INTERNATIONAL: Three Decades of Progress on Women's Rights, but Major Obstacles to Equality Persist

In Cameroon it was used to bring justice to village women suffering rape and other physical abuse from their husbands. In Morocco it sparked legal reforms hailed as “revolutionary” in their ability to reconcile universal human rights principles and that country's Islamic heritage. And in India it enabled sexual harassment in the workplace to be outlawed.

These are just three of the myriad ways that the United Nation's women's human rights treaty has made its mark. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) turns 30 years old in December this year. Its impact as a force for change on women's lives is being discussed and celebrated in events all over the world.

Thirty years after its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly, on 18 December 1979, the treaty remains the essential international tool for achieving women's human rights. National action spurred by the CEDAW treaty has been wide ranging: new constitutional guarantees for women in Thailand, land-owning rights established for women in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, changes to the law of evidence benefiting women in the Solomon Islands, reproductive health rights established in Colombia, a new Magna Carta for women's equality enacted in the Philippines.

However, the Convention's implementation has been uneven and seven countries still have not ratified it: namely Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga and USA. Nevertheless, 186 other states have ratified CEDAW making it one of the most widely subscribed-to international treaties in existence.

“It is a very practical document,” said UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, referring to the CEDAW convention. “It says concretely and explicitly what countries have to do at the national level to achieve women's equality. But progress is not automatic – it requires a great deal of work and commitment in order to make the necessary changes in societies.”

Sometimes the first step to equality is to create a new law, as in the sexual harassment case of India. Justice Sujata Manohar, one of the Supreme Court judges who decided this case in 1997, looked to the CEDAW treaty to enable India's Supreme Court to create a new national law, which could be later enshrined in legislation, prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace.

In a collaborative effort involving the government, women activists, their lawyers and a panel of Supreme Court justices, national guidelines were developed to protect women in the workplace from unwanted sexual advances. But what sort of impact has this had in India? Has it changed the workplace into a safer place for women? Justice Manohar will be part of a special event on 3 December at United Nations headquarters in New York to discuss the impact of the women's rights treaty.

The true measure of the impact of the CEDAW treaty is the condition of women's actual lives today. Serious human rights violations against women are still happening and violence against women is a major concern world-wide, whether occurring as sexual violence in situations of armed conflict or domestic abuse at home.

Are women, like those in India and Bangladesh (where the High Court recently followed India's example and introduced national sexual harassment guidelines), more aware of their rights and able to exercise them? And how is the United Nations system assisting countries to make these important changes to ensure equality for women?

These questions and other stories about how CEDAW has changed women's lives around the world will be explored at the roundtable discussion to be opened by the Secretary-General at 3pm on Thursday 3 December at UNHQ in New York. Hosted by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay and the Executive Director of UNIFEM, Inés Alberdi, it will feature stories from Austria and Mexico, in addition to those mentioned above from Morocco, Cameroon and India.

In addition to Justice Manohar, the other participants are Nouzha Guessous, former member of the Morocco Family Law Reform Commission; Maria Regina Tavares da Silva, former CEDAW Committee member and member of the Committee's delegation which visited Mexico as part of the Committee's Inquiry into the abduction, rape and murder of young women from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico; Rosa Logar, Executive Director of the Vienna Domestic Abuse Intervention Centre, which in 2004 bought a complaint to the CEDAW Committee on behalf of two women murdered by their husbands; Naéla Gabr, Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women which monitors implementation of the treaty; and Elizabeth Evatt, former CEDAW Committee Chairperson from 1989 to 1990.

Also participating will be women leaders of the UN Development Programme, the UN Population Fund, the UN Children's Fund, and the UN Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women.

Putting the questions to the participants at the 3 December event will be Ghida Fakhry, television journalist and news anchor for the Al Jazeera English network.

Raising questions in a different way - through theatre - Sarah Jones, the Tony Award winning playwright and performer, will perform stories about the discrimination that women still face, despite 30 years of progress.Currently 186 countries are bound by the provisions of the international women's human rights treaty, CEDAW.

A full list can be found at: http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-8&chapter=4⟨=en

The full text of the Convention can be found at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cedaw.htm

and its Optional Protocol can be found at:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cedaw-one.htm

For additional information see the CEDAW 30th anniversary website: www.unifem.org/cedaw30

The event will be live webcast at: www.un.org/webcast