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The Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
The establishment of CEDAW in 1979 by the United Nations signaled the acceptance by the international community of the necessity of an international bill of rights for women, and an accompanying agenda for action that would guarantee women’s enjoyment of these rights.
• Countries Must Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is one of seven United Nations human rights treaties. It provides the basis for realizing equality between women and men through ensuring women’s equal access to, and equal opportunities in, political and public life, as well as education, reproductive health, employment, family law, child care, and social security.
• Countries Must Take Pro-active Measures to Uphold the Convention
Countries who sign the Convention agree to take all appropriate measures, including legislation and temporary special measures, so that women can enjoy all of their human rights and fundamental freedoms.
• Canada Must Regularly Report to the United Nations
As part of signing the agreement, Canada must regularly report to the United Nations on its progress in fully implementing CEDAW.
CEDAW’s Optional Protocol
In October 2002, Canada signed on to a new human rights treaty that creates two new procedures to enhance compliance with CEDAW.
- Communications Procedure: Individuals and groups can submit a formal complaint to the United Nations about alleged violations of CEDAW by their country.
- UN Inquiry: The UN Committee can demand information and an explanation from a country where grave or systematic violations of CEDAW may be occurring.
A History of CEDAW in the Global Context
- 1946: The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Status of Women is established to monitor the situation of women and promote women’s rights.
- 1979: The UN Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
- 1980: Canada signs CEDAW.
- 1981: Canada ratifies CEDAW, along with 19 other countries.
- 2002: Canada adopts the CEDAW Optional Protocol (OP). In doing so, it joins 52 other countries who have ratified it.
- 2003: In December 2003, 175 countries have ratified CEDAW.
Women & the Convention: The Story of CEDAW in Canada
Many women in Canada are not familiar with the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, in part because the Canadian government has not well-publicized its own obligations under this international treaty.
Nonetheless, a few women’s organization in Canada have made strategic use of CEDAW in order to illuminate how Canada is failing to live up to its domestic and international commitments to women’s equality.
In 1990, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women submitted a parallel report to the United Nations regarding Canada’s second CEDAW report which focused on the negative impact that Canada’s changing economic priorities, including cuts to core funding for women’s organizations, access to employment insurance, quality child care, abortion, and employment equity, were having on women in Canada.
In 1993, the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women produced a report on the steps Canada had taken to fulfill its obligations under CEDAW in which it concluded that few of Canada’s CEDAW commitments had been fully, or even partially fulfilled, and that Canada continued to enter into international treaty agreements without being clear about how or if they would be implemented.
In 1997, an ad hoc group of individuals and orgnizations produced a shadow report on the occasion of the 4th UN review of Canada’s adherence to CEDAW. This report focused on the growth of women’s inequality as a direct result of the government of Canada’s policy priorties. The report illuminated the negative impact of the federal government’s elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan in 1995 (which had set standards in the delivery of health care, education and social security programs across the country).
The report concluded that these policies compromise Canada’s own domestic commitments to women’s inequality, including those made in the Charter of Human Rights and Freedom (which the federal government has identified as one of the primary vehicles through which CEDAW is upheld in Canada).
In 2002, the Feminist Alliance for International Action submitted an alternative report to the United Nations CEDAW Committee on the occasion of the 5th review of Canada’s report. The report, Canada’s Failure to Act: Women’s Inequality Deepens demonstrates that many laws, policies and programs necessary to ensure women’s inequality have not been implemented or, alternately, have been eliminated.
In January 2003, the UN Committee which reviewed Canada’s compliance to CEDAW noted that the federal government must take urgent action to remedy the profoundly unequal status of Aboriginal and First nations women, the systemic discrimination confronted by immigrant and refugee women as well as women who come to Canada under the Live-in caregiver program, the scarce resources for legal aid for family and civil law, women’s increasing poverty, and the downloading of care-giving onto women due to cuts in social programs.