Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women Adjourns Seventy-eighth Session

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women this afternoon adjourned its online seventy-eighth session, during which it considered the ninth periodic report of Denmark, its first review of a State party report to be held virtually.

The Committee adopted ad referendum the report of its seventy-eighth session, as well as the agenda for its seventy-ninth session.

In concluding remarks, Gladys Acosta Vargas, Chair of the Committee, said the dialogue with Denmark had been the Committee’s first-ever online dialogue. She said that she was only adjourning the session, which concluded today, as the Committee would exceptionally meet in private on 4 March to adopt its concluding remarks on the report of Denmark.

The Chair said that in view of the exceptional situation created by the pandemic, the Committee had not been able to review the reports of eight States parties initially scheduled for the seventy-eighth session. These State party reviews had been postponed to the seventy-ninth session, which was scheduled to take place in June/July this year. As agreed, they would wait for an assessment of the security situation linked to the pandemic at the end of March to see whether or not the summer session could be held in-person in Geneva.

In other work, the Chair said that the Committee had adopted two important joint statements at this session, a “Call for national action plans to achieve gender parity by 2030”, to be issued jointly by the Committee and the Inter-Parliamentary Union on International Women’s Day on 8 March 2021, and a joint statement on “Corruption and human rights”, to be issued jointly by the Committee and the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Human Rights Committee.

The seventy-ninth session of the Committee will be held from 21 June to 9 July 2021.

CEDAW21.004E