Few causes defended by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The cornerstone of these efforts is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which was adopted in 1979. This legal instrument inter alia defines discrimination against women and sets forth legal obligations for States parties to end such discrimination.
Thirty years later, has there been much progress? Members of parliament from 39 countries gathered in Geneva for the 7th edition of the annual parliamentary seminar on women’s rights to try and provide a preliminary response to this question. The seminar, organized by the IPU and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, focused on achievements and progress in the field of women’s rights and identified remaining challenges. The parliamentarians underscored progress made in terms of political awareness with regard to women’s right issues, which have become part and parcel of the international and national political agendas. Participants also highlighted many legal initiatives taken in their countries to address discrimination, as well as the adoption of national plans of action and strategies aimed at pursuing gender equality.
But challenges remained: while legal reform was taking place, enforcement of legislation was still difficult in many countries. Specific areas needed to be addressed as a matter of priority, in particular violence against women and inequality in the labour market. The participants also underscored the need to strengthen parliament’s contribution to the CEDAW reporting process, which remained relatively weak in a majority of countries.
As a complement to and on the heels of this initiative, the IPU supported two projects aimed at strengthening parliament’s contribution to the enforcement of CEDAW at the national level. In Jordan, a parliamentary working group tasked with following up the removal of discriminatory provisions from the country’s laws met for the third time at the Jordanian House of Representatives. The group had recently contributed to the review of the Criminal Procedure Code with a view to making it more gender-sensitive. It discussed future priorities and agreed to pursue its efforts, focusing on the removal of discriminatory provisions from the Social Security Act, the Criminal Code and the Personal Status Act.
In Rwanda, parliamentarians met for a two-day seminar organized by the IPU to take stock of the status of implementation of CEDAW. Participants highlighted that gender equality remained a slow process and important challenges had to addressed, notably in the areas of sensitizing the public about equality and making women aware of their rights. The meeting identified the following priority actions for parliaments: making use of sex-disaggregated data, eliminating discriminatory provisions from the Criminal Code, the Labour Code and the Commercial Code and meeting the specific needs of the most vulnerable women.
The gap between international commitments made and actual national enforcement remains wide. This is an open invitation for parliaments to pursue and strengthen its actions to promote respect for women’s rights.
