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Universalizing Women’s Human Rights through CEDAW
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52 Univers alizing Women’s Human Rig hts throu gh cedaw Savitri Goonesekere, Sri Lanka The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was one of the first human rights treaties that incorporated the concepts of universality, indivisibility, and interdependence of human rights. The Convention’s norms of equality and nondiscrimination on the ground of sex are elaborated in specific provisions on the civil, political, socioeconomic, and cultural rights of women, which are all considered on par with each other. These concepts were reaffirmed much later at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna (1993) by the community of UN member States as was the key issue of violence against women as being linked to infringement of the human rights to bodily security and freedom from gender-based discrimination. Again, already in 1992, the CEDAW Committee, in its General Recommendation No. 19, had identified these rights as being covered by the Convention. Thus, the consensus of UN member States on these issues in Vienna gave the Convention a new global relevance. As we come to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Committee’s work, it is important to reflect on how the Convention and its Committee have contributed to the women’s rights movement regionally and across countries, by reinforcing the universality and indivisibility of women’s human rights. I was privileged to serve as a member of the CEDAW Committee in the years 1999 to 2002. Women’s human rights issues had become central to my research and teaching as a university academic and lawyer. The subject of human rights in my generation had not been part of the law school curriculum. International human rights law and women’s rights were therefore areas I had to learn about on my own, and they gave a new perspective to my work. My experience as a member of the Committee enriched my understanding of comparative law and of the relevance and meaning of harmonizing international human rights norms at the domestic level. This essay will therefore reflect on that experience and on the contributions made by the CEDAW Committee on human rights issues of special relevance to women in developing countries. The Norm of Universality, Reservations, and Diversity The Convention’s concept of the universality of women’s rights is reflected in its preamble and content. Most important, the definition of discrimination on the basis of sex as both de jure and de facto denial of women’s rights in Article 1—and the State’s responsibility to eliminate it in all fields including the political, social, economic, and cultural in Article 3— set a comprehensive and common standard of equality for the enjoyment of human rights. The State’s responsibility to intervene and take steps to eliminate discrimination by both state agents and nonstate persons, enterprises and organizations, in the family and community, is emphasized in Article 2 and Articles 5 and 16, the latter dealing with social and cultural practices and attitudes in the family that endorse gender-based discrimination . This approach to the universality of women’s rights has generated much debate, with cultural relativists arguing that this is an imposition of “Western” standards on countries in the South. Universality is perceived as a patronizing attitude that “infantilizes” developing countries, and removes their right to achieve progress in harmony with their own cultures . Some feminists have also suggested that the adversarial and individualistic approach to rights reflected in CEDAW, focusing exclusively on equality between women and men, undermines an ethic of care and a sense of community, reinforcing the State’s power to intrude on privacy (Robinson 1998; Steiner and Alston 2000). Since the Convention follows international treaty law in permitting reservations, States Parties have in fact tried to modify the applications of these universal norms in their country’s context. States Parties from developing countries in particular have entered reservations or declarations to important articles, especially Articles 5 and 16. CEDAW is the treaty with the highest number of reservations, some of which should not have been permitted, for they undermine the very object and purpose of the Convention. Though the Convention has not given it a mandate to review reservations , the CEDAW Committee has addressed the practice of reservations and justifications in general and, when based on ethnic and religious diversity, has consistently promoted the Convention’s concept of “all rights for all women.” It has used its general powers while scrutinizing reports to raise these issues with States...