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286 Streng th ening Women’s Human Rig ht s throu gh Individual Complaints Cees Flinterman, The Netherlands Human rights are inclusive: they include both women and men, they include any individual without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion (UN Charter, 1945). It is that fundamental message of human rights that has always motivated me. For that reason I was more than pleased when The Netherlands government asked me to chair The Netherlands delegation to the UN World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993) and later to represent The Netherlands in the negotiations on the Optional Protocol to the CEDAW Convention (New York, 1996-1999). It is an even greater pleasure and responsibility that presently, as a member of the CEDAW Committee, I am in a position to help implement the Convention and its Protocol, thereby contributing to strengthening the principle of equality of women and men around the world. With hindsight the year 1993 can be regarded as a catalyst in the development of human rights of women. In that year the member States of the UN through the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights recommended : New procedures should also be adopted to strengthen implementation of the commitment to women’s equality and the human rights of women. The Commission on the Status of Women and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women should quickly examine the possibility of introducing the right to petition through the preparation of an optional protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. (United Nations 1993b, para. 40) It took some time before the Commission on the Status of Women (hereinafter CSW) heeded the call of the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights; this was inter alia due to the important role of the CSW in the preparation of the Beijing World Conference on Women (1995); this World Conference also called on all UN member States to support strengthening women’s human rights . . . l 287 the elaboration of the Optional Protocol (United Nations 1995a, para. 230k). In 1996 an open-ended Working Group was established by the CSW which was mandated to draft an Optional Protocol and which met parallel to the sessions of the CSW in the years 1996–1999. This Working Group made use of Suggestion No. 7 by the CEDAW Committee, setting out the desirable elements of an Optional Protocol (CEDAW 1995, 8–11, paras. 1–29); the Working Group also had access to a draft of an Optional Protocol, which was prepared by members of the CEDAW Committee, members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and by experts in the field of international human rights law and the human rights of women at a meeting in 1994 at Maastricht University in The Netherlands, where at the time I was teaching public international law and international human rights law.1 One of the members of the CEDAW Committee, Sylvia Cartwright, who had also participated in the Maastricht meeting, attended the sessions on the Working Group as a resource person. The Working Group has been remarkably successful. At its fourth session in 1999 it reached consensus on a draft Optional Protocol which provides for two additional procedures in the CEDAW Convention: the individual communication procedure and the inquiry procedure.The draft Optional Protocol was unanimously agreed upon by the CSW, ECOSOC and eventually adopted by consensus by the General Assembly, at its fiftyfourth session, on October 6, 1999, twenty years after the adoption of the CEDAW Convention. The CEDAW Optional Protocol entered into force on December 22, 2000 and has been ratified as of December 2006 by 85 States out of the 185 States Parties to the CEDAW Convention. The main question to be discussed in this essay is whether the individual communication procedure will help “the full and equal enjoyment by women of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”2 I will try to answer this question by first addressing some innovative features of the Optional Protocol. Then I will have a look at the emerging, although still limited, quasi-jurisprudence of the CEDAW Committee under the Optional Protocol. In the final section I will address a number of the challenges which the Committee will be facing in the future in the implementation of its mandate under the Optional Protocol. Innovative main features The individual communication procedure under the Optional Protocol is modeled after similar existing procedures under other binding international human rights instruments, such as the Optional...

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