COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN CONCLUDES FORTY-SECOND SESSION

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women this afternoon concluded its forty-second session and issued its concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mongolia, Myanmar, Portugal, Slovenia and Uruguay.

These concluding observations will be available on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights next week under the following link:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/cedaws42.htm

This morning, Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the Committee that she would support all the Treaty Bodies in their important work. She also recognized that the Treaty Bodies were the custodians of international human rights norms. Ms. Pillay said that she was particularly aware of the work of this Committee. In light of this, she would be an energetic advocate for universal ratification of the Convention and its Optional Protocol. She had been very impressed by the work of the Committee over its twenty-five years. It was pleasing that from 2010, the Committee would meet for three annual sessions of three weeks and would have further working group time.

The adoption of the Optional Protocol had been a triumph, said Ms. Pillay, to which the Committee had significantly contributed and she was delighted to note that it was receiving more and more communications. She knew however that there were many more women who could benefit from the procedures established by the Optional Protocol and it was critical that there be targeted legal literacy strategies developed to encourage them to use the instrument. In conclusion, she assured that the Committee would be a central pat of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights capacity building activities.

Dubravka Simonovic, Chairperson of the Committee, in concluding observations, said that this morning they had met with the new High Commissioner and had exchanged views on issues relevant to the work of the Committee under the servicing of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. They had discussed ways and means needed to strengthen the impact of the Convention and the work of the Committee at the national and the United Nations level.

Ms. Simonovic said that this session had been marked by a heavy workload, as they had considered and adopted concluding observations for 12 States from all regions of the world. In addition to adopting concluding observations, they had also considered several petitions under the Optional Protocol and had discussed potential inquiries. During the session they had also adopted their 26th general recommendation on migrant women workers and had started to work on the general recommendation on older women and on the economic consequences of divorce.

Ms. Simonovic said the Committee had also adopted a statement on the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It stated that there was no doubt that also in 2008 full equality, both formal and substantive, of women and men around the world had not yet been achieved. Nevertheless the Committee was convinced that the principle of equality of women and men in the enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms did not only constitute crucial treaty obligations, but was also emerging as a principle of customary international law.
The Committee had further considered their inputs to the Durban Review conferences and ways to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Convention and the tenth anniversary of the Optional Protocol.

The Committee will hold its forty-third session in Geneva from 19 January to 6 February 2009 during which it will consider the reports of Armenia, Bhutan, Cameroon, Dominica, Germany, Guatemala, Haiti, Libya and Rwanda on how those countries are implementing their obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

For use of the information media; not an official record

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