Until now, Tunisia has not used Chapter 1 as an excuse for maintaining laws or practices that violate Cedaw.
Saudi Arabia is probably the most extreme case of using "Islamic law" to negate the effects of human rights treaties but, among the other Arab countries, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Syria and the UAE have also lodged Sharia-based reservations to Cedaw.
The UK is currently failing numerous international and domestic human rights and gender equality obligations in this area – despite growing calls for action from bodies such as the United Nations committee to end discrimination against women (Cedaw), the UN Beijing Platform for Action, Evaw and Women's National Commission.
It was one of the first countries to sign up to Cedaw – way back in 1980 – and women accounted for more than 20% of its members of parliament.
Saudi Arabia, for example, operates the world's most blatant and institutionalised system of discrimination against women – and yet, along with 17 other Arab states, it is also a party to Cedaw.
CEDAW's (1979) requirement for the elimination of "all forms" of discrimination against women has been a framework for these debates (IWRAW-AP 2012).
In the case of CEDAW, the OP consists of the Communications Procedure, which enables people to complain directly to the CEDAW monitoring committee, and the Inquiry Procedure, which empowers the CEDAW monitoring committee to investigate systematic forms of discrimination against women.
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1979 that defines discrimination against women and commits signatory countries to taking steps toward ending it.
While the basic right to political equality is taken for granted in many societies today and is explicit in the norms of international law (CEDAW 1979), in some cultures women are still not equal citizens.
JUNE ZEITLIN Washington, Dec. 2, 2011 The writer is director of the Cedaw Education Project of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Human rights are now said to apply equally to women and equal protection of the law is seen as applying equally to men and women (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women [CEDAW] 1979).
