CEDAW Committee Member Dr.Hanna Beate Schoepp-Schilling Statement for 25-Year Celebration

 

 

 

 

Celebration:
Twenty-five Years of the Work of the CEDAW Committee

Hanna Beate
Schöpp-Schilling

CEDAW Member
(1989-2008)

July 23,
2007

 

           
The twenty-fifth Anniversary of the CEDAW Committee’s work is a cause for
celebration. I feel deeply honored to be given the opportunity to speak today as
the currently most senior member of the Committee. Although I have not been  on the Committee for twenty-five years,
I have been a member since 1989 and have thus have seen many positive changes
and developments with respect to the recognition, visibility, status, resources,
working methods, output and impact of the Committee.

 

When the
CEDAW Committee – then, as today, 
consisting of twenty-two women and one man – met for the first time in
Vienna in October 1982, expectations among members, the secretariat, States
Parties and academic observers were mixed. 
In no way was the success story of the Committee – as I would call it
today – foreseen. Various obstacles of a conceptual, political, organizational
and technical nature were looming to impede its work and, in fact, did so for
quite some time. Today, most of them have been overcome and the Committee is no
longer seen as the “poor relative” among the human rights treaty bodies.
Nevertheless, in order to fully appreciate the Committee’s status and
achievements in 2007, it is worthwhile to consider some of the impediments that
it needed to overcome.

 

In
1982,  many States, States Parties
and academic commentators viewed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women 
more as a development than a human rights instrument. In this context
many States Parties believed that their obligations under the Convention, namely
to eliminate direct and indirect discrimination against women in all areas of
their lives and to achieve their equality with men in the exercise and enjoyment
of their human rights,  needed only
to be progressively implemented rather than “without delay” as Article 2 of the
Convention calls for. Two factors may have contributed to this misunderstanding.
First, the Committee monitors States Parties’ efforts towards eliminating
discrimination against women not only in the civil and political but also in the
economic, social and cultural spheres. 
The International Covenant 
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which guarantees these rights to
both women and men, allows for their progressive implementation, which also
depends on the availability of financial resources. Second, the goal of Article
5 (a) of  the CEDAW Convention,
which calls for the modification and abolishment of culturally based
stereotypes, clearly cannot be achieved immediately. The physical and
organizational separation of the Committee from the other then existing treaty
bodies may also have contributed to this misinterpretation.

In reviewing States Parties’
reports, however, the Committee has pointed out again and again, that lack of
resources or any other difficult circumstances do not allow a State to
discriminate against women. And while it may take time to ultimately alter
attitudes, behaviour, political, economic and social structures and institutions
based on or affected by discriminatory sex-role stereotypes, efforts to
eliminate them have to begin “without delay”  from the moment when the Convention
enters into force in the territory of the respective State
Party.!

This
misperception of the Convention and of its monitoring Committee as a development
instrument and mechanism was finally laid to rest through the outcome document
of the  UN Conference on Human
Rights in Vienna in 1993 – a conference at which, as I remember clearly,  the then CEDAW Committee Chairperson was
first seated among NGO representatives rather than with the Chairpersons of the
other UN treaty bodies! This document reaffirmed that “women’s rights are human
rights” and thus finally gave the Committee its rightful place among the other
human rights treaty bodies. I well remember the first Action Plan to come out of
what then had become the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
(OHCHR)  and the aim of this Plan to
mainstream a human rights approach into all activities of the United Nations.
Committee members, including myself, worked hard to include a gender perspective
into that Plan. Upon reaffirmation of this concept by the Beijing Conference in
1995 the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), which has been servicing
the Committee since its inception first in Vienna and then in New York, was
given an additional staff post of a human rights chief to support the
Committee!

 

Since 1982, 110 members have been
serving on the Committee. They have come from a variety of countries of all
regions of the world representing “different forms of civilization as well as
the principal legal systems.” Committee sessions thus are experiments in
intercultural learning and understanding, which in the early years were not free
from ideological strife. Members of these early years indicate in their
reminiscences how politically induced differences of opinion and evaluation,
reflective of  the Cold War,
 also colored 
the Committee’s discussions concerning its mandate, the evaluation of
States Parties’ reports as well as the formulation of the Committee’s own
lengthy final reports. However, despite such difficulties, consensus was always
found since all members were driven by the first and foremost goal: to improve
women’s exercise and enjoyment of their human rights world-wide.

 

Nobody had expected rapid
ratification of the Convention. However, this, in fact, did happen and  resulted in  the Convention’s entry into force
already on September 3, 1981, e.g., a little more than twenty months after its
adoption in December 1979, and a little more than eighteen months after the
Secretary-General had opened the Convention for signature, ratification or
accession on March 1, 1980.  The
special ceremony for signing, ratifying or acceding to the Convention at the
Second UN World Conference on Women in Copenhagen on July 17, 1980 had also
contributed to this fact. As a consequence, however, and particularly in the
early years, the Committee experienced a lack of financial resources with
respect to its being serviced by the DAW in general and to budgetary means
allowing for activities of Chairpersons outside the Committee’s session. These
could only gradually be overcome, also thanks to States Parties’ support over
the years for budgetary growth! In addition, the Committee’s work would have
been less efficient had it not been for the support by international NGOs, UN
entities, academic institutions as well as by some States Parties that, since
the early 1990s, have provided the Committee with informal meetings either in
New York or
elsewhere. Contributions to world conferences, development of working methods,
or new general recommendations would not have happened without this
generosity.

 

The quickly
increasing number of States Parties also led to another problem: the equally
rapidly increasing backlog of States Parties’ reports waiting for review. This
backlog was not caused by any laziness on the part of the Committee – in fact,
I  remember clearly the work and the
exhaustion caused by it,  when the
Committee in its thirteenth session in 1994,  reviewed fifteen States Parties’ reports
in three weeks – although it did not yet formulate concluding comments –,
adopted General Recommendation No. 21 (on women’s equality in marriage and
family life) and 2 suggestions, and worked on its contributions to three UN
World Conferences!  The backlog was
caused by  the unfortunate wording
of  Article 20 (1) of the
Convention, which restricts the Committee’s meeting time to “normally … a period
of not more than two weeks annually.” 
As some early Committee members indicated, who previously had been
engaged in the intergovernmental deliberations on the Convention as diplomats, a
different kind of monitoring body had been discussed originally, for which the
restricted meeting might have been acceptable. The idea of  a monitoring CEDAW Committee consisting
of twenty-three independent experts was promoted and accepted in the very last
stage of the intergovernmental negotiations. Unfortunately, due to an oversight,
the restricted meeting time was not eliminated. Because of the non-tiring
efforts of Committee members, Committee Chairs and of friendly States Parties’
support, the Committee’s meeting time has been extended over the years. Even an
amendment to the Convention was adopted in 1995, which, unfortunately, still
awaits the necessary number of acceptances. I would like to express my wish that
by the Committee’s thirtieth anniversary of its work, this amendment to Article
20 (1) will have been accepted “by a two-thirds majority of States parties” and
thus, will finally have become legal.

 

Rapid
ratification of the Convention, unfortunately, was accompanied by a large number
of reservations to many of its articles, in particular Articles 2, 5, 9 and 16.
Since its inception, the Committee has addressed the issue of reservations in
many statements. Reservations to the Convention are permitted under its Article
28 (1), but not when they are “incompatible with the object and purpose
of the Convention” (Article 29 (2)). In its various pronouncements the
Committee has identified incompatible reservations and has asked States Parties
to review, limit and withdraw them. Some of the Committee’s statements have
influenced the formulation of respective paragraphs in outcome documents of UN
World conferences, or, most recently in the new harmonized reporting guidelines
for a common core document. The Committee is also represented in the recently
established working group on reservations of the OHCHR. But the dilemma of what
observers have termed the “paradox of universality vs. integrity” of the CEDAW
Convention has not been solved, although a number of reservations were withdrawn
over the years. The Committee addresses the issue of reservations, when
warranted, in each constructive dialogue with States Parties by inquiring into
the reasons for such reservations, States Parties’ plans and time frames for
withdrawing them as well as into the impact of such reservations on the women
living in the respective State Party.

 

For many years, the foremost mandate
of the Committee has been the monitoring of States Parties’ implementation
efforts through the review of States Parties’ reports and the formulation of
suggestions and general recommendations, the latter interpreting the Convention.
The outcome document of the Fourth UN World conference on women in Beijing in 1995,  added another task, e.g., the monitoring
of the implementation of the goals of the Beijing Platform for Action. The
most  important breakthrough in the
enhancement of the Committee’s mandate and 
status  as a human rights
treaty body, however, came in December 1999 with the adoption of an Optional
Protocol to the Convention by the General Assembly. I well remember the
excitement of the Committee’s standing Working Group under the Optional
Protocol, which I chaired for some years, when the first communications under
the Optional Protocol arrived and the Working Group started preparing views for
the Committee. At the same time the Committee also undertook its first inquiry
dealing with the gruesome murders of women in Mexico.

 

Formulating concluding comments
after a the review of a State Party’s report as well as adopting views under the
two procedures of the  Optional
Protocol enhance the Committee’s power to interpret the Convention and the
obligations contained therein, although the Committee – like any treaty body –
never acts as a court, and its pronouncements are no more than what may be
called quasi-jurisprudence. The general recommendations,  which the Committee formulates to
elucidate articles of the Convention, have also proven an invaluable tool for
enhancing States Parties’ understanding of their obligations. While it is agreed
that these can only be considered as “soft law,” I have noted with satisfaction
over the years that these general recommendations have contributed to a deeper
understanding of international law in general and of the CEDAW Convention in
particular  among all stakeholders.
Thus, it was the CEDAW Committee that first highlighted genital mutilation of
girls and women as a human rights violation in General Recommendation No. 14,
even though the formulation it adopted in 1990 only uses the terminology of
“female circumcision” due to the then sensitive political discussion of the
violation. And in 1992, the Committee again was first in  clearly stating in the by now famous
General Recommendation No. 19 that violence against women is a form of
discrimination and thus not permitted under the Convention. Other important
general recommendations preceded and followed those, e.g., on the equal rights
of women to participation in the political and public spheres; in marriage and
family; in access to health care and on the nature and necessity to apply
temporary special measures, if the achievement of de facto equality of women
with men is to be accelerated.

 

           
The CEDAW Committee, more than other treaty bodies, has enjoyed a special
relationship with UN World Conferences. The four UN World Conferences on Women –
Mexico in 1995, Copenhagen in 1980, Nairobi
in 1985, Beijing
in 1995 – contributed, each in a specific way, to the creation of the
Convention, its ratification, its status and its additional mandates. The
Committee contributed relevant statements to the conferences in Nairobi and Beijing as well as to the other UN World
conferences of the 1990s, thus supporting and enhancing the progress made at
these meetings with respect to a deepened understanding of the nature of human
rights violations against women and of the efforts necessary to eliminate them.
The conferences strengthened the Committee’s status. They also highlighted the
need for gender mainstreaming of all UN activities,  and they created  a new in-depth understanding of the
nature of intersectional discrimination against women.

 

           
The
Convention allows for the contributions of UN Specialized agencies, programs and
funds to the work of the Committee (Article 22). Over the years, I have seen the
growth of the Committee’s very valuable interaction with these entities as well
as their commitment to and engagement in promoting the Convention, the
Committee’s concluding comments and through it the human rights of women.

 

           
I have to been lucky to experience the increase in quality in the
Committee’s work and its impact when the Committee started to receive so-called
alternative or shadow reports in the early 1990s. I still remember – and this
was the time before the internet! – 
how difficult it was for me and other Committee members in the early
years to research women’s human rights situation in a country beyond the
information given in a State Party’s report. With the arrival of alternative
reports, this task became much easier. Committee members now receive this
additional information that usually becomes a basis for questions to a
respective State Party. International Women’s Right Action Watch (IWRAW),
founded by international activists shortly after the Nairobi conference, has
been extremely helpful in this respect as have been many other international
NGOs over the years. A new dimension entered the Committee’s work in the
mid-nineties, when representatives of national NGOs began to write their
alternative reports themselves rather than delivering their pertinent
information to international organizations, and even more so, when they began to
attend the Committee’s meetings, in which the report of their State Party was
discussed. Listening to the constructive dialogue enables them to assist and
lobby their respective government to implement the Committee’s concluding
comments.  International Women’s
Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW Asia Pacific) has been instrumental in
facilitating this “circle of empowerment” from “global to local”
levels.

 

           
I have always found it difficult to measure the precise impact of the
Committee’s work with respect to the improvement of women’s exercise and
enjoyment of their human rights since the Committee has been only one player
among many. However, it has been a great satisfaction for Committee members when
the impact as shown in legislative reform, court verdicts, programs and other
endeavors could be directly traced to the Committee’s constructive dialogue, its
concluding comments or, most recently, to its views and decisions under the
Optional Protocol. Formulating concluding comments rather than a general report
on the constructive dialogue, which the Committee started doing in the second
half of the 1990s, proved to be a new and rather difficult task,
the improvement of which occupies the Committee on an ongoing basis. The
Committee sometimes spent hours in plenary on the formulations of a specific
paragraph, while today this work squarely falls into members’ time before, after
or between Committee meetings, adding another burden to the already rather full
working schedule of members during a session. Yet, the Committee’s concluding
comments instigate further improvement of women’s enjoyment of their human
rights, and thus, are of greatest importance. I envision making these concluding
comments even more concrete and precise to increase their relevance to States
Parties and the Committee’s 
impact.

 

           
Beginning in 2008, the Committee will be located in Geneva for two of its
hopefully three annual sessions and will be serviced by the OHCHR. While this is
a development that the Committee had already requested in 1994, parting from the
DAW is not without regret and sadness, and certainly with deep gratitude to all
its staff, since the servicing provided has become excellent after the Division
and the Committee moved to New
York. The links to the efforts of the Commission on the
Status of Women and with the overall United Nations system is of great value to
the Committee’s work. Thus, the Committee must maintain links with whatever new
gender-structure will be emerging in the United Nations. At the same time, being
located in Geneva and serviced – together with all other human rights treaty
bodies – by the OHCHR  will offer a
great opportunity for harmonizing and integrating the human rights treaty bodies
into a system, which will be recognized as one and will act in a harmonious
manner without being unified into a single body,  or a reduced number of treaty bodies or
being confronted with a single unified report.

 

 In the many years I had the honor to
serve on the CEDAW Committee, I, unfortunately, had to recognize the world-wide
persistence of discrimination against women. While women undoubtedly are making
progress in the exercise and enjoyment of their human rights, such progress,
nevertheless, is slow and new challenges emerge, which threaten the gains that
have been achieved. It is, therefore, necessary, that the work of this
Committee, which has proven to be so successful over the past twenty-five years,
will continue with the same or even greater support by the secretariat; UN
specialized agencies, programs and funds; States Parties; NGOs and – a recently
emerged phenomenon – national human rights institutions.

 

I hope to be speaking for the
Committee when expressing the following wishes to be realized in the near
future, such as universal ratification of the Convention and the Optional
Protocol;  review and withdrawal of
reservations; regular reporting by States Parties and increased follow-up by the
Committee on its concluding comments, views and decisions; additional support
activities by UN entities,  NGOs and
NHRIs; and an increase in cooperation with other human rights treaty bodies in
the framework of moving towards a harmonized and integrated system. The past
twenty-five years have proven and underlined the need for the Convention and its
Committee. Thus, any treaty body reform must preserve and uphold the specificity
of this Committee’s work, a specificity, which is directly related to the
specific nature of discrimination against women. Women comprise half of
humanity, and I look forward to the day when they will be able to exercise and
enjoy their human rights on an equal basis with men. The Committee’s endeavors
undoubtedly will continue to contribute to this goal!

 

Thank you!