The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW): from its radical preamble to its contemporary intersectional approach

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe global women’s movement has been one of the key actors in the origins and development of current United Nations (UN) treaties for women’s human rights, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979). The text of the Preamble to CEDAW, particularly, resulted from non-Western perspectives on women’s organising around the UN International Women’s Year (1975) and the UN Decade for Women (1976–1985). This article traces the longer history of CEDAW and discusses the CEDAW Committee’s subsequent work since the mid-1980s to expand and renew the Treaty by adopting the so-called General Recommendations. It argues that the CEDAW Committee in recent years developed a holistic and explicitly intersectional approach, in line with the Convention’s original but often overlooked Preamble.KEYWORDS: CEDAWUN Decade for Womenwomen’s human rightswomen’s activismintersectionality AcknowledgmentsI am very grateful to Natalia Jarska for inviting me to participate in the international workshop ‘International Women’s Year in 1975 and the UN Decade for Women. Reception, impact and legacies’, organised by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in May 2021, which led to this article. I am also grateful to the reviewers of the manuscript, who suggested some pertinent clarifications in the use of concepts, and especially to Francisca de Haan for her valuable comments and ideas that helped improve the manuscript.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See Arvonne Fraser, ‘The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (The Women’s Convention)’, in Women, Politics and the United Nations, ed. Anne Winslow (London: Greenwood Press, 1995); Ann Taylor Allen, Anne Cova, and June Purvis, eds., ‘International Feminisms’, special issue, Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 (September 2010).2 Judith Resnik, ‘Law’s Migration: American Exceptionalism, Silent Dialogues, and Federalism’s Multiple Ports of Entry’, Yale Law Journal 115, no. 7 (2006): 1564–670; Susanne Zwingel, ‘From Intergovernmental Negotiations to (Sub)National Change. A Transnational Perspective on the Impact of CEDAW’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 7, no. 3 (2006): 400–24; Susanne Zwingel, Translating International Women’s Rights: The CEDAW Convention in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Debra Liebowitz and Susanne Zwingel, ‘Gender Equality Oversimplified: CEDAW and the Measurement Obsession’, International Studies Review 16 (2014): 362–89; Loveday Hodson, ‘Women’s Rights and the Periphery: CEDAW’s Optional Protocol’, The European Journal of International Law 25, no. 2 (2014): 561–578; Ruth A. Stoffels, ‘The Role of the CEDAW Committee in the Implementation of Public Policies on Gender Issues: Analysis through a Study of the Protection of Girls’ Rights in Spain’, The International Journal of Human Rights 23, no. 8 (2019): 1317–6.3 See Francisca de Haan, ‘Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organizations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)’, Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 (2010): 547–73; Kristen Ghodsee, ‘Revisiting the United Nations Decade for Women: Brief Reflections on Feminism, Capitalism and Cold War Politics in the Early Years of the International Women’s Movement’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 33, no. 1 (2010): 3–12; Chiara Bonfiglioli, ‘The First UN World Conference on Women (1975) as a Cold War Encounter: Recovering Anti-Imperialist, Non-Aligned and Socialist Genealogies’, FILOZOFIJA I DRUŠTVO 27, no. 3 (2016): 521–41.4 Under its article 18, the Convention established a monitoring mechanism based on the submission of periodic reports by States parties. The CEDAW Committee, composed of elected, independent experts, is responsible for reviewing official reports, preparing questions for on-site sessions, and producing Concluding Observations on the progress of each country in their implementation of the Convention. The General Recommendations are, instead, documents issued by the CEDAW Committee to interpret, renew, and expand the content of the Convention. 38 General Recommendations have been issued since the mid-1980s on various topics, including procedural issues but also the specific situations of vulnerable groups of women and concrete violations of women’s human rights.5 See Francisca de Haan, ‘The Global Left-Feminist 1960s. From Copenhagen to Moscow and New York’, in The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties. Between Protest and Nation-Building, eds. Chen Jian et al. (New York: Routledge, 2018). For the earlier decades of the twentieth century, see, e.g. Katherine M. Marino, Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement, Gender & American Culture (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019).6 Hilkka Pietilä, The Unfinished Story of Women and the United Nations (New York: UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service, 2007); de Haan, ‘The Global Left-Feminist 1960s’, 4.7 Fraser, ‘The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women’, 1.8 Mary Hawkesworth, Political Worlds of Women. Activism, Advocacy, and Governance in the Twenty-First Century (Boulder: Westview Press, 2012), 256; Celia Donert, ‘Whose Utopia? Gender, Ideology, and Human Rights at the 1975 World Congress of Women in East Berlin’, in The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, eds. Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).9 Fraser, ‘The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women’, 1; De Haan, ‘The Global Left-Feminist 1960s’, 5.10 De Haan, ‘The Global Left-Feminist 1960s’, 232, 5.11 Fraser, ‘The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women’, 1.12 Hawkesworth, Political Worlds of Women, 254, 8.13 Leticia Ramos Shahani, ‘The UN, Women, and Development: The World Conferences on Women’, in Developing Power: How Women Transformed International Development, eds. Arvonne S. Fraser and Irene Tinker, 1st Feminist Press ed. (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2004), 26–36; Ellen Chesler, ‘Who Wrote CEDAW?’, in Women and the UN. A New History of Women’s International Human Rights, ed. Rebecca Adami and Dan Plesch (London: Routledge, 2021).14 De Haan, ‘The Global Left-Feminist 1960s’, 5.15 See Jocelyn Olcott, International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History, (Oxford University Press, 2017).16 Hawkesworth, Political Worlds of Women, 260, 8.17 United Nations, Report of the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, New York, 1976, 125–35.18 Fraser, ‘The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women’, 1; Devaki Jain, ‘Lessons from the UN’s Sixth Decade, 1996–2005’, in Women, Development and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 135–68.19 See Forum’80, 30th July. Copenhagen, 1980, 2.20 The Group of 77 (G-77) was established in 1964 aiming to represent the interests of developing countries in the United Nations. By the early 1970s, the Group of 77 had become very influential in the General Assembly and its proposal for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) was gaining momentum. See Roland Burke, ‘Competing for the Last Utopia?: The NIEO, Human Rights, and the World Conference for the International Women’s Year, Mexico City, June 1975’, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 6, no. 1 (2015): 47–61.21 General Assembly of the UN, Convención sobre la eliminación de todas las formas de discriminación contra la mujer, 1979, A/RES/34/180.22 Hawkesworth, Political Worlds of Women, 255, 8.23 See Chesler, ‘Who Wrote CEDAW?’, 13.24 Peggy Antrobus, ‘A Decade for Women: UN Conferences, 1975–1985’, in The Global Women’s Movement: Origins, Issues and Strategies (London: Zed, 2004).25 Donert, ‘Whose Utopia?’, 8; Jean H. Quataert, Advocating Dignity: Human Rights Mobilizations in Global Politics, Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).26 Alda Facio, ‘Viena 1993, cuando las mujeres nos hicimos humanas’, Pensamiento Iberoamericano, 9 (2011): 10–15.27 Zwingel, ‘From Intergovernmental Negotiations to (Sub)National Change’, 2.28 Pietilä, The Unfinished Story of Women and the United Nations, 30, 6.29 Facio, ‘Viena 1993’, 26.30 CEDAW Committee, General recommendation No. 25, on article 4, paragraph 1, of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, on temporary special measures, 2004, 30th session.31 CEDAW Committee, General recommendation No. 24: Article 12 of the Convention (women and health), 1999, 20th session.32 CEDAW Committee, General recommendation No. 28 on the core obligations of States parties under article 2 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 2010.33 LGBTIQ rights are considered as part of sexual, identity and reproductive rights.34 I do not discuss in this work the increasing⸻and well-organised international-level⸻opposition to gender equality policies and LGBTQI rights. For that topic, see e.g. Elizabeth S. Corredor, ‘Unpacking “Gender Ideology” and the Global Right’s Antigender Countermovement’, Signs, 44, no. 3 (2019): 613–38.35 Gabrielle Simm, ‘Queering CEDAW? Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) in International Human Rights Law’, Griffith Law Review 29 no. 3 (2021): 374–400.36 Shadow reports are reports critical of the performance of women’s human rights of governments under review that NGOs and women’s organisations can submit. The expansion since the 1990s of this mechanism for the participation of women’s organisations has provided the CEDAW Committee with relevant information on the ground and made the periodic review more participatory.37 The Optional Protocol to the Convention was adopted by the General Assembly in 1999. It provided the Convention with complaint mechanisms for violations of the rights recognised in the Treaty. For a discussion of the Protocol’s potential to address reparation and make general recommendations to the State parties, see Hodson, ‘Women’s Rights and the Periphery’, 2; Stoffels, ‘The Role of the CEDAW Committee’, 2.38 See Simm, ‘Queering CEDAW?’, 34.39 CEDAW Committee, General Recommendation No. 37 on Gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change, 2018, CEDAW/C/GC/37.40 CEDAW Committee, Concluding observations on the combined seventh and eighth periodic reports of the Philippines, 2016, CEDAW/C/PHL/CO/7–8.41 CEDAW Committee, General recommendation No. 27 on older women and protection of their human rights, 2010, CEDAW/C/GC/27: 5.42 Catherine O’Rourke, ‘Feminist Strategy in International Law: Understanding its Legal, Normative and Political Dimensions’, The European Journal of International Law 28, no. 4 (2017): 1019–45.43 Zwingel, ‘From Intergovernmental Negotiations to (Sub)National Change’, 10, 2.44 A different matter, once again, is the current legal debate on whether the content of the General Recommendations is binding on States parties to the Convention, given that they have not been directly ratified by the States. One of the strategies deployed by the Committee in its Concluding Observations is to consistently mention the General Recommendations, treating them as if they were mandatory for the States parties to the Convention. Women’s organisations have also started to invoke CEDAW General Recommendations in their ‘shadow reports’ in order to support their demands. See Older Women’s Network, NGO Thematic Shadow Report. September 2012, 2012.45 See CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Seventh Periodic Report of Turkey, 2016, CEDAW/C/TUR/CO/7; CEDAW/C/PHL/CO/7-8, 38; CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Combined Eighth and Ninth Periodic Reports of Sweden, 2016, CEDAW/C/SWE/CO/8-9; CEDAW Committee, General Recommendation No. 38 on Trafficking in Women and Girls in the Context of Global Migration, 2020, CEDAW/C/GC/38.46 See CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Combined Initial and Second Periodic Reports of Afghanistan, 2013, CEDAW/C/AFG/CO/1-2; CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Eighth Periodic Report of the Russian Federation, 2015, CEDAW/C/RUS/CO/8.47 See CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Seventh Periodic Report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 2013, CEDAW/C/GBR/CO/7; CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Combined Fifth and Sixth Periodic Reports of Slovenia, 2015, CEDAW/C/SVN/CO/5-6; CEDAW Committee, Observaciones finales sobre los informes periódicos séptimo y octavo combinados de España, 2015, CEDAW/C/ESP/CO/7-8.48 CEDAW/C/GC/38, 43.49 CEDAW Committee, Observaciones finales sobre los informes periódicos séptimo y octavo combinados del Perú, 2014, CEDAW/C/PER/CO/7-8: 6.50 CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: Niger, 2017, CEDAW/C/NER/CO/3-4:13.51 CEDAW Committee, Observaciones finales sobre los informes periódicos octavo y noveno combinados de Guatemala, 2017, CEDAW/C/GTM/CO/8-9: 3; CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Combined Eighth and Ninth Periodic Reports of Canada, 2016, CEDAW/C/CAN/CO/8-9: 6.52 CEDAW/C/GTM/CO/8-9: 3, 49.53 CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Eighth Periodic Report of Kenya, 2017 CEDAW/C/KEN/CO/8: 4.54 CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Sixth Periodic Report of Azerbaijan, 2022, CEDAW/C/AZE/CO/6: 2.55 CEDAW Committee, Concluding Observations on the Fourth Periodic Report of the United Arab Emirates, 2022, CEDAW/C/ARE/CO/4: 10.Additional informationNotes on contributorsLydia Candelaria González OrtaLydia Candelaria González Orta holds a PhD in Social Sciences and a GEMMA Erasmus Mundus Master in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has published on gender equality policies and women’s human rights and has collaborated with Spanish research & cooperation projects on gender studies and gender equality policies. Since 2018, Lydia González has been working on European projects on gender and science at the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) where she has been appointed the Spanish National Contact Point of Horizon Europe—the EU Programme for R&I—for cross-cutting gender issues.