where there
was not sufficient support by law in
Hungary to protect her and her children, reported her state to CEDAW
who recommended to Hungary that they take
immediate and effective measures to guarantee the physical and mental
integrity of this particular woman known as
A.T and her family and to ensure she had a safe home in which to live
with her children. CEDAW also made general
recommendations to Hungary to respect, protect, promote and fulfill
women’s rights.
Australia has not yet committed to ratifying the Optional Protocol.
The Howard Government wanted there to be
reform of the UN treaty system first. It remains to be seen what the
Rudd Government will do although it now looks
promising that the new government proposes to sign the optional protocol.
If you would like to read the full text of this informative talk, the
secretary Catherine Evans will loan it to you.
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