The Convention was adopted by the UN's General Assembly in 1979 and entered into force in 1981. It amplifies some of the existing provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Its provisions include obligations for states to pursue policies for eliminating discrimination against women in the areas of government, nationality, access to education and employment opportunities, health care and equality before the law. As of December 2002, the Convention had 170 ratifications.

This is the first commentary on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), analyzing the Convention article by article. Each chapter provides an overview of an article's negotiating history, interpretation, and all the relevant case law, including decisions and recommendations by the CEDAW Committee.

As an instrument which addresses the circumstances which affect women's lives and enjoyment of rights in a diverse world, the CEDAW is slowly but surely making its mark on the development of international and national law. Using national case studies from South Asia, Southern Africa, Australia, Canada and Northern Europe, Women's Human Rights examines the potential and actual added value of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in comparison and interaction with other equality and anti-discrimination mechanisms. The studies demonstrate how state and non-state actors have invoked, adopted or resisted the CEDAW and related instruments in different legal, political, economic and socio-cultural contexts, and how the various international, regional and national regimes have drawn inspiration and learned from each other.

This book looks at the centerpiece of the international women’s rights discourse, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and asks to what extent it affects the lives of women worldwide. Rather than assuming a trickle-down effect, the author discusses specific methods which have made CEDAW resonate. These methods include attempts to influence the international level by clarifying the meaning of women’s rights and strengthening the Convention’s monitoring procedure, and building connections between international and domestic contexts that enable diverse actors to engage with CEDAW. This analysis shows that while the Convention has worldwide impact, this impact is fundamentally dependent on context-specific values and agency. Hence, rather than thinking of women’s rights exclusively as normative content, Zwingel suggests to see them as in process. This book will especially appeal to students and scholars interested in transnational feminism and gender and global governance.

This publication reproduces the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the nine core international human rights treaties and their optional protocols in a user-friendly format to make them more accessible, in particular to government officials, civil society, human rights defenders, legal practitioners, scholars, individual citizens and others with an interest in human rights norms and standards.

The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Law and Procedure examines the core UN human rights treaties that form the framework of international human rights law. This book describes the development of each treaty, along with the substantive rights enshrined in them, and analyses the nature and functions of their respective monitoring bodies. Topics discussed include periodic reporting procedures, investigative procedures and individual complaint procedures, with supporting case law analysed in great detail. This practical and indispensable reference resource: - Guides you through the structure of each of the core UN human rights treaties, explaining both the substance of the rights and the various procedures which may be drawn upon to implement those rights - Explains in detail how each of these procedures may be accessed, as well as critiquing their operation in practice - Covers a wide number of areas including civil and political rights generally, racial and gender-based discrimination and the prohibition against torture - Discusses proposals for reform of the UN human rights treaty monitoring system and the implications of these reforms The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Law and Procedure has been written for practitioners and students of human rights law in the UK, Ireland and abroad. Government bodies, non-governmental organisations, national human rights institutions and charities will also find this a great resource.

This volume is the fully revised and updated version of the first comprehensive commentary on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol. It reflects the developments during the decade following the publication of the first edition in 2012, which has also seen a notable rise in individual complaints (more than 85), ten new General Recommendations, and six new inquiry procedures as well as numerous statements, partly in conjunction with other UN human rights bodies. The Convention is a key international human rights instrument and the only one exclusively addressed to women. It has been described as the United Nations' 'landmark treaty in the struggle for women's rights'. At a time when the backlash against women's human rights and the concept of gender-based discrimination is increasingly challenged by governments and powerful societal actors, the Commentary is an important instrument to hold all state powers to account on their international obligations under the Convention. The Commentary analyses the interpretation of the Convention through the work of its monitoring body, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. It comprises detailed analyses of the Preamble and each article of the Convention and of the Optional Protocol, including a separate chapter on the cross-cutting substantive issue of violence against women. The sources relied on are the treaty language and the general recommendations, concluding observations, and case law under the Optional Protocol (individual complaints and inquiries), through which the Committee has interpreted and applied the Convention. Each chapter is self-contained, but the Commentary is conceived of as an integral whole. The book also includes an introduction which provides an overview of the Convention and its embedding in the international law of human rights as well as the most recent challenges to women's human rights worldwide.