UN Consideration of Optional Protocol for ICESCR – Gender
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: February 12, 2006
Attachments: PWESCR-Programme on Women’s Economic, Social
& Cultural Rights.pdf
FILING ALLEGED VIOLATIONS OF WOMEN’S ECONOMIC, SOCIAL and CULTURAL RIGHTS,
throught the United Nations Convention on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights ICESCR, and a potential ICESCR OPTIONAL
PROTOCOL.
Rights (PWESCR) – Please see attached file.
PWESCR – The momentum of struggles
around economic integration and globalisation is growing just as economic
injustices become increasingly acute and visible. In this political climate,
governments, international financial institutions and corporations have adopted,
in most cases, a gender-neutral version of equality that treats economic policy
as unrelated to the advancement of women’s rights. A gender-neutral approach distorts
reality and fails to frame women’s issues in the context of inequality and
discrimination. Women of all ages experience inequalities within and
outside their homes. Women constitute 70% of the world’s poor and two-thirds of
the world’s illiterate. Women are continually denied access to basic healthcare,
housing, education and work. Moreover, they suffer from the burdens imposed by
gender-based hierarchies and subordination that restrict them from enjoying
their human rights.
In recent years, people across the world, particularly
those most vulnerable to ESCR violations are increasingly demanding ESCR for
themselves, for their families and their communities. Human rights mean little
if individuals do not have economic autonomy. Women’s oppression and the
dominance of patriarchal structures, whether within the family or in community,
is sustained largely because of their lack of access to economic and social
resources. In today’s social, economic and political climate, there is a danger
that human rights may slide into irrelevance unless women understand them,
governments recognize their corresponding obligations, and courts and corporate
actors have content to address the threats that neo-liberal economic policies
and discriminations pose to women’s advancement within the home, community and
society at large.
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ESCR-NET
Women’s Economic, Social & Cultural
Rights
http://www.escr-net.org/EngGeneral/wg_women.asp
_______________________________________________________________________
Link for UN International Law as:
*International Covenant on Economic, Social &
Cultural Rights
*International Covenant on Civil & Political
Rights
*First and Second Optional Protocols to the International
Covenant on Civil & Political Rights
*CEDAW
*CEDAW Optional Protocol
http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/
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for an optional protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights
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Distr. E/CN.4/2006/WG.23/2 Original: |
COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Sixty‑second session
Open‑ended working group on an optional
protocol
to the
International Covenant on Economic,
Social and
Cultural Rights
Third session
Geneva, 6-17 February 2006
Elements for an optional protocol to the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
paper by the Chairperson-Rapporteur, Catarina de Albuquerque
I.
COMMUNICATIONS PROCEDURE
A.
Introduction
A
communications procedure allows individuals and at times groups of individuals
to bring claims of an alleged violation by a State of a provision of a human
rights treaty for quasi-judicial examination by a human rights monitoring body.
Within the United Nations
human rights system, communications exist in respect of five out of the seven
core human rights treaties.[i] In this context, all communications
procedures are optional, which means that a separate declaration of acceptance
of this mechanism is needed both in those cases where the communications
procedure is foreseen in the convention itself (as is the case with the
International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers
and Members of Their Families (CMW), the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) or the Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
(CAT)) or in an optional protocol (the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)).
Consequently, ratification of a treaty does not imply an obligation that
the State party is subject to the treaty’s communications procedure.
[i] Communications procedures exist in relation to the following
international human rights treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) through its Optional Protocol; the International
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD, art.
14), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment (CAT, art. 22), the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) through its Optional Protocol, and
the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant
Workers and Members of Their Families (CMW) (art. 76). At the regional level the African
Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights,
the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Social Charter all
contain communications procedures.
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