International Framework on Violence Against Women with Focus on the CEDAW

The next session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women will focus on prevention of violence against women, while the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is leading the ongoing UN Global Campaign UNite to combat violence against women worldwide. Since its establishment in 1946 the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has been a very important standard and policy setting intergovernmental body that launched 5 global women's conferences and elaborated almost all crucial women human rights instruments1 including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women2 (the CEDAW) adopted in 1979, the Optional Protocol to the CEDAW adopted in 2000, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women adopted in 1993. For a long time, violence against women - and especially domestic violence against women - was treated as a “private matter“ and was a hidden reality of women's lives. This approach has gradually changed to the current predominate view that violence against women is a matter of “public concern”, but unfortunately it is still the most common and widespread violation of women's human rights.