Women's rights: from bad to worse? Assessing the evolution of incompatible reservations to the CEDAW Convention

• Author: Marijke de Pauw
• Position: PhD researcher at the Fundamental Rights and Constitutionalism Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Pages: 51-65

Women’s rights: from bad to worse? Assessing the evolution of

incompatible reservations to the CEDAW Convention

Marijke De Pauw

Merkourios 2013 – Volume 29/Issue 77, Article, pp. 51-65.

URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-112873

ISSN: 0927-460X

URL: www.merkourios.org

Publisher: Igitur Publishing

Copyright: this work has been licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution License (3.0)

Keywords

International Treaty Law, Human Rights Treaties, Reservations, Severability Doctrine, UN Treaty Bodies, CEDAW Conven-

tion

Abstract

e Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is the most important international

human rights instrument for the protection of women’s rights worldwide. It is, however, also one of the main UN human

rights treaties to which the largest number of reservations has been made. As far-reaching reservations to human rights treaties

are detrimental to the eective protection of human rights, this gave rise to the debate on the need to apply a reservations

system to such treaties that allows for the ecient protection of their integrity. More specically, it resulted in the severability

approach and treaty bodies claiming their competence to assess reservations’ compatibility. is article aims to contribute to

the academic research on reservations to the CEDAW Convention, by studying the evolution of reservation-making to this

human rights treaty from a comparative perspective from its entry into force until the present. rough this analysis, the

article aims to identify trends and shifts in this practice over time, allowing for a more detailed assessment of the increasing

number of incompatible reservations, the Committee’s progress towards a more active approach on reservations, and State’s

increasing willingness to object to reservations they nd incompatible.

Author Aliations

e author is a PhD researcher at the Fundamental Rights and Constitutionalism Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Article

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Merkourios - Gender in European and International Law - Vol. 29/77