The United Nations Working Group established by the Commission on the Status of Women to examine the possibility of an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) met for the third time in March 1998.
Those negotiations were well attended and progress was made in resolving difficult issues in the draft text. The Working Group will meet again in March 1999 and there seems to be a reasonable chance that the Optional Protocol could be agreed at this meeting.
The Optional Protocol which is proposed for CEDAW would:
- Provide a procedure to enable women to complain to the Committee about violations of CEDAW by their Governments
- Include an inquiry procedure to enable the Committee to conduct inquiries into serious or systemic abuses of women's human rights in countries that are party to the Optional Protocol.
A similar process exists under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for communications to be made by individuals directly to the Human Rights Committee. An Optional Protocol to CEDAW would play a positive role in promoting States' compliance with the provisions of the Convention, creating broader public awareness of women's human rights and placing the Convention on an equal footing with other international human rights instruments.
However, a number of issues are yet to be resolved. For example, agreement is yet to be reached on who should have standing to submit communications to the CEDAW Committee and whether States should be able to make reservations to the Protocol.
The essence of the debate on standing is whether groups and organizations should be permitted to have standing before the Committee in their own right, or whether they should be required to be acting on behalf of individual women. Groups and organizations do not have standing in other complaints processes which form part of the UN human rights system. However, they can be authorized to act on behalf of individuals who have suffered as a result of a breach of the Convention.
The argument in support to authorizing groups, for example women's NGOs, to have standing in their own right to take complaints to the CEDAW Committee, is that to be effective for women the Protocol must recognize that there will be situations where, through fear of retribution, lack of resources or lack of information, women may not be in a position to take advantage of the complaints process. The same argument is used to support the position that communications could be submitted by individuals or groups of individuals, or on their behalf. This phrase appears in the current text in brackets to indicate that consensus is yet to be reached on its inclusion.
The second key outstanding issue is whether States should be permitted to enter reservations to any of the provisions of the Optional Protocol, allowing them to opt out of particular aspects of the communications process.
Consensus on the issue of reservations was elusive at this year's negotiations, and is expected to be one of the more difficult remaining issues. Accordingly the current draft reflects two options: the first is that no reservations are to be permitted, the second is that only reservations consistent with the object and purpose of the protocol should be permitted. Many States consider that any reservations would be inherently inconsistent with the object and purpose of the Protocol, which is, after all, optional. There remains uncertainty about whether agreement will be able to be reached on giving the CEDAW Committee a power of inquiry into systematic and serious vie Convention. Many States have particular sensitivities regarding an inquiry process, and this is likely to effect the outcome of negotiations on reservations.
New Zealand is a signatory of the CEDAW Convention and supports the development of an Optional Protocol which creates an effective mechanism for women, and which would enhance the implementation of the Convention.
Information about the proposed Optional Protocol, including the draft text, is available from the Human Rights Unit, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Tel: 04 494-8232; and on the internet at: www.womenwatch/daw/CEDAW/protocol/optional.htm.