CEDAW and the Committee: personal reflections

AuthorSavitri Goonesekera
ProfessionFormer member, CEDAW Committee
Pages191-192
191
Part IV: Afterword
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13. CEDAW and the Committee:
personal reflections
Savitri Goonesekera, former member,
CEDAW Committee
My first article relating to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was written in the 1980s after my country, Sri
Lanka, ratified the Convention in 1981. I recall that I could hardly find informative
publications on the Convention, especially in the context of issues relating to women’s
human rights in the developing countries of Asia and Africa. CEDAW did not feature
prominently in the Third World Conference on Women, which I attended in Nairobi
in 1985.
Today the CEDAW Convention and its Committee have acquired a clear status and
relevance as the global and universal benchmark and norm-setting flag bearer on
women’s rights and women’s issues. The commitment, professionalism and indepen-
dence of the CEDAW experts and the capacity of the CEDAW Committee to earn the
respect of both governments and women’s groups has helped the Convention to be
ratified by 186 countries, almost reaching the status of universal ratification by member
states of the United Nations.
The complaints and inquiry procedure to CEDAW, the Optional Protocol (2000), has
been ratified by more than 50 per cent of these state parties. The Committee has
pronounced its views on several individual complaints and conducted one inquiry under
the Optional Protocol. It has also adopted 26 General Recommendations, which have
interpreted the meaning of equality, developing it beyond the traditional meaning of
equality before the law and equal protection of the law, incorporating in national
constitutional and international human rights jurisprudence influenced by Anglo-Ameri-
can law. This has enabled the Committee to address the complexities and nuances of
gender-based discrimination that impacts negatively on women, addressing issues such
as gender-based violence, exploitation in migration for employment, and the gender
discrimination dimensions of conflict and disaster. All these are aspects not specifically
dealt with in the Convention. These developments, in my experience, have made
CEDAW norms more relevant to women in non-Western political economic and social
systems. They have facilitated new understanding and incorporation of women’s human
rights in the national constitutions of different countries, as well as the regional human
right systems in Europe and Latin America. The most recent Women’s Rights Protocol
to the African Charter on Human Rights has been inspired by CEDAW.

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