[Senate Hearing 107-530]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-530
TREATY DOC. 96-53; CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN, ADOPTED BY THE U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON
DECEMBER 18, 1979, AND SIGNED ON BEHALF OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ON JULY 17, 1980
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 13, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
senate
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
80-461 WASHINGTON : 2002
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware, Chairman
PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland JESSE HELMS, North Carolina
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota BILL FRIST, Tennessee
BARBARA BOXER, California LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia
BILL NELSON, Florida SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
Virginia
Antony J. Blinken, Staff Director
Patricia A. McNerney, Republican Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Balmforth, Ms. Kathryn Ogden, Member, Firm of Wood Crapo, LLC,
Salt Lake City, Utah, Former Director, World Family Policy
Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.................... 40
Prepared statement........................................... 42
Davis, Hon. Jo Ann, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington,
D.C............................................................ 11
Hoff-Sommers, Dr. Christina, Resident Scholar, American
Enterprise Institute, Chevy Chase, MD.......................... 51
Prepared statement........................................... 54
Kirkpatrick, Hon. Jeane, Senior Fellow & Director of Foreign and
Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute, Former
Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Washington,
D.C............................................................ 29
Prepared statement........................................... 31
Koh, Hon. Harold Hongju, Professor, Yale Law School, Former
Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, New Haven, CT... 32
Prepared statement........................................... 35
Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, D.C................................................ 23
Mclennan, Hon. Juliette C., Former U.S. Representative to the
U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, Easton, MD............. 47
Prepared statement........................................... 48
Millender-McDonald, Hon. Juanita, U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, D.C................................................ 14
Prepared statement........................................... 27
Morella, Hon. Constance A., U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, D.C................................................ 21
Smith, Ms. Jane E., Chief Executive Officer, Business and
Professional Women/USA, Washington, D.C........................ 56
Prepared statement........................................... 58
Woolsey, Hon. Lynn C., U.S. House of Representatives, Washington,
D.C............................................................ 9
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Appendixes
A. Text of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women................................... 73
B. Material Submitted in Support of Ratification of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women.................................................. 85
C. Material Submitted in Opposition to Ratification of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women.................................................. 121
(iii)
TREATY DOC. 96-53; CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN, ADOPTED BY THE U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON
DECEMBER 18, 1979, AND SIGNED ON BEHALF OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ON JULY 17, 1980
----------
THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph R.
Biden, Jr., chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Biden, Boxer, Feingold, Wellstone,
Brownback, and Enzi.
The Chairman. The hearing will come to order, please.
Today, the Committee on Foreign Relations is going to consider
an important treaty designed to advance the rights of women
around the world: The Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Action on this treaty is
long overdue. It was submitted by President Carter in 1980. Let
me say that again. It was submitted by President Carter in
1980.
Eight years ago, in September 1994, the committee approved
this treaty 13 to 5; so we are on record. I voted for this
treaty, and others who were on this committee at the time, 13
of us, some of whom are still here, voted for this treaty in
1994.
Unfortunately, no action has been taken on the treaty since
that date. At the outset, let me express my disappointment with
the manner in which, and I have tried to be very, very
cooperative with the Department with which this committee has
had great relations and no substantive complaints with the
Department of State, but I want to express my disappointment
with the manner in which the administration has addressed this
treaty. Its cooperation has been far from satisfactory, and
this is not just carping. Let me explain why.
Last June, I became chairman--as my father would say, it is
better to be lucky than good. After I became chairman, I wrote
Secretary Powell to invite the State Department to submit its
list--and would you close that door back there? I would ask the
police to close the door in the back and keep the noise down.
Thank you.
Last June, as I said, after I became chairman, I wrote
Secretary Powell to invite the Department of State to submit
its list of priorities for treaties pending in the Senate,
restating the request made by Senator Helms 3 months earlier,
which I might say for my colleagues from the House, this is one
of the few things the Constitution does not have them do,
treaties. It is a tradition of the Senate. It is a practice to
ask each administration to do that. There is nothing abnormal
about the request that was made. In my letter I indicated that
I expected to convene a hearing on the Woman's Convention in
the coming year.
Senator Boxer and I have been talking about this for
several years, but because of the--and I do not say this
critically. It is just an observation. Because of the strong
opposition of the then-chairman of the committee, there was no
likelihood we were going to get a hearing on the treaty, and so
we had planned a half-a-dozen different ways to try to bring
the treaty up on the floor even without a hearing, and we found
that we ran into roadblocks that would make it virtually
impossible to get it done, so I indicated that I expected to
convene a hearing on the women's convention in the coming year,
and that the Department would be asked to testify at the time.
In February of this year, in response to my letter, the
Department submitted, and I quote, the administration's treaty
priority list for the 107th Congress.
Now, the letter places treaties pending in the Senate in a
number of categories. The letter I received from the
Department, the letter indicated that the Bush administration
supported the women's convention and placed that treaty in
category III, a category of treaties which the administration
believes, ``are generally desirable and should be approved,''
not their highest priority. There are other treaties they have
listed. There are several categories in the letter they have
sent us, but in the letter they sent us in February saying, we
believe this treaty is generally desirable and should be
approved.
Heartened by that statement, in early March I wrote back to
the Secretary of State and indicated the committee would hold a
hearing after the Easter recess. I invited the Under Secretary
of State for Global Affairs to appear at the hearing, scheduled
for May 15. As the hearing date approached, the Department
informed this committee that it was still discussing who would
testify for the administration, so I postponed the hearing,
fully expecting that, giving them the opportunity--they are for
this treaty--to decide who it was who would best make the case
for the administration for this treaty, so I postponed the
hearing and rescheduled it for this week and issued a new
written invitation to the Under Secretary for Global Affairs.
Despite this considerable advance warning--now, remember,
this is right after Easter, and we rescheduled it for now. At
the end of May the committee received a request for another
delay in the hearing. The reason given, the Department of
Justice had just begun a new review of the treaty. So at the
end of May we are told, after being told in February they
supported this treaty, that the Department of Justice was going
to review the treaty.
Now, for years I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I
can tell you how long it takes the Department of Justice to
reach a decision on anything that is controversial. So, I fail
to understand this new development. The committee was informed
that the treaty priority letter had been subject to a thorough
interagency review prior to its submission to the committee. I
asked, I said, now look, you sent us this list at the beginning
of the year. Was it just an accident that it got put on the
list, no one vetted it? They said no, the whole letter we sent
you listing all the treaties and our priorities had been
subject to a thorough interagency review prior to its
submission to this committee.
The sudden news that the Department of Justice has just
initiated a review suggests that was either not the case, or
something has intervened that I do not fully understand. More
to the point, I am concerned by the casual attitude of the
executive branch toward the treaty process and the legitimate
request of this committee for testimony on a significant treaty
pending before it.
I indicated last June--not this June, last June--that the
committee would have a hearing in the coming year. I reiterated
that notice in early March, when I told the State Department
the treaty would be subject to a hearing this spring, and over
this period never once was the committee informed that the
Department of Justice had initiated, was planning to initiate,
even thought about initiating a review of this treaty.
I should note that the State Department made a last-minute
offer to send two mid-level officials, but inasmuch as their
testimony would be incomplete until the Department of Justice
had completed a review, I decided to proceed with this hearing
today and to hear from the executive branch when it is fully
prepared, and if it is not fully prepared, to move the treaty,
period, with or without their input.
As of today, the position of the Bush administration, as
reiterated in a letter dated June 4, is this. It believes the
treaty is generally desirable and should be approved. That
statement has not been rescinded, so I am assuming and
proceeding as if the President of the United States supports us
passing this treaty. The fact that it is reviewing the treaty
and the committee's proposed resolution for ratification from
1994 to see if additional conditions should be recommended to
the Senate, should be done quickly, because if it is not done,
we are going to move, and you all know I say--I have five of my
colleagues sitting before me here. You all know our legislative
schedule. What are the prospects, if we were to bring up this
treaty on the floor between now and the time we go out, even
if--even if there were overwhelming support for it? Time is a-
wasting.
The treaty on the rights of women is a landmark document.
It sets forth the basic obligations to advance and protect
equality for women. Most nations of the world, 169 of them in
all, have become a party to this treaty. For the United States,
the treaty will impose a minimal burden. The U.S. Constitution
and existing Federal laws will satisfy the obligations of the
treaty. The United States will need to enter a handful of
reservations to a treaty where it is inconsistent with our
Constitution or current Federal law, as we do with nearly every
treaty, but the United States will not need to enact any new
laws to be in compliance with this treaty.
For the United States, the treaty can be a powerful tool to
support women around the world who fight for equal rights. Our
voice on women's rights will be enhanced by becoming a party to
this treaty, because we will be empowered to call nations to
account for their compliance with the treaty. Absent our
membership, we cannot do that.
Similarly, the treaty is a powerful instrument for women to
demand their rights under it. For example, after the Colombian
Government ratified the treaty in 1981, women's groups across
Colombia relied on the treaty to successfully fight for women's
rights in Colombia's new constitution.
The importance of giving women an equal role in society
cannot be understated. Secretary Powell said it as well as
anyone in his statement on the International Women's Day:
It is not just popular opinion, but plain fact.
Countries that treat women with dignity, that afford
women a choice in how they live their lives, that give
them equal access to essential services, give them an
opportunity to contribute to public life, these are the
countries that are the most stable, valuable, and
capable of meeting the challenges of the new century.
Within the last decade, the United States has joined
multilateral human rights treaties banning torture, promoting
civil and political rights, banning racial discrimination. It
is long past time we joined the rest of the world in dealing
with this same fervor on the rights of women.
Now, let me just conclude by saying this. If we need any
more graphic illustration of why this treaty is needed for
women of the world, I just invite you to come back to
Afghanistan with me. I invite you to come back to Afghanistan
with me, stand there with the Minister for Women's Affairs, and
observe that even after the liberation, the majority of women
are still wearing burkas. Even after this, they are still
worried about their future.
As I met with the Minister of Education and the Minister of
Women's Affairs in a building with no heat in the middle of
January, I believe, there were a group of women, about 50 or
60, standing out in a big anteroom waiting to see the
Ministers. They were all former teachers, and they all had
their burkas on, and I said why? Why? And the Minister of
Women's Affairs asked the Minister of Education, whose office
we were in, whether or not she could call in one of the women.
The woman she called in spoke English. She said, Senator Biden
wants to know why you are still wearing a burka, and she told
me the following story, and I will be very brief.
She said she rode in on a bus--and by the way, an
interesting incongruity, women with burkas in modern high
heels. Seriously, you ought to go and see it. And she said in
perfect English,
I rode in on the bus, and as I got off the bus from
my home I had to walk two blocks to this building. As I
crossed the street, a taxicab with five men pulled over
off the road and up on the sidewalk and blocked my way
between the sidewalk, the cab, and the wall, and the
men jumped out and asked me why did I not have my burka
on, and I just looked at them, and they said, ``the
Taliban may be gone, but the mujahedin is still here.''
I now wear my burka.
If you women had not fought to make sure that in Bonn, this
new Government, this Loya Jirga which is taking place in
Afghanistan right now, included women, it would not happen. If
we do not set an international standard, we are going to have
this repeated time and again.
So, as I turn the gavel over--and it is not just
ceremonial, it is real--to the woman in this place who has been
the single strongest voice for women internationally, the
person who has been the single strongest voice for women
internationally as a member of this committee, and I want to
make something clear. I do not want anybody to read my not
chairing this as meaning that this committee does not view this
as vital. The reason that the Senator from California is going
to chair this is she has forgotten more about this than most
people know. She cares more about it than anybody else in the
Senate, and it should be viewed in the way it is intended. This
is a symbolic gesture as well to indicate just how important
this committee, speaking for myself and I think the majority of
this committee, believes this treaty is.
So without any further ado, I am going to sit here somewhat
silently, although I make no firm commitment, and turn the
gavel over to my friend from California to run this hearing.
Senator Boxer [presiding]. Senator Biden, I am very moved
and touched by your remarks. I hope this hearing will be very
fair. It is very balanced, I say to my friends on the other
side of the aisle who may not agree with us, and it means a
great deal to me, not only that you are allowing me this honor
of chairing the first hearing since 1994, but it says to me the
fact that you are here and that you made as strong a statement
as you did, that we could not be better served. It is, as you
would say, a big deal. It is a big deal to me and to the
members of this committee.
I would ask unanimous consent to put my entire statement in
the record. Since I am now chair, I will give myself permission
to do that, and I would like to summarize here so we can get to
every Member and get to our panels.
I think there is no better time than right now to show our
commitment to women by approving this treaty, CEDAW. Senator
Biden, you touched on the reasons, and I am going to amplify on
them a little bit. Afghanistan, we had no idea after 9/11 the
road would lead there. The road did lead there, and it led to
the liberation of the women of Afghanistan, or at least the
first steps of their liberation.
Afghanistan showed us how cruelly women can be treated
throughout the world. Under the Taliban, women were beaten for
offenses like bearing their ankle or going outside to beg for
food without a male escort, or for not wearing the suffocating
burka, and the word suffocation is an important word, because
the burka not only interfered with their ability to breathe--
and if you have ever put a burka on, you know what I mean--but
it suffocated their individuality.
Indeed, it suffocated their humanity, which is exactly the
point. Women were forced to be made invisible, and clearly from
Senator Biden's eye witness reports they still are. Their
daughters are forced to go without an education, or without
basic health care.
Right now, Afghanistan is in the midst of the process to
form a new Government, given the past treatment of women and
girls in their country, Afghanistan needs an international
framework to look to in drafting the new laws of their nation.
Clearly, CEDAW should be that guide, and the U.S. should be
pushing Afghanistan to abide by the principles contained in the
CEDAW treaty, which I might say are the very same principles
that guide us in our laws.
I would like to place into the record, and I will do so, a
letter sent to me yesterday by Dr. Sema Samar, a vice chair of
the Afghan Interim Authority, and the Minister of Women's
Affairs, who Senator Biden referred to. As pointed out by Dr.
Samar, the U.S. cannot use CEDAW as a diplomatic tool for human
rights because we have not ratified it. It is very important,
she writes to us, to the women of Afghanistan, that we do this.
I want to make clear to all colleagues we are speaking to the
women of Afghanistan and the women of the world when we act on
this treaty.
I would like to use the prerogative of the chair to ask two
Afghan women who are here with us today to rise, Nasiba and
Nafesia. Would they rise, please? Would you stand, please?
We want to welcome you. These two women work for the
Minister of Women's Affairs, and they come here to show their
strong support for this treaty. We also have women from Egypt
and India here today, and I want to thank them. They also feel
very strongly. Would they stand up, the women from Egypt and
India? They were at a press conference.
Ladies and gentlemen of this committee, this is not a
theoretical matter. This is a matter that impacts these women
every single day of their lives. This treaty has been ratified
by 169 countries since it was first adopted in 1979. The United
States is one of the few not on the list. I want to point out
to my colleagues, we are standing with non-ratifying countries
like Syria, Iran, and Somalia. Syria, Iran, and Somalia. We
cannot continue to stand with those nations. It is a disgrace,
in my opinion. In my humble opinion it is time to move forward.
The CEDAW treaty is designed to overcome barriers to
women's equality in the areas of legal rights, education,
employment, health care, politics, and finance. It is a
meaningful treaty. Senator Biden gave an example of Colombia.
Let me give you one in Brazil. When Brazil reformed its
constitution it used the treaty as a guide for including
guarantees of human rights to women. In Costa Rica, the treaty
was helpful in developing property rights and political
participation for women.
Yet we know women all over the world are still suffering
discrimination. Worldwide, 130 million women are victims of
female genital mutilation, 2 million girls are sold into sexual
slavery every year, and women are four times more vulnerable
than men from dying from the HIV/AIDS virus. The disease is
killing 1.3 million women a year, and yet women are being
denied health care throughout the world.
So the committee did hold its last hearing in 1994, and it
voted 13 to 5 to report it out, with one abstention. I was not
on the committee then. I am so happy to be on it now. But
despite this bipartisan vote, the treaty never came before the
full Senate for consideration. Today's hearing is an effort to
address this treaty from the point where we left off in 1994.
We are using as a starting point the recommendations made by
the Clinton administration and the understanding added by
Senator Helms that says that nothing in the treaty shall be
construed to reflect or create any right to abortion.
Is that a vote in the House?
Ms. Woolsey. I am going to miss the Journal.
Senator Boxer. If some of you want to go and come back, we
will do that.
Ms. Davis. It is adoption of the rule, and then there is
another vote after that.
Senator Boxer. Maybe you should go over at the end and vote
on the one and the next.
I also understand there are concerns the CEDAW committee
established by the treaty somehow interferes with the
sovereignty of the United States. This is false, and I want to
lay that right out there. The committee does say some
controversial things that I do not agree with, but let it be
clear the committee cannot in any way force any government to
change its laws or adopt the opinions that they are expressing.
If we have to clarify that, we will. We will take care of that
problem. We do not want to be deterred.
It is also important to make clear that the ratification
would not require the United States to change or adopt any
laws. This is very important. Senator Biden addressed the fact
that we do not have the Bush administration here, they are not
ready, so I will put that in the record.
What I am trying to do is see if we can, with the agreement
of the Minority, allow at least one or two of you to go forward
before you need to leave, so I am going to put the rest of my
statement into the record and say again what an honor this is,
and Senator Enzi, would it be alright if we heard from, say, a
pro and a con, and then take your testimony immediately
following, since they have a vote? That would be nice, so why
don't we take Lynn Woolsey, and then Hon. Jo Ann Davis, then
they can run and do the vote. Go ahead, Lynn.
[The prepared statement of Senator Boxer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Barbara Boxer
I want to thank Senator Biden for bringing us to this moment and
for giving me the honor of chairing this hearing. It means a great deal
to me.
There is no better time than now for the Senate to approve the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW). We should be propelled forward because Afghanistan has
shown us how cruelly women can be treated throughout the world.
The number of people outside of this hearing room shows the great
interest in this Treaty. The young women who are here today demonstrate
that the future in many ways is about them. They want to know we
believe in them.
Under the Taliban, women were beaten for offenses like showing an
ankle or for going outside to beg for food without a male escort. They
were forced to wear the burka which suffocated their individuality and
their humanity. Women were made to be invisible and their daughters
forced to go without an education or basic health care.
Right now, Afghanistan is in the midst of the Loya Jirga process to
form a new government. Given the past treatment of women and girls,
Afghanistan needs an international framework to look to in drafting the
new laws of their nation.
CEDAW should be that guide and the U.S. should be pushing
Afghanistan to abide by the principles contained in the CEDAW treaty.
I want to place into the record a letter sent to me yesterday by
Dr. Sima Samara--Vice Chair of the Afghan Interim Authority and
Minister of Women Affairs. As pointed out by Dr. Samar, the U.S. cannot
use CEDAW has a diplomatic tool for human rights because we have not
ratified it--it is very important to the women of Afghanistan that we
do so.
The treaty has been ratified by 169 countries since it was first
adopted in 1979. The United States is one of the few who are not on
this list. We are standing with non-ratifying countries like Syria,
Iran and Somalia. In my opinion, this is a disgrace.
President Carter signed the CEDAW treaty in 1980. It is time to
move forward. The CEDAW treaty is designed to overcome barriers to
women's equality in the areas of legal rights, education, employment,
health care, politics and finance. It is a meaningful treaty.
For example, when Brazil reformed its constitution, it used the
treaty as a guide for including guarantees of human rights for women.
In Costa Rica, the treaty was helpful in developing property rights and
political participation for women.
Yet there is much more work to be done because women throughout the
world are still suffering because of discrimination.
We know that 130 million women are victims worldwide of female
genital mutilation, 2 million girls are sold into sexual slavery each
year; and women are four times more vulnerable than men of dying from
the HIV/AIDS virus. The disease kills 1.3 million women each year.
As I said before, the committee last held a hearing on the treaty
in 1994, and voted 13-5 with one abstention to recommend ratification.
Despite this bipartisan vote, the treaty has never come before the full
Senate for consideration.
Today's hearing is an effort to address this treaty from the point
where we left off in 1994. We are using as a starting point the
recommendations made by the Clinton administration, and the
understanding added by Senator Helms that says that nothing in the
treaty shall be construed to reflect or create any right to abortion.
I also understand that there are concerns that the CEDAW committee
established by the treaty somehow interferes with the sovereignty of
the United States. This is false. The only requirement this treaty
imposes on ratifying countries is to report progress and obstacles
encountered in moving toward treaty standards. The committee, which I
don't always agree with, cannot mandate government actions.
I want to be clear here: the committee has no enforcement powers.
If we need to clarify this fact in the Resolution of Ratification, I
think it is worth exploring.
It is also important to make clear that ratification of this treaty
would not automatically require the United States to change or adopt
any laws. Whenever the U.S. Constitution or laws conflict with the
obligations of the treaty, U.S. laws will take precedence.
Unfortunately, we can not explore these issues with the Bush
Administration today. The administration has said that this treaty is
``generally desirable and should be approved.'' However, no senior
State Department official was made available to testify today. Clearly
they have dropped the ball on an issue that is very important--
especially after the way women were treated in Afghanistan.
The U.S. effort to prevent another Afghanistan and to promote
health and equality for women everywhere will be much more effective
and credible if we join with other nations that support human rights
and ratify this treaty without further delay.
I hope that the administration will join us in this view and work
to ratify the treaty this year. And I really hope that the committee
will report the treaty favorably to the full Senate as soon as
possible.
[The letter from Dr. Samar referred to by Senator Boxer
follows:]
Ministry of Women's Affairs,
Interim Administration of Afghanistan,
June 12, 2002.
Hon. Barbara Boxer,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Boxer: The leaders of my homeland of Afghanistan are
convening once again in the traditional Loya Jirga, a long-awaited
council whose delegates will outline the way we will live in the
future. In my capacity as Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission in
Afghanistan, I am asking for the help of the United States in making
sure that our new government guarantees full human rights for women. An
urgent first step must be your ratification of the International CEDAW
Treaty for the Rights of Women.
As the world knows, Afghan women were subjected to outrageous
abuses under the previous Taliban government as well as oppression and
violence throughout the last 23 years. For the first time in many
years, there is a hope that the rights of women will be recognized and
defended in this country. Now the Loya Jirga is considering parts of
our 1964 Constitution as a model for the new government. It was broadly
respectful of basic rights for women, but there is no guarantee the
Loya Jirga will adopt those provisions. More models and more persuasion
are needed. The CEDAW treaty is the most important international guide
and set of standards on the human rights of women, which of course has
never been ratified by Afghanistan.
I understand that the U.S. Senate is now considering whether the
United States should join 169 other countries in ratifying the CEDAW
treaty. I believe it will be important for me and other Afghan women if
you do take this step. We will then be able to tell our countrymen that
the United States, where women already have full legal rights, has just
seen the need to ratify this treaty. This treaty will then truly be the
international measure of the rights that any country should guarantee
to its women. We will be able to refer to its terms and guidelines in
public debates over what our laws should say. Your advisers to many of
our leaders here will be able to cite its provisions in their
recommendations. And perhaps we women will achieve full human rights
for the first time in a generation.
Senator Boxer, on behalf of the women of my country, I urge you to
do everything possible to see that the United States ratifies the CEDAW
treaty. Members of the U.S. Senate will thus be able to say that they
had a significant influence in freeing the women of Afghanistan. Thank
you very much for your time and attention to my plea. Please keep in
touch with me on your progress.
Sincerely,
Dr. Sima Samar,
Vice Chair and Minister of Women's Affairs.
STATEMENT OF HON. LYNN C. WOOLSEY, U.S. HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is definitely an
honor to be here today, and I thank you and I thank the members
of the committee and Senator Biden for recognizing the
importance of ratifying this important CEDAW initiative.
Out of the 22 years that the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, has been
in existence, I have spent the last 9 years in the House
pushing for the ratification of this incredibly important
treaty. In fact, the first resolution that I introduced in the
House was a resolution calling on the Senate to ratify CEDAW.
That was in 1993, and I have reintroduced a resolution every
Congress since.
In that time, we have subsequently gained cosponsors,
bipartisan cosponsors, by the way, as well as support from all
sectors of Congress, Republicans, Democrats, blue dogs, new
Democrats. The resolution that I have introduced in the 107th
Congress, House Resolution 18, currently has 119 bipartisan
cosponsors. It is important to note that there is a groundswell
of support for ratification, both here in the House and in the
Senate and among the local governments and grassroots
organizations.
At the end of the year, 16 States and 58 United States
counties and cities, including Marin County, where Barbara
Boxer lives, and the city of Santa Rosa, both in the district
that I represent, and both of these communities and all of
those States and cities have passed resolutions advocating U.S.
ratification of CEDAW.
In 1999, CEDAW supporters, including the Church Women
United and the United Methodist Women, delivered more than
10,000 individually handwritten letters to Senators urging
ratification of the treaty. That is 10,000 individually
handwritten letters. I am sure you all received yours. Some
said thank you for already supporting it. Others said, please
come with us. Needless to say, this has been a long battle for
CEDAW supporters. That is why I am pleased to be here today to
testify in support of CEDAW and thank again Senator Boxer for
making this possible.
As part of our agenda to promote international human
rights, we must recognize the importance of elevating the
status of women. CEDAW is not about creating new rights, but
about ensuring that women are able to exercise the same human
rights as men. CEDAW establishes a universal definition of
discrimination against women and provides international
standards to discourage sex-based discrimination. These
standards encourage equality in education, health care,
employment, and all other arenas of public life.
Some opponents of CEDAW claim that----
Senator Boxer. Let me ask you a question. How do we want to
proceed? Do you want to put the rest of the statement in the
record and come back and finish? We can hear from Hon. Jo Ann
Davis so we have some con on the record here. You can come back
and finish. How do you want to proceed?
Ms. Woolsey. That would be fine with me. It is up to you.
Senator Boxer. Why don't you just collect your thoughts,
finish the presentation, and we will call on you again when we
come back.
Ms. Woolsey. What I would do, I will put my statement in
the record.
I would like to echo what you said about what this means to
women around the world, and what an embarrassment it is to our
Nation to be with North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan in the way
we treat women in not supporting this. We do not treat women
here that way, but they want to hear from us because of how we
are.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Woolsey follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Lynn Woolsey
Madam Chair, it's an honor to be here today. I thank you and the
Committee for recognizing the importance of holding this hearing.
Out of the 22 years that the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has been in existence, I
have spent the last nine in Congress, pushing for the ratification of
this incredibly important treaty. In fact, the first resolution that I
introduced in the House was a resolution calling on the Senate to
ratify CEDAW. That was in 1993 and I have reintroduced the resolution
every Congress since. In that time we've subsequently gained more
cosponsors, as well as more support from all sectors of Congress:
Republicans, Democrats, Blue Dogs, New Democrats. The resolution that I
have introduced in the 107th Congress, H.Res. 18, currently has 119
bipartisan cosponsors.
It's important to note that there is a groundswell of support for
ratification, both here in Congress and among the local governments and
grassroots organizations. At the end of last year, sixteen states and
58 U.S. counties and cities, including Mann County and the city of
Santa Rosa--both in the district that I represent--had passed
resolutions advocating U.S. ratification of CEDAW. In 1999, CEDAW
supporters, including the Church Women United and the United Methodist
Women, delivered more than 10,000 individually hand-written letters to
Senators urging ratification of the treaty. That's 10,000! Needless to
say, this has been a long battle for CEDAW supporters. That's why I am
so pleased to be here today to testify in support of CEDAW, and thank
Senator Boxer for making this possible.
As part of our agenda to promote international human rights, we
must recognize the importance of elevating the status of women. CEDAW
is not about creating new rights, but about ensuring that women are
able to exercise the same human rights as men.
CEDAW establishes a universal definition of discrimination against
women, and provides international standards to discourage sex-based
discrimination. These standards encourage equality in education, health
care, employment and all other arenas of public life.
Some opponents of CEDAW claim that ratification of CEDAW would mean
that we would have to abolish ``Mothers Day'' because it singles women
out based on their gender. But under CEDAW, discrimination is defined
as any difference in treatment on the grounds of gender, which
intentionally or unintentionally disadvantages women, and prevents a
society from recognizing a woman's rights in both the domestic and
public arenas. So I am here to tell you that under this definition of
discrimination, we don't have to get rid of ``mothers' day,'' or any
other day that is designated to celebrate women.
This comprehensive U.N. treaty serves as a powerful tool for all
women as they fight against discrimination. CEDAW has led to
substantial improvements for women's lives in countries including
Japan, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Zambia. In fact, when Brazil redrafted its
constitution, it used CEDAW as a framework for articulating human
rights for Brazilian women. Their constitution now contains provisions
on gender equality, gender-based violence, and equality of rights
within marriage, family planning, and employment. These provisions
parallel those contained in CEDAW.
To date, 169 countries have ratified CEDAW. However, as we all
know, the U.S. is not one of these countries. In fact, the U.S. is the
only industrialized nation that has not ratified CEDAW, a distinction
that places us in the company of countries like North Korea, Iran and
Afghanistan. The decision to abandon this unfavorable distinction is
long overdue.
If we truly want to be regarded as a world leader and champion of
human rights, we must teach by example and ratify CEDAW. We must also
learn from example. The Taliban rule in Afghanistan was an illustration
of how systematic violations against women sanctioned by governing
authorities can lead to broader danger and instability. Clearly, a
country cannot become stable and democratic if half its population
remains oppressed.
As the U.S. works to help Afghanistan rebuild, we are presented
with a shameful irony: while we are trying to teach the Afghan people
that women must be an equal part of a post-Taliban democracy, we
contradict ourselves by refusing to ratify the one international treaty
that ensures the rights of all women. This is leading by example.
Women remain grossly under represented at the international level,
and in some areas, they are not represented at all. The globalization
of today's world makes the equal participation of women at the
international level increasingly important. The inclusion of women in
all areas of global affairs will make a difference in the policy and
decisionmaking processes.
Women around the world are depending on the U.S. to show support
for CEDAW because U.S. support will strengthen CEDAW's purpose and
enhance its credibility. While countries that have ratified may not all
fully comply with CEDAW, U.S. ratification puts us in a position where
we can push for fuller compliance.
The time has come for the U.S. to join the other 169 nations that
have committed themselves to safeguarding basic human rights and ending
gender discrimination by ratifying CEDAW. Today's Senate hearing is a
major step in that direction.
Thank you.
Senator Boxer. Well, we thank you very much for your great
leadership on this from day 1 that you got into the Congress.
Congresswoman Davis.
STATEMENT OF HON. JO ANN DAVIS, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Davis. Thank you, Madam Chairman, members of the
committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the
ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms
of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW. As you know, CEDAW
requires participating countries to take appropriate measures
to eliminate discrimination against women in all facets of
life. The convention also creates a committee to monitor the
implementation of CEDAW, composed of representatives of 23
other countries. It is the work product of this implementing
committee that I want to focus my testimony upon today, for no
matter how laudable the goals of this CEDAW treaty may be, the
attempted application of the principles of the convention by
the committee has led to profoundly disturbing results, which
do not advance the condition of women worldwide.
The committee has the responsibility for overseeing the
implementation of the convention by reviewing reports submitted
by participating countries. The committee then makes
recommendations based upon the reports and responses to
committee questioning. While this may initially appear rather
benign, these recommendations exert a great deal of informal
pressure upon countries that depend upon United Nations funding
of human aid programs and the CEDAW committee has made some
startling conclusions in implementing the treaty.
For instance, although the treaty specifically states that
countries shall take measures to suppress the trafficking and
exploitation of women, the CEDAW committee has actually called
upon China to decriminalize prostitution, rationalizing that it
is often the result of poverty. Similarly, it commended Greece
for decriminalizing prostitution and providing a regulatory
structure, and urged Germany to legitimize prostitution through
labor and social law.
Members of the committee, this is simply inexcusable.
Prostitution is inherently demeaning and degrading to women,
and in no way promotes sexual equality. It in fact robs women
of their dignity, spreads disease and death, and leads to a
downward spiral of exploitation and the cheapening of human
life. The committee has also criticized a country for the
reintroduction of Mother's Day, arguing that it reinforces
sexual stereotypes.
I believe that there are gender distinctions we should
celebrate, and motherhood is one of them. I am proud to be the
mother of two children, and I want to emphatically state that
the celebration of motherhood does not demean women in any way.
Madam Chairman, it would be an understatement to say that
these types of edicts, and these are only examples, do not
promote confidence in the CEDAW committee. Since 1981, the U.S.
Senate has had the opportunity to review how CEDAW has worked
in practice, rather than theory, and there are no compelling
reasons for our Nation to become a party to this pact.
Some may argue that if we do not ratify the treaty, then we
will not have a place at the table in how CEDAW continues to be
implemented. However, Madam Chairman, the committee is made up
of representatives from 23 countries, many with very dubious
human rights records of their own, giving any even well-
intentioned efforts at reform by the United States little
chance of success, were there even to be an American
representative on that committee. In fact, to ratify the treaty
I believe would send the implicit message throughout the world
that the United States was endorsing the work of the CEDAW
committee, and that is inexcusable.
Congress also needs to remember that we are a sovereign
Nation with a representative democracy sufficient to address
issues of gender discrimination and equality in our city
councils, State legislatures, and Congress. In the United
States, women's voices can be and they are heard, and we enjoy
unparalleled opportunities and freedoms in this great country,
and I might say that the women in Afghanistan that are enjoying
their freedom now was because of our foot soldiers on the
ground, and not the treaty.
Our country should enter treaties to promote its interests
abroad, be it trade or defense-related, to name a couple. We
should not become a party to a treaty full of broad and vague
language that has been so recklessly interpreted in the past
and only has the potential for more abuse in the future, nor
should we be eager to have our laws and social structures
pronounced upon by an international committee made up in part
by representatives of nations with notoriously poor human
rights records.
Madam Chairman, the United States is capable of addressing
gender issues in its own free and democratic institutions, and
becoming a party to this treaty would in no way further that
end. At this time of war, and with such pressing security
issues facing our Nation, I urge the Senate not to take up this
ill-considered initiative, and I thank you, Madam Chairman.
Senator Boxer. Thank you very much, and just on your way
out, and I am looking forward to having you all back if I can,
I want to read for the record what the committee said about
prostitution, OK. You said they called for legalization. They
said, given the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the committee recommends
that due attention be paid to health services for women in
prostitution. The Government is also urged to take measures for
the rehabilitation and reintegration of prostitutes into
society, and the decriminalization of prostitution. It did not
call for the legalization.
But I do want to make a point as a mother and a grandmother
and a United States Senator from the largest state, I love
Mother's Day, and this committee is not going to change my view
on that, and clearly, as I said at the beginning, let us not
change the subject from the treaty to the committee. The
committee has no impact on any Government, it is clearly
stated, and we will address this in our statements as we go
forward.
Ms. Davis. If I might make a comment, Madam Chairman, we
have to address the committee at the same time we address the
treaty. I mean, we have to when we are considering becoming a
part of that treaty, because the committee has had a great
impact, and I did not say legalize prostitution, I said
decriminalize.
Senator Boxer. Well, I would just make the point that we
put it in the record that they talked about the sad case of
these women getting HIV/AIDS. I just wanted to point out that
we will deal with the committee. That is what I said in my
opening statement. Just as Senator Helms dealt with abortion,
we will deal with the issue of the committee when we talk about
our statements and our comments and our reservations, so I
really appreciate your bringing up the committee, because it
fits into my opening statement, and I thank you very, very
much.
Ms. Millender-McDonald, do you want to do your statement
now?
STATEMENT OF HON. JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, U.S. HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I really have an extended
statement. I would not want to water it down by doing it
quickly. I would like to come back, but I certainly want to say
how much I appreciate this committee having us come before it
and want to applaud Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey for her
tenacious commitment to this particular treaty.
Now, please give me some thoughts. Can I come back to speak
on this, because there are two votes.
Senator Boxer. Yes. We will hold open until you return. we
will have the other panelists. Senators from the Republican
side will now speak to their heart's content, as long as they
wish. As Congresswomen come in it is my intention to call on
them even if we need to interrupt another panelist.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Boxer. Senator, which of you would like to begin?
Senator Enzi, thank you.
Senator Enzi. Thank you, Madam Chairman. As we have heard
and will hear today, accounts of the history and status of the
United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW, the title itself
promotes the right thing on behalf of women, and I sense that
all of us here today share that view. Indeed, the name of this
treaty draws good people to want to do good things, but
ultimately it is not about the name.
What matters for us here is what is inside the convention.
We find an assortment of measures both radical and ill-defined
that belie its name, so for 22 years there has wisely been a
lid on the Pandora's box, but from time to time curiosity takes
control, as is the case today, but curiosity asks many
questions, such as, how can we still be interested in the CEDAW
agenda decades after the Carter White House sent it to the
Hill, after Democrat administrations and Democrat-controlled
Senates let it languish for 22 years?
The answer, in short, is that efforts to ratify CEDAW have
been sustained by the politics of symbolism. Indeed, the
convention addresses an important symbolic principle, one that
the United States has supported in other anti-discrimination
treaties throughout the 20th century. I suppose that the best
intentions were at work when CEDAW was initiated at the United
Nations during the Carter administration, but its elaboration
was flawed. Perhaps U.N. group-think, the twists and turns of
finding agreement, any agreement, is what torpedoed an
otherwise useful effort, or perhaps extreme agendas came to
dominate the outcome. This can happen in the U.N. setting, as
we were reminded last autumn when the U.N. World Conference
Against Racism, held in Durban, nearly fell victim to the type
of hatred and stereotyping it was supposed to repair.
The big point is that CEDAW's advocates claim to be taking
the moral high ground when actually they want to stand 6 feet
on top of buried values, values that recognize and appreciate
the diversity of people, be they man or woman, boy or girl.
Meanwhile, the convention has not made any difference in
eliminating discrimination against women. Rather, it serves as
a facade for continuing atrocities.
For example, its most admiring signatory countries do not
adhere to the letter of CEDAW. China's Government practices
forced abortion and sterilization. In Afghanistan, women were
oppressed by a series of governments until liberation by U.S.
and allied forces. France refuses unconditional extradition to
U.S. fugitives who murder American women and girls. Germany,
who signed, declines to return abducted American girls to their
American parents. Iraq kills its own women and girls with
chemical weapons. In Saudi Arabia, religious police let 14
girls die in a fire, rather than allow male rescuers to enter
their burning school, and North Korea starves and oppresses its
women and girls.
I do not want the United States' prestige to suffer by
association with this group of anti-women rogues, and so I
subscribe to the views that the ratification of CEDAW is not in
the interest of the United States. Now, we will hear testimony
as to its merits and demerits, but I am compelled to state that
CEDAW would supersede U.S. Federal, and State law, surrendering
American domestic matters to the norm setting of the
international community. On this point, given its broad
definition of discrimination, potentially it could tempt
frivolous lawsuits in the United States.
So even if you believe that our country could get something
useful out of CEDAW for civil rights at home, or that it would
not bargain away any of its sovereignty, why should the United
States lend its power and prestige to this misshaped
convention? Why give cover to signatory States that continue to
discriminate severely against women? Why try to breathe life
into an agenda of stale goods whose expired shelf life makes
them unhealthy for the United States and the international
community?
Despite the fact that for years a democratically controlled
Senate and the Clinton White House did not advance its
ratification, which is also unlikely in the foreseeable future,
CEDAW is in front of us again. So today, therefore, we must
revisit these themes that have rightly given the Senate cause
to contain its curiosity on this Pandora's box. We will learn a
lot, we will advance a principle, but we have to be very
careful of a treaty that is written this way.
Senator Boxer. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Brownback.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I want to
state at the outset I appreciate the hearing. I appreciate you
hosting and holding the hearing. I have had the opportunity to
work with the chairman on a number of vital women's issues over
the years, something I am very proud of. In fact, our
collaboration recently won the favorable attention of Ms.
Magazine, which the chairperson noted to me, and something we
have joked about may never happen again, at least not for me.
It may for you, but perhaps not for me, but it has been a
pleasure to be able to work with you.
Senator Boxer. Well, you have a chance today to get back
in.
Senator Brownback. We will see. We worked together on
Afghan women about 4 years ago, putting forward a resolution
calling on the United States and the U.N. to condemn what was
taking place in Afghanistan toward women, and I think it was a
helpful issue that we brought forward at that time, and I am
pleased we did that then, and pleased to see the Afghan women
here today. I am looking forward to hearing the testimony, to
hearing about the treaty, and the thoughts that people want to
put forward. I want to have a good, candid discussion and
dialog on the issue. I want to keep an open mind on it and hear
what people have to say.
I would note one thing before turning the microphone over
and then being able to hear witnesses. I think it really is
actions that count more than the words. Afghanistan was a
signatory in 1980 to CEDAW, and look what took place there. It
is the actions I think that are the important thing, and I
realize there is criticism of the Bush administration on this,
but it is the actions that count, the actions of our putting
forward troops, putting forward an aggressive effort, putting
forward a push, an aggressive effort to see that women were
involved in the Afghanistan cabinet. I worked with the
chairperson on that issue as well.
The actions are the ones that matter to the women around
the world, and I think the Bush administration has taken very
strong actions here to liberate women and to provide
opportunities. Afghanistan signed CEDAW, and yet what are its
actions? I think that is what speaks far louder, and I hope
that the United States continues to take a very active role,
regardless of views on the treaty, and there are differing
opinions on it in pursuit of the rights of women throughout the
world, everywhere in the world, including Islamic portions of
the world that we aggressively and strongly push for those
rights of women.
I have traveled to many countries in the world, and I have
seen a number of places, Madam Chairman, that women do not have
significant rights or opportunities, many oppressed by their
government to not have rights or opportunities, and it is the
failings of those countries. I think the United States has a
unique position and obligation to press for those rights for
women throughout the world and aggressively to do so. It is the
actions. It is the actions that count much more than the words,
and I look forward to us continuing to be very strong in our
actions in the support of women throughout the world.
Senator Boxer. Thank you so very much, Senator.
What we are going to do is to take a little break right
after I make some comments regarding Senator Enzi's remarks,
but before he leaves I want to make a couple of remarks, then
we will take a little break. If in 5 minutes we do not have our
Congresswomen back, we will go to the next panel and then we
will bring them in.
Senator Brownback. Madam Chairman, can I ask, why don't we
bring up that next panel, because with two votes it is going to
take them awhile.
Senator Boxer. That is what I said we would do.
Senator Brownback. Rather than a break, why don't we just
go.
Senator Boxer. I will make the decision. I think we are
going to wait 5 minutes and then we are going to go, because I
am trying not to disrupt the flow here, but here is what I
wanted to say to Senator Enzi. The answer to the charge that
the Democrats let this languish is this. In 1988 and 1990 the
committee held hearings, this committee. It did not proceed
because neither the Reagan nor Bush administrations, Bush I,
supported CEDAW, and as you know we do need the President to
sign it. The Senate did move it forward under President Clinton
in the 103d Congress, but it was blocked in the full Senate. It
was reported out favorably.
Now, this administration wrote to us and told us that the
treaty should be approved, so we are moving forward on that
basis, but what I want to say, Senator Enzi, is when you say--
and I will be glad to yield to you when I finish--from time to
time curiosity takes hold when we look at the treaty, let me
just say that my interest in the treaty is not that I am
curious about it at all. I am not curious about it. I am very
anxious to see it ratified in this, the greatest Nation in the
world, and I want to see women have rights, so it is not about
curiosity.
Second, he says the treaty is symbolic, and I want to point
out a few specifics. In Colombia, it was not symbolic when the
courts ruled in 1992 that the absence of legal recourse then
available to a female victim of domestic violence violated her
human right to life and personal security. The State now
ensures protection for all women. In Uganda it was not symbolic
when the State and cities created programs to campaign against
domestic violence using State funds for the purpose that is
cited in CEDAW. In Costa Rica, the courts are authorized to
order an abusive spouse to leave the home and to continue
providing economic support, and CEDAW played a big role there.
In promoting girls' education in even Switzerland, and
Slovenia, and Pakistan, which has a long way to go, and India,
when they made progress CEDAW was cited. In improving health
care in many countries, Australia, Israel, the Philippines,
Argentina, Mexico, and Australia, CEDAW was cited. Improving
women's lives at work, CEDAW was cited in many countries,
ensuring legal rights in Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Botswana, so
on the ground it is not a symbolic thing.
Now, in our country, because we are the leader, it is not
going to force any changes in the laws, I would agree with you
there, that is clear, but what we are hearing from our Afghan
women friends and from others is, if the United States does
ratify this, it gives us moral authority when we go around to
other countries and ask them to please respect the rights of
women. It is a pretty simple thing, I think, and so I just
wanted to put my disagreements with you into the record, and I
would be glad to yield to you for as much time as you might
have to respond.
Senator Enzi. Madam Chairman, I do not want to take up time
from Senator Feingold, but I do have additional comments I
would like to put in the record that I did not include in that,
places where the idea of the treaty has failed, places where
the committee has absolutely gone against at least the
principle of the treaty, and places where the United States
would be giving up some of its sovereignty if it were to go
into the treaty, and I think those are reasons why it has not
been taken up.
If a treaty is taken up by the U.S. Senate and passes by
the majority that is necessary to pass a treaty, I do not think
there is much chance that a President who put that forward
would be vetoing the treaty.
Senator Boxer. I am very delighted to see that we have been
joined by Senator Russ Feingold, and we would recognize you to
make an opening statement.
Senator Feingold. I simply would like to put my statement--
well, I will talk for 30 seconds. I would like to put my longer
statement in the record. What I wanted to do is just commend
you, Madam Chair, because I remember when you and I were the
only Democratic Senators here at an attempt to bring this up a
while back, and a group of our distinguished Congresswomen came
here and sat in the audience and were concerned about this, and
it was kind of a lonely time, and it is only because of your
leadership. You are the driving force behind this. It is long
overdue. I get very frequent contacts from people in my State
that they want this done, and so I just want to commend you,
and I am delighted that this is getting the leadership it
needs.
[The prepared statement of Senator Feingold follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Russell Feingold
I am pleased to be here today to consider the ratification of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW). Since my election to the Senate, I have called for the
ratification of this important treaty, and I have been amazed and
perplexed through the years that the United States has remained one of
the few countries in the world that has not ratified this bedrock human
rights document.
The commitment of the United States to the fundamental human rights
of all women and girls cannot be questioned. Yet we have refused to
join the primary international mechanism for promoting and protecting
the rights of women and girls around the globe. We have had twenty-two
years now to consider this ratification. I urge my colleagues to stop
hesitating. Our hesitation is an embarrassment to this body and to the
United States. We must ratify this treaty, and we must ratify it now.
Our ratification stands to send an important message to the larger
world about our commitment to the rights of women and girls, while
lending additional support and momentum to the work of the body that
administers CEDAW.
We all know that discrimination against women robs a country of the
talents and productive resources of at least half of society. But it is
important to reflect on this point. Think, if you will, of the
development potential that is lost every day in so many developing
countries, and of the vast potential that will continue to be lost so
long as girls and young women face discrimination in accessing
education, careers, economic credit, and participation in the political
life of their country. Think, too, of the lives that are lost as a
result of more violent patterns of discrimination. Think of the women
and girls who are denied access to health care, or denied the right to
make decisions about their care; think of those who face prosecutions
or death for asserting their sexual or reproductive autonomy in
defiance of fathers, husbands, or brothers; think of the endemic crisis
of domestic violence, and the failure of so many governments and
societies to address the epidemic. Women are literally dying because of
persistent patterns of discrimination.
In recent months we have listened with horror and shock as the
women of Afghanistan have emerged from their enforced seclusion to
describe years of abuse. The world has witnessed few more egregious
examples of institutionalized discrimination against women, but we must
also recognize that women in many other societies are living equally
restrictive lives. I can think of no better way for the United States
to encourage governments around the world, including the new government
in Afghanistan, to respect the rights of women than for us to ratify
CEDAW.
I look forward to this hearing today, and I look forward to swift
action to ratify this Convention. It is time for the United States to
join the 169 other nations that have ratified CEDAW. And it is time for
all of us to make a personal commitment to eliminating all forms of
discrimination against women and girls worldwide.
Senator Boxer. I would commend you, Senator. It is an honor
to serve with you on this committee.
I was given statements by Senator Dodd and Senator Nelson.
I am going to place them in the record.
[The prepared statement of Senator Dodd follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Christopher J. Dodd
Good morning. I would like to welcome our witnesses to the
committee, and thank them for coming here to testify on a topic that I
believe to be of vital importance, the Convention to Eliminate All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women. This hearing has been a long
time coming, and, in my view, serves an important purpose. It is high
time that the United States, as the only industrialized democracy that
has not ratified CEDAW, make clear its policy toward this treaty and
the broader issue of discrimination against women.
The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, is in essence a ``Bill of Rights''
for women worldwide. It is the first and only tool available to address
women's political, cultural, economic, social, and family rights on a
global level. When this treaty was drafted in 1979, it represented the
initial step in the development of human rights language for women
throughout the world.
Unfortunately, while the rest of the world has built upon the
foundation of 1979, the United States lags woefully behind. As of May
2002, 169 countries have ratified CEDAW, yet the United States is among
a small number of countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, and Sudan,
that have not yet taken the important step of ratification.
Negotiations on this convention were completed under the Carter
Administration in 1980, and the treaty was formally transmitted to the
Senate on November 12, 1980. Although the Senate has held many hearings
on this treaty over the past few years, it has never been brought to
the Senate floor for a vote. The United States made ratification of the
Women's Convention by the year 2000 one of its public commitments at
the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. It is now up to us to
honor this commitment.
In my view, the United States must recognize the positive impact
that the treaty can have internationally, and act accordingly to ratify
this treaty as soon as possible. Already, CEDAW has promoted the
development of citizenship rights in Botswana and Japan, inheritance
rights in the United Republic of Tanzania, and has fostered political
participation in Costa Rica. Domestic violence laws have been developed
in countries such as Turkey, Nepal, South Africa and the Republic of
Korea, as have anti-trafficking laws in the Ukraine and Moldova.
As long as the United States remains a part of the small minority
of nations that has not ratified the treaty, the country's credibility
as a world leader in human rights is grossly compromised. The United
States has and must continue to set an example for other nations to
follow. Without U.S. ratification, other nations may feel at liberty to
ignore CEDAW's mandate and their responsibilities under it. The United
States must continue in its quest for equality and send a message to
the rest of the global community that discrimination against women must
end.
On a domestic level, CEDAW ratification would promise positive
implications for women in our nation. The treaty would encourage women
and girls to pursue vocations in math and science through the
recruitment of female workers, as well as the expansion of both private
and public programs that boost participation in these fields that are
currently dominated by men. In regard to sexual harassment, a pressing
issue for the United States, the treaty encourages schools to adopt and
enforce stronger sexual harassment policies.
Discrimination is an active force in employment even today. CEDAW
seeks to eliminate any and all gaps that exist between the employment
of men and women in the work force. Through the treaty's ratification,
the United States would be forced to take necessary measures to
introduce paid maternity leave without the loss of employment
seniority, merit, or benefits. Twenty-two of the nations that have
ratified the treaty have instituted laws and policies to promote equal
opportunities for females in employment; the United States must follow
suit, building on the success of the FMLA.
In our country, domestic violence is and has been an issue of
nationwide concern. Only 44 percent of all rural counties have full-
time prosecutors for violent crimes against women, and women in these
areas do not even have sufficient legal representation to combat
domestic violence if they choose to seek it. Ratification of the treaty
would encourage the United States to provide more sufficient social and
legal services.
CEDAW has great domestic and global implications. Rarely does this
committee have the opportunity to consider actions that can affect so
many people in all corners of the globe. Especially now, as the US
seeks to encourage active participation of women in Afghanistan, we
must finally step up to our leadership role in this debate. I thank
Senator Boxer for holding this hearing today to encourage the Senate to
do just that.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our witnesses for
coming, and especially recognize a distinguished scholar from my state
of Connecticut. The Honorable Harold Hongju Koh, former Assistant
Secretary of State for Human Rights and a Professor at Yale Law School,
is with us today and I welcome him to the committee and thank him for
his important contributions to our country and this dialogue.
I am hopeful that this hearing will further urge this committee
toward the ratification of a treaty that is sorely needed and necessary
for the advancement of our domestic and international community. The
time for ratification of the CEDAW treaty is now.
[The prepared statement of Senator Nelson of Florida
follows:]
Statement for the Record Submitted by Senator Bill Nelson of Florida
I would like to praise Chairman Biden for calling this hearing, as
well as Senator Boxer for her leadership on this issue. The time for
U.S. leadership to advance women's rights around the globe is now. We
can take a significant step forward using the bully pulpit of our
nation's position as the beacon of freedom, and as an advocate of human
rights and equality when this committee reports, and the full Senate
ratifies, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Treaty. Twenty-two years of
inaction is inexcusable. It is time to put force and substance behind
repeated U.S. calls for the advancement of women's rights in all parts
of the world by ratifying CEDAW.
Senator Boxer. Senator Dodd says he hopes this hearing will
further urge this committee toward the ratification of a treaty
that is sorely needed and necessary for the advancement of our
domestic and international community. He says the time for the
ratification of the CEDAW treaty is now.
So what we are going to do at this point is take a 5-minute
break and in 5 minutes if, in fact, the women have not
returned, or at least one for the panel, we are going to go to
the first two pro and con witnesses in the next panel, so for 5
minutes we will take a break. We stand in recess until 11:01.
[Recess.]
Senator Boxer. The committee will come to order. I see we
have our Congresswomen back. We are most grateful for you
moving so quickly, and then right after they are completed we
will hear from our next panel, and we are going to lead it off
with Hon. Jeane Kirkpatrick and then we will get to the rest of
the panel, so why don't we continue where we left off.
Congresswoman Woolsey, would you like to add to your very
eloquent statement that you made before, and I would ask the
audience--we are going to move really quickly here. Yes,
Congresswoman.
Ms. Woolsey. I am trying to find where I left off. OK,
CEDAW. Thank you for doing this and being so patient with us.
We have 2 hours now.
Senator Boxer. Well, I do not, though.
Ms. Woolsey. CEDAW establishes a universal definition of
discrimination against women and provides international
standards to discourage sex-based discrimination. These
standards encourage equality in education, health care,
employment, all other areas of public life. Some opponents of
CEDAW claim that ratification would mean that we would have to
abolish Mother's Day. That is sort of what we heard with one of
the other witnesses, because it singles women out based on
their gender, but under CEDAW discrimination is defined as any
difference in treatment on the grounds of gender which
intentionally or unintentionally disadvantages women and
prevents a society from recognizing a woman's rights in both
the domestic and public arenas. I am here to tell you that
under this definition of discrimination we will not have to get
rid of Mother's Day or any other day that is designated to
celebrate women.
This comprehensive treaty serves as a powerful tool for all
women as they fight against discrimination. CEDAW has led to
substantial improvements for women's lives in other countries,
including Japan, Brazil, Sri Lanka, and Zambia. I am going to
leave off here, because I have said in general that it is an
embarrassment not to be part of this as the leading Nation in
the world, and I yield to my other colleagues.
Senator Boxer. Thank you so much. We are going to ask Hon.
Connie Morella now to address us.
STATEMENT OF HON. CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, U.S. HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Morella. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to
congratulate you for holding this long overdue hearing on the
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination
Against Women. I am pleased to join my colleagues,
Congresswoman Woolsey, Congresswoman Maloney, and Congresswoman
Millender-McDonald----
Senator Boxer. Would you pull the microphone up?
Ms. Morella [continuing].----I certainly shall. I join
them in strong support of its full ratification. I thank you
for allowing us this opportunity to speak for many Members in
the House of Representatives who feel as strongly as we do.
Madam Chair, as you know, the Senate has already agreed to
the ratification of several important human rights treaties,
including the Genocide Convention, the Convention Against
Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination. CEDAW established a worldwide commitment
to combat discrimination against women and girls, yet the
United States has neglected our responsibility to participate.
While 169 countries of the world have ratified or acceded to
CEDAW, and the United States is among a small minority of
countries, including Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan
which have not.
Previous administrations have proposed a small number of
reservations, understandings, and declarations to ensure that
United States ratification fully complies with all
constitutional requirements, including the rights of States and
individuals. The legislatures of California, Iowa,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, South
Dakota, and Vermont have all endorsed United States
ratification of CEDAW. Also, over 100 United States-based
civic, legal, religious, educational, and environmental
organizations, including many major national membership
organizations, support ratification of CEDAW, and yet we have
seen no Senate action since President Carter signed the treaty
and submitted it to the Senate for its consent in 1980.
We did, of course, hear that this committee had passed it
out in 1994. Our overdue ratification of CEDAW would allow the
United States to finally nominate a representative to the CEDAW
Oversight Committee. Our vocal support for the human rights of
every individual. Our role as a world leader should mandate our
support for CEDAW, and our lack of action, quite frankly, is
nothing short of embarrassing.
The statistics surrounding the abuse and discrimination of
women is staggering. Around the world at least one in every
three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise
abused in her lifetime. Violence against women is one of the
most common human rights violations, and it takes many forms:
physical, sexual, and psychological. It cuts across most
country's social groups and socioeconomic classes.
Violence against women can occur in every setting: homes,
streets, schools, and places of work. Violence is a
multidimensional issue that stems from women's subordinate
status in society, women's economic dependence on men, and
women's overall lack of power, as is the case most commonly in
developing nations. In most societies around the world there
are beliefs, norms, and social institutions that legitimize and
perpetuate violence against women.
Women are particularly vulnerable to violence during times
of political upheaval and economic instability. Although rape
as a weapon of war has been internationally condemned, armies
continue to use it in conflicts around the globe. For example,
in 1992, as many as 20,000 women were raped in the first few
months of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and most recently we
hear horrible accounts of women and girls being raped in
Afghanistan as they try to return to their homes from refugee
camps.
Violence prohibits many women from participating in the
economy, being active in civic life, accessing educational
opportunities, and obtaining health care. One out of every five
healthy years of life are lost to women ages 15 to 44 as a
result of violence. This loss of productivity impairs women's
economic development and overall growth in their respective
national economies.
War and violence have uprooted and displaced 35 million
people worldwide from their homes; 80 percent of these refugees
are women and children. They have little access to basic food,
medical care, hygiene, and shelter. But women are not only
victims, they are taking the initiative to reach across the
conflict divide and foster peace. In Mali and Liberia women
joined together to collect arms, in Northern Ireland, Catholic
and Protestant women created joint community development
projects; and yet, despite women's positive roles in fostering
peace, they are excluded from most peace negotiations.
The United States should actively engage in ways to
eliminate the brutality that women face around the world. One
of the first and most basic steps is to adopt the objectives of
CEDAW. We can also strengthen our support for programs that
advocate for protective legislation, judicial accountability,
and enforcement of existing laws relating to the prevention of
violence against women and girls. We should also encourage the
integration of violence intervention into all sectors of the
United States' international development assistance, invest in
a variety of intervention programs, strengthen women's economic
opportunities in order to improve their options and their
negotiating power outside of and within the home, and encourage
communities to design response capabilities like health,
police, judicial, and social services to respect the autonomy
and meet the needs of victims.
Madam Chair, thank you again for this opportunity to share
our frustration for the 22 years of basic inactivity on CEDAW.
I hope that this hearing will finally create some movement,
some momentum on the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms
of Discrimination Against Women. It is belated, but I think the
time is now. I think this will be the beginning of that
ratification by the Senate. I sincerely believe that its
ratification will finally give the force of international law
to our effort on behalf of women's rights, and also give us the
credibility to be taken seriously on this issue when we
advocate with foreign governments on behalf of human rights.
So I thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank Senator Brownback
for being here also, and other members of the committee who
have been here.
Senator Boxer. Thank you so much, Congresswoman.
Congresswoman Maloney.
STATEMENT OF HON. CAROLYN B. MALONEY, U.S. HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Maloney. Thank you, Senator Boxer, Chairman Biden,
other members of the committee. On behalf of the U.S. House of
Representatives, and especially on behalf of the women Members
and supporters of the rights of women worldwide, I commend you
for holding this hearing on CEDAW, the treaty for the rights of
women.
This hearing is an important step toward ratification of
the treaty and a step toward equality for women worldwide. This
hearing is long overdue, more than 22 years overdue. This week
is an historic one for women. Here we are considering a step in
which the United States would officially join the world
community in supporting the rights of women. Meanwhile, across
the globe in Kabul, Afghanistan, women are talking about and
are taking part for the first time in the Loya Jirga, the
assembly of leaders who will determine the future of that
shattered country.
I hope that future will include ratification of the CEDAW
treaty for the rights of women. I would hope that in the year
2002, both the United States and Afghanistan will join the 169
other countries that have already ratified the treaty for the
rights of women. Let's face it, 169 countries cannot be wrong.
Why is the treaty for the rights of women so important? It
is the bill of rights for women worldwide. It sets up standards
for the treatment of women. It is a framework from which any
country can build programs that can save women's lives and
bring women into the economic mainstream of development. If we
are serious about helping women in Afghanistan, we will ratify
the CEDAW treaty. If we are serious about making sure that the
Taliban's terrible actions against women will never, ever
happen again anywhere, we will ratify the CEDAW treaty. If we
are serious about saving women's lives, we will ratify the
CEDAW treaty.
How does the treaty work? It outlines what equal treatment
for women looks like in everyday life, in legal rights,
education, health care, employment, politics, and finance. The
United States is already among the world's leaders in rights
for women, and ratification would not require us to change a
single one of our laws; but the situation is different in other
countries. Too many women cannot speak out, out of fear of
being beaten. Too many women are sold as sex slaves. Too many
are raped as a weapon of war. Too many girls still cannot go to
school, and too many women are not allowed even to inherit
property.
In places like that, women and their governments have used
the terms of the CEDAW treaty to set up primary school and
health care programs for girls, for example, and to get women
the right to vote and to inherit property. Organizations have
used it for guidance in setting up programs to keep women from
being beaten or killed by husbands in dowry disputes or to
provide safe motherhood kits.
But the United States needs to ratify the treaty, too, in
order to give strength to these movements. I have had the
privilege of taking part in events worldwide related to
implementing the CEDAW treaty. I was the congressional co-chair
of our delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing, China, in 1995. I am a member of several groups of
parliamentarians who represent hundreds of countries.
Often, I am asked, ``Why hasn't the United States ratified
CEDAW? Don't you know how important this treatment is for our
country and around the world?'' Senator Boxer, it is
tremendously embarrassing as a Member of Congress to face these
questions, especially when President and Mrs. Bush have spoken
so forcefully about the need to help women in Afghanistan. I
can only tell people that the reason we have delayed so long is
that too many Senators have serious misunderstandings about
what the treaty really does.
Let me now discuss some of these misunderstandings for one
brief moment. Opponents of this treaty have called it a radical
version of the Equal Rights Amendment. I have to say, I only
wish that that were true. I wish this treaty did have the power
to require Afghanistan and other countries to treat women
fairly, but the truth is that it has no true enforcement
mechanisms. Ratification requires no change in anyone's laws.
The treaty's only power is the power of public opinion.
Critics say the treaty will let the United Nations meddle
in U.S. family life, or that it will generate a flood of
lawsuits. Not true. It authorizes nothing that is not already
possible here.
Senator Helms, I believe, has said this treaty has, ``a
radical anti-family agenda, close quote, that denigrates
motherhood and seeks to level out all distinctions between men
and women.'' With respect, this is just not true, and I ask you
to look carefully at the facts. The CEDAW committee's words on
these matters have been twisted and taken out of context by
treaty critics.
For example, the critics say the committee wants all
children to be in day care rather than at home with their
mothers. This is an extreme distortion of a remark the
committee made about the situation in Slovenia, where only 30
percent of young children of working parents, fathers and
mothers both working, were in day care. Only 30 percent were in
day care. The committee noted that the other 70 percent were
missing out on possible education while their mothers and
fathers were at work. They were home alone.
Critics say the treaty would promote abortion because it
endorses family planning and that is a code word for abortion,
but family planning is no code word. President Bush supports
family planning and the right of every couple to plan the
number and spacing of their children. The CEDAW treaty has been
certified as abortion-neutral by the State Department; Senator
Helms led the way in making this explicit back in 1994, adding
a formal understanding to the treaty that notes it does not
guarantee any right to abortion.
In a number of cases, critics say the CEDAW committee came
out against motherhood. In truth, the committee was lamenting
stereotypes about women that some countries use to justify laws
discriminating against them, or to let men avoid sharing family
responsibilities. This was the case in Armenia and even in
Denmark and Luxembourg.
The committee rightly said that honoring, ``the noble role
of the mother,'' and setting up Mother's Day, is no excuse for
keeping pregnant women from working or denying women their job
benefits. The vast majority of American women would agree with
that. In fact, an overwhelming majority of American women and
men support U.S. ratification of CEDAW, just as they support
full human rights for women and men.
Already, 16 States and several dozen cities and counties
have passed resolutions calling for ratification, including Los
Angeles, Boston, and New York. It is not just women in other
countries who would benefit if the United States ratifies this
treaty. American women have many rights, but they still lag
behind men in some important areas.
In January, my colleague, Representative John Dingell and I
released a report from the General Accounting Office that
compared the----
Senator Boxer. Congresswoman, could you wrap it up here,
please?
Ms. Maloney [continuing].----salaries of U.S. men and women
in management, and it found that men's pay remains higher than
women's in virtually every field, and that in seven fields the
gap has actually gotten worse since 1995. Other studies have
found that large majorities of American women think the glass
ceiling is stronger than ever before. Men seem to think it is
only women's lack of experience that keeps them out of the
executive suite, or that women prefer it that way. Women know
better.
If we ratify the CEDAW treaty, none of these things would
change overnight, and the treaty could not require any
additional laws to change them, but it would be a signal that
the U.S. Government is committed to promoting and protecting
the equality of opportunity for its own citizens; it would set
the stage for U.S. leadership, ensuring that women are fairly
treated here and around the world. This action is long overdue.
In closing, I would just call for ratification and join you
in recognizing and applauding the four women who have come
here, two from Afghanistan, Nafisia, Nasiba, and Dr. Joji from
India, and Azina from Egypt.
Senator Boxer. Thank you very much.
Congresswoman McDonald.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is good
to see you in the seat. You have absolutely been tenacious on
behalf of women in trying to pass this treaty. I also would
like to thank my dear friend and colleague, Congresswoman Lynn
Woolsey, who, too, has been tenacious and has had a commitment
to passing CEDAW.
I speak for those young women who are outside of this door
who are unable to come into this committee room today. We all
know that 169 countries have ratified this treaty for the
rights of women, and yet our own country, the United States, is
the only industrialized western nation not on the list. Madam
Chair, given our position in the world, by failing to endorse
this treaty we are compromising our credibility as a world
leader for human rights.
The treaty for the rights of women provides benchmarks
against which countries can measure their domestic and foreign
policies with regard to women. Our Government made a public
commitment at the United Nations Conference on Women held in
Beijing in September 1995, and at that time we said that we
would ratify this treaty by the year 2000. Well, 2000 has come
and gone, and we have yet to honor that promise.
The treaty is a tool that women around the world are using
to fight the effects of discrimination. We all know the
statistics. Women and children are the poorest groups of our
societies. Increasingly, women and children are the primary
victims of war. When we reflect on the desperate plight of
Afghan women, which you have been in the lead on, they have
been terrorized, tortured, and stripped of all human rights and
human dignity under this Taliban law.
We realize that the United States must make every effort to
prevent similar tragedies from occurring in other rogue States
and nations. By ratifying this treaty, Americans would be
adding a powerful voice to the ongoing fight against violence
against women. However, if we fail to ratify the treaty we are
sending a very different signal to the world. We need to be
able to speak out loudly and strongly on the violence against
women, and to be able to point to our country's signature on
the treaty. Without our ratification, we are arguing from a
position of weakness.
Because the United States is not a signatory, some
Governments may feel free to ignore the treaty's mandate and
their obligation under it. By ratifying the treaty, the United
States will enforce and reinforce its commitment to the
elimination of discrimination based on gender. In addition, by
ratifying this treaty, the United States would gain
international credibility and influence in three ways.
First, we would be adding our voice as the most powerful
Nation in the world to the treaty for women's rights.
Second we would be entitled to wield even greater influence
in the fight against violence and discrimination based on sex.
This is because we would be entitled to nominate a United
States' expert to be a member of this committee on this treaty.
The committee is responsible for only monitoring the status and
the treaty of women from countries that have ratified this
treaty. They only try to make sure that we are in compliance.
A report based on the committee's observation is presented
regularly to the United Nations. One function of the report is
to reveal human rights abuses and to encourage the countries
where abuses have occurred to change their discriminatory laws.
For instance, measures are being taken in many countries to
stamp out the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and
girls. I met just yesterday with about 10 African women who are
speaking about the trafficking, this horrific thing that
happens to women in other countries and the exploitation of
their children. This is real. This is real, committee members,
and we are begging for this committee to ratify this treaty. A
United States expert would bring to the committee and to the
United Nations the knowledge, the experience and benefit of our
own experience in combating discrimination against women.
The third advantage that the United States would gain from
ratifying the women's treaty relates to women in our own
country. While women in the United States can access legal
protections against violent attackers, the fact is that
incidents of violence remain high right here in our country.
Every year, about 3 million women are physically abused by
their husbands or boyfriends, and unfortunately this has been
documented by the United States Department of Justice Study in
1998 and the Commonwealth Fund study in 1998. Ratification of
the treaty for the rights of women would send a signal to
perpetrators and victims alike that the United States is
serious about eliminating violence at home as well as abroad.
Madam Chair and members of this committee, it is for this
reason that I join my colleagues today asking you to support
this resolution and to please pass it so that we women across
this country and across the world can feel that we are helping
in the elimination of discrimination.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Millender-McDonald follows:]
Prepared Statement of Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald
Madam Chair: The United Nations Treaty for the Rights of Women--
also known as CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women) provides a universal definition of
discrimination against women. The Treaty for the Rights of Women
provides benchmarks against which countries can measure their domestic
and foreign policies with regard to women.
One hundred and sixty nine (169) countries have ratified the treaty
but the United States is the only industrialized western nation not on
the list. By failing to endorse the treaty, we compromise our
credibility as a world leader for human rights. Our Government made a
public commitment at the United Nation Conference on Women held in
Beijing in September 1995. At that time, we said that we would ratify
the treaty by the year 2000. The year 2000 has come and gone and we
have not yet honored that promise.
The Convention is a tool that women around the world are using to
fight the effects of discrimination. We all know the sad statistics--
women and their children are the poorest group in all societies.
Increasingly women and children are the primary victims of war. When we
reflect on the desperate plight of Afghani women--terrorized, tortured
and stripped of all human rights under Taliban rule--we realize that
the United States must make every effort to prevent similar tragedies
from occurring in other rogue states.
By ratifying the treaty, Americans would be adding a powerful voice
to the on-going fight against violence against women. However, if we
fail to ratify the treaty, we are sending a very different signal to
the world. We need to be able to speak out loudly and strongly against
violence against women--and to be able to point to our country's
signature on the treaty.
Without our ratification, we are arguing from a position of
weakness. Because the United States is not a signatory, some
governments may feel free to ignore the treaty's mandate and their
obligations under it. By ratifying the treaty, the United States will
reinforce its commitment to eliminate discrimination based on gender.
In addition, by ratifying the treaty, the United States would gain
international credibility and influence in three ways.
First, we would be adding our voice--as the most powerful nation in
the world--to the treaty for Women's Rights.
Second, we would be entitled to wield even greater influence in the
fight against violence and discrimination based on sex. This is because
we would be entitled to nominate a United States expert to be a member
of the Committee on the treaty (CEDAW). The committee is responsible
for monitoring the status and treatment of women from countries that
have ratified the treaty. A Report based on the committee's
observations is presented regularly to the United Nations.
One function of the report is to reveal human rights abuses--and to
encourage the countries where abuses have occurred--to change
discriminatory laws. For instance, measures are being taken in many
countries to stamp out the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women
and girls. A United States expert would bring to the committee--and to
the United Nations--the knowledge, experience and benefit of our own
experience in combating discrimination against women.
The third advantage that the United States would gain from
ratifying the Women's Treaty relates to women in our own country. While
women in the United States can access legal protections against violent
attackers, the fact is that incidents of violence remain high. Every
year, about three million women are physically abused by their husband
or boyfriend. (United States Department of Justice study in 1998 and a
Commonwealth Fund study in 1998.) Ratification of the Treaty for the
Rights of Women would send a signal to perpetrators and victims alike
that the United States is serious about eliminating violence at home as
well as abroad.
It is for these reasons that I support the Resolution that the
Senate should consent to the ratification of the Treaty for the Rights
of Women (CEDAW).
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Boxer. Thank you very much. We want to thank the
panel. It has been sort of a stop-and-go start, but we got you
all in, and we are very happy. Have a good day. I want to also
thank Hon. Jo Ann Davis who came with a con view on this
treaty.
We are going to move very quickly to the second panel. We
are going to lead it off with Hon. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who is
against the treaty, and then go to Hon. Harold Hongju Koh,
professor at Yale Law School, and I am going to ask the
panelists if they could move quickly, because tempus fugit, and
we need to move forward. Thank you.
Next will be Juliette McLennan, who is pro, then Kathryn
Balmforth, who is con, then Christina Sommers, who is con, so
the next panel will be three pro and three con. We are going to
lead it off with Ambassador Kirkpatrick. I am going to ask her
if she could take a seat right now, and ask the Congresswomen
if they could allow that to occur, and we are going to start
with Hon. Jeane Kirkpatrick, and I am going to ask the
panelists to put your statement in the record.
If you want to read it, that is fine. We are going to let
you know when 5 minutes is up, we will give you an additional
minute, and I would ask all the other panelists to please join
the other two if they would at this time, Juliette McLennan,
Jane Smith, Ms. Balmforth, Dr. Sommers, if they will all join,
and as soon as they are set up we are going to start.
Thank you all for your great patience, and we will be
bringing you water, and we will start with you, Ambassador
Kirkpatrick. We are very pleased you could come, take time out
of your busy schedule. Please open.
STATEMENT OF HON. JEANE KIRKPATRICK, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR
OF FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE
INSTITUTE, FORMER PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE TO THE UNITED
NATIONS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. Thank you very much, Senator Boxer.
Senator Boxer. And let us pull the mike real close to you
so everyone can hear you.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. Thank you very much, Senator Boxer.
Thank you for inviting me to testify today. I want to address
three questions very briefly:
1. Is there significant discrimination in the world?
2. Will the passage of the convention on the elimination
and discrimination solve the associated problems?
3. Will it help the women who need help most?
Finally, maybe we ought to say, what could we do that
might?
The answer to the first question is, the widespread
discrimination in many societies, including most Third World
societies, most societies in the world, the answer is yes,
clearly, obviously in most societies. Many, if not most, girls
and women have little control over their lives. Almost all
women are denied equal rights, equal educational opportunity.
In many Third World countries, as you know, women can
neither choose their husbands nor their marital status, nor
control the size of their families. In many of these countries
women are denied contraception, access to contraception, even
if it is widely available in their countries.
In a number of countries in Africa and the Middle East
societies, women are trapped in early and polygamous marriages,
denied education beyond elementary school, if that, and
destined to live as dependents and paupers. Should they become
widows, these are miserable circumstances. I can hardly bear to
think about them. There are countries in which bride-burning is
still a practice, widow-burning is still a practice. These are
dreadful situations.
If one thing is clear, it is that there are no global
standards agreed upon about what constitutes discrimination
against women particularly. It is also true, of course, that
most of the issues associated with women specifically, like
marriage and child-bearing are dealt with casually if at all in
most societies.
What I am going to address very briefly is, what could a
convention eliminating discrimination do for women who are
trapped, for example, in the codes governing marriage? What
could they do for that Nigerian woman that we read about not
long ago who was sentenced to be stoned to death because she
was thought to be guilty of adultery? I guess she was finally
pardoned, or that sentence was suspended. Only at the very last
moment, though.
This convention unfortunately is unable to have much
effect. Because I lived at the U.N. for 5 years I became
extremely impressed with the emptiness of words. I would like
very much to see women all over the world have all of the
rights that are enumerated in CEDAW. I would like to see women
all over the world have all of the rights enumerated in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I might say, too, and I
believe that it is important, it is more important to do than
to speak.
It would be very important, in my opinion, if we desire to
make the U.N. a seat of improvement of the status of women, if
the U.N. desired to make the U.N. the site of improvement and
elimination of discrimination against women, they could begin
with their own personnel policies which, though less
discriminatory than they have been in past times, remain highly
discriminatory. Very few women ever manage to make their way
out of the lower ranks of U.N. personnel systems.
They could also systematically eliminate discrimination
against women in each and every one of their international
programs, refugee programs, development programs, health
programs, where when I visited those programs and supported
them, I saw with my own eyes the incredible discrimination
against women in some of the refugee camps, above all in the
Afghan refugee camps, actually, in the eighties. The U.S. and
U.N. were both trying to respect traditional culture, which
made paupers and beggars out of the women in the camps, and
most of the people in the camps were women.
What really bothers me is the impression that people have
that they have solved the problem because they have passed
their U.N. treaty. The fact is, U.N. treaties read well and
they act almost not at all. I mean, they simply do not lead to
improvement and progress almost never, and unless and until
there is implementation, then, of the treaties, and that is
true for all the treaties, I might say, not just this treaty
but all the treaties, and until there is implementation of the
treaties----
Senator Brownback. Madam Chairman, could she proceed?
Senator Boxer. I have not stopped anybody.
Senator Brownback. I just wanted to make sure she has the
ability to proceed. She is probably the most knowledgeable
witness we will have here today and----
Senator Boxer. I think every single person here is
extremely knowledgeable, and I did not intend to cut her off at
all, and I said to all that the bell will go off in 5 minutes
and then you can conclude as you wish.
Senator Brownback. I am glad you did not intend to cut me
off, either, but if she could just have that time to speak.
Senator Boxer. Let me just reiterate what I said at the
beginning. We set the clock for 5 minutes because of the press
of time. Everyone can take as much as they need to then
conclude their remarks. The chair will permit that. Please
proceed.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. I understand that, Madam Chairman,
and I thank you for that. I just want to emphasize that I
believe it is cynical, if I may, to pretend that ratifying the
global treaty will transfer or transform the practices of
discrimination against women in almost all the societies in the
world. If we want to help women in the most oppressed
societies, I think we should above all try to share the lessons
that American women have learned from experience.
We should emphasize implementation of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, because, Madam Chairman, one thing
I am certain of, and that is that women never have their rights
respected except in societies where men have rights respected.
That is just a fact, and so I think maybe the focus needs to be
on freedom and on democracy and on rule of law, and universal
rights for everyone.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Kirkpatrick follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Thank you for inviting me to testify today. The rights and roles of
women is a subject about which I have thought and written a good deal
in the course of my life. I have lived through very significant changes
in the opportunities and practices that determine the lives of women in
the United States and elsewhere. My own life and experiences have been
importantly affected by changes in attitudes and practices concerning
women. So naturally I have been and remain interested in this subject.
At the time that I sought employment as a teacher of political
science at the university level, it was still commonplace to encounter
frank admission by some persons in authoritative positions in public
university such as I encountered from one department chair: ``We don't
have any women in this department and, frankly, we like it that way.''
Fortunately I was able to identify a department whose members had more
open minds on this matter.
When Ronald Reagan appointed me to serve as the U.S. Permanent
Representative to the United Nations in his first Administration, I
became the first woman ever to represent a major power or a Western
Country in the United Nations; and the first woman to be ``at the
table'' when major issues of foreign policy were decided.
As I said, there have been major increases in the opportunities
available to women in my lifetime.
I desire to address three questions:
(1) Is there significant discrimination against women in the
world?
(2) Will passage of the Convention on the Elimination of
Discrimination solve the associated problems?
(3) Would it help women who need help most?
There is widespread discrimination against women in many societies
including most Third World societies. In many, if not most, of these
societies, girls and women have little control over their lives. In
many, women are denied equal, legal rights, and equal educational
opportunity. In many Third World Countries women can neither choose
their husbands, nor their marital status, nor control the size of their
families. In many of these countries women are denied contraception
even where it is available.
In a number of Africa's polygamous societies women are trapped into
early marriages, denied education beyond elementary school, if that,
and destined to live as a dependent or a pauper should they become
widows.
As all women (and men) familiar with life on five continents
understand, there are no global standards agreed upon by all concerning
what constitutes discrimination against women. The patterns of
relations between men and women, of distribution of roles,
responsibilities, rights, resources, and obligations are as diverse as
the laws and practices governing courtship, marriage, divorce, death,
inheritance and so forth.
Issues of reproduction and education are more complex but equally
or more resistant to regulation by global treaties. Views vary widely
and deeply between cultures and civilizations concerning the education
of girls as well as boys, of age at marriage, of childbearing, divorce,
and distribution of responsibilities in a family.
What can a convention eliminating discrimination do for women
trapped into Shari'a codes governing marriage, divorce and inheritance?
I share CEDAW's desire to see ended any existing vestige of
discrimination against women. I also believe U.S. law provides
important defenses for U.S. women against workplace discrimination.
No U.N. body, no U.N. code can overhaul practices in, say, West
Africa, where some farmers have four wives, and perhaps, a concubine or
two. It may be that U.N. bodies can influence the age for marriage.
This convention will not help girls being sucked into polygamous
marriages, nor left penniless by inheritance laws that give everything
to the sons and/or the favorite wife or impose a sentence of death by
stoning on an unfaithful wife or widow.
The establishment of universal norms and goals can be helpful if
the norms are relevant, not if they are so remote from the lives and
societies of these societies being considered. A treaty such as CEDAW
describes an ideal society and reflects realities of life in no
society. It reflects the author's aspiration of some women who managed
to get an education for all women: for education, employment, medical
care, and a degree of control over their own lives.
If taken literally, this convention can only breed cynicism.
Should the United Nations desire to eliminate discrimination
against women, they could and should begin with their own personnel
policies which, though somewhat less discriminating than in the past,
remain heavily biased against women in all policy levels.
The U.N. could and should systematically eliminate discrimination
in its programs, its refugee programs, its development programs, its
health programs, its education programs. It could undertake a crash
program to provide education for girls in societies where there is
none.
This convention cannot begin to guarantee American women what our
Constitution, our laws, and practices provide us.
It is cynical to pretend that a global treaty can transform
societies and governments that deny citizens all rights. If we want to
help women in the most depressed societies, we should sharp the lessons
American women have learned from experience.
Women have rights only in societies where men have rights. Freedom
and democracy are what they both need.
Senator Boxer. Thank you very much. I want to say that Hon.
Jeane Kirkpatrick is the senior fellow and director of foreign
and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and
of course we all remember her as a former Permanent
Representative to the United Nations. Every one of our
witnesses brings tremendous credibility to this topic, and it
is my pleasure now to introduce Hon. Harold Hongju Koh, who is
a professor at Yale Law School, who is a former Assistant
Secretary of State for Human Rights.
We welcome you, and again I will reiterate we have the 5-
minute clock. When it turns red, just try to collect your
thoughts and finish up.
STATEMENT OF HON. HAROLD HONGJU KOH, PROFESSOR, YALE LAW
SCHOOL, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS,
NEW HAVEN, CT
Mr. Koh. Let me commend you, Senators, for your action to
move to ratify this long overdue convention, which I have
studied and worked for both in an academic capacity and as
Assistant Secretary of State. In his recent State of the Union
Address, President Bush said, ``America will always stand for
the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law,
limits on the powers of the State, and respect for women,''
among other things. There is no more fitting way for this
administration and this Senate to answer that demand than by
moving quickly to ratify this treaty.
Senator Boxer, I want to commend both you for your efforts
to make these hearings a reality and Chairman Biden, as the
principal author of the Violence Against Women Act, for your
sustained efforts to secure a national commitment to end
violence against women across the country.
My message today is that this commitment should not stop at
the water's edge. Particularly after September 11, the U.S.
cannot be a world leader in guaranteeing progress for human
rights--whether in Afghanistan, in the United States, or around
the world--unless it is also a party to this treaty on women's
rights.
You have heard about the background and history of the
CEDAW. Let me simply reinforce Ambassador Kirkpatrick's request
that we implement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
That is precisely what this treaty is designed to do. It says
in the Universal Declaration that everyone is entitled to the
rights in the universal declaration ``without distinction of
any kind such as race, color, or sex,'' and it was for that
reason that they moved to the drafting and ratification of this
treaty.
You have heard that at this moment our country is the only
established industrialized democracy in the world that has not
ratified the women's rights treaty. That is a national disgrace
for a country that views itself as a world leader on human
rights.
So why should we ratify? For two reasons. First,
ratification would make an important global statement regarding
the seriousness of our commitment on these issues. Second, it
would have a major impact on ensuring both the appearance and
the reality that our national practices fully satisfy or exceed
international standards.
Senator Brownback, you mentioned the things that occurred
in Afghanistan when they had simply signed but not ratified
CEDAW. Yet that is precisely the situation that we are now in.
We have signed but not ratified CEDAW, and ratification is
clearly the next step that we need to take. In response to
Ambassador Kirkpatrick, I would say, it may well be that
ratifying this treaty is not the whole answer, but it is
certainly an important part of the answer.
You have heard about the provisions of the CEDAW. Let me
say from my own experience at the State Department, where I
supervised the production of annual country reports on human
rights conditions worldwide, that a country's ratification of
CEDAW is one of the strongest indicators of the strength of its
commitment to internalize the norm of gender equality into
domestic law. For us, to obey the treaty's provisions would not
be burdensome, while countries with far less impressive records
have, in fact, ratified the treaty, and these are countries we
would never consider to be our equal on such matters.
From my time in the Government I can also say that our
continuing failure to ratify the CEDAW has reduced our global
standing; it has damaged our diplomatic relations, and it has
hindered our ability to lead in the international human rights
community. Nations that are otherwise our allies cannot
understand why we have not taken this obvious step. Our
European and Latin American allies in particular regularly
question and criticize us for this both in public settings and
in private diplomatic meetings. They have challenged our moral
leadership on human rights, which is devastating after
September 11; and perhaps most important, our exclusion from
this treaty has provided anti-American diplomatic ammunition to
countries who have exhibited far worse records on human rights
generally and women's rights in particular. So, to persist in
nonratification, I think, would be extremely damaging.
Will ratification help? As a recent comprehensive world
survey issued by the U.N. Development Fund for Women
chronicles, numerous countries around the world who have
ratified CEDAW have found that it has helped to empower them to
change their constitutions, to pass new laws, and influence
court decisions. It would have the same effect here. Most
fundamentally, ratification would further our national
interest. You do not have to take my word for it. Secretary
Powell put it well earlier this year when he said, ``the
worldwide advancement of women's issues is not only in keeping
with the deeply held values of the American people, it is
strongly in our national interest as well.''
I have studied this treaty for many years. I have found
nothing in it that even arguably jeopardizes our national
interest. The provisions are entirely consistent with the
letter and spirit of the Constitution, both State and Federal.
The U.S. can and should accept virtually all of the obligations
without qualification. It seems to me, in fact, that the
various understandings and reservations that have been proposed
in the past are too extensive. Only one of them, regarding free
speech, I think, is advisable to preserve the integrity of the
treaty.
I can address quickly some of the fallacies that have been
circulated about the likely impact of ratification. First, that
CEDAW supports abortion rights. This is flatly untrue. There is
no provision in CEDAW that mandates abortion or contraception
on demand. CEDAW does not create an international right to
abortion. The treaty itself is neutral on abortion, allowing
policies in this area to be set by signatory States. Its goal
is to ensure equal access to family planning information for
men and women alike. In fact, some countries where abortion is
illegal, among them Ireland, Rwanda, and Burkino Faso, have
ratified CEDAW.
Second, the claim that CEDAW would somehow undermine the
American family by redefining gender roles. It contains no
provisions that seek to regulate any constitutionally protected
interest and, as you know, the U.S. Constitution limits the
Government's power to interfere in family matters.
Third, some have falsely suggested the ratification of
CEDAW would require decriminalization of prostitution. Again,
Article 6 specifically states that countries shall take all
appropriate matters to suppress forms of trafficking in women
and exploitation of prostitution in women. Some have suggested
that ratification would require a legalization of same-sex
marriage. Whatever view you may hold about this practice, it is
clearly not contained in the treaty, which requires only
elimination of discrimination against men and women alike.
Senator Boxer. The red light and the yellow light got
confused, so your time is up, if you could just wrap up.
Mr. Koh. Yes, Senator. In closing, let me say how much this
means to every American. My mother came to this country from
Korea, and is now a naturalized American citizen. My wife is an
American-born citizen of Irish and British heritage, and my
daughter, who will turn 16 years old in 10 days time, is a
young American woman.
I cannot explain to my daughter why her grandmother and
mother would be protected by CEDAW in their ancestral countries
but she is not protected by it in the United States, which
professes to be a world leader on gender equality. I cannot
explain to her why the country that I served as Assistant
Secretary for Human Rights has for so long failed to ratify the
authoritative instrument on women's human rights, and finally,
I cannot explain why we insist on keeping company with such
non-ratifying countries as Iran, Sudan, and Syria, in which
human rights and women's rights have been brutally repressed.
So our choice is simple. Our failure to ratify the treaty
will undermine our efforts to fight for democracy and human
rights worldwide. Ratification now would be both prudent
foreign policy and simple justice.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Koh follows:]
Prepared Statement of Professor Harold Hongju Koh
Chairman Biden, Senator Boxer, Members of the committee:
Thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee today to
testify regarding the long-overdue United States Ratification of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW or Women's Convention). I have studied and argued for
ratification of that Convention for more than a decade, first in my
academic capacity as Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of
International Law (and from 1993-1998 as Director of the Orville H.
Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights) at Yale Law School,
where I have taught since 1985, and then from 1998 to 2001 when I
served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and
Labor. \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See, e.g., Testimony of Harold Hongju Koh, Assistant Secretary
of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Before the Subcommittee
on International Operations and Human Rights, U.S. House of
Representatives, March 8, 2000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush
recently announced that ``America will always stand for the non-
negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the
power of the state; respect for women; private property; free speech;
equal justice; and religious tolerance'' (emphasis added). I can
imagine no more fitting way for this Administration and this Senate to
answer that demand than by moving quickly to ratify this treaty for the
rights of women.
I am particularly honored to appear here today in front of Senators
who have been such strong advocates for gender equality over so many
years. Senator Boxer, let me commend you for your efforts during these
past several Congresses to make this hearing a reality, particularly by
introducing S. Res. 237, which called not just for hearings on CEDAW
ratification, but also for a date certain for Senate action. Let me
equally commend you, Chairman Biden, as principal author of the
Violence Against Women Act, for your sustained efforts to secure a
national commitment to end violence and discrimination against women
across this country.
My main message today is that this commitment should not stop at
the water's edge. Particularly after September 11, America cannot be a
world leader in guaranteeing progress for women's human rights, whether
in Afghanistan, here in the United States, or around the world, unless
it is also a party to the global women's treaty.
Let me first review the background and history of CEDAW; second,
explain why ratifying that treaty would further our national
commitments to eliminating gender discrimination, without jeopardizing
our national interests; and third, explain why some concerns
occasionally voiced about our ratification of this treaty are, upon
examination, completely unfounded.
First, some history. The United Nations Charter reaffirms both the
faith of the peoples of the United Nations ``in the equal rights of men
and women,'' Preamble, and their determination to promote respect for
human rights ``for all without distinction as to race, sex, language,
or religion.'' Art. 1(3). In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights similarly declared that ``everyone'' is entitled to the rights
declared there ``without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour,
(or) sex . . . .'' Art. 2. In 1975, a global call for an
international convention specifically to implement those commitments
emerged from the First World Conference on Women in Mexico City. But
until 1979, when the General Assembly adopted the CEDAW, there was no
convention that addressed comprehensively women's rights within
political, social, economic, cultural, and family life. After years of
drafting, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in December 18, 1979, and
the Convention entered into force in September 1981.
In the more than two decades since, 169 nations other than our own
have become parties to the Convention. Only nineteen United Nations
member states have not. That list includes such countries as
Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Qatar, and the
United Arab Emirates. To put it another way, the United States is now
the only established industrialized democracy in the world that has not
yet ratified the CEDAW treaty. Frankly, Senators, this is a national
disgrace for a country that views itself as a world leader on human
rights.
Why should the United States ratify this treaty? For two simple
reasons. First, ratification would make an important global statement
regarding the seriousness of our national commitment to these issues.
Second, ratification would have a major impact in ensuring both the
appearance and the reality that our national practices fully satisfy or
exceed international standards.
The CEDAW treaty has been accurately described as an international
bill of rights for women. The CEDAW simply affirms that women, like the
rest of the human race, have an inalienable right to live and work free
of discrimination. The Convention affirms the rights of all women to
exercise on an equal basis their ``human rights and fundamental
freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any
other field.'' \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Art. 1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The treaty defines \3\ and condemns discrimination against women
\4\ and announces an agenda for national action to end such
discrimination. By ratifying the treaty, states do nothing more than
commit themselves to undertaking ``appropriate measures'' \5\ toward
ending discrimination against women, steps that our country has already
begun in numerous walks of life. The CEDAW then lays a foundation for
realizing equality between women and men in these countries by ensuring
women's equal access to, and equal opportunities in, public and
political life--including the right to vote, to stand for election, \6\
to represent their governments at an international level, \7\ and to
enjoy equal rights ``before the law'' \8\--as well as equal rights in
education, \9\ employment, \10\ health care, \11\ marriage and family
relations, \12\ and other areas of economic and social life. \13\ The
Convention directs States Parties to ``take into account the particular
problems faced by rural women,'' \14\ and permits parties to take
``temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality''
between men and women, a provision analogous to one also found in the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,
which our country has already ratified. \15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ See Art. 1 (``the term `discrimination against women' shall
mean any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex
which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the
recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their
marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human
rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social,
cultural, civil or any other field.'').
\4\ See Art. 2 (``States Parties condemn discrimination against
women in all its forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and
without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women and,
to this end, undertake'' to embody the principle of gender equality
into national laws.).
\5\ See Art. 3.
\6\ See Art. 7.
\7\ See Art. 8.
\8\ See Art. 15.
\9\ See Art. 10.
\10\ See Art. 11.
\11\ See Art. 12.
\12\ See Art. 16.
\13\ See Art. 13.
\14\ See Art. 14.
\15\ Compare CEDAW Art. 4 with International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Art. 1(4).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ratifying this treaty would send the world the message that we
consider eradication of these various forms of discrimination to be
solemn, universal obligations. The violent human rights abuses we
recently witnessed against women in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo,
and Rwanda painfully remind us of the need for all nations to join
together to intensify efforts to protect women's rights as human
rights. At the State Department, where I supervised the production of
the annual country reports on human rights conditions worldwide, I
found that a country's ratification of the CEDAW is one of the surest
indicators of the strength of its commitment to internalize the
universal norm of gender equality into its domestic laws.
Let me emphasize that in light of our ongoing national efforts to
address gender equality through state and national legislation,
executive action, and judicial decisions, the legal requirements
imposed by ratifying this treaty would not be burdensome. Numerous
countries with far less impressive practices regarding gender equality
than the United States have ratified the treaty, including countries
whom we would never consider our equals on such matters, including
Iraq, Kuwait, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, from my direct experience as America's chief
human rights official, I can testify that our continuing failure to
ratify CEDAW has reduced our global standing, damaged our diplomatic
relations, and hindered our ability to lead in the international human
rights community. Nations that are otherwise our allies, with strong
rule-of-law traditions, histories, and political cultures, simply
cannot understand why we have failed to take the obvious step of
ratifying this convention. In particular, our European and Latin
American allies regularly question and criticize our isolation from
this treaty framework both in public diplomatic settings and private
diplomatic meetings.
Our nonratification has led our allies and adversaries alike to
challenge our claim of moral leadership in international human rights,
a devastating challenge in this post-September 11 environment. Even
more troubling, I have found, our exclusion from this treaty has
provided anti-American diplomatic ammunition to countries who have
exhibited far worse record on human rights generally, and women's
rights in particular. Persisting in the aberrant practice of
nonratification will only further our diplomatic isolation and
inevitably harm our other United States foreign policy interests.
Treaty ratification would be far more than just a paper act. The
treaty has demonstrated its value as an important policy tool to
promote equal rights in many of the foreign countries that have
ratified the CEDAW. As a recent, comprehensive world survey issued by
the United Nations Development Fund for Women chronicles, numerous
countries around the world have experienced positive gains directly
attributable to their ratification and implementation of the CEDAW.
\16\ CEDAW has been empowering women around the globe to change
constitutions, pass new legislation, and influence court decisions in
their countries. Ratification of the CEDAW by the United States would
similarly make clear our national commitment to ensure the equal and
nondiscriminatory treatment of American women in such areas as civil
and political rights, education, employment, and property rights
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ See, generally, UNIFEM, ``Bringing Equality Home: Implementing
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW),'' available at:
http://www.unifem.undp.org/cedaw/cedawen4.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most fundamentally, ratification of CEDAW would further our
national interests. Secretary of State Colin Powell put it well when he
said earlier this year: ``The worldwide advancement of women's issues
is not only in keeping with the deeply held values of the American
people; it is strongly in our national interest as well. . . . Women's
issues affect not only women; they have profound implications for all
humankind. Women's issues are human rights issues. . . . We, as a world
community, cannot even begin to tackle the array of problems and
challenges confronting us without the full and equal participation of
women in all aspects of life.''
After careful study, I have found nothing in the substantive
provisions of this treaty that even arguably jeopardizes our national
interests. Those treaty provisions are entirely consistent with the
letter and spirit of the United States Constitution and laws, both
state and federal. The United States can and should accept virtually
all of CEDAW's obligations and undertakings without qualification.
Regrettably, the Administration has not provided a witness here today
to set forth its views on the ratification of this treaty. Although
past Administrations have proposed that ratification be accompanied by
certain reservations, declarations, and understandings, only one of
those understandings, relating to limitations of free speech,
expression and association, seems to me advisable to protect the
integrity of our national law. \17\
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\17\ That proposed understanding, included in the 1994 Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Report, states in relevant part, that the
United States understands that by ratifying it could not
constitutionally ``accept any obligation under this Convention, in
particular under Articles 5, 7, 8, and 13, to restrict those rights [of
freedom of speech, expression and association), through the adoption of
legislation or any other measures, to the extent that they are
protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.'' S. 384-
10, Exec. Rep. Sen. Comm. On For. Rel. Oct. 3, 1994, reprinted in 89
Am. J. Int'l L. 108 (1995).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, let me address some myths and fallacies that have been
circulated about the likely impact of United States ratification of the
CEDAW. The most common include the following:
First, that CEDAW supports abortion rights by promoting access to
``family planning.'' This is flatly untrue. There is absolutely no
provision in CEDAW that mandates abortion or contraceptives on demand,
sex education without parental involvement, or other controversial
reproductive rights issues. CEDAW does not create any international
right to abortion. To the contrary, on its face, the CEDAW treaty
itself is neutral on abortion, allowing policies in this area to be set
by signatory states and seeking to ensure equal access for men and
women to health care services and family planning information. In fact,
several countries in which abortion is illegal--among them Ireland,
Rwanda, and Burkina Faso--have ratified CEDAW.
A second fallacy is that CEDAW ratification would somehow undermine
the American family by redefining traditional gender roles with regard
to the upbringing of children. In fact, CEDAW does not contain any
provisions seeking to regulate any constitutionally protected interests
with respect to family life. The treaty only requires that parties
undertake to adopt measures ``prohibiting all discrimination against
women'' and to ``embody the principle of the equality of men in women''
in national laws ``to ensure, through law and other appropriate means,
the practical realization of this principle.'' How best to implement
that obligation consistent with existing United States constitutional
protections--which as you know, limit the government's power to
interfere in family matters, including most parental decisions
regarding childrearing--is left for each country to decide for itself.
Third, some have falsely suggested that ratification of CEDAW would
require decriminalization of prostitution. Again, the text of the
treaty is to the contrary. CEDAW's Article 6 specifically states that
countries that have ratified CEDAW ``shall take all appropriate
measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in
women and exploitation of prostitution in women.''
Fourth, some claim that if CEDAW were U.S. law, it would outlaw
single-sex education and require censorship of school textbooks. In
fact, nothing in CEDAW mandates abolition of single-sex education. As
one way to encourage equal access to quality education for all
children, Article 10 requires parties to take all appropriate measures
to eliminate ``any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at
all levels and in all forms of education by encouraging [not requiring]
coeducation and other types of education which will help to achieve
this aim . . .,'' (emphasis added) including, presumably, single-sex
education that teaches principles of gender equality. CEDAW also
encourages the development of equal education material for students of
both genders. This provision is plainly designed not to disrupt
educational traditions in countries like ours, but rather, to address
those many countries in the world (like Afghanistan during Taliban
rule) in which educational facilities for girls are either nonexistent
or remain separate and unequal.
Fifth, some have suggested that U.S. ratification of CEDAW would
require the legalization of same-sex marriage. Whatever view one may
hold regarding the desirability of same-sex marriage, this treaty
plainly contains no such requirement. Article 10 of CEDAW requires only
elimination of discrimination directed against women ``in all matters
related to marriage and family relations.'' Thus, for example, the
practice of polygamy is inconsistent with the CEDAW because it
undermines women's equality with men and potentially fosters severe
financial inequities. Article 10 would neither require nor bar any
national laws regarding same-sex marriage, which by their very nature,
would apply equally to men and women.
Finally, and most pervasively, opponents of CEDAW have claimed that
U.S. ratification would diminish our national sovereignty and states'
rights by superseding or overriding our national, state or local laws.
Given the broad compatibility between the treaty requirements and our
existing national laws, however, very few occasions will arise in which
this is even arguably an issue. Moreover, the treaty generally requires
States to use ``appropriate measures'' to implement the non-
discrimination principle, which by its terms accords some discretion to
member countries to determine what is ``appropriate'' under the
national circumstances. Finally, the Senate is, of course, free to
address any material discrepancies between national law and the treaty
by placing understandings upon its advice and consent, along the lines
of the ``freedom of speech'' understanding discussed above, or by the
Congress passing implementing legislation--as it has done, for example,
to effectuate the Genocide Convention--specifying the precise ways in
which the Federal legislature will carry out our international
obligations under this treaty.
Ironically, many of the unfounded claims about the likely effects
of CEDAW ratification have been asserted by self-proclaimed advocates
of states' rights. In fact, within our own country, the emerging trend
has been the opposite. Broad sentiment has been emerging at both the
state and local level to incorporate the CEDAW requirements into local
law. As I speak, governmental bodies in some fifteen states and Guam,
\18\ sixteen counties \19\ and forty-two cities \20\ have adopted
resolutions or instruments endorsing CEDAW or adopting it on behalf of
their jurisdictions. Far from CEDAW imposing unwanted obligations on
local governments, local governments are in fact responding to the
demands of their citizens, who have become impatient at the lack of
federal action to implement these universal norms into American law.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ To date, legislative bodies have endorsed US ratification of
the CEDAW in CA (twice), CT (Senate), FL (House), HI (House), IL
(House), IA, ME, MA, NH, NY, NC, RI (Gen. Assembly), SD (House), VT,
Wisconsin (Senate), and the territory of Guam. For a complete listing,
see Working Group on Ratification of UNCEDAW, Human Rights for All, at
41-42, available at:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/commit/cedawbw.pdf.
\19\ These include counties in California, Illinois, Kentucky,
Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, and Washington.
\20\ San Francisco, California, for example, has enacted a city
ordinance designed to incorporate CEDAW into the functioning of the
city by promoting equality in the city's treatment of public employees,
its budgetary spending, and its provision of municipal services to city
inhabitants.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A host of other misconceptions exist about CEDAW, some of them
preposterous, which I would be happy to address in response to your
specific questions. \21\ But my main point is clear: we must not let
unfounded fears projected onto the CEDAW prevent us from the long
overdue step of ratifying this important document.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ One such preposterous claim, for example, is that U.S.
ratification of the CEDAW would somehow require the United States to
abolish Mother's Day. Nothing in the treaty requires this. Rather than
denigrating motherhood, the CEDAW's central aim is to support
motherhood, by promoting women's freedom to make choices on an equal
basis with men. Nothing in that goal conflicts with our proud American
tradition of celebrating both Mother's Day and Father's Day every year,
as expressions of this country's commitment to gender equality, which
is fully consistent with the nondiscrimination goals of the CEDAW.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Particularly in a time of terror, promoting human rights and
eradicating discrimination should not be partisan issues. As President
Bush recently reminded us, the United States cannot fight a war on
terrorism alone; it needs cooperation not only from its current allies,
but also from the rest of the world. ``We have a great opportunity
during this time of war,'' he said, ``to lead the world toward the
values that will bring lasting peace . . . [such as] the non-
negotiable demands of human dignity [that include] respect for women.
. . .'' First Lady Laura Bush echoed that sentiment on International
Women's Day 2002, when she said, ``People around the world are looking
closely at the roles that women play in society. And Afghanistan under
the Taliban gave the world a sobering example of a country where women
were denied their rights and their place in society . . . . Today,
the world is helping Afghan women return to the lives that they once
knew. . . . Our dedication to respect and protect women's rights in
all countries must continue if we are to achieve a peaceful, prosperous
world. . . . Together, the United States, the United Nations and all
of our allies will prove that the forces of terror can't stop the
momentum of freedom.''
The world looks to America for leadership on human rights, both in
our domestic practices and in our international commitments. Ours is a
nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
human beings--not just men--are created equal. Our country has fought a
civil war and a centuries-long social struggle to eliminate racial
discrimination. It is critically important that we seize this
opportunity to announce unequivocally to the world that we, of all
nations, insist on the equality of all human beings, regardless of
gender.
Senators, in closing let me say how much United States ratification
of this important treaty means to every American. My mother, Hesung
Chun Koh, came to this country more than fifty years ago from the
Republic of Korea and found equal opportunity here as a naturalized
American citizen. My wife, Mary-Christy Fisher, is a natural-born
American citizen and lawyer of Irish and British heritage. I am the
father of a young American, Emily Koh, who will turn sixteen years old
in ten days' time.
Although I have tried, I simply cannot give my daughter any good
reason why her grandmother and mother would have been protected by
CEDAW in their ancestral countries, but that she is not protected by it
in the United States, which professes to be a world leader in the
promotion of women's rights and gender equality. I cannot explain to
her why this country we love, and which I have served as Assistant
Secretary of State for Human Rights, has for so long failed to ratify
the authoritative human rights treaty that sets the universal standard
on women's equality. Finally, I cannot explain why, by not ratifying,
the United States chooses to keep company with such countries as
Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, in which human rights and women's
rights have been brutally repressed.
The choice is simple. Our continuing failure to ratify this treaty
will hamper and undermine our efforts to fight for democracy and human
rights around the world. Ratification now of the CEDAW treaty would be
both prudent foreign policy and simple justice.
Thank you. I now look forward to answering any questions you may
have.
Senator Boxer. Thank you very much.
We will hear from Ms. Kathryn Ogden Balmforth, member of
the firm of Wood Crapo, LLC, Salt Lake City, Utah, former
director of the World Family Policy Center, Brigham Young
University, and we are very grateful for your presence here,
and please begin.
STATEMENT OF MS. KATHRYN OGDEN BALMFORTH, MEMBER, FIRM OF WOOD
CRAPO, LLC, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, FORMER DIRECTOR, WORLD FAMILY
POLICY CENTER, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UTAH
Ms. Balmforth. Thank you, Madam Chairman, members of the
committee. I approach CEDAW as a civil rights lawyer, having
represented both plaintiffs and defendants in discrimination
cases. As you said, I am a member of the firm of Wood Crapo in
Salt Lake City, a firm founded by a woman. I took a leave from
my firm to serve for 3 years as the director of the World
Family Policy Center at Brigham Young University.
The World Family Policy Center is an interdisciplinary
center drawing expertise from the law school, the school of
family life, and the Center for International Studies. The
center works with diplomats at the United Nations to protect
the family from efforts to denigrate its status and protection
in international documents.
I oppose CEDAW for two reasons. First, I can say
unequivocally that CEDAW would offer nothing of substance to
American women. We have a highly developed system of civil
rights laws protecting women in this country. Those laws are
crafted by democratically elected representatives and
interpreted by courts designed to protect fundamental rights
and liberties which are the birthright of Americans. If
Americans do not like these laws, there are mechanisms for
Americans to change them.
Our system is not perfect because people are not perfect,
but it is so far superior to anything that exists at the United
Nations in establishing the rule of law that it would be the
sheerest folly to subordinate our right to legislate these
purely domestic matters, even to the slightest degree, to some
international body, and I must say that on its face CEDAW calls
for changes in constitutions and legislation to the extent they
do not comply with CEDAW.
Clearly, you cannot ignore the pronouncements of the CEDAW
committee, as the committee is set up by the treaty itself to
monitor compliance. In so doing, they interpret and apply the
treaty. They issue general recommendations trying to flesh out
these very vague and broad terms of the treaty, and as soon as
the optional protocol goes into existence they will further
interpret the treaty by deciding individual cases brought under
the treaty. You simply cannot ignore the pronouncements of the
CEDAW committee if you are thinking of ratifying CEDAW.
Second, I oppose CEDAW because both on its face and a
fortiori, as interpreted by the doctrinaire CEDAW committee, it
is a threat to fundamental freedoms everywhere. This is not a
regime behind which the United States should throw its power
and prestige.
An important characteristic of American civil rights law is
that it is crafted legislatively and judicially to balance
society's interests in preventing discrimination with other
equally important societal interests such as right to speech,
free exercise of religion, privacy, and parental rights. Rather
than acknowledging these fundamental rights, the language of
CEDAW is so sweeping and overbroad that it threatens to overrun
them and any other standing in its path.
Article I of CEDAW defines discrimination as any
distinction on the basis of sex in any field.
Article II requires Governments to eliminate all
discrimination, not just by Government, but by any person,
organization, or enterprise.
Article V requires Governments to modify the social and
cultural patterns of conduct of men and women with a view to
achieving the elimination of all practices which are based on
stereotyped roles for men and women.
CEDAW thus requires Governments to intrude in all areas, no
matter how private, consensual, or even sacred. On its face,
CEDAW calls for an unprecedentedly intrusive Government to
exert its power against family, private interaction between men
and women, religion, and even thought.
The reports of the CEDAW committee offer no hope that
restraint might be exercised in the interpretation of its
overbroad language. To the contrary, the committee reports are
disturbingly ad hoc, undisciplined, and inconsistent. I might
add that advocates of the CEDAW and the CEDAW committee like to
dignify the committee pronouncements by calling them
jurisprudence. There is no requirement that the so-called
experts forming this committee be jurists, let alone prudent
ones, and they show none of the restraint or thought of
traditional jurisprudence.
The committee shows no respect for competing fundamental
rights. They show no reluctance to issue new rights even when
the committee knows that Governments would never have ratified
CEDAW if those rights had been spelled out in the treaty. In
fact, in 1996, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N.
Population Fund, and the Secretary cosponsored a roundtable
discussion for the heads of the treaty bodies, including CEDAW
to urge reinterpretation of those treaties to include
controversial unagreed rights such as abortion and lesbianism.
The CEDAW committee has fully complied. My written remarks
contain numerous citations to some of the overreaching and
outrageous pronouncements of the committee. This is a
representative list. It is by no means complete. Briefly, the
committee routinely instructs countries to liberalize their
abortion laws. They have issued an interpretive document which
coyly states that Article XII of CEDAW prohibits
criminalization, quote, of medical procedures only needed by
women.
The committee has even gone so far as to state in the case
of Italy and one of the former Soviet republics whose name
escapes me now, and I apologize for that, that women's rights
are violated when hospitals refuse to do abortions for reasons
of conscience, thus implying that this implied right to
abortion trumps the rights of conscience, which are expressed
in other international documents.
The committee has instructed Kyrgyzstan to legalize
lesbianism. The committee did instruct China to decriminalize
prostitution, and frankly I have always thought that if
something is no longer criminalized it is legal, and if there
is a distinction between decriminalization and legalization I
think it is too fine a distinction to have any practical
meaning. It commended Greece for legalizing prostitution and
admonished Germany to make sure its prostitutes received all
benefits from labor and employment laws.
Now, I would say that on its face the document says that it
purports to be opposed to trafficking and exploitation of
prostitution. It is a very careful and somewhat sneaky
distinction being made by the document and in its application,
because it says nothing about voluntary prostitution, and in
fact I sat and watched at the 5-year followup to Beijing as
western Governments, including ours, I am ashamed to say,
refused to take any position in opposition to voluntary
prostitution.
Senator Boxer. I would ask you if you could wrap up.
Ms. Balmforth. OK. The primary characteristics of the
committee are its unrelenting hostility to religion and to any
traditional family structures, and this does not just mean in
Afghanistan, although advocates of the treaty routinely point
to Afghanistan as a justification for the overreach of the
treaty, thus proving the adage that hard cases make bad law.
The committee attacks religion incrementally. You only have
to look at the instruction to Libya to reinterpret the Koran in
ways the committee finds permissible to see its disdain for
religion, but it has also explicitly found in one of its
general comments that religion disadvantages women in all
countries.
And even if a country has completely secularized its
system, the committee finds noncompliance if people persist in
thinking and acting and voting according to their religious
convictions. They recently did so to Ireland, because the Irish
persist in thinking, acting, and voting like Catholics,
especially with respect to abortion. The committee invoked
Article V requiring Ireland to step in to eradicate the effects
of Catholicism on their culture to the extent it offended the
CEDAW committee's interpretation of CEDAW.
Senator Boxer. I would ask you to please wrap it up.
Ms. Balmforth. I will do that.
There has been a great deal of talk about reservations to
the treaty. I do not believe, for a number of legal reasons,
that appropriate reservations can be made to protect against
whatever rights the committee may invent in the future. There
is a lot of high-flown language and noble sentiment attached to
this treaty. As usual, the devil is in the details, and as a
woman who is familiar with some of these details, I am very
much opposed to ratification.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Balmforth follows:]
Prepared Statement of Kathryn O. Balmforth, Esq.
I oppose ratification of CEDAW for two reasons. First, CEDAW offers
nothing to American women. Second, CEDAW is so overreaching and flawed
that it is a threat to civil rights and liberties everywhere. America
should not throw its power and prestige behind it.
I approach CEDAW as an American civil rights lawyer, having
represented both plaintiffs and defendants in anti-discrimination
cases. I took a three year leave from my practice to serve as the
Director of the World Family Policy Center at Brigham Young University,
and there became familiar with CEDAW.
I can say unequivocally that ratification of CEDAW would offer
nothing of substance to American women. The United States already has a
highly developed system of civil rights laws promoting equality for
women. It is a system developed, and developing, through laws passed by
legislators and courts interpreting and applying those laws. The
legislatures directly reflect the will of the American people, while
the courts are designed to protect fundamental rights and freedoms that
Americans claim as their birthright. If Americans are dissatisfied with
the law, there are mechanisms for Americans to change it.
Does the American system always operate perfectly? Of course not.
Human beings are fallible. But the rule of law as established in our
system is so far superior to anything that exists in the international
human rights treaty system, that it would be the sheerest folly to
subordinate, in even the slightest degree, our right to make our own
laws in this purely domestic area to any international treaty body.
One important characteristic of American civil rights law is that
it is crafted, legislatively and judicially, to balance society's
interest in preventing discrimination with other, equally important,
societal interests, such as fundamental first amendment rights to
speech and freedom of religion. By contrast, CEDAW, on its face--and a
fortiori, as it is being interpreted by the CEDAW committee--is a
threat to political freedom, freedom of thought and belief, parental
rights, privacy rights, and religious freedom.
Rather than acknowledging these fundamental rights, the language of
CEDAW is so sweeping and overbroad that it threatens to overrun them,
and any others standing in its path. For example, Article 1 of CEDAW
defines ``discrimination'' as ``any distinction . . . on the basis of
sex,'' in ``any . . . field.'' Article 2 requires states parties to
eliminate ``all discrimination against women,'' not just by government,
but ``by any person, organization, or enterprise.'' Article 5, requires
states parties to ``modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct
of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of . . . all
. . . practices which are based on . . . stereotyped roles for men and
women.''
In other words, CEDAW requires government to intrude in all areas,
no matter how private, consensual, or even sacred, if there is any
distinction made on the basis of sex, or if any culture perpetuates
``stereotypes.'' CEDAW requires the exertion of government power
against family, religion and even thought. On its face, CEDAW calls for
an unprecedentedly intrusive government. The fact that the intrusion
would be made to advance a politically correct feminist ideology makes
it no less oppressive.
The reports of the CEDAW committee offer no hope that restraint
might be exercised in the interpretation and application of CEDAW's
broad language. To the contrary, the committee's reports are
disturbingly ad hoc, undisciplined, and inconsistent. Though CEDAW
advocates like to dignify the pronouncements of the CEDAW committee by
calling them ``jurisprudence,'' there is no requirement that the so-
called ``experts'' comprising the committee be jurists--let alone
prudent ones.
The reports do not suggest that the committee gives any weight to
competing fundamental rights. The committee shows no reluctance to
intrude into protected areas or to expand its reach--even beyond the
sweeping language of CEDAW--by stretching that language to encompass
new rights that were clearly never intended by the states parties. In
fact, in 1996, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, the U.N.
Secretariat, and the U.N. Population Fund held a round table discussion
for the heads of the human rights treaty bodies, including the CEDAW
committee. At that meeting, the committee heads were encouraged to
reinterpret their respective treaties to create ``rights'' that have no
popular support in most parts of the world, and were given theoretical
blueprints for such reinterpretations.\1\
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\1\ See Round Table of Human Rights Treaty Bodies on Human Rights
Approaches to Women's Health, with A Focus on Sexual and Reproductive
Health and Rights, 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The committee reports are, indeed, increasingly doctrinaire. For
example, the ``stereotype'' routinely targeted for eradication by the
CEDAW committee is ``motherhood.'' The CEDAW committee behaves as if
motherhood were an arbitrary designation, rather than a fact of life.
One of the committee's most pronounced characteristics is an
unrelenting hostility to traditional family arrangements. Despite the
right of the family to state protection in numerous international
documents, and even the specific admonition in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights that motherhood is entitled to special
care,\2\ the CEDAW committee views CEDAW as a mandate to eradicate the
very idea that being a mother and a homemaker is a role that might be
valued and freely chosen by some women. The committee views full
employment in paid work as a woman's only acceptable role, and day care
as the best environment for even the youngest children. The committee
has even admonished countries to change tax laws that make it easier
for mothers to be with their children.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 25, para. 2.
\3\ A/55/38 para. 314 (Germany).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make no mistake, this hostility to traditional family roles is not
aimed only at governments like the Taliban, although CEDAW advocates
used the Taliban as a justification for CEDAW's excessive reach (thus
proving the adage that ``hard cases make bad law''). In recent reports,
the committee has told Western European countries like Germany, Spain,
and Luxembourg--with their below replacement birth rates and imploding
populations--that their governments must do more to get women into the
full-time work force, and to ``eradicate stereotypical attitudes.'' \4\
The committee recently chastised Sweden because its young men and women
were freely choosing vocational roles that the committee views as too
``traditional.'' The committee admonished Sweden to do a better job of
indoctrination.\5\ The call for governmental ``eradication'' of
``attitudes'' violates fundamental rights to freedom of thought and
belief.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ CEDAW/C/2000/I/CRP.3/Add.7/Rev. 1, paras. 25-28 (Germany);
CEDAW/C/1999/L.2/Add.6, paras. 24-27 (Spain); CEDAW/C/2000/I/CRP.3/Rev.
1, paras. 25-26 (Luxembourg).
\5\ A/56/38 para. 342.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The committee made similar pronouncements to Georgia and Belarus,
countries struggling both with declining populations and attempts to
rebuild societies after the collapse of Communism. The committee
accused both countries of overemphasizing women's role as mothers, and
specifically criticized Belarus for reinstituting a national Mothers'
Day.\6\ The committee has criticized countries because too many of
their tiniest children--from newborns to the age of three--were with
their mothers, instead of in day care.\7\
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\6\ 16 CEDAW/C/1999/L.2/Add.3, para. 30; CEDAW/C/2000/I/CRP.3/
Add.5/Rev. 1, paras. 9, 23-27 (Belarus).
\7\ See, e.g., A/55/38 para. 313 (Germany); A/52/38/Rev. 1, paras.
104, 114 (Slovenia).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The committee also seems oblivious to political self-determination
and freely chosen democratic leadership. In applying Article 4 of
CEDAW, which calls for ``temporary special measures'' to achieve
equality of the sexes, the committee has recommended institution of
quotas in all spheres, public and private, and even for elective
offices.\8\ The committee suggested that the government of Georgia,
when undoing its former totalitarian regime, had been too quick to
abandon its political quotas.\9\ This notion of quotas for women in
elective office is so extreme that, when it was placed before the
voters of Switzerland a couple of years ago, it received only 17
percent of the vote, suggesting that even the majority of women voted
against it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ CEDAW/C/2002/1/CRP.3/Add.7, para 33 (Estonia); A/56/38 para.
341 (Egypt); CEDAW/C/2000/CRP.3/Add.1/Rev. 1, para. 42 (Jordan); CEDAW/
C/1999/L.2/Add.3, para. 29 (Georgia); A/53/38, para. 110 (Croatia).
\9\ CEDAW/C/1999/L.2/Add.3, paras. 28-29.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The committee's disregard of rights to religious exercise can be
understood simply by referring to its incredible instruction to the
Libyan government to reinterpret its people's fundamental scripture--
the Koran--in ways that were ``permissible under CEDAW.'' \10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ A/49/38 paras. 130, 132.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Again, however, the committee's disdain for religion is not limited
to conservative Muslim countries. The committee has expressly opined
that religion disadvantages women ``in all countries.'' \11\ The
committee has criticized governments, Norway and Hong Kong, for
example, because they grant exemptions from discrimination laws to
religious institutions, thus allowing churches and religious
communities to establish their own rules for internal governance.\12\
If the United States were to ratify CEDAW, existing exemptions for
religious institutions in American civil rights laws would similarly
offend the CEDAW committee.
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\11\ A/52/38/Rev.1, para. 10.
\12\ A/54/38, para. 314 (China/Hong Kong); A/50/38, para. 460
(Norway).
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The committee attacks religion incrementally. When a country makes
a reservation based on religious belief, the committee pressures that
country to withdraw it, or declares it invalid.\13\ The committee then
pressures countries to completely secularize their laws. Then, even
after legal systems have been completely secularized, the committee
finds non-compliance if the citizens' freely cast votes reflect their
religious values.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ See, e.g., A/56/38 paras 326-27 (Egypt)
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For example, the committee's primary criticism of Ireland was that
the Irish persist in thinking, living, and voting like Catholics,
particularly with respect to abortion.\14\ The committee invoked
Article 5 of CEDAW, which obligates the Irish government to take
measures to eradicate the influence of Catholicism on its culture and
people, to the extent Catholicism offends the committee's
interpretation of rights under CEDAW. \15\
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\14\ CEDAW/C/1999/L.2/Add.4, para. 20.
\15\ Id., paras.33-34.
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Furthermore, as I previously mentioned, the committee shows no
reluctance to invent new, unanticipated and unagreed rights by
processes of ``interpretation.'' For example, the committee is treating
abortion and lesbianism \16\ as ``rights,'' even though such ``rights''
have little popular support throughout the world and have been, in
fact, clearly rejected by the General Assembly at Cairo and Beijing, in
follow ups to those conferences, and numerous other negotiations. The
committee even began treating voluntary prostitution as a ``right''
under CEDAW.\17\ This practice of inventing new ``rights'' raises
serious questions about the committee's good faith in interpreting
CEDAW, and about the legitimacy of a committee of ``experts'' imposing
these new rights on sovereign governments, when they know that these
governments would never have agreed to a document expressly containing
them.
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\16\ See, e.g., CEDAW/C/1999/L.2/Add.2, paras 26-27 (abortion); A/
54/39, paras. 127-28 (lesbianism).
\17\ See A/54/38, paras. 288-89 (China), and para. 197
(Greece);CEDAW/C/2000/I/CRP.3/Add. 7/Rev. 1, paras. 39-40.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nor do all women, themselves, agree with the CEDAW committee's
priorities. Many women, in all parts of the world, view their family
role as the most important role they will ever have. They freely choose
to be with their families, nurturing their children, and passing on
culture and values. They do not want to work full-time, at least while
their children are small. In many cases, women are forced to work
because of economics, and would like to be ``liberated'' from their
jobs to spend more time with their families. They do not feel oppressed
by their ``stereotypical role.'' They believe that motherhood and
homemaking offer benefits to themselves and to their families. Yet,
CEDAW requires that the force of government be brought to bear to
eradicate these ``stereotypical attitudes.'' What business does any
government have interfering in this manner?
These matters, and other matters covered by CEDAW, go to the core
of culture, family, and religious belief. CEDAW--particularly as it is
interpreted by the CEDAW committee--poses a threat to fundamental
rights in all these areas. The doctrinaire approach of the CEDAW
committee is nothing less than ``cultural colonialism,'' which attempts
to force a radical Western agenda which is widely rejected even in the
West. It completely ignores the rights of women, and men, to political,
social, and cultural self-determination. We have not done women a favor
if, for the sake of possible short-term gains, we persuade them to
sacrifice political freedom.
As global communication and commerce shrink the world, and as
people in all parts of the world become better educated and more aware
of the situation of women in the developed world, the lot of women
worldwide will inevitably improve, with or without CEDAW and the CEDAW
committee. It wasn't so long ago that women in America were second-
class citizens. We have evolved, and that has changed. These changes
were made without an international committee interfering in our
domestic governance and telling us which parts of our culture we had to
jettison. People in the rest of the world deserve the same opportunity
to evolve, consistent with their own cultures and values. CEDAW is too
blunt an instrument for the task. Whatever advances it may secure for
women, the collateral costs, in terms of denigration of other
fundamental rights, are too high.
The international human rights system--which is much more malleable
and corruptible than the American legal system--has become a magnet for
groups seeking ways to seize power and impose their beliefs without
popular support. It attracts those groups precisely because of its
malleability and corruptibility. The CEDAW committee is a prime example
of these characteristics.
Some may say that the CEDAW committee can't hurt the United States,
because we are too powerful, the committee has no enforcement
authority, and we can make appropriate reservations.
Of course, if only the weak nations must kowtow to the CEDAW
committee, then this isn't a system of ``law'' at all, but merely the
exercise of power, and we should not pretend otherwise.
It is true that the CEDAW committee, at present, has no ``teeth''
with which to enforce its pronouncements, nor do any of the United
Nations Human Rights treaty bodies. These bodies were ostensibly
founded on the principle of respect for the sovereignty of nations.
Accordingly, for the present, compliance with human rights committee
recommendations depends on the political will of the states
parties.\18\
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\18\ This is true, at least, among the developed nations. If
countries are poor, weak, and in need of international assistance, they
may already be subject to coercion to comply as a condition of
receiving assistance.
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However, one only need follow the news to recognize that there is
an ongoing effort, both at the United Nations and among some Western
powers, to give ``teeth'' to the enforcement of human rights. Who can
doubt that one of the main purposes of NATO's activities in the former
Yugoslavia was to make the point that human rights supersede national
sovereignty? Several recent pronouncements from within the United
Nations system have made the same point. Kofi Annan has spoken openly
about ``redefining'' sovereignty, and stating that the ``individual is
the focus of the [United Nations'] concerns,'' thus bypassing
bothersome national governments.\19\
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\19\ Kofi Annan, ``The Legitimacy to Intervene: International
Action to Uphold Human Rights Requires a New Understanding of State and
Individual Sovereignty,'' Financial Times, December 31, 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moreover, one of the newly minted ``crimes against humanity'' in
the statute of the International Criminal Court is the crime of
``persecution,'' which is broadly defined as ``the intentional and
severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law
. . . '' \20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ A/CONF.183/9, Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court, Art. 7, para. 2(g).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
If national sovereignty must give way in cases of violation of
``human rights,'' and if individuals are to be imprisoned for the
denial of ``fundamental rights'' under ``international law,'' then
these undisciplined, doctrinaire committee pronouncements matter a
great deal because they purport to give content to those ``rights.'' If
a human rights regime with ``teeth'' becomes a reality, CEDAW would
indeed pose a danger to important rights and freedoms, not to mention
sovereignty. This is not a regime to which the United States should
encourage by lending its prestige and support.
Nor can the United States necessarily always rely on reservations
to protect its sovereignty and the constitutional rights of its
citizens. We are certainly too powerful now for the ``international
community'' to impose its will upon us. But there is no guarantee that
the ``international community,'' or the CEDAW committee, would always
respect our reservations. And, again, if this is simply a matter of raw
power, not of law, then it is undeserving of our support for that
reason alone.
We could declare that CEDAW is not self-executing. But the CEDAW
committee takes the position that CEDAW must become part of domestic
law.\21\ We can make reservations on specific topics. But who can
predict what non-textual rights will be introduced by the CEDAW
committee in the future? We can make a broad reservation based on our
Constitution. But a quick perusal of the reservations to the CEDAW,
and, more specifically, the objections to those reservations, will
reveal that members of the ``international community'' routinely
declare such broad reservations invalid because they are too vague and
non-specific. In short, there is no way to guarantee that the CEDAW
committee will not at least attempt to meddle in the domestic affairs
of the American people, in violation of our Constitution and our
sovereignty. It is precisely this type of meddling by human rights
committees that recently prompted Australia to declare that it would no
longer report to them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ See, e.g., CEDAW/C/2002/I/CRP.3/Add.4 para. 31 (Trinidad and
Tobago).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In conclusion, the advocates of CEDAW usually speak in broad,
glowing terms about all CEDAW's noble intentions. As usual, however,
the devil is in the details. As a woman who is familiar with some of
those details, I oppose ratification of CEDAW. It offers nothing of
value, and there are too many important rights at risk.
______
supplement to prepared statement of kathryn o. balmforth
As discussed at the hearing on CEDAW before the Committee on
Foreign Relations on June 13, 2002, I am pleased to provide additional
information clarifying the source of footnote 11 on page 6 of my
prepared statement.
In United Nations document A/52/38/Rev.1, paragraph 387 reads:
1. General Recommendation 23
387. The committee adopted general recommendation 23
on articles 7 and 8 of the Convention relating to women
in public life, and authorized Ms. Silvia Cartwright,
in conjunction with the Secretariat, to edit the text
so that it could be included in final form in the
report of the committee on its seventeenth session (for
the text, see part two, chap. I, sect. A).
Paragraph 10 of General Recommendation 23, as approved by the
committee and posted on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights website, reads:
10. In all nations, the most significant factors
inhibiting women's ability to participate in public
life have been the cultural framework of values and
religious beliefs, the lack of services and men's
failure to share the tasks associated with the
organization of the household and with the care and
raising of children. In all nations, cultural
traditions and religious beliefs have played a part in
confining women to the private spheres of activity and
excluding them from active participation in public
life.
Equality of participation in public life is a mandate of Article 7
of the Convention. The CEDAW committee is interpreting that to mean
numerical equality, not just equal opportunity. The committee has
called for quotas, even for elective office. Since Article 5 of CEDAW
expressly calls for changing any practice that is based on
``stereotyped roles'' for women, it is clear that the express targeting
of ``religion'' in this General Comment is meant to convey the idea
that any religion that encourages motherhood and caring for the family
as a valuable activity is violating CEDAW, and that action should be
taken to change those belief systems.
Senator Boxer. The Hon. Juliette McLennan, former U.S.
Representative to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women,
we welcome you.
STATEMENT OF HON. JULIETTE C. McLENNAN, FORMER U.S.
REPRESENTATIVE TO THE U.N. COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN,
EASTON, MD
Ms. McLennan. Thank you, Madam Chairman and other members
of the committee, and I thank you for inviting all of us here
today to discuss this treaty. Recalling the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or
CEDAW, the treaty for the rights of women, U.S. ratification of
this is a matter of crucial, crucial importance for the health
and well-being of women and children around the world. It is
also critical for the international interests of the United
States, and I hope my testimony will help persuade some of you
in this case. I have a longer testimony which I would like to
submit to you, and I will just try and touch on some of the key
points as I go through.
As a former Representative to the U.N. Commission on the
Status of Women during the first Bush administration--I believe
some refer to it as Bush 41--I can tell you that my work as an
ambassador, you would hear stories all the time from other
diplomats, where is the leadership of the United States?
Without ratifying this treaty we do not have the authority and
the credibility to go forward with our leadership in human
rights. It is very simple.
International standards, the importance of having
international standards for human rights is vital. In
Afghanistan, as we have been talking about this morning, we
have seen the terrible effects of apartheid, gender apartheid.
In too many other countries women and girls are still deprived
of the basic rights we take for granted right here in the
United States. The international treaty for the rights of women
was approved 22 years ago. 169 countries have ratified it. We
have already heard about the company we keep, somewhat
embarrassing, to say the least.
May I just say that the supreme court of Tanzania put it
very well when it cited the standards in ruling that women must
be allowed to inherit clan property. The treaty for the rights
of women and these other facts the court said are, quote, a
standard below which any civilized nation will be ashamed to
fall. International standards, international benchmarks. These
are the key things this treaty does, and we need to support it.
The question for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is
whether it makes a difference for the human rights of women if
the United States ratifies this treaty. Clearly, we have heard
from all sorts of people this morning the effects that this
treaty, the ratification of this treaty will have. It is
terribly, terribly important. The failure of our ratification
has again, if I may say, caused our credibility to be called
into question in the international arena. We have not ratified
the treaty. We have very little leverage when we argue that
other nations ought to observe basic human rights of women.
When we are not treaty partners, it is very awkward for us
to demand, for example, that India and Pakistan work hard to
enforce treaty bans in their own laws against bride-burning and
the so-called honor killings of women. Without a seat at the
table, our voice is not heard and thus is not taken seriously,
and I might also say from my own personal experience, when I
was at the United Nations, the other diplomats would come up to
me and say, your country publishes a country-by-country human
rights report every year, yet you have not ratified CEDAW. It
does not equalize in weight. We are not being heard.
Critics like to point out that there are countries that
have ratified the treaty where women's rights are still abused.
Well, the treaty is only one tool. We live in an imperfect
world, but without that seat at the table, without that
leadership, we cannot show and prove the bipartisan support
that this country has exhibited in human rights for the last--
well, forever. Forever.
Senator Boxer. I would ask you to wrap up.
Ms. McLennan. Yes, I would be happy to. I would just like
to say, again, the importance of ratifying this is so important
for our leadership capability, helping women around the world.
We have to be able to stand up and say we, the United
States, we do not support sex slavery, we oppose the deaths of
women dowry disputes, we oppose women dying as victims of honor
crimes, and from AIDS, and the complications of child birth. We
are a Nation who supports education for girls as well as boys,
and we refuse to leave women behind as second-class citizens in
voting, or gaining credit, or owning property.
That is why the United States must ratify this treaty. It
is long overdue. Our voice and support are long, long overdue,
and I urge the committee to please ratify this treaty with
great haste.
[The prepared statement of Ms. McLennan follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ambassador Juliette Clagett McLennan
Madame Chairman, members of the committee: thank you very much for
inviting me to be here today to discuss with you this very important
treaty. Its formal name is the Convention for the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW. But to be perfectly
clear on what this means, I will call it the Treaty for the Rights of
Women. U.S. ratification of this treaty is a matter of crucial
importance for the health and well-being of women and children around
the world, and it is also critical for the international interests of
the United States. I hope my testimony will help to persuade all of you
that this is the case.
My name is Juliette Clagett McLennan and I am a former U.S.
Representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women,
where I served in the administration of President George Bush with the
rank of ambassador. I am also on the board of directors of the U.S.
Friends of the World Food Programme and the International Center for
Research on Women. My first concern here today is that some members of
the committee may not see any need for America to ratify this treaty. I
can tell you from my work as an ambassador and subsequent work around
the world that ratification of this treaty is sorely needed.
Next, I want to explain how the treaty has worked overseas to help
save women's lives, and how U.S. ratification will help to save
millions more lives around the world. And finally, I am concerned that
some senators may have some misunderstandings about the Treaty for the
Rights of Women. I want to try to clear those up.
First let me talk about the importance of having international
standards for human rights of women. In Afghanistan we have seen the
terrible effects of gender apartheid at work. In too many other
countries, women and girls are still deprived of the basic rights we
take for granted here at home. While it is hard to hear and harder to
bear, the facts tell us that there is no doubt a need for international
standards:
Some two million girls between five and 15 are brought into
the commercial sex market every year \1\ as part of worldwide
human trafficking.
An estimated 60 million girls are ``missing'' because of son
preference, female infanticide or simple neglect. \1\
Around the world, pre-pubescent girls are routinely required
to marry before their bodies are mature enough to cope with
sexual relations or pregnancy, and as a result, pregnancy-
related complications are the main cause of death for girls 15
to 19.\2\
Because older men often prey upon uneducated young girls,
the HIV/AIDS infection rate for teenage girls worldwide is five
times the rate for boys their own age. For women in their 20s,
the rate is three times higher.\4\
In India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, women are often attacked
with acid in dowry disputes, and so-called ``honor'' killings
took the lives of 5,000 women in 1999--a stabbing, stoning,
strangulation or live burning every two hours.\1\ The murderers
are not prosecuted.
In developing countries, one woman in every 48 will die from
the complications of pregnancy and childbirth, compared to only
one in 1,800 in the industrialized world, because women get
unequal medical care.\3\
Women are two-thirds of the world's 880 million
illiterates,\1\ and of the 300 million children with no access
to education, two-thirds are girls.\1\
Women may be barred from owning property or from inheriting
it, or they cannot get credit to start businesses, or they are
kept from voting and barred from the councils where decisions
are made about their own lives.
When wars and conflicts rage, women are rarely at the tables
where negotiators try to preserve peace or end conflict. Yet,
women and children make up more than 75 percent of the world's
millions of displaced persons and refugees.\5\
The International Treaty for the Rights of Women was approved at
the United Nations in 1979 as an effort to end those abuses. It does
not establish any laws but rather sets standards for the human rights
of women, standards that were developed from measures that the United
States strongly supports, including the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the Bill of Rights of our Constitution. The Supreme Court of
Tanzania put it very well when it cited these standards in ruling that
women must be allowed to inherit clan property. The Treaty for the
Rights of Women and these other pacts, the court said, are ``a standard
below which any civilized nation will be ashamed to fall.''
The question for the Foreign Relations Committee is whether it
makes a difference to the human rights of women if the United States
ratifies this treaty. At this moment, the United States stands
shoulder-to-shoulder in failing to ratify this treaty with such nations
as Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria and Somalia. As the members of this
committee know very well, women and girls in Afghanistan under the
Taliban were subjected to shocking abuse. They were punished or killed
for exercising basic freedoms of speech, assembly and public
participation--for just trying to go to work or to school. In Sudan and
Syria women lack full property and legal rights, and in Somalia girls
are subjected to female genital cutting. Our partnership with these
nations in refusing to join the world community that stands for the
human rights of women is embarrassing, to say the least--one that we
ought to abandon as soon as possible. Over the last 22 years, 169
countries have ratified the Treaty for the Rights of Women, and we are
the only industrialized and developed nation that has not.
This failure has compromised our credibility as a world leader in
helping women to seek their human rights. Because we have not ratified
the treaty, we have little leverage when we argue that other nations
ought to observe the basic human rights of women. When we are not full
treaty partners, it is awkward for us to demand, for example, that
India and Pakistan work harder to enforce the treaty bans and their own
laws against bride-burning and the so-called honor killings of women.
Without a seat at the table, our voice is not heard and thus, not taken
seriously.
We have learned to our national dismay that it harms our national
interest when we are not eligible to be on a U.N. committee where human
rights are protected and promoted. Only if we ratify the Treaty for the
Rights of Women can we serve on and lend our strength to the CEDAW
committee, the group that monitors countries on their progress in
overcoming barriers to women's full equality. The committee is named
for the formal treaty name, and gets periodic reports from each
ratifying country. But its voice would be a lot stronger if the United
States could be a member. In the same way, the treaty and the committee
would amplify the U.S. voice in our drive to end discrimination and
abuse of women around the world.
Critics like to point out that even in countries that have ratified
this treaty, women's rights are still abused. But the treaty, like
other human rights instruments, is one tool available to women to press
their governments to make good on their treaty commitment. We live in
an imperfect world but because the treaty sets standards for basic
human rights, it has become a strong tool to stop violence against
women and open the doors of opportunity. Where the treaty can be
invoked, women and girls can more credibly demand the rights that
American women take for granted--like the right to vote, to hold
elected office and to have credit and property in their own names.
In Colombia, for example, the courts ruled in 1992 that the absence
of legal recourse for a victim of domestic abuse was a violation of the
woman's human rights to life and personal security. In Uganda, the
treaty terms led the state and cities to create programs against
domestic violence. Pakistan introduced co-education in primary schools
after it ratified the treaty, and girls' enrollment, although still
very low, has increased rapidly. Developed countries benefit too.
Argentina set up a program to prevent teen pregnancy and provide care
when it does occur, especially for homeless girls. Slovenia and
Switzerland have changed their school admission policies to benefit
girls, and Australia launched efforts to promote awareness and
prevention of breast and cervical cancer.\6\
The Treaty for the Rights of Women is a tool that women around the
world are using to seek the right to own or inherit property, to
establish their own credit, to hold jobs and get an education, to fight
poverty and violence, and to improve their own health care, saving
millions of lives. Ratifying the Treaty for the Rights of Women will
allow the United States to lead the way in reducing the suffering of
the world's three billion women. It is in our own urgent national
interest to do this.
Let me now tell you some things the Treaty for the Rights of Women
will NOT do. First, it will NOT require any change in U.S. laws. As
this committee noted in its report in 1994, U.S. laws are already
consistent with the standards in the treaty. In addition, the treaty is
not self-executing. This means that the treaty cannot change U.S.
domestic law in any way. Any argument that the treaty will require a
lot of legal changes or inspire a flood of lawsuits is just plain
incorrect. The treaty certainly does not authorize any lawsuits that
are not possible right now. In addition, the treaty has no enforcement
mechanisms--just the force of international opinion. No international
court or tribunal will be meddling in U.S. laws or family arrangements.
The only thing this treaty requires is periodic reports on progress
in overcoming barriers to women's equality and the national good will
to address barriers that might still exist. And some of the
misconceptions about the treaty arise from the fact that irresponsible
critics have taken lines out of context from some CEDAW committee
recommendations. Let me be clear. There are no mandates to governments,
nor can there ever be mandates to governments, from the CEDAW
committee.
For example, critics of the treaty say the CEDAW committee in its
comments on China said prostitution should be legal worldwide. That is
simply wrong. The CEDAW committee noted in its country report on China
that it has rampant prostitution and sex trafficking as well as a
skyrocketing rate of HIV/AIDS infection. So it urged the government of
China to regulate prostitution so that the victimized women can come
forward without fear of jail to get health care, education and
treatment for AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.
Evangelical Christian groups among others have made the very same
recommendations.
Critics also charge that the CEDAW committee has come out against
motherhood and Mother's Day. This is totally false. The committee in
1998 noted that in Belarus, the majority of the poor are women and most
of the jobless are mothers, but the government, rather than calling on
men to assist with domestic and family needs, reinstituted Mother's Day
to deflect attention from mothers' situation. In another report, it
noted that Armenia had justified barring women from working night
shifts or in manual labor with claims it was defending ``the noble role
of motherhood.'' Critics have twisted these defenses of women's rights
to employment to sound like attacks on motherhood, but in fact
protection for mothers and motherhood must include economic protections
against discrimination, for all working women.
Another example involves a 1997 general committee report that
urged, ``full participation of women in the military,'' Irresponsible
treaty critics say that means women will have to be sent into ground
combat. But that is another misrepresentation. The phrase was in the
context of the committee's observation that women's absence from
military decision-making hampers diplomacy, negotiations, and efforts
to make and keep the peace. It also neglects the effect upon women and
families of military decisions in times of conflict. Full participation
of women in military affairs would change these processes for the
better.
A fourth misrepresentation about the treaty is that it advocates
the use of abortion because it supports, ``access to family planning.''
In fact, family planning means just that, the ability to plan the size
of one's family, and access to services to ensure a healthy family. It
is not a code word. It is true that the CEDAW committee has been very
concerned about access to family planning, given the rise of HIV/AIDS
and the importance of promoting healthy and safe pregnancy. The treaty
itself is abortion-neutral. Countries on both sides of the abortion
debate have ratified the treaty. Ireland, for example, ratified the
treaty without any reservations and maintains a ban on abortion.
Nevertheless, to underscore this point, the Foreign Relations Committee
attached a legal ``understanding'' to the legislation in 1994 noting
that it does not confer or deny any right to abortion.
So those are some of the things that the Treaty for the Rights of
Women does not do.
So why does the United States need to ratify the treaty? The simple
answer is that a bipartisan consensus of Americans wants to defend the
basic human rights of women. We need the treaty as a tool to set clear
standards for achieving that goal around the world. Ratification will
give us credibility in urging other countries to give women their full
human rights. It will strengthen our international partnerships and
affirm our leadership position in working to protect and promote human
rights and reduce human suffering. And it will help to guarantee that
the outrages committed against the women of Afghanistan are never
repeated anywhere again.
The United States must stand with other civilized countries to
protect and promote the human rights of women. We must affirm the
international standards that we so strongly defended for the women of
Afghanistan. We must tell the world: We oppose sex slavery. We oppose
the deaths of women in dowry disputes and as victims of ``honor
crimes,'' and from AIDS and from the complications of childbirth. We
are a nation that supports education for girls as well as boys, and we
refuse to leave women behind as second-class citizens in voting or
gaining credit or owning property. That is why the United States must
ratify the Treaty for the Rights of Women. Our voice and support are
long overdue. I urge you to ratify this treaty without delay.
I appreciate this opportunity to testify, and I will be happy to
answer any further questions you may have.
Thank you.
Sources:
1.U.N. Population Fund, Lives Together, Worlds Apart: State of
World Population 2000, UNFPA, New York, 2000.
2. Family Care International, Sexual and Reproductive Health
Briefing Cards, FCI, New York 2000.
3. World Health Organization, Revised 1990 Estimates of Maternal
Mortality: A New Approach by WHO and UNICEF, Geneva, 1996.
4. UNAIDS, Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, Eleven
Population-Based Studies. UNAIDS, New York, 2000.
5.U.N. Population Fund, Reproductive Health for Communities in
Crisis: UNFPA Emergency Response, UNFPA, New York, 2001.
6. For these and additional examples, see Milani, Leila Rassakh,
ed., Human Rights for All, Working Group on Ratification of the U.N.
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women, Washington DC 2001.
Senator Boxer. Thank you so much. It is my pleasure to call
on now Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar, American
Enterprise Institute. You are very well-represented here by two
women. Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF DR. CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS, RESIDENT SCHOLAR,
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, CHEVY CHASE, MD
Dr. Sommers. And I am also an adjunct professor at Clark
University, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Senator Boxer. We will let the record so show.
Dr. Sommers. Although I actually am arguing we should not
ratify the CEDAW convention, I want to first speak as a
feminist who would very much like to see a realistic
international effort for securing women's rights. American
women have been beneficiaries of two major waves of feminism.
In the first wave, women won basic political and legal rights.
The second wave advanced women economically and socially. Now,
with this progress, American women have achieved virtual
equality with men. There are still unresolved equity issues,
but overall we are now among the freest and most liberated
women in the world, and in some ways we are not merely doing as
well as men, we are doing better
Now we have reached the third wave, and much of our efforts
can now be devoted to helping women in other parts of the world
achieve the kind of equity that we have here, but committing
ourselves to the CEDAW convention is the wrong way to do that.
I have several reasons for opposing ratification of this
convention. I will submit my longer statement to the record.
Senator Boxer. Without objection, we will put that in.
Dr. Sommers. Here I will focus on two or three that I
regard as decisive. The CEDAW has many admirable and sound
goals that any person of conscience must support, but it was
formulated throughout the seventies. It promotes reforms that
we now know undermine economic prosperity.
Article XI, for example, calls for Governments to set
wages. It demands, quote, the right to equal remuneration in
respect of equal work--I am sorry, in respect to work of equal
value. Now, that is the policy we call comparable worth.
Americans have rightly rejected it as unjust and unworkable, so
why should we advocate it for women elsewhere?
Article XI also demands a vast array of costly, ambitious
programs. American women have benefited from a free, open, and
economically dynamic society. Shouldn't we be promoting
policies that bring these advantages to women everywhere?
The treaty includes several sweeping demands that I would
regard as socially divisive. Article V, for example, calls for
the Government to, quote, modify the social and cultural
patterns of conduct of men and women with a view of achieving
the elimination of all practices which are based on
stereotypical roles for men and women. Now, of course, some
stereotypes are destructive and prejudicial, and we must call
disparaging attention to them, but there are other male/female
stereotypes that are descriptively true.
Now, in the 1970's there were many feminists who believed
that gender was a social construct, just an artifact of society
that gave men the advantage. Today, very few, but a handful of
scholars in women's studies still believes that. A growing body
of research suggests there is a biological basis for sex
differences and aptitudes and preferences. As the Rutgers
University anthropologist Lionel Tiger has said, biology is not
destiny, but it is good statistical probability. Unfortunately,
much in CEDAW is premised on the false idea that all gender
preferences are socially constructed and should be targeted for
elimination.
Now, of course, in recognizing that men and women have
distinctly different preferences, I am not for one moment
suggesting that any woman should be prevented from pursuing her
goals in any field she chooses. I am suggesting, however, it
would be wrong to expect and to impose parity in all fields.
There are always going to be more women than men that want to
stay home with little children, more women will be drawn to
fields like early childhood education, more men in hydraulic
engineering or helicopter mechanics.
Consider how the feminist hard-liners could deploy Article
X of the treaty. It calls for, quote, the elimination of
stereotype concepts of roles of men and women at all levels in
all forms of education, in particular, by the revision of
textbooks and school programs. Can there be anyone in the
United States, apart from a small coterie of activists, who
would favor empowering a committee of foreign gender experts to
oversee American social mores and to intrude into public
education by distorting the textbooks our children read?
This treaty could do harm by promoting male and female
resentments in this country at a time where the country badly
needs unity. Most American women are proud and grateful to be
from a society that has afforded us unprecedented freedoms and
opportunity, but this favorable view of our society is not
shared by many of my colleagues in academia, particularly
feminist activists in women's studies. I have reviewed
textbooks, I have taught from these textbooks where routinely
they call America a patriarchal, oppressive society. One
leading textbook calls it a rape culture, another refers to the
gender terrorism faced by American women. Well, Bosnia for a
time was truly a rape culture, Afghanistan under the Taliban
practiced gender terrorism, but to apply such terms to the
United States is ludicrous. Too much of what passes as gender
scholarship is ideologically and factually wrong. American men
are depicted as violent predators, American women their hapless
victims. If you had to distill the philosophy of academic
feminism to a single dictum, it would be this: women are from
Venus, men are from hell.
Now, in the last 10 years, a number of moderate feminist
academics----
Senator Boxer. Somebody who said that was remembering her
first husband.
Would you wrap up, please?
Dr. Sommers. I will try to wrap up. In the last 10 years, a
number of moderate feminist academics like myself and a growing
number of dissident independent scholars have been working hard
to correct the misinformation, challenge the naive hostility to
free markets, call for an end to the male- bashing rhetoric. We
are beginning to make slow progress in opening up the national
discussion on gender to diverse perspectives.
Now, what does it have to do with CEDAW? If the United
States signs this treaty it would dramatically increase the
power of these misguided gender scholars. The treaty calls for
the elimination of sexism. American society has achieved this
goal in most of the ways that count, but if you compare us with
the rest of the world, we are a shining example of gender
equity, but this is not the view of the feminist theorists.
They do not agree with that, and in support of their gloomy
perspective they cite a body of statistically challenged
advocacy research that castigates American males and denigrates
American society.
Now, this treaty--this is my point. This treaty, in
conjunction with the counterfeit gender research could be a
toxic combination. If CEDAW is ratified, expect more rancor,
more lawsuits, more divisiveness.
A final point. The United Nations has a history of using
its human rights doctrines and commissions for scoring points
against western democracies, all the while carefully refraining
from censuring countries that notoriously abuse the rights of
its citizens. The United States was excluded from a Commission
on Human Rights last year, petulantly expelled from the
Commission on Human Rights, and on every occasion it seems the
United States is alone.
I do not consider it a bad thing to be alone, because we
are alone in defending little Israel, the only democracy in the
Middle East. Anyway, there is no reason to believe the CEDAW
would not be used in a highly political way as well.
Women in the developing countries need our help. We are
morally bound to assist them in ways that are constructive and
reflect the ideals of fairness and common sense that have
lifted American women to a level of freedom unprecedented in
human history. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Sommers follows:]
Prepared Statement of Christina Hoff Sommers
the case against ratifying the united nations convention on the
elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw)
Although I shall be arguing that we should not ratify the CEDAW
convention, I want first to speak as a feminist who would very much
like to see a realistic international effort for securing women's
rights.
American women have been the beneficiaries of two major waves of
feminism. In the First Wave, led by the great foremothers, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, women won basic political and legal
rights, including the right to vote. The Second Wave, which came in the
sixties and early seventies, advanced women economically and socially.
Employers could no longer legally restrict a job to one sex. A company
could no longer refuse to hire a woman because she had children. Such
laws have been critical to the well-being and success of American women
and most of the reforms of the First and Second Waves are appropriate
and necessary for women everywhere.
With this historical progress, American women have achieved virtual
equality with men. There are still some unresolved equity issues, but
overall, we are now among the freest and most liberated women in the
world. In some ways, we are not merely doing as well as men--we are
doing better. We live longer, we are better educated, we have more
choices on how to lead our lives. By any reasonable measure, equity
feminism is the great American success story.
When I lecture about the history of the women's movement on college
campuses, students often ask what's next for the Third Wave. My answer
is always the same; we have to help women in other parts of the world
secure the freedoms we now take for granted. There are countries,
especially in Africa and Asia, where women have not yet had their
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; as for second wave
reforms, they are light-years away from them.
American women have much to tell the women of the world. We can and
should help women everywhere to achieve the kind of equity we have
here. But joining the CEDAW convention is the wrong way to do that. I
have several reasons for opposing ratification of this treaty. I will
focus here on two or three that I regard as decisive.
The CEDAW convention has many admirable and sound goals that any
person of conscience must support. But it was formulated in the 1970s
and it promotes several reforms that we now know to be harmful. These
programs looked promising, exciting and progressive in 1975, but since
then we have come to realize that they undermine economic prosperity.
Article 11, for example, calls for governments to set wages. It demands
``The right to equal remuneration. . . . in respect of work of equal
value.'' This is the policy we call ``comparable worth.'' Americans
have rightly rejected comparable worth as unjust and unworkable at
home. So, why should we advocate it for women anywhere?
Article 11 also demands that governments provide paid maternity
leave, and provide the ``necessary supporting social services to enable
parents to combine family obligation with work responsibility and
participation in public life . . . through the establishment and
development of a network of childcare facilities.'' All very salutary,
except that experience shows that such programs tend to burden a
country's economy to everyone's detriment. American women have
benefited from a free, open and economically dynamic society: shouldn't
we be promoting policies that bring these advantages to needy women
everywhere?
The treaty includes several sweeping demands that are socially
divisive and likely to create unnecessary misery. Article 5, for
example, calls for all governments to ``modify the social and cultural
patterns of conduct of men and women with a view to achieving the
elimination of prejudices and all other practices which are based on .
. . stereotyped roles for men and women.'' What exactly does this
provision entail? Of course, some gender stereotypes are destructive
and prejudicial and we must call disparaging attention to them.
(Typical examples include generalizations that women are irrational,
that they are less intelligent than men, that they are politically
immature, etc.) But, other male/female stereotypes are descriptively
true. In the 1970s, many feminists believed that truly liberated men
and women would become more and more alike--that a gender-just society
would eventually become androgynous. Gender was supposedly an
artificial social construction that gave men the advantage. Well,
today, only a handful of scholars in Women's Studies programs still
believe that.
A growing body of research in neuroscience, endocrinology, and
psychology over the past 40 years provides evidence that there is a
biological basis for many sex differences in aptitudes and preferences.
Males have better spatial reasoning skills, females better verbal
skills. Males are greater risk takers, females are more nurturing.
(There are exceptions, but these are the rules.) As the Rutgers
University anthropologist Lionel Tiger has said, ``Biology is not
destiny, but it is good statistical probability.'' Unfortunately, much
in CEDAW is premised on the false idea that all gender preferences are
socially constructed.
Of course, in recognizing the obvious differences between men and
women, I am not for one moment suggesting that women should be
prevented from pursuing their goals in any field they choose; but I am
suggesting we should not expect or aim at parity in all fields. More
women than men will continue to want to stay at home with small
children and pursue careers in fields like early childhood education or
psychology; men will continue to be heavily represented in fields like
helicopter mechanics and hydraulic engineering.
A few years ago I took part in a television debate with celebrity
lawyer, Gloria Allred. Ms. Allred was representing a 14-year-old girl
who was suing the Boy Scouts of America for excluding girls. Allred
characterized same-sex scout troops as a form of ``gender apartheid.''
She spoke of the need to ``socialize'' boys to play with dolls so they
could be more nurturing and less fractious. CEDAW will give all the Ms.
Allred's in this country a treaty of their own to create mischief.
Consider, for example, how hard-liners could deploy Article 10 of
the treaty: It calls for the ``elimination of stereotyped concepts of
the roles of men and woman at all levels in all forms of education . .
. in particular, by the revision of textbooks and school programs.''
Our textbooks and school materials cannot endure any more political
corrections. The New York Times recently ran a story about how politics
of textbook revisions is now out of control: great works of literature
were recently scanned for insensitivity and altered by censors before
intense lobbying eliminated the practice. The CEDAW Treaty demands this
kind of textual revision--which amount to censorship inconsistent with
American civil liberties.
Can there be anyone in the United States, apart from a small
coterie of feminists activists and academics, who would favor
empowering a committee of foreign bureaucrats to oversee American
social mores--or intrude into public education by distorting the
textbooks our children read?
the treaty could do us harm by promoting male/female resentments
and divisions at a time when the country badly needs social unity. Most
American women feel blessed to live in a country where, for the most
part, the men are fair-minded, decent and supportive of women in their
quest for equality. We are proud and grateful to be part of a society
that has afforded us unprecedented freedoms and opportunities. But this
very favorable view of American men and of American society is not
shared by the hard-line feminists in our universities. These activists/
scholars tend to take a dim view of American society, routinely
referring to it as a ``patriarchy,'' a ``male hegemony,'' a culture
that keeps women socially subordinate. One leading textbook in women's
studies talks of an epidemic of gender ``terrorism'' plaguing the
average American women. Another calls the United States a ``Rape
Culture.'' Now, Bosnia, for a time, was truly a rape culture.
Afghanistan, under the Taliban, routinely practiced gender terrorism.
To apply such terms to the United States is ludicrous.
The activists and scholars who characterize America as a sexist
society sincerely believe we are in a gender war. In all wars, the
first casualty is truth. Too much of what we hear from contemporary
women's organizations is outrageously false. Too much of what passes as
gender scholarship is ideological and factually wrong: American men are
depicted as violent predators and American women their hapless victims.
If you ask me to reduce the philosophy of academic feminism to a single
phrase it be this one: Women are from Venus, Men are from Hell.
For the past decade, moderate feminist academics like myself, and a
growing number of dissidents scholars such as Camille Paglia
(University of the Arts), Daphne Patai (University Of Massachusetts),
Betsy Fox-Genovese (Emory), Noretta Koertge (University of Indiana),
Judith Kleinfeld (University of Alaska), Jennifer Braceras (Harvard
Law)--to name only a few--have been hard at work correcting the
misinformation, challenging the naive hostility to the free market
system, and calling for an end to the male bashing-rhetoric that is
standard fare at most of our colleges and universities. We have made
slow but steady progress in opening up the national discussion on
gender to diverse perspectives, but thinking on these matters on campus
and in the major feminist organizations remains dismayingly rigid and
intolerant. For the time being, the organized women's movement in this
country is dominated by ideological gender theorists and by well-
intentioned, but misinformed, women's groups that take what these
theorists say seriously.
Now what does this have to do with CEDAW? If the United States
signs the treaty, it would dramatically increase the power of the
misguided gender scholars. The treaty calls for the elimination of
sexism. Reasonable people believe that our American society has already
achieved this goal in most of the ways that count. If you compare us
with the rest of the world, we are a shining example of gender equity.
Unfortunately, most campus theorists do not agree with that. They
believe that American women live in a male supremacist society; and
they can cite twenty years of feminist ``scholarship'' to persuade
themselves and us that they are right. What they actually cite is a
body of statistically challenged gender ideology.
This treaty in conjunction with the counterfeit feminist research
could be a most toxic combination. If CEDAW is ratified, expect more
rancor, more lawsuits, and more divisiveness. Gender bureaucrats from
the United Nations will join the feminist ideologues and the United
States will be subject to relentless legal assaults for alleged
violations of the treaty.
The United Nations has a history of using its human rights
doctrines and commissions for scoring points against Western
democracies--all the while carefully refraining from censuring
countries that notoriously abuse the rights of their citizens. The
United States was banished from the Commission on Human Rights for a
year. The UN's 2001 Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa
turned into a shameful anti-Semitic condemnation of Israel. There is no
reason to believe that the CEDAW would not be used in a highly
political way as well.
Women in the developing countries need help. We are morally bound
to assist them in ways that are constructive and that reflect ideals of
fairness and common sense that have lifted American women to a level of
freedom and unprecedented in human history. CEDAW is not the way.
Senator Boxer. Thank you so much.
Our final speaker will be Ms. Jane E. Smith, chief
executive officer of Business and Professional Women/USA.
STATEMENT OF MS. JANE E. SMITH, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL WOMEN/USA, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Smith. Thank you. Good morning. I am Jane Smith, CEO of
Business and Professional Women, and I want to thank Senator
Biden and Senator Boxer and the members of the committee for
inviting me to be here today. We do thank you and ask that the
longer statement be placed in the record.
Senator Boxer. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. Smith. Business and Professional Women is a bipartisan
organization of 30,000 women in 1,600 federations around the
country, and we are an organization representing equity for
women in the work place, but I also represent, as a member of
the steering committee, the National Council of Women's
Organizations, a nonpartisan network of 160 women's
organizations collectively representing 7 million women in the
Nation, but I would also like to say that I am the immediate
past president of the National Council of Negro Women, having
managed programs in Zimbabwe, Egypt, Eritrea, and Senegal, and
also worked at the Carter Center, where we worked around the
world for the democratization of cultures, and it is with those
experiences that I come.
The treaty for the rights of women is an instrument that
BPW wants ratified to address discrimination against women in
their political, cultural, economic, social, and family values.
We believe in having formal representation of being a member of
treaties, of conventions that speak to human rights for people
here in the United States and around the country.
We have examined this as a business plan because we are
businesswomen, and we see best practice models in this treaty
that can be used by many of us all over this country and around
the world. None of it is perfect, not even practices here in
the United States, but we have here a road map of where we hope
to go, and it shows us how we can get there. BPW therefore
supports ratification of the treaty for the following reasons.
First, in ratifying the treaty, the United States heightens
its credibility as a world leader of human rights. To do so is
to do what is right, and to do so is to be able to have a
position on what is right.
Second, the treaty offers the United States an opportunity
to share its progressive work on the rights of women with less
advanced nations.
Third, the treaty provides a plan for ending discrimination
against women, thereby offering an opportunity to better our
Nation.
Now, while BPW's members and American women in general have
made tremendous strides toward equality in the last 80 years,
women around the world continue to experience discrimination in
all facets of their lives. As many have said before me today,
this discrimination is no better exemplified than in
Afghanistan. BPW in 1956, when our members visited Afghanistan,
stood in support of a program for opportunities for girls. We
published it in our magazine and spread it around the United
States. 40 years later, BPW's members continue to show support
for these women in Afghanistan, and we do understand many
similar situations around the world.
The United States works with impoverished countries around
the globe on a daily basis, providing instruction on issues
from irrigation to voting procedures to inoculations, but most
importantly the United States instructs countries on human
rights issues, even though we are not perfect, encouraging
other nations to adopt policies in line with democratic
principles that we stand for even though we often do not live
up to them.
Yet we are the only industrialized Nation that has not
ratified the treaty for the rights of women. Our members ask
how can we have other countries ask us to provide guidance in
human rights when we are not ready to stand for that.
A personal editorial note, as an African American, I will
always be grateful to the American citizens who took a formal
position on my freedom. Unfortunately, life for Afghan women
and other women around the world is only a snapshot of what is
going on. We could talk about the things that need to be worked
on in Peru, and Thailand, and Brazil, and Pakistan, and
Zimbabwe, and then on the other hand we could talk about those
things that are still not perfect but going on well in Uganda,
United States, Costa Rica, Canada, India.
All of these examples, pro and con, even though none are
perfect, illustrate that the treaty for the rights of women has
proven to be a valuable tool in broadening the basic rights of
women and girls as a formal tool, as a formal plan, as a formal
guideline. Although I have focused much of my remarks on what
goes on both here and around the world, we have to say one more
time that it would only be collective as Mrs. Bush, as the
administration, as the women's organizations in the United
States have brought to the table in facing Afghanistan. Despite
all of the successful work that we have done on this this year,
for some reason many of us cannot still see that ratifying the
treaty is definitely the way to go.
On behalf of Business and Professional Women/USA and the
National Council of Women's Organizations, I thank the
committee for this opportunity to testify, and if we had had
time I would have welcomed questions. I thank you specifically,
Madam Chair.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jane E. Smith
Good morning. I am Jane Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Business
and Professional Women/USA. On behalf of Business and Professional
Women/USA (BPW/USA), I want to thank Senator Biden, Senator Boxer,
Senator Helms and the members of the committee for inviting me here
today. I applaud Senator Biden for holding this hearing and Senator
Boxer for chairing it. I welcome the opportunity to represent the
working women who are members of my organization to discuss the
importance of ratifying the Convention to End All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, often called the Treaty for the Rights of
Women.
Business and Professional Women/USA is a bi-partisan organization
that promotes equity for all women in the workplace through advocacy,
education and information. BPW/USA represents the interests of 30,000
working women who participate in 1,600 local organizations across the
nation, including every Congressional District. I am here today also as
a Steering Committee Member of the National Council of Women's
Organizations. In this capacity, I represent a nonpartisan network of
160 women's organizations, collectively representing seven million
women nationwide.
The Treaty for the Rights of Women is an instrument to address
discrimination against women in their political, cultural, economic,
social, and family lives. As Chief Executive Officer of Business and
Professional Women, I view it as a business plan because the treaty
provides a ``best practice'' model for improving the rights of women.
It offers us a road map of where we hope to go and shows us how we can
plan to get there. Research has taught us that improving the lives of
women impacts greatly the quality of their families' lives, and
ultimately the quality of their nations.
BPW/USA supports ratification of the Treaty for the Rights of Women
because it provides a plan for ending discrimination against women,
thereby offering an opportunity to better our nation. Additionally, in
ratifying the treaty, the United States heightens its credibility as a
world leader on human rights.
Let us take a moment to look at the quality of women's lives in the
United States. A glance at BPW/USA's organizational history provides an
interesting time line of the considerable gains American women have
made in the last eight decades. BPW/USA was founded in 1919 by
suffragettes and the organization has been fighting to achieve equity
for women here and abroad ever since. In the 1930s BPW/USA's members
lobbied successfully to end the legal practice of denying jobs to
married women and in the 1940s we fought for the creation of women's
branches of the armed forces. BPW/USA's members played a significant
role in the passage of the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act and
in the 1960s, and since the 1970s we have lobbied successfully for
increases in the minimum wage and passage of the Family Medical Leave
Act and the Violence Against Women Act.
While BPW/USA's members, and American women in general, have made
tremendous strides toward equality in the last eighty years, women
around the world continue to experience discrimination in all facets of
their lives. This discrimination is no better exemplified than in
Afghanistan. BPW/USA's concern for the status of Afghan women dates
back to 1956 when BPW/USA's members recommended support of the UNESCO
Afghanistan Project--a program to increase educational opportunities
for girls. Forty years later, BPW/USA's members continued to advocate
on behalf of Afghan women who were prohibited from attending school,
participating in government, or working outside of the home by Taliban
regime. BPW/USA's members advocated on behalf of their sisters in
Afghanistan, passing a legislative resolution in 1999 at our National
Conference urging the United States government to exert its influence
diplomatically and economically to force Afghanistan's Taliban
government to recognize the fundamental rights of women.
In 1999, at the same time BPW members were calling on the Taliban
to cease its oppression of Afghan women, we were renewing our call to
the United States government to ratify the Treaty for the Rights of
Women, a call that began in 1982. BPW/USA's members, and those of our
sister organizations, understand that other countries look to the
United States as an example of freedom and equality and are aware that
our failure to ratify the treaty affects our ability to promote basic
human rights. The United States works with impoverished countries
around the globe on a daily basis, providing instruction on issues from
irrigation to voting procedures to inoculation. But, most importantly,
the United States instructs countries on human rights issues,
encouraging other nations to adopt policies in line with democratic
principles. BPW/USA's members recognize the privileges they enjoy here
in the United States--rights that allow them to vote, to start their
own businesses, to pursue careers of their choice, to hold political
office. These are basic human rights. Yet, we are the only
industrialized nation that has not ratified the Treaty for the Rights
of Women. How can we ask other countries to accept our guidance and
follow our lead on human rights when we ourselves have not committed to
a Treaty to end discrimination against women already ratified by 169
countries, including a number of America's allies such as Great
Britain, Canada and France? And, what company are we keeping by not
ratifying the treaty? Presently, countries like Sudan, Iran and yes,
Afghanistan have failed to ratify the treaty. Surely, we want to
differentiate ourselves from these countries and their documented
terrorist practices, oppression of women, and human rights violations.
The United States is the leading country of the free world and we must
also be the lead supporter of human rights.
Unfortunately, life for Afghan women under the Taliban regime
offers only a snapshot of the oppression experienced by women around
the globe. There is much work still to be done around the world to
ensure equality for women and girls. According to a recent report
issued by the World Health Organization, as many as 60 percent of women
in rural areas of Peru, Thailand, and Brazil are victims of violence,
and in other parts of the world, two in three women experience
violence. In Pakistan, Islamic law does not distinguish between
consensual sex and rape when banning ``adultery,'' so up to 50 percent
of women who report rape in Pakistan are charged with ``adultery'', and
up to 80 percent of Pakistani women in jail have been convicted of
``adultery''. In Zimbabwe, with an AIDS population of 1.5 million, the
rapid spread of the disease has been facilitated by a culture of near-
total male-dominance with women risking physical punishment,
humiliation or rejection if they refuse sexual relations. Even a
request that a would-be sexual partner wear a condom can earn a woman a
beating, or can see her returned as an unfit wife to her family.
Internationally, women also experience high rates of maternal
mortality, have limited access to education and training, possess
little decision-making authority, and have unequal access to health
care. the treaty is an excellent first step toward addressing these
issues and many others that women around the world continue to
confront. In fact, two years ago, I was a delegate to a special session
of the United Nations General Assembly, a follow-up to the 1995 Beijing
Conference on Women. At this special session, I was approached by women
from all over the world inquiring as to why the United States has
failed to ratify the Treaty for the Rights of Women. They could not
understand why the United States, a model for countries around the
globe, refused to ratify a Treaty to end discrimination against women.
The women I spoke with at the United Nations General Assembly
meeting also shared ways the treaty had assisted the women in their
countries in gaining political, civil and economic rights. These
women's experiences are not isolated examples. A number of countries
that have ratified the treaty have implemented policies to improve the
status of women and increase their educational and employment
opportunities. For instance, twenty-two of the countries that have
ratified the treaty have instituted programs to promote women's equal
opportunity in employment. The Uganda government has created programs
to combat domestic violence. Costa Rica is implementing training
modules to decrease the incidence of sex crimes. And, India
universalized its Integrated Child Development Services program after
ratifying the treaty, increasing significantly the number of girls
enrolled in school. These examples illustrate that the Treaty for the
Rights of Women has proven to be a valuable tool in broadening the
basic rights of women and girls.
Although I have focused much of my remarks on the status of
international women, it is important to note that American women have
not achieved parity with their male counterparts either. Discrimination
still exists-in schools, in the workforce, in civil and political
rights. True, American women have made significant inroads but, as a
nation, considerable works lies before us. And, this is where the
treaty becomes important. As business and professional women, many BPW
members have drafted business plans. These plans provide them with a
road map of where they plan to go and how they plan to get there. As I
stated earlier, the treaty should be the United States' business plan
for women. Although the treaty would not impose new requirements in our
laws, it would reinforce compliance with already existing federal
obligations and laws granting women legal autonomy and protection
against discrimination in matters of property and contract.
The United States must continue to strive for equality between men
and women because we are not there yet. Currently:
American women continue to experience sexual harassment in
the workforce and many girls are now subjected to sexual
harassment in schools;
Almost one-third of the American women murdered each year
are killed by their current or former partners, usually a
husband;
Women are paid 73 cents for every dollar their male
counterparts are paid;
More than one in eight women lack health insurance;
Working mothers do not have adequate access to child care.
Currently 20 states maintain waiting lists for child care;
Women are often excluded from medical research, which means
doctors know less about how to recognize and treat diseases
among women. In particular, our nation is failing to fight
adequately the number one killer of American women--
cardiovascular disease; and
In the United States, about 1 million teenagers become
pregnant each year. Approximately 70 percent of these pregnant
girls do not receive adequate prenatal care.
While these statistics focus on women, I must emphasize that the
fact that American women have not achieved full equality in our society
impacts directly on the lives of America's children. The next
generation is shortchanged when working mothers must resort to sub par
child care facilities, when children witness domestic violence in their
homes, and when working mothers do not bring home an adequate paycheck
because of unfair pay.
With all of that said, I must emphasize that the treaty would only
provide us with a road map or a business plan, it would not be a
mandate. The Treaty for the Rights of Women requires regular progress
reports from ratifying countries but it does not impose any new changes
in existing laws or require new laws. It lays out models for achieving
equality and provides recommendations for improved programs and
practices. It monitors progress without stipulating changes in the
United States Constitution.
Last fall, I participated in meetings with the Administration and
the women's community, meetings to discuss ways to include women in the
rebuilding of Afghanistan. The women's community emphasized that the
participation of women in the new Afghan government was essential to
creating a stable political and social structure and I am proud to say
that the Administration understood the importance of women having a
seat at the table. In the words of First Lady Laura Bush, ``Afghan
women should have the opportunity to play a role in (the future of
Afghanistan).'' And, in fact, women have played an important role in
the rebuilding of Afghanistan. Currently, the women of Afghanistan are
working with their American sisters to ensure that Afghan women
participate equally in the drafting of a new Constitution for their
country, thereby guaranteeing parity for women under the law. Despite
the success of this partnership, I cannot help but think that our role
as a guide in the rebuilding process is somewhat hypocritical because
of our failure to ratify the Treaty for the Rights of Women.
By not ratifying the treaty, America is expressing to the world
that we stand apart, even from our allies, in the quest to end
discrimination against women. We must acknowledge that even the most
advanced country in the world can still work toward the ideal of
equality for all under the law. We must recognize that as a leader, the
United States must lead by example. Just as the women's community and
the Administration understood the importance of including women in the
decision making process in the rebuilding of Afghanistan I urge you to
recognize the importance of ratifying the Treaty for the Rights of
Women in the United States' goal of achieving human rights around
globe.
On behalf of Business and Professional Women/USA, and the National
Council of Women's Organizations, I thank the committee for this
opportunity to testify and I welcome your questions.
Thank you.
Senator Boxer. Thank you so much. We do have time for
questions. The question period will be led by Senator Biden. I
will submit my questions for the record. I have a longstanding,
pressing Senate commitment in 5 minutes. I just want to say for
the record that the reason we have come to this moment is
because of the Senator sitting next to me here, Senator Joe
Biden.
The bottom line is that women cannot face these problems
alone, as was so clearly pointed out by Dr. Sommers. So let me
be very clear: without the support of Senator Biden and many of
my male colleagues, in addition to, of course, the women on
both sides of the aisle, we would not be at this point today.
This has truly been, I think, a model on how we should proceed
equally together.
As far as the opposition, men and women equally coming
forward and speaking their minds. There is not any question
about that, because this is about a treaty that I believe will
move our country forward in the eyes of the rest of the world,
and clearly in the eyes of the women and men who care about
women in our own country.
When I saw, Mr. Chairman, the line of young women and young
men waiting to get into this room, and I talked to a few of
them, they were so happy that this day had come, so in parting,
let me just say that I know the question and answer period will
be very stimulating and exciting, knowing my two colleagues
that are remaining here to do the questioning. I will read the
record very carefully. I look forward to voting this treaty out
of committee and bringing it to the Senate floor an taking the
Bush administration at its word that they believe this treaty
would be good for us to approve. That is their current
position. I hope it does not change, and I thin if we do this,
it will be a tremendous signal to the women around the world
who are looking to us for leadership.
Again, my deepest thanks for the trust you have placed in
me. I greatly appreciate it, Mr. Chairman, and I hand the gavel
over to you at this point.
Senator Biden [presiding]. Thank you, Senator. Since
Senator Brownback and I are the two remaining, maybe we can use
a 10-minute rule, and I invite you to interrupt at any time,
because I find we are most likely to learn the most if we
actually have a genuine exchange, a genuine dialog here.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected
them with another, and to assure among the powers of the earth
the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and
the nature of God entitle them, decent respect for the opinions
of mankind requires that they should declare the cause which
impels them to the separation.
We hold these truths self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. To secure those rights, Governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, and whenever any form of Government
becomes destructive to those ends, it is--and so on.
You are all familiar with the Declaration of Independence,
not a single word of which is self-executing, but I would
respectfully suggest it emboldened and empowered the world--the
world--the world to act.
But the bottom line of this is that I find it kind of
fascinating that one of the several reasons offered against
ratifying this treaty is, it is not self-executing, that there
is no enforcement mechanism, and in the same argument--we are
allowed to argue an alternative here.
At the same time, we argue that because there are
provisions in the treaty which we have, as Dr. Hoff Sommers has
indicated, we have moved well beyond as a society, that there
is a commission, a committee, which has no power, by the way,
has no power, that can comment on whether a country has abided
by or is following the tenets of the treaty, that we should not
join because it has power to influence events in the United
States.
I believe, Doctor, you said it will increase lawsuits, it
will do these other things.
Dr. Sommers. Definitely.
Senator Biden. There is not a single ounce of evidence to
sustain that position, none, but I will go into this in a
minute.
Dr. Sommers. I could offer some.
Senator Biden. Let me speak. Now, you mentioned--let me get
the witness list here.
Now, Ms. Balmforth, you mentioned abortion, and you
mentioned Mexico and Ireland. Do you know whether or not they
are signatories to the treaty?
Ms. Balmforth. Yes. They ratified it. This was a comment
made to them by the committee in determining whether they had
complied or not.
Senator Biden. Do you know whether they have withdrawn from
the treaty?
Ms. Balmforth. No.
Senator Biden. You do not know, or you do know?
Ms. Balmforth. I do not believe they have.
Senator Biden. Ambassador Kirkpatrick, you indicated that--
which is, I think, a very important point--it is more important
to do than to speak. Is it sometimes more important to speak
than remain silent?
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. Of course.
Senator Biden. Is there--and I am sure you are all aware,
but we passed this out of committee last time. It contained a
resolution of ratification, contained as we are able to do
under the Senate under our Constitution, 10 conditions, four of
which were reservations, four of which were understandings, and
two of which were declarations.
The reservations were, we would accept no obligation to
regulate private conduct. We accept no obligation to assign
women to all military units, accept no obligation to establish
comparable worth, we accept no obligation to provide paid
maternity leave. The understandings were federalism, the
Federal Government will assure compliance within the reach of
its powers, otherwise the States will, not the U.N. or anyone
else, not to accept the obligations under Articles 5, 7, 8, and
13, which may violate free speech, expression, or association.
Third, understanding that Article 12 allows State parties
to decide what his appropriate.
Fourth, nothing in the convention creates a right to
abortion, which is the Helms understanding, and the
declarations were that the convention is not self-executing
under U.S. law, and the U.S. is not bound by Article 29,
paragraph 1, regarding arbitration in the International Court
of Justice.
That was what we did on this treaty, as we have done on
SALT treaties and START treaties and many, many other treaties
that we have ratified, and so each of the areas that I have
heard you mention specifically we have--and there may be others
which I would be prepared to entertain--we have made it clear,
or we made it clear in the past that our ratification of this
treaty was conditioned upon the reading of the treaty as our
conditions indicated, which would obviate in the specific legal
sense at least the concerns that most of you have expressed.
It may not obviate the generic concern you have about
unleashing radical feminism around the world, and I kind of
find it fascinating when I am in India or in any other country,
the last kind of concern as the woman is about to be put on the
pyre to be burned after her husband has been killed, because it
is the custom still in some parts of India that the wife be
burned with him, is whether or not there is enough protection
of men's rights. It really does not just leap up to the top of
their consciousness at that moment, and so I have a question of
you, Professor Koh, and then I would yield to my colleague.
The provisions of the treaty state that the obligations in
general--they state each of the obligations in general, not in
specific terms. Nearly all the substantive articles of the
treaty obligate nations which join to, quote, take all
appropriate measures to address gender discrimination in
specific segments of law and society. Can you tell us in
layman's terms what that means, to take all appropriate
measures? What does that mean within the context of the treaty?
Mr. Koh. I think you have hit on, Senator, the central
contradiction of the position taken by the con speakers, which
is, on the one hand they are saying this convention does not do
anything at all. It is a nothing. On the other hand, they are
saying it would have this sweeping effect and force a radical
change in our society. The real answer is in between. It is a
valuable and useful tool to promote gender equality.
Now, their basic concern is about its imposition on
national sovereignty. As you have suggested, the Senate can put
understandings on its advice and consent, which protect
constitutional rights. Then the language which you have just
read says that we shall take ``appropriate measures,'' and
there is a margin of appreciation for what we consider to be
``appropriate measures.''
I want to say something about the CEDAW committee, because
I am, I think, the only person here who has actually appeared
before one of these treaty committees. The concerns that are
being expressed about these treaty committees were also
expressed about the treaty committee for the Torture
Convention, the treaty committee for the Race Discrimination
Convention, and the treaty committee for the Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights. In each case, it was argued that somehow
they would take over our sovereignty.
In fact, particularly once U.S. experts were put on those
committees, those committees have done a good job. I have
actually appeared before one and submitted the U.S. report to
the other. It has been a very valuable exercise for the U.S.
Government in demonstrating exactly how much we have done to
meet international standards. So, I think the suggestion that
somehow these committees are going to run wild and invade our
sovereignty, when in fact we have various ways of ensuring that
our National interests are protected, and when in fact our own
practices are so fully compliant with most of the treaty
provisions already, just rebuts the criticism that is being
made here.
Senator Biden. I would like to and I will insert for the
record, not in literal terms of rebuttal, but to elaborate on
the statements Mrs. Balmforth made regarding some of the
decisions taken on lesbianism and religion, et cetera. Let me
just read--in the Kyrgyzstan example you gave about lesbianism,
if I am not mistaken--and you can correct the record if I am
wrong. I will put this in--the committee you are talking about
did not direct them to legalize lesbianism. In its
consideration of Kyrgyzstan's report it noted that lesbianism
is punishable by imprisonment, and it recommended that criminal
penalties be abolished.
Now, we do not have any criminal penalties in the United
States under our Constitution for being a lesbian. I guess you
know that, right?
Ms. Balmforth. Of course I do.
Senator Biden. So all they are doing is what we do in the
United States, recommending that.
In the same report the committee called on Kyrgyzstan to
institute legislation to suppress the growth of trafficking in
prostitution, and to offer support for the rising number of
victims of violent and sexual acts such as gang rapes.
Now, again, I am not suggesting that everything this
committee suggests makes sense, but I want to make clear it
only suggests, period. Absent us having a representative on the
committee as a voice to have a more balanced or reasoned view,
or enlightened view, it seems to me that we put ourselves at
some risk, and at least on the example--I will not go through
the ones with regard to the Koran as well and religion, but on
the one on lesbianism, I could be wrong, but I believe that
what I have just said to you is accurate, that it did not call
for legalizing lesbianism. It called for doing what the United
States Constitution says.
If you are a lesbian, because you are a lesbian, we have no
right under our Constitution to put you in jail. That is what
they do in Kyrgyzstan. They put you in jail if you are a
lesbian, and all this report said to the best of my knowledge
was, we recommend you not do that. You decriminalize it, not
promote lesbianism, but anyway, I will put in the record
comments on the actions of the advisory committee on
prostitution, Mother's Day, lesbianism, the religion and the
Koran, gender roles, the noble mother, this notion of
stereotypes, day care in Slovenia, and sex education in
Romania.
From my perspective, I would give you a chance to take a
look at it when it is in the record and invite you to comment
on whether or not the characterization that I believe is
appropriate is appropriate, but I am over my time, and I would
yield to my friend Senator Brownback.
[The information referred to follows:]
Excerpt From Report of the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, Twentieth Session (A/54/38 (Part I))
* * * *
127. The Committee is concerned that lesbianism is classified
as a sexual offence in the Penal Code.
128. The Committee recommends that lesbianism be
reconceptualized as a sexual orientation and that penalties for
its practice be abolished.
* * * *
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank
the members of the panel for being here and for giving us your
opinion. It is illuminating. You have made me certainly see the
wisdom and the need for the Department of Justice to review
this document thoroughly. By all of the strength of the legal
opinions that many of you--and I presume we have got a good
balance of lawyers here on the panel, or people that are
trained in the law.
That we have differences of opinion on this, and that that
would bear certainly a thorough review of its impact on the
United States and around the world.
I want to focus on several different areas if I could on
this. One is on the issue of sex trafficking. I have last year,
and thanks under the chairman, although he ought to thank me a
little bit too, we got through a bill opposed to sex
trafficking.
Senator Biden. You are the main reason why it happened. You
have been outspoken and articulate and consistent and
persistent on sex trafficking, just as I am going to be on this
convention.
Senator Brownback. Thank you very much, and it was a good
bill, it was a good piece of legislation, and I think it is
helping young girls live free in some countries that would not
be otherwise. It is a continuation of the actions-versus-words
sort of argument that I would like to follow.
The problem of it is, that I see in this area, is both in
the treaty itself and in the committee of CEDAW. In the treaty
itself, we have got three levels of worst-offender trafficking
countries, and the worst is tier 3. This report just came out
here a week ago. Of the people that are in tier 3--these are
the worst offender countries in this area of sex trafficking--
12 of 19 are signers on the CEDAW participating parties, of
CEDAW 12 of 19, and two are even members of the CEDAW
committee, of the overarching committee that governs CEDAW,
Indonesia and Turkey.
I mean, here is again a use of a document saying, look, we
are signed on to CEDAW, but we are going to be the worst
offenders on trafficking of young women and children. I want to
point this out, and say that again, it is actions that speak so
loud. I like, frankly, what Ambassador Kirkpatrick pointed out,
that we should really be rallying around the International
Declaration of Human Rights and pressing that issue.
I have visited these places. I have been to India and
talked with officials, and been to places where they are
recruiting young girls into brothels and the horrible life that
they have lived. I have been to Nepal, where some of these
girls have traveled back to, and I have met with the girls that
have been trafficked into these places. I have been to
Thailand, and I have been to the border where they are
recruiting and trafficking the girls across these borders, and
you have Governments in these countries that are signing these
documents saying yes, we are doing this, and not doing a darned
thing, and I have met with the officials and pressed them on
it.
Afghanistan is raised a great deal here, but our actions of
sending troops into Afghanistan and insisting that women be
placed on the overall council in Afghanistan and in the Loya
Jirga are far more important than any words that we would say,
and I think we would be far better to focus on the
international rights.
The human rights documents would be the place for us to
emphasize and focus, rather than a treaty that you have raised
some serious questions for me on this, and I want to ask
particularly Ms. Balmforth, the lawyer, you cite to the
committee's actions more than the document, and Dr. Sommers,
you cite the document more than to the committee's actions. I
mean, you are saying that what the committee is doing are a
number of things that are highly questionable.
Is the committee taking this from the document, or are they
a rogue committee that is operating the CEDAW committee, Ms.
Balmforth, because I read from your testimony some of the
things they are putting forward, are really very troubling
about what the committee is putting forward. How do you
interpret their actions?
Ms. Balmforth. Well, they are not a rogue committee in the
sense that they are operating at the express instruction of the
High Commissioner of Human Rights, the Secretary of the
Division for the Advancement of Women, the U.N. Population
Fund. I mean, this kind of reinterpretation of the treaty has
been expressly encouraged by them.
One of the problems is structural. I mean, what becomes a
tool of diplomacy, this vagueness, this ambiguity that allows
countries to sign on to a document that can mean different
things to different people becomes--it gives people
interpreting it a blank check to say it means whatever it
means. I mean, it is a two-edged sword, when you start trying
to interpret the meaning of this document into actual, positive
law in countries, or constitutional provisions in countries, so
they have been given a virtual blank check with this sweeping
language of the treaty.
I mean, I see the treaty as being problematic in itself. It
can mean whatever the committee says it means, and it is very
true that the committee has no teeth. Right now, you cannot
send blue helmets in to enforce this, and if you are as strong
as we are, certainly the intelligence community cannot force
its will on us at this point in time, but there is no guarantee
that our reservations will always be respected.
If you look at what the committee does, if you look at what
other nations do, when countries have made broad reservations
to the treaty--for example, to protect their religious laws, or
some other way, the western countries, European Union countries
in particular object to those reservations as being invalid.
The committee has said they are invalid because they are either
too broad or vague, or because they are against the purpose of
the convention, which would make it invalid under international
law.
We cannot begin to predict what the committee will come up
with next in terms of what they think this document means, so
we cannot offer a specific reservation to everything, and
reservations that are too broad, that purport to place our
Constitution above it, will likely be declared invalid by the
members of the intelligence community.
And I must say, too, I mean, it is true they cannot force
us now to do anything, but if all this is is an exercise of
power, it is not the rule of law, and we should not pretend
that it is.
Senator Brownback. Dr. Sommers, is that your concern, that
the committee's interpretation of the language that you put
forward and cited will lead to the committee having broad
places that it could go that we may not contemplate?
Dr. Sommers. Absolutely. I think the committee is being
true to the document, and I would also suggest, if you want
some comic relief, go to the web site of--San Francisco has
ratified the treaty. San Francisco has ratified the treaty.
Senator Biden. You know there is a bunch of radical
feminists out there, don't you?
Dr. Sommers. Then why don't you go and look and see what
they did, and they have established a gender bureaucracy.
And by the way, I did not use the phrase radical feminists.
That is yours. I talked about orthodox feminists and hard-line
feminists.
Senator Biden. I think you did say radical, but----
Dr. Sommers. And statistically challenged gender scholars.
But San Francisco has passed this and has established--
seriously, I mean, it is not a joke, and they have a gender
bureaucracy, and it is all there. I mean, go in and look and
you get a harbinger of what could actually happen if we were to
allow the bureaucrats who are so carried away with the worst
kind of divisive sexual politics into our communities.
In this case in San Francisco, it can be humorous, but
imagine that they had power, and I will tell you the thinking
of the activists in San Francisco is not that different from
the people on the committee. You see the sorts of things that
they have gone after, and again, I agree with my colleague
that--well, how will it affect the world, something in between,
and in between I think it will be very mischievous in this
country because of the current composition of our feminist
leadership, and the fact that women's studies in America where
they generate the scholarship is a one-party system. They do
not allow diversity.
So really Americans have not had the benefit of scholarship
that represents the richness of both conservative, liberal, and
include libertarian ideas, so that would be a very dangerous
combination of the misinformation that is generated from a
women's studies departments which are just carried away with
their own ideology, and mix that power with the U.N. This would
be a hammer to hit us with.
Senator Brownback. Ambassador Kirkpatrick, a document like
this, ratified by the United States, signed and ratified by the
United States, how would that be used? What would we see coming
out of the U.N. toward the United States if something like this
happens here, from your experience?
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. Frankly, I do not think much would
happen. That is really my position. I do not think much of
anything would happen.
I think I said it as clearly as I could that in a very real
sense what offends me the most about just such treaties is that
they leave people with a sweeping coverage and language. They
leave people with the impression that they are running a
revolution and will change and improve a great many things, and
that is just not true. Most of the global treaties really, and
the committees which are founded on the basis of them, lead to
very little.
Now, sometimes they lead to more. Sometimes there are some
technical commissions established from time to time. For
example, on some of the nuclear arms treaties and the chemical
weapons treaty, there are commissions established which would
visit all of the pharmaceutical manufacturing places, but most
of the treaties, nothing much happens at all. I cannot conceive
of anything very positive coming out of this treaty, and
really, frankly I doubt if anything very negative will come out
of it.
I just do not think much of anything would come out of it,
and it bugs me to have the impression created that we have
solved big problems. Actually, I really think discrimination
against women is a very big problem, a very big problem----
Senator Brownback. I do, too.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick.--in many other countries, above all
in the Third World.
Senator Brownback. And I have seen it there.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. And I have, too. I visited the
places you described.
Senator Brownback. And it is horrible, what is taking
place. I am not resolved, myself, where I am going to come down
on this treaty, Mr. Chairman. I hear a lot of question raised
today, but I am resolved about what the United States needs to
do to help women and children around the world, and we need to
act. We need to take action in places, and like what we have
done in Afghanistan I think is a good early step action to try
to liberate, and what we have done on sex trafficking I think
are good steps, that we need to act. We need to act in these
places, and so I am looking forward to more input on the
treaties.
Mr. Koh. Might I respond to three points Senator Brownback
made? First you said you thought we should implement the
Universal Declaration for Human Rights. The universal
declaration is not a treaty. This treaty is one, and this is
the very implementing force you are calling for.
Second, your important point about 12 of the 19 being
violators who are members of the treaty. It is precisely
because we are not members of the treaty that we cannot force
them through the treaty to enforce Article VI, which targets
trafficking. If we were to join, we could.
Senator Brownback. Why don't the others do it?
Mr. Koh. That is what the CEDAW committee does. In fact, I
think we want a committee which is aggressive and in context,
holds countries' feet to the fire. The real question is, do we
have more to gain or lose from ratification, and my answer is
that we clearly have more to gain.
Senator Brownback. We have opinions here that I do not know
if we want a real aggressive committee, from what I have seen
Ms. Balmforth put forward of what actions they have taken with
a very aggressive committee.
Mr. Koh. I think Senator Biden put it well. You have to
read the language in context, and when a full and searching
evaluation of a country's commitment to gender discrimination
is made by the committee, that tends to be a good thing,
because we come out well, and better than many other countries.
We have the most to gain by joining this committee and the
least to lose.
Senator Biden. Can we trespass on your time just a little
bit more? We will only hold you for one more round, if you have
time, Senator.
Senator Brownback. We just got buzzed for a vote.
Senator Biden. Let me say, Ambassador Kirkpatrick, I have
known you for years. I have great respect for you, and one
thing I most admire, and I mean this sincerely, your
consistency and your unvarnished statement of what you think
all the time, and I mean this sincerely.
Your position does not surprise me at all, and it is
balanced, because you have said the same thing about the
Chemical Weapons Convention, you said the same thing about the
Biological Weapons Convention. You have a consistent and, I
think--you do not need me to think it--defensible and rational
argument as to why not only this treaty but other treaties--I
was literally--you are on a call list for me to call you asking
you about the Moscow treaty, for example, which has no self-
executing element to it, which I wonder what your views are
going to be on it, but that is a different subject.
So what I am trying to say to you is, you and I have had a
long disagreement about the values of hortatory language that
is not self-executing, and whether it is damaging or has a
positive impact, but we both acknowledge most of these
treaties, if they are not self-executing, are not able to
deliver what they promise, and our argument, or our
disagreement, to the extent that it has existed, and it has
existed in some areas, has been about whether or not this
establishing international norms improves the prospect for
whatever the treaty calls for, whether it is arms control or
whether it is women's rights, or whether or not it has the
effect in its failure to be abided by, degrading the prospect
that international norm will be kept, so I am not going to bore
you or anybody else here with a discussion of our differences,
but I thank you for your candor, and I really mean it.
The idea that this is going to radically affect outcomes
either way is highly, highly unlikely, in my view, number 1, so
having stated that, in terms of, so the rest of the panel knows
where I am coming from on this, it is out of the point of view
that we ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,
that we can do everything the Senator from Kansas says we
should do about enforcing or using other methods to deal with,
wherever we can, insisting upon the ending of trafficking,
insisting upon women's rights in our bilateral agreements and
every other fora beyond this treaty, but to suggest that if we
do this treaty we cannot do those things, or doing this treaty
will somehow impact upon our ability to do those things I would
respectfully suggest is not logical. It is not consistent.
Maybe this treaty does not do much, but by going forward
with the treaty, it does not mean we cannot and should not move
forward on bilateral issues, on writing into our legislative
initiatives conditionality relating to conduct in other
countries like we have in Afghanistan, like we have in other
matters.
But there are a couple of things that I want to make sure I
understand. Now, I am not going to take the time now, but I am
going to share with my colleague my analysis of a legal opinion
by a very talented woman who I think is dead wrong in her
characterization of what the committee said and does. You read
from her testimony when you said it worries you about what the
committee has done.
I would argue that if you take a look at the context of
these you will find--like I said, the one on lesbianism, it
does not legalize lesbianism or call for the legalization as
stated in that statement, does it?
Ms. Balmforth. Can you explain to me the difference between
decriminalization and legalization?
Senator Biden. I sure can. You decriminalize something, you
say you do not go to jail for it. You legalize it, and you say
that it is morally acceptable, that this is a policy of a
country, that this is our position, so you decriminalize a lot
of things in our society that we think are morally
reprehensible. We decriminalize them. All that calls for is
what the American Constitution says about lesbianism. We have
decriminalized being a lesbian. We have not legalized being a
lesbian in a way that we have affirmatively passed legislation
saying, by the way, to be a lesbian is a good thing. We have
not done that. We have said, the fact that you may be a lesbian
does not allow this country or any State to lock you up in jail
because you are a lesbian.
Senator Brownback. Mr. Chairman, can I just ask a question
on this, not on this point, but another? We are going to have
to go vote shortly. Does she express--because there is a quote
in here that says the committee has expressly opined that
religion disadvantages women in all countries.
Senator Biden. That is not what that says. That is a
statement--let me find my----
Senator Brownback. I would like to get clarity on that, if
that is stated.
Senator Biden. I have so many papers piled up here.
Ms. Balmforth. Senator, I do not have the original document
with me. I could find it and send it to you.
Senator Brownback. She has a citation here.
Ms. Balmforth. I have a citation. As I looked at it,
somebody brought that document to me, and I took this from two
or three other iterations, and I hope it is not a misstatement,
but I believe it was a general comment.
Senator Biden. Let me help you out with that.
Senator Brownback. If you could, Mr. Chairman, if you have
specific items on each of these, I think it would be helpful to
say, OK, well, this is--because there are specific cites on
these.
Senator Biden. Rather than tie up the whole committee, I
was not going to go through that. That is why I submitted it
for the record, but let me speak on the cite relative to
religion. It says, the question really asked is, why did this
committee direct Libya to reinterpret the Koran to fall within
CEDAW's guidelines, because that is what the allegation is.
That is what is stated there.
Before ratification, each country has an opportunity to
adopt reservations understandings or declarations with regard
to the provisions of the treaty. When Libya ratified the
convention, it expressed a reservation about Article 2, which
calls for an end to all legal forms of discrimination against
women. At the same time, Libya noted that under the Koran's
teachings, women are equal partners of men. Therefore, the
committee asked for further clarification on why they needed
this reservation.
Now, that seems to me somewhat different than suggesting
that, as was suggested in the statement. Now, I may be wrong
about that. We can battle that out.
Senator Brownback. Well, if you could Mr. Chairman, and I
do not mean to interrupt----
Senator Biden. You are, but go ahead.
Senator Brownback. She has a specific cite to this, and
what would be useful to me is if we go to the specific cite and
say, OK----
Senator Biden. Now let me move ahead, and I know you want
to go vote, and I have to go vote, too, and everybody wants to
get the devil out of here, but with regard to three of you on
the committee, or two of you on the committee--not the
committee, but the panel. That is one of those senior moments I
am having--with regard to cast that has been given, which is
that if you read the worst possible thing that can be
interpreted from the treaty as probably happening, I would just
say--and I am going to be a bit--I was going to go through a
series of questions, but with 6 minutes we are not going to
have time. I will submit them in writing with the permission of
the panel, and I will not overburden you. I will only ask a
couple of questions for the written record, if I may.
But there is a provision that--I am glad you all were not
around asking to sign the Declaration of Independence, Doctor,
because there is a piece of the declaration that says, it is
the right of the people to alter or to abolish or to institute
a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and
organizing its powers in such forms as to them may seem most
likely to effect the safety and happiness of the people.
I am just glad you were not around to dissect this, because
you would have immediately pointed out, you know, we have
radical Muslims in the United States. We pass this thing, those
folks may go out there and justify tearing down our Government
based upon the fact--right here, we are saying it. Right here,
we are saying it. Anybody has a right to effectuate, to take
down a Government, to effectuate the principles.
And by the way, I have some colleagues at UCLA or Clark or
wherever, and they are radical wackos. They are anarchists, and
they are teaching this stuff, and by the way, in San
Francisco--and I can give you people--I can give cites in San
Francisco for a lot of things. In San Francisco there are
people who suggest, and they do, right now--right now, that our
Declaration calls for the justifiable use of force to overthrow
this Government. Ergo, do not sign on to this sucker. Do not
sign on to this.
Look, folks, we can make this out to be something that is
absolutely worst case scenario. The bottom line is that the one
thing, the one thing the rest of the world understands even
when they try to use it against us, there is nowhere in the
world where there is the following notion, that is upheld by
the majority of the people of that country, and the notion
being America, America is repressive when it comes to women.
The entire world, the entire world understands that the
single least repressive nation in the world with regard to
women is the United States, and I find it absolutely mind-
boggling that the one country that has the strongest suit to
play on women concludes that we cannot be party to this because
we may be driven to do things in the name of women that are
inconsistent with the rights of men, inconsistent with the
rights of those who share a view that abortion is wrong,
inconsistent with those who suggest that we in fact have an
equal place in society for men like us.
I am going to write--and you can submit your objections to
my assertions in writing. I am going to give you a chance,
because I am going to ask you specific questions. I truly
appreciate your being here. I truly appreciate us getting this
thing underway, and as my Grandfather Finnegan would say, and
he was antiabortion, with the grace of God and the goodwill of
the neighbors and the creek not rising, maybe, maybe we can
move forward on this treaty.
Thank you all very much.
[Whereupon, at 12:55 p.m., the committee adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X E S
----------
Text of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women
The States Parties to the present Convention,
Noting that the Charter of the United Nations reaffirms
faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of
the human person and in the equal rights of man and women,
Noting that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
affirms the principle of the inadmissibility of discrimination
and proclaims that all human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights and that everyone is entitled to all the
rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of
any kind, including distinction based on sex,
Noting that the States Parties to the International
Covenants on Human Rights have the obligation to ensure the
equal right of men and women to enjoy all economic, social,
cultural, civil and political rights,
Considering the international conventions concluded under
the auspices of the United Nations and the specialized agencies
promoting equality of rights of men and women,
Noting also the resolutions, declarations and
recommendations adopted by the United Nations and the
specialized agencies promoting equality of rights of men and
women,
Concerned, however, that despite these various instruments
extensive discrimination against women continues to exist,
Recalling that discrimination against women violates the
principles of equality of rights and respect for human dignity,
is an obstacle to the participation of women, on equal terms
with men, in the political, social, economic and cultural life
of their countries, hampers the growth of the prosperity of
society and the family and makes more difficult the full
development of the potentialities of women in the service of
their countries and of humanity,
Concerned that in situations of poverty women have the
least access to food, health, education, training and
opportunities for employment and other needs,
Convinced that the establishment of the new international
economic order based on equity and justice will contribute
significantly towards the promotion of equality between men and
women,
Emphasizing that the eradication of apartheid, of all forms
of racism, racial discrimination, colonialism, neo-colonialism,
aggression, foreign occupation and domination and interference
in the internal affairs of States is essential to the full
enjoyment of the rights of men and women,
Affirming that the strengthening of international peace and
security, relaxation of international tension, mutual co-
operation among all States irrespective of their social and
economic systems, general and complete disarmament, and in
particular nuclear disarmament under strict and effective
international control, the affirmation of the principles of
justice, equality and mutual benefit in relations among
countries and the realization of the right of peoples under
alien and colonial domination and foreign occupation to self-
determination and independence, as well as respect for national
sovereignty and territorial integrity, will promote social
progress and development and as a consequence will contribute
to the attainment of full equality between men and women,
Convinced that the full and complete development of a
country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace
require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with
men in all fields,
Bearing in mind the great contribution of women to the
welfare of the family and to the development of society, so far
not fully recognized, the social significance of maternity and
the role of both parents in the family and in the upbringing of
children, and aware that the role of women in procreation
should not be a basis for discrimination but that the
upbringing of children requires a sharing of responsibility
between men and women and society as a whole,
Aware that a change in the traditional role of men as well
as the role of women in society and in the family is needed to
achieve full equality between men and women,
Determined to implement the principles set forth in the
Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women
and, for that purpose, to adopt the measures required for the
elimination of such discrimination in all its forms and
manifestations,
Have agreed on the following:
PART I
Article 1
For the purposes of the present Convention, the term
``discrimination against women'' shall mean any distinction,
exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the
effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition,
enjoyment or exercise by women irrespective of their marital
status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human
rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic,
social, cultural, civil or any other field.
Article 2
States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all
its forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without
delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women and,
to this end, undertake:
(a) To embody the principle of the equality of men and
women in their national constitutions or other
appropriate legislation if not yet incorporated therein
and to ensure, through law and other appropriate means,
the practical realization of this principle;
(b) To adopt appropriate legislative and other
measures, including sanctions where appropriate,
prohibiting all discrimination against women;
(c) To establish legal protection of the rights of
women on an equal basis with men and to ensure through
competent national tribunals and other public
institutions the effective protection of women against
any act of discrimination;
(d) To refrain from engaging in any act or practice of
discrimination against women and to ensure that public
authorities and institutions shall act in conformity
with this obligation;
(e) To take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women by any person,
organization or enterprise;
(f) To take all appropriate measures, including
legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws,
regulations, customs and practices which constitute
discrimination against women;
(g) To repeal all national penal provisions which
constitute discrimination against women.
Article 3
States Parties shall take in all fields, in particular in
the political, social, economic and cultural fields, all
appropriate measures, including legislation, to ensure the full
development and advancement of women, for the purpose of
guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights
and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men.
Article 4
1. Adoption by States Parties of temporary special
measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men
and women shall not be considered discrimination as defined in
the present Convention, but shall in no way entail as a
consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate standards;
these measures shall be discontinued when the objectives of
equality of opportunity and treatment have been achieved.
2. Adoption by States Parties of special measures,
including those measures contained in the present Convention,
aimed at protecting maternity shall not be considered
discriminatory.
Article 5
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures:
(a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of
conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the
elimination of prejudices and customary and all other
practices which are based on the idea of the
inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes
or on stereotyped roles for men and women;
(b) To ensure that family education includes a proper
understanding of maternity as a social function and the
recognition of the common responsibility of men and
women in the upbringing and development of their
children, it being understood that the interest of the
children is the primordial consideration in all cases.
Article 6
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures,
including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in
women and exploitation of prostitution of women.
PART II
Article 7
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to
eliminate discrimination against women in the political and
public life of the country and, in particular, shall ensure to
women, on equal terms with men, the right:
(a) To vote in all elections and public referenda and
to be eligible for election to all publicly elected
bodies;
(b) To participate in the formulation of government
policy and the implementation thereof and to hold
public office and perform all public functions at all
levels of government;
(c) To participate in non-governmental organizations
and associations concerned with the public and
political life of the country.
Article 8
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to
ensure to women, on equal terms with men and without any
discrimination, the opportunity to represent their Governments
at the international level and to participate in the work of
international organizations.
Article 9
1. States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men
to acquire, change or retain their nationality. They shall
ensure in particular that neither marriage to an alien nor
change of nationality by the husband during marriage shall
automatically change the nationality of the wife, render her
stateless or force upon her the nationality of the husband.
2. States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men
with respect to the nationality of their children.
PART III
Article 10
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to
eliminate discrimination against women in order to ensure to
them equal rights with men in the field of education and in
particular to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women:
(a) The same conditions for career and vocational
guidance, for access to studies and for the achievement
of diplomas in educational establishments of all
categories in rural as well as in urban areas; this
equality shall be ensured in preschool, general,
technical, professional and higher technical education,
as well as in all types of vocational training;
(b) Access to the same curricula, the same
examinations, teaching staff with qualifications of the
same standard and school premises and equipment of the
same quality;
(c) The elimination of any stereotyped concept of the
roles of men and women at all levels and in all forms
of education by encouraging coeducation and other types
of education which will help to achieve this aim and,
in particular, by the revision of textbooks and school
programmes and the adaptation of teaching methods;
(d) The same opportunities to benefit from
scholarships and other study grants;
(e) The same opportunities for access to programmes of
continuing education including adult and functional
literacy programmes, particularly those aimed at
reducing, at the earliest possible time, any gap in
education existing between men and women;
(f) The reduction of female student drop-out rates and
the organization of programmes for girls and women who
have left school prematurely;
(g) The same opportunities to participate actively in
sports and physical education;
(h) Access to specific educational information to help
to ensure the health and well-being of families,
including information and advice on family planning.
Article 11
1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to
eliminate discrimination against women in the field of
employment in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men
and women, the same rights, in particular:
(a) The right to work as an inalienable right of all
human beings;
(b) The right to the same employment opportunities,
including the application of the same criteria for
selection in matters of employment;
(c) The right to free choice of profession and
employment, the right to promotion, job security and
all benefits and conditions of service and the right to
receive vocational training and retraining, including
apprenticeships, advanced vocational training and
recurrent training;
(d) The right to equal remuneration, including
benefits, and to equal treatment in respect of work of
equal value, as well as equality of treatment in the
evaluation of the quality of work;
(e) The right to social security, particularly in
cases of retirement, unemployment, sickness, invalidity
and old age and other incapacity to work, as well as
the right to paid leave;
(f) The right to protection of health and to safety in
working conditions, including the safeguarding of the
function of reproduction.
2. In order to prevent discrimination against women on the
grounds of marriage or maternity and to ensure their effective
right to work, States Parties shall take appropriate measures:
(a) To prohibit, subject to the imposition of
sanctions, dismissal on the grounds of pregnancy or of
maternity leave and discrimination in dismissals on the
basis of marital status;
(b) To introduce maternity leave with pay or with
comparable social benefits without loss of former
employment, seniority or social allowances;
(c) To encourage the provision of the necessary
supporting social services to enable parents to combine
family obligations with work responsibilities and
participation in public life, in particular through
promoting the establishment and development of a
network of child-care facilities;
(d) To provide special protection to women during
pregnancy in types of work proved to be harmful to
them.
3. Protective legislation relating to matters covered in
this article shall be reviewed periodically in the light of
scientific and technological knowledge and shall be revised,
repealed or extended as necessary.
Article 12
1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to
eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health
care in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and
women, access to health care services, including those related
to family planning.
2. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 1 of this
article, States Parties shall ensure to women appropriate
services in connexion with pregnancy, confinement and the post-
natal period, granting free services where necessary, as well
as adequate nutrition during pregnancy and lactation.
Article 13
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to
eliminate discrimination against women in other areas of
economic and social life in order to ensure, on a basis of
equality of men and women, the same rights, in particular:
(a) The right to family benefits;
(b) The right to bank loans, mortgages and other forms
of financial credit;
(c) The right to participate in recreational
activities, sports and all aspects of cultural life.
Article 14
1. States Parties shall take into account the particular
problems faced by rural women and the significant roles which
rural women play in the economic survival of their families,
including their work in the non-monetized sectors of the
economy, and shall take all appropriate measures to ensure the
application of the provisions of this Convention to women in
rural areas.
2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to
eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas in order
to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, that they
participate in and benefit from rural development and, in
particular, shall ensure to such women the right:
(a) To participate in the elaboration and
implementation of development planning at all levels;
(b) To have access to adequate health care facilities,
including information, counselling and services in
family planning;
(c) To benefit directly from social security
programmes;
(d) To obtain all types of training and education,
formal and non-formal, including that relating to
functional literacy, as well as, inter alia, the
benefit of all community and extension services, in
order to increase their technical proficiency;
(e) To organize self-help groups and co-operatives in
order to obtain equal access to economic opportunities
through employment or self-employment;
(f) To participate in all community activities;
(g) To have access to agricultural credit and loans,
marketing facilities, appropriate technology and equal
treatment in land and agrarian reform as well as in
land resettlement schemes;
(h) To enjoy adequate living conditions, particularly
in relation to housing, sanitation, electricity and
water supply, transport and communications.
PART IV
Article 15
1. States Parties shall accord to women equality with men
before the law.
2. States Parties shall accord to women, in civil matters,
a legal capacity identical to that of men and the same
opportunities to exercise that capacity. In particular, they
shall give women equal rights to conclude contracts and to
administer property and shall treat them equally in all stages
of procedure in courts and tribunals.
3. States Parties agree that all contracts and all other
private instruments of any kind with a legal effect which is
directed at restricting the legal capacity of women shall be
deemed null and void.
4. States Parties shall accord to men and women the same
rights with regard to the law relating to the movement of
persons and the freedom to choose their residence and domicile.
Article 16
1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to
eliminate discrimination against women in all matters relating
to marriage and family relations and in particular shall
ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women:
(a) The same right to enter into marriage;
(b) The same right freely to choose a spouse and to
enter into marriage only with their free and full
consent;
(c) The same rights and responsibilities during
marriage and at its dissolution;
(d) The same rights and responsibilities as parents,
irrespective of their marital status, in matters
relating to their children; in all cases the interests
of the children shall be paramount;
(e) The same rights to decide freely and responsibly
on the number and spacing of their children and to have
access to the information, education and means to
enable them to exercise these rights;
(f) The same rights and responsibilities with regard
to guardianship, wardship, trusteeship and adoption of
children, or similar institutions where these concepts
exist in national legislation; in all cases the
interests of the children shall be paramount;
(g) The same personal rights as husband and wife,
including the right to choose a family name, a
profession and an occupation;
(h) The same rights for both spouses in respect of the
ownership, acquisition, management, administration,
enjoyment and disposition of property, whether free of
charge or for a valuable consideration.
2. The betrothal and the marriage of a child shall have no
legal effect, and all necessary action, including legislation,
shall be taken to specify a minimum age for marriage and to
make the registration of marriages in an official registry
compulsory.
PART V
Article 17
1. For the purpose of considering the progress made in the
implementation of the present Convention, there shall be
established a Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women (hereinafter referred to as the Committee)
consisting, at the time of entry into force of the Convention,
of eighteen and, after ratification of or accession to the
Convention by the thirty-fifth State Party, of twenty-three
experts of high moral standing and competence in the field
covered by the Convention. The experts shall be elected by
States Parties from among their nationals and shall serve in
their personal capacity, consideration being given to equitable
geographical distribution and to the representation of the
different forms of civilization as well as the principal legal
systems.
2. The members of the Committee shall be elected by secret
ballot from a list of persons nominated by States Parties. Each
State Party may nominate one person from among its own
nationals.
3. The initial election shall be held six months after the
date of the entry into force of the present Convention. At
least three months before the date of each election the
Secretary-General of the United Nations shall address a letter
to the States Parties inviting them to submit their nominations
within two months. The Secretary-General shall prepare a list
in alphabetical order of all persons thus nominated, indicating
the States Parties which have nominated them, and shall submit
it to the States parties.
4. Elections of the members of the Committee shall be held
at a meeting of States Parties convened by the Secretary-
General at United Nations Headquarters. At that meeting, for
which two thirds of the States Parties shall constitute a
quorum, the persons elected to the Committee shall be those
nominees who obtain the largest number of votes and an absolute
majority of the votes of the representatives of States Parties
present and voting.
5. The members of the Committee shall be elected for a term
of four years. However, the terms of nine of the members
elected at the first election shall expire at the end of two
years; immediately after the first election the names of these
nine members shall be chosen by lot by the Chairman of the
Committee.
6. The election of the five additional members of the
Committee shall be held in accordance with the provisions of
paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 of this article, following the thirty-
fifth ratification or accession. The terms of two of the
additional members elected on this occasion shall expire at the
end of two years, the names of these two members having been
chosen by lot by the Chairman of the Committee.
7. For the filling of casual vacancies, the State Party
whose expert has ceased to function as a member of the
Committee shall appoint another expert from among its
nationals, subject to the approval of the Committee.
8. The members of the Committee shall, with the approval of
the General Assembly, receive emoluments from United Nations
resources on such terms and conditions as the Assembly may
decide, having regard to the importance of the Committee's
responsibilities.
9. The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall
provide the necessary staff and facilities for the effective
performance of the functions of the Committee under the present
Convention.
Article 18
1. States Parties undertake to submit to the Secretary-
General of the United Nations, for consideration by the
Committee, a report on the legislative, judicial,
administrative or other measures which they have adopted to
give effect to he provisions of the present Convention and on
the progress made in this respect:
(a) Within one year after the entry into force for the
State concerned; and
(b) Thereafter at least every four years and further
whenever the Committee so requests.
2. Reports may indicate factors and difficulties affecting
the degree of fulfillment of obligations under the present
Convention.
Article 19
1. The Committee shall adopt its own rules of procedure.
2. The Committee shall elect its officers for a term of two
years.
Article 20
1. The Committee shall normally meet for a period of not
more than two weeks annually in order to consider the reports
submitted in accordance with article 18 of the present
Convention.
2. The meetings of the Committee shall normally be held at
United Nations Headquarters or at any other convenient place as
determined by the committee.
Article 21
1. The Committee shall, through the Economic and Social
Council, report annually to the General Assembly of the United
Nations on its activities and may make suggestions and general
recommendations based on the examination of reports and
information received from the States Parties. Such suggestions
and general recommendations shall be included in the report of
the Committee together with comments, if any, from States
Parties.
2. The Secretary-General shall transmit the reports of the
Committee to the Commission on the Status of Women for its
information.
Article 22
The specialized agencies shall be entitled to be
represented at the consideration of the implementation of such
provisions of the present Convention as fall within the scope
of their activities. The Committee may invite the specialized
agencies to submit reports on the implementation of the
Convention in areas falling within the scope of their
activities.
PART VI
Article 23
Nothing in this Convention shall affect any provisions that
are more conducive to the achievement of equality between men
and women which may be contained:
(a) In the legislation of a State Party; or
(b) In any other international convention, treaty or
agreement in force for that State.
Article 24
States Parties undertake to adopt all necessary measures at
the national level aimed at achieving the full realization of
the rights recognized in the present Convention.
Article 25
1. The present Convention shall be open for signature by
all States.
2. The Secretary-General of the United Nations is
designated as the depositary of the present Convention.
3. The present Convention is subject to ratification.
Instruments of ratification shall be deposited with the
Secretary-General of the United Nations.
4. The present Convention shall be open to accession by all
States. Accession shall be effected by the deposit of an
instrument of accession with the Secretary-General of the
United Nations.
Article 26
1. A request for the revision of the present Convention may
be made at any time by any State Party by means of a
notification in writing addressed to the Secretary-General of
the United Nations.
2. The General Assembly of the United Nations shall decide
upon the steps, if any, to be taken in respect of such a
request.
Article 27
1. The present Convention shall enter into force on the
thirtieth day after the date of deposit with the Secretary-
General of the United Nations of the twentieth instrument of
ratification or accession.
2. For each State ratifying the present Convention or
acceding to it after the deposit of the twentieth instrument of
ratification or accession, the Convention shall enter into
force on the thirtieth day after the date of the deposit of its
own instrument of ratification or accession.
Article 28
1. The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall
receive and circulate to all States the text of reservations
made by States at the time of ratification or accession.
2. A reservation incompatible with the object and purpose
of the present Convention shall not be permitted.
3. Reservations may be withdrawn at any time by
notification to this effect addressed to the Secretary-General
of the United Nations, who shall then inform all States
thereof. Such notification shall take effect on the date on
which it is received.
Article 29
1. Any dispute between two or more States Parties
concerning the interpretation or application of the present
Convention which is not settled by negotiation shall, at the
request of one of them, be submitted to arbitration. If within
six months from the date of the request for arbitration the
parties are unable to agree on the organization of the
arbitration, any one of those parties may refer the dispute to
the International Court of Justice by request in conformity
with the Statute of the Court.
2. Each State Party may at the time of signature or
ratification of this Convention or accession thereto declare
that it does not consider itself bound by paragraph 1 of this
article. The other States Parties shall not be bound by that
paragraph with respect to any State Party which has made such a
reservation.
3. Any State Party which has made a reservation in
accordance with paragraph 2 of this article may at any time
withdraw that reservation by notification to the Secretary-
General of the United Nations.
Article 30
The present Convention, the Arabic, Chinese, English,
French, Russian and Spanish texts of which are equally
authentic, shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the
United Nations.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned, duly authorized, have
signed the present Convention.
Material Submitted in Support of Ratification of the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
Statement Submitted by the American Association of University Women
aauw supports ratification of cedaw
Dear Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: On behalf
of the 150,000 members of the American Association of University Women,
we urge you to support ratification of the U.N. Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). More
than twenty years after the First World Conference on Women, the United
States has still failed to ratify CEDAW, the most comprehensive human
rights treaty addressing international women's rights.
CEDAW, also know as the Treaty for the Rights of Women, is the only
international legal instrument that comprehensively addresses women's
rights with political, cultural, economic, and social spheres at the
local, national, and international levels. The Treaty has been ratified
by 169 nations and it has become an important tool for partnerships
among nations to end human rights abuses and promote the health and
well being of women and girls. Although the United States played a
defining role in drafting the convention and signed the treaty in July
1980, it has never ratified it, and is the only industrialized country
to fail to do so.
To guarantee equality and individual rights for a diverse society,
AAUW advocates support for U.N. programs that address human rights and
women's and girls' concerns. AAUW has endorsed the ratification of the
U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) since 1981, and urges the Senate to take action
to ratify this important treaty.
Sincerely,
Nancy Rustad,
President, AAUW.
Jacqueline Woods,
Executive Director, AAUW.
______
Statement Submitted by the American Bar Association
The American Bar Association welcomes today's Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearing on the U.N. Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, or the Treaty on
the Rights of Women) as a significant step toward U.S. ratification of
the treaty. The ABA strongly urges the Senate to consent to
ratification as expeditiously as possible this year.
One of the ABA's main goals is to advance the Rule of Law around
the world. The ABA believes that international treaties, such as CEDAW,
are invaluable tools to help governments, non-governmental
organizations, and individuals establish laws and policies that protect
and respect the rights of all persons, regardless of race, religion,
culture, or gender. Most other nations of the world have agreed upon
CEDAW as the invaluable framework for defining the basic human rights
to be afforded women and girls, include rights to equal educational
opportunities, access to health care, employment without economic or
other discrimination, ownership of property, and participation in all
aspects of civic and political life.
In the United States, these rights generally are assumed. In many
other countries, however, that is not the case. CEDAW ratification
therefore could not come at a more critical, yet propitious, time for
the advancement of the Rule of Law around the globe. Senate action now
will demonstrate to the world that, despite the events of September 11
and their aftermath, this country remains committed to human rights
advancement, encouraging both the further development of emerging
democracies and the promise of democratic principles and participatory
government in countries where freedom is newly won. Nowhere is the need
for such encouragement more evident than in Afghanistan, where the
United States has won the fight against a repressive regime, but women
and girls are just beginning their struggle to attain their rightful
place in society.
As Afghanistan works to rebuild and to restructure its government,
CEDAW provides a blueprint for the use of international standards to
address women's basic human rights need and help ensure equality. CEDAW
encourages signatories to incorporate the principle of equality of men
and women in their legal systems, abolish all discriminatory laws, and
adopt anti-discrimination measures. It underscores the importance of
ensuring that nations' laws and constitutions reflect and encompass
women's equal role in strengthening nations by guaranteeing them the
opportunity to participate fully in all aspects of public life. And it
recognizes what we all have observed from experience in Afghanistan and
elsewhere: Women cannot participate fully and effectively in society is
they are deprived of educational opportunities, health care, property
rights, and means of redress in the courts and at the ballot box. The
fact that CEDAW has become an essential tool for promoting women's
rights in many of the 169 countries that have ratified it to date is a
clear statement of CEDAW's value as a force for change.
Historically, the United States has been a world leader in
promoting human rights. Its failure to ratify CEDAW damages our ability
to encourage other nations to fulfill their responsibilities under the
treaty. Ratification in 2002 will send a strong message to the world
community that the United States supports human rights for women and
girls at home and around the globe. It is time for the United States to
take up its leadership role in human rights advancement by ratifying
CEDAW now.
______
Statement Submitted by Amnesty International USA
Amnesty International strongly supports ratification of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW). As the largest grassroots human rights organization in
the world, Amnesty International has gathered countless first-hand
accounts of the severe violations of human rights women and girls face
the world over and of the urgent appeal and need for U.S. ratification
of this treaty.
Throughout the world, women and girls suffer rape, beatings, honor
killings, acid burning, genital mutilation, sexual exploitation, and
other forms of violence. Every day, thousands of girls are sold and
trafficked into the sex slave trade against their will. Survivors of
abuse often find no legal recourse or are confronted with egregious
laws that work against the victim. Many women suffer even further in
societies that place blame upon the victim and impose shame on her.
Violence has no boundaries and affects women in every country, of every
race, nationality, and religion.
Violence against women is rooted in discrimination and reinforces
discrimination. Social and cultural norms that deny women the same
rights as men often render women more vulnerable to physical, sexual,
and mental abuse. The common thread is discrimination against women,
the denial of basic human rights to individuals simply because they are
women.
Treatment of Women Around the World
No country demonstrates more clearly the need for defending the
rights of women than Afghanistan, which implemented a ``gender
apartheid'' unlike anywhere in the world. Under the Taliban regime,
women and girls were severely repressed and especially vulnerable to
abuse. Not only were women and girls effectively denied access to
education, medical treatment, employment, and freedom of movement, but
those who were deemed to have disobeyed the regime's rules were subject
to severe beating, amputation, and even death by stoning, depending on
the alleged offense. They were subject to such mistreatment simply
because of their gender.
The world saw vividly the dire conditions women and girls were
facing in Afghanistan. Sadly, such mistreatment and denial of
fundamental rights takes many forms and occurs in many places. In India
the government has failed to curb violence against women and prosecute
offenders. In this patriarchal society, impoverished families
frequently have little interest in educating girls and often force them
into marriage as children (age 8). Girls soon learn that abuse in the
home is widespread, without distinction to religion, caste, or class.
In some regions of India, violence is often associated with the
practice of ``dowry'' as husbands and family harass wives for increased
dowry. Methods of killing women in the home include soaking them in
kerosene and setting light to them, as well as poisoning; cause of
death is often cited as suicide or accident. Although prohibited in
1961, the practice of ``dowry'' continues, without much consequence to
perpetrators.
In Nigeria, domestic violence, including rape, occurs among all
social and ethnic sectors, largely without response by officials. Women
who have been raped are often unable to obtain justice and are deterred
from reporting offences for fear of being punished themselves. As in
many countries, Nigeria has laws that work against victims of sexual
violence. In particular, in the northern states where Shari'a law
applies, the standard for proof of rape requires that four Muslim men
``of good repute'' corroborate the woman's claim of rape. The
punishment for sexual relations outside of marriage can include public
flogging or death by stoning. Amnesty International interviewed Bariya
Ibrahim Magazu, a 17-year-old girl who reported being raped. She had no
legal representation and was unable to produce witnesses to
substantiate her claim that three men had forced themselves on her,
causing her to become pregnant. The court sentenced Bariya to 100
lashes for having sexual relations outside marriage and a further 80
lashes for her accusations against the three men, which were judged to
be false. The sentence was carried out after the delivery of the baby.
Amnesty International has documented countless accounts of horrific
abuses against women. The women tell their stories with strength and
conviction, stressing the need to change conditions. In Guatemala, Rodi
Alvarado Pena married a Guatemalan Army soldier when she was sixteen.
Her husband raped her repeatedly, dislocated her jaw, tried to cut her
hands off with a machete, kicked her in the vagina, used her head to
break windows and attempted to abort their second child by kicking her
in the spine. He terrified her by bragging about his power to kill
innocent civilians, including infants, with impunity. He made clear
that he expected her total obedience. Although her husband often
assaulted her in public, Ms. Alvarado was never offered official
protection or assistance. She filed a complaint with the police, but
her husband ignored three citations without consequence. One complaint
was referred to a court, but the judge failed to send Ms. Alvarado's
husband a summons. When Ms. Alvarado tried to obtain a divorce, the
court would not permit it without her husband's consent. Fearing for
her life, Ms. Alvarado fled Guatemala to San Francisco where she
applied for political asylum. An Immigration Judge granted her asylum
in 1996, finding that the abuse she suffered constituted persecution
and that the government of Guatemala was unwilling to protect her.
However, the Board of Immigration Appeal (BIA) challenged the judge's
finding and revoked the decision. The former Attorney General in
January 2001, intervened to vacate the BIA decision, returning the case
to the BIA to be heard again. Ms. Alvarado's case is still pending.
Torture of women is rooted in a global culture which denies them
equal rights with men, and which legitimizes the violent appropriation
of women's bodies for individual gratification or political ends. Many
have fought courageously to prevent and combat abuses and to win
greater equality for women. However, women worldwide still face many
obstacles, earning less than men, owning less property than men, and
having less access to education, employment and health care than men.
Treaty for the Rights of Women
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women addresses many of these human rights violations. It is a
cost-free tool that women around the world are using effectively to
build stronger communities, economies, and families, as well as to
combat violence. CEDAW has encouraged the development of citizenship
rights in Botswana and Japan, inheritance rights in the United Republic
of Tanzania, and property rights and political participation in Costa
Rica. CEDAW has fostered the development of domestic violence laws in
Turkey, Nepal, South Africa, and the Republic of Korea and anti-
trafficking laws in Ukraine and Moldova. CEDAW has had a positive
impact on laws relating to women in countries as diverse as Uganda,
Colombia, Brazil, and South Africa. Much more could be accomplished
with U.S. leadership to hold countries accountable for the commitments
they have made through CEDAW.
Governments have a responsibility under international human rights
law to promote and ensure the rights of all, to prevent violations of
those rights from taking place, and to provide remedies to victims. The
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women is the most relevant international treaty to hold governments
accountable for protecting women and girls from such gender based
violence and discrimination. Although U.S. law is already in compliance
with most provisions of the convention, ratification by the United
States would bolster international advocacy for women's most basic
human rights and help hold repressive governments accountable.
The treaty for the rights of women provides the world community
with an international framework of standards for the recognition and
protection of women's rights as human rights. The treaty ``reaffirms
faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the
human person and in the equal rights of men and women.'' It is a
comprehensive approach to the right to non-discrimination on the basis
of gender, and defines discrimination against women as ``any
distinction, exclusion, or restriction based on sex, that has the
effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition,
enjoyment, or exercise by women of human rights of fundamental
freedoms.'' The treaty calls on all States Parties to take appropriate
measures in all fields to ``ensure the full development and advancement
of women for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and
enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on the basis of
equality with men.'' States Parties to the convention agree to
undertake legislative, judicial, administrative, and other appropriate
measures to abolish existing practices, laws and customs that
discriminate against women and violate their human rights and
fundamental freedoms.
Amnesty International has found that CEDAW is an international tool
that is keenly accurate and comprehensive in its approach to address
the violations women and girls face. Specifically:
Article 3 of the Convention calls on governments to ensure that
women may exercise and enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms on a
basis of equality with men. Women should receive the same fundamental
protections for exercising their human rights as other inhabitants of a
country.
Amnesty International has documented a myriad of cases of
abuse by government officials and found that women in custody
are more likely to face gender-specific violation of human
rights, such as rape, sexual assault and sexual intimidation.
Amnesty has also documented that rape allegations against
police officers are rarely investigated and even more rarely
result in convictions. Other forms of sexual humiliation
targeted primarily at women detainees include fondling by male
guards, verbal abuse that is gender-related, threats of rape or
other forms of sexual abuse, strip searching and body cavity
searching with the intent to humiliate or degrade. Amnesty has
also documented the rape of female children in detention,
including cases where children as young as three have been
raped.
Article 7 of the U.N. Women's Convention requires the government to
assure women's participation in all forms of public life, including
participation in non-governmental organizations concerned with the
public and political life of the country.
Amnesty International has documented numerous cases of women
activists who have been detained, tortured, ``disappeared'' or
killed because of their activities in organizations that
promote civil, political, social, cultural or economic rights
or seek to protect human rights.
Article 12 of the U.N. Women's Convention calls on governments to
insure appropriate medical services in connection with pregnancy,
confinement and the post-natal period.
Amnesty International has documented the torture, ill-
treatment, and denial of adequate nourishment and medical
attention to pregnant prisoners in a number of countries, which
in many cases has led to miscarriage and permanent physical
damage.
Article 14 of the U.N. Women's Convention calls on governments to
take into account the particular problems faced by rural women ``and to
take all appropriate measure to ensure that rural women benefit from
the opportunity to organize self-help groups and cooperatives, and to
participate in all community activities.''
Anmesty has documented serious human rights violations against
rural women in general and rural women who are activists in
particular. Indigenous women campaigning on issues of concern
to them--such as protection, and the return of or just
compensation for land to which they claim traditional rights--
have themselves frequently become victims of human rights
violations.
U.S. Leadership
The United States has a long tradition of bipartisan support for
human rights treaties. Eleanor Roosevelt helped draft the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and led efforts to garner international
support for this seminal document for the human rights of all people.
President Ronald Reagan led efforts to ratify the Genocide Convention
and President George H.W. Bush led efforts to ratify treaties against
torture and in support of civil and political rights. President Bill
Clinton, with unanimous support from a Republican led Senate, ratified
the race convention. Ratification of the treaty for the rights of women
would further the U.S. legacy in support of human rights treaties.
In the last year, President Bush and Mrs. Bush have forcefully
advocated for the protection of the women of Afghanistan, and in a
letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Bush
Administration has stated that CEDAW ``should be approved.'' The
importance of U.S. ratification of the treaty for the rights of women
is especially poignant at this time as an important means of supporting
the women of Afghanistan and others who suffer around the world.
In his State of the Union address of January 29, 2002, President
George W. Bush highlighted the treatment of women as one indicator of
the freedoms enjoyed in a country: ``We have a great opportunity during
this time of war to lead the world toward the values that will bring
lasting peace . . . We have no intention of imposing our culture. But
America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human
dignity: the rule of law; limits on the power of the state; respect for
women; private property; free speech; equal justice; and religious
tolerance.''
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on March 7, 2002, underscored
the importance of upholding and defending the rights of women for the
United States' national and international interests: ``The worldwide
advancement of women's issues is not only in keeping with the deeply
held values of the American people; it is strongly in our national
interest as well . . . Women's issues affect not only women; they have
profound implications for all humankind. Women's issues are human
rights issues . . . We, as a world community, cannot even begin to
tackle the array of problems and challenges confronting us without the
full and equal participation of women in all aspects of life.''
Support for the rights of women is bipartisan and universally
recognized as central to the advancement of humankind. The principals
espoused in the treaty are consistent with those in U.S. law and with
our country's foreign and domestic policy objectives. By ratifying, the
United States will be in a position to contribute to the development of
the standards and procedures for effective implementation of this
treaty around the world. It also would enable the United States to
utilize the internationally agreed upon standards in CEDAW to urge
other governments to end violence and discriminatory practices that
deny women fundamental human rights. With U.S. support, the treaty can
become a stronger instrument for the millions of women around the world
who desperately need international protection. Women around the world
look to the United States for leadership; until the US ratifies, many
governments will take their commitments less seriously.
The United States has the opportunity to send a clear signal of its
commitment to defend the rights of women around the world by ratifying
CEDAW. The treaty affects millions of women in every region,
nationality, and religion or belief. The United States should welcome
this historic opportunity to ratify this treaty without delay.
News Release Submitted by Amnesty International
Saudi Arabia--Investigation into Tragic Death of 14 School Girls Must
Be Transparent and Public
Publish date: 15/03/2002
Amnesty International is gravely concerned at reports that 14 girls
have lost their lives and dozens of others were injured following a
fire at their school in Mecca on 11 March 2002 after the religious
police (Mutawa'een) prevented them from escaping from the fire because
they were not wearing headscarves and their male relatives were not
there to receive them.
The religious police are also reported to have prevented rescuers
from entering the school because they were males and therefore not
permitted to mix with females.
If these reports are true, this is a tragic illustration of how
gender discrimination can have lethal consequences.
When state policies on segregation of sexes are implemented at the
expense of human life, urgent steps are needed at the highest level.
Policies and practices through which the lives of women and girls are
devalued must be changed.
Amnesty International welcomes calls for an urgent investigation
into these tragic deaths to prevent any future recurrence and for
anyone found responsible to be brought to justice. The findings of such
investigation must be made public.
Saudi Arabia must take urgent measures to end all forms of
discrimination against women in accordance with CEDAW (Convention on
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), to which
Saudi Arabia is a state party.
The Saudi Arabian English language daily Arab News quoted eye
witnesses as having said: ``Whenever the girls got out through the main
gate, these people [Mutawa'een] forced them to return via another, . .
. ``instead of extending a helping hand for the rescue work, they were
using their hands to beat us.''
Source: Amnesty International, International Secretariat, 1 Easton
Street, WC1X 8DJ, London, United Kingdom
Saudi Arabia's Religious Police Allegedly Contribute to Death of 15
Girls
By Brian Carnell--Sunday, March 17, 2002
On Monday, March 11, 2002, a fire destroyed a school in Mecca,
Saudi Arabia, killing 15 girls--most of whom were crushed to death in a
panic to exit the building. But rescue efforts at the fire were
hampered when members of Saudi Arabia' religious police--the Commission
for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice--refused to allow
either girls to leave the building or firefighters to enter the
building. The reason? The girls were not wearing their traditional head
scarves or black robes.
The English-language Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that
a member of the Commission told men trying to enter the building to try
to save the girls that, ``it is sinful to approach them'' because they
were not wearing the required garb.
Meanwhile, a civil defense officer told Saudi Arabian newspaper al-
Eqtisadiah that he saw members of the Commission ``being young girls to
prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the
abaya . . . We told them that the situation was very critical and did
not allow for such behavior. But they shouted at us and refused to move
away from the [school's] gates.''
The official response from the Saudi Arabian government has been to
claim that the people blocking access to the school were not really
members of the Commission. In an article in the Saudi English-language
newspaper Arab News, the Civil Defense Department now claims that it
has information ``which casts doubt on whether the members of the
Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice who allegedly
played a role in hampering rescue operations at the fire-hit Makkah
girls' school were really members of the organization.''
As the Wall Street Journal put it, this claim smacks of a bad
cover-up, but either way this is exactly the sort of attitude toward
women and girls that Saudi Arabia's leaders have long promoted with
their funding and promotion of Islamic extremism.
Source: ``Were commission members at fire tragedy impostors?'', Khaled
Al-Fadly & Saeed Al-Abyad, Arab News, March 17, 2002. ``Saudi police
face deaths criticism,'' Reuters, March 14, 2002.
News Release Submitted by Human Rights Watch
Saudi Arabia: Religious Police Role in School Fire Criticized
(New York, March 15, 2002)--Saudi authorities should conduct an
independent, thorough, and transparent investigation of the March 11
fire at a girls' public intermediate school in Mecca that claimed the
lives of at least fourteen students, Human Rights Watch said today. The
tragedy has focused attention on the role of the religious police as
well as the state agency responsible for the education of girls and
women in the kingdom.
Eyewitnesses, including civil defense officers, reported that
several members of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the
Prevention of Vice (mutawwa'in, in Arabic) interfered with rescue
efforts because the fleeing students were not wearing the obligatory
public attire (long black cloaks and head coverings) for Saudi girls
and women. The mutawwa'in, a law-enforcement agency that has sought to
ensure the application of the kingdom's strict gender segregation and
dress code for women, has drawn criticism for abusive practices
including harassment, physical abuse, and arbitrary arrest.
``Women and girls may have died unnecessarily because of extreme
interpretations of the Islamic dress code,'' said Hanny Megally,
Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa division of
Human Rights Watch. ``State authorities with direct and indirect
responsibility for this tragedy must be held accountable.''
There were 835 students and fifty-five women teachers in
Intermediate School No. 31 when the blaze started at about 8:00 in the
morning, according to Saudi press reports. Saudi newspapers suggested
that the school, located in a rented building, was overcrowded, and may
have lacked proper safety infrastructure and equipment, such as fire
stairs and alarms.
The government's investigation should also examine unsafe
conditions at the school, which is administered by the General
Presidency for Girls' Education (GPGE), Human Rights Watch added.
Yesterday's edition of Arab News (Jeddah) cited a report prepared
by Mecca's Civil Defense Department about the rescue effort at the
school. The report noted that mutawwa'in were at the school's main gate
and, ``intentionally obstructed the efforts to evacuate the girls. This
resulted in the increased number of casualties.'' The religious police
reportedly tried to block the entry of Civil Defense officers into the
building. ``We told them that the situation was dangerous and it was
not the time to discuss religious issues, but they refused and started
shouting at us,'' Arab News quoted Civil Defense officers as saying.
``Whenever the girls got out through the main gate, these people
forced them to return via another. Instead of extending a helping hand
for the rescue work, they were using their hands to beat us,'' Civil
Defense officers were quoted as saying. The officers also said they saw
three people beating girls who had evacuated the school without proper
dress. A Saudi journalist told Human Rights Watch that the mutawwa'in
at the scene also turned away parents and other residents who came to
assist.
The tragedy has prompted Saudi journalists to call for greater
openness on the part of the GPGE in response to inquiries from the
media for information about its policies and practices. All aspects of
state-financed education for girls in Saudi Arabia, including the
renting of buildings for schools, is under the authority of the GPGE,
an autonomous government agency long controlled by conservative
clerics. ``A free flow of information would . . . help the press to
prepare an investigative report on other schools in the Kingdom where
conditions might also endanger the lives of students and teachers,''
Deputy Editor-in-Chief Jamal A. Khashoggi wrote in yesterday's Arab
News.
He urged that the GPGE provide information about fire safety in its
schools for girls, including the number of fire extinguishers, the
frequency of fire drills, as well as details about the contracts for
the thousands of rented school premises in the Kingdom, including
provisions for installation of emergency exits and fire alarms.
The Kingdom's intermediate public schools, which are segregated by
gender, provide three years of education for children between the ages
of twelve and fifteen, following a six-year program of elementary
education.
Saudi Arabia is a state party to the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child and the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of
all forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Megally added that in the midst of this tragedy it was encouraging
to see relatively open discussion of need for investigation in the
traditionally very quiescent Saudi press.
______
Ecumenical Statement in Support of the U.S. Ratification of CEDAW
As leaders of Christian denominations and ecumenical organizations,
we strongly urge the U.S. Senate to ratify the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Since
we believe all peoples are created equally in the eyes of God, each of
our denominations and organizations supports universal ratification of
CEDAW.
CEDAW establishes a legal landmark that women are entitled to all
human rights and has proven to be one of the most potent tools for
systematically uprooting gender inequality and oppression. This has
been evident in the reports made to the United Nations by many of the
169 countries which have ratified CEDAW since its adoption by the
General Assembly in 1979. The Convention calls on governments to
abolish laws that discriminate against women and actively promote
equality by ensuring that women have equal access to education, health
care, employment, economic benefits and public life.
This Convention has successfully created an international standard
against which the treatment of all women can be measured in all fields
of life--including civil, political, economic, social, and cultural
rights. After ratifying CEDAW, many countries enacted laws that extend
the equal rights of women. Developing democracies have even included
the equality of women in their new constitutions as a result of their
ratification of this Convention.
Nations look to the United States for leadership in the
international sphere. By ratifying this Convention, the U.S. will be
making a statement to other nations that human rights and the equality
of women are a priority to the U.S. and for U.S. foreign policy.
Ratification of this treaty would promote the basic rights of women
both in our own country and globally.
While the United States is a leader in the human rights arena,
there are still many instances of gender inequality in the U.S. that
need to be addressed. We have learned from U.S. government reports that
women are still discriminated against in employment opportunities. One
example is ``A New Look Through the Glass Ceiling: Where are the
Women?'' compiled by the U.S. General Accounting Office in January
2002.
We uplift the words of First Lady Laura Bush on International
Women's Day 2002: ``Our dedication to respecting and protecting women's
rights in all countries must continue if we are to achieve a peaceful,
prosperous, and stable world.'' The ratification of this Convention is
a clear step towards this goal.
Clifton Kirkpatrick,
Stated Clerk of the General Assembly,
Presbyterian Church (USA)
James E. Winkler,
General Secretary,
General Board of Church and Society,
The United Methodist Church
The Reverend John L. McCullough,
Executive Director,
Church World Service,
Division for Church and Society,
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
______
Press Release Submitted by the Family Violence Prevention Fund
leading domestic violence prevention organization urges senate and bush
administration to ratify treaty on rights of women
Washington, DC.--The Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) today
called on the Senate and the Bush Administration to immediately ratify
the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The United States is the only
industrialized nation that has not ratified CEDAW, the universal
standard for women's rights.
``Violence against women is a human rights issue. Every day,
throughout the world, women are beaten, tortured, abused and killed,''
said FVPF President Esta Soler. ``Ratifying CEDAW is a critical first
step to protecting women's rights and ending violence against women
around the world and in this country.''
CEDAW is the most comprehensive treaty ensuring the human rights of
women. The treaty addresses gender discrimination in areas including
education, employment, health, politics and law. To date, 168 countries
have ratified CEDAW. In failing to ratify the treaty, the U.S. joins a
group of countries that includes Iran and Afghanistan.
``At a time when the U.S. focuses on human rights abuses and
violence in other countries, it is critical that we look at what is
happening in our own country,'' continued Soler. ``The Senate and the
Bush Administration must take action to safeguard the rights of women
at home and abroad, and should waste no time in ratifying CEDAW to
reaffirm this country's commitment to human rights around the world.''
The Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) works to end domestic
violence and help women and children whose lives are devastated by
abuse, because every person has the right to live in a home free of
violence. The FVPF challenges lawmakers to take domestic violence
seriously, educates judges to protect all victims of abuse, and
advocates for laws to help battered immigrant women. The FVPF works
with health care providers and employers to identify and aid victims of
abuse, helps communities support children from violent homes, and shows
Americans how to help end domestic violence. FVPF programs and policies
have won countless awards and been replicated around the world.
______
Hadassaah,
New York, NY,
May 14, 2002.
Hon. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Chairman,
Hon. Jesse Helms, Ranking Member,
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senators: On behalf of the over 300,000 members of Hadassah,
the Women's Zionist Organization of America, I am writing to
congratulate you for holding hearings on the United Nations Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW). As the only developed country not to have ratified this
treaty, these hearings are an important first step in the move to
accept this important benchmark.
CEDAW has established internationally recognized standards for the
status of women, thus providing a measure against which countries can
review the status of their own women. Many countries have used the
CEDAW benchmarks to improve the status of women in the areas of
employment equity, access to health care, political involvement, and on
social issues.
As the largest women's and largest Jewish organization in the
United States, Hadassah has a 90-year record of advocacy on issues of
importance to women and the Jewish community, such as equal pay,
women's health, combating violence against women, and recognizing rape
as a war crime. Our flagship project, the Hadassah Medical Organization
in Jerusalem, recently has inaugurated a Women's Health Center, the
first of its kind facility in Israel to address health issues for women
separately from those of men.
To date, 168 countries have ratified CEDAW. By joining them, the
United States will re-affirm its global leadership position on ensuring
women's rights as basic human rights, a key policy objective of
President Bush--as demonstrated by the important work that the U.S has
undertaken in Afghanistan.
Once again, we applaud the hearing. We hope that this is the first
step along the important road of improving the status of women around
the world, by ratifying CEDAW.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Lipton,
National President.
______
Sisters of the Holy Names,
California Justice and Peace Committee,
San Jose, CA.
Hon. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Chairman,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Senator Biden: Please list us as strongly endorsing the U.N. CEDAW
which we urge to Senate to ratify.
Rosemary Everett, SNJM.
______
Statement Submitted by the International Association of Women Judges/
International Women Judges Foundation
I submit this statement on behalf of the International Association
of Women Judges (IAWJ) to urge that the U.S. Senate ratify the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women.
The IAWJ, is a non-partisan, non-profit organization composed of
more than 4,000 members at every level of the judiciary in 77 nations,
including 1300 members in the United States, who share a commitment to
equal justice and the rule of law. With its educational adjunct, the
International Women Judges Foundation (IWJF), the IAWJ has long
supported the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and endorsed its ratification by
every nation. Unfortunately, by failing to ratify the Convention, the
United States has aligned itself with a handful of nations that spurn
democratic traditions and the rule of law.
The IAWJ-IWJF's flagship project, a highly successful educational
program that prepares men and women judges to apply the terms of
international and regional human rights conventions to cases in
domestic courts that involve discrimination and violence against women,
has been presented in South America, East Africa and the Dominican
Republic. It soon will be launched in 4 Central American nations,
Nigeria and the United States. The facilitators who developed the
curriculum and conduct the training workshops include several
U.S.experts in women's human rights who, of course, draw heavily on
CEDAW. Invariably, the judges whom they train ask why the United States
has not ratified an instrument so vital that it is referred to as the
women's bible. Underlying this question is a subtle reproach to the
United States' for its reluctance to ratify the Convention. There
cannot be the slightest doubt that this nation's recalcitrance in
ratifying CEDAW has contributed to undermining its prestige and moral
posture in many parts of the world. Regrettably, this situation exists
at a time when the U.S, more than ever, needs and seeks the support of
other nations in a rapidly shrinking world.
The IWJF enjoys consultative status with the United National
Economic and Social Council, and in this capacity, I have had the
privilege of attending many meetings of the CEDAW Expert Committee. The
Expert Committee has no power to compel compliance with the
Convention's provisions. Yet, a number of CEDAW's critics in this
country read into its provisions, arbitrary and compulsory commands
that simply are not there. The Expert Committee recommends; it does not
dictate. Through diplomatic questions posed to states-parties that have
submitted reports, the Committee has succeeded in bringing about many
useful changes that are of great benefit to women.
The Senate has an historic opportunity to set the record straight
by ratifying CEDAW. The IAWJ urges it to do so.
Yours sincerely,
Judge Arline Pacht,
Executive Director, IAWJ-IWJF
______
Statement Submitted by the International Center for Research on Women
cedaw: an essential tool for overcoming poverty and ensuring the
dignity and rights of women
The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is pleased to
submit this statement concerning the importance of the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to
the full realization of women's rights and potential. The Center
commends the Chairman for convening this hearing to review the U.S.
position regarding ratification of the treaty.
The ICRW seeks to improve the lives of women in poverty, advance
women's equality and human rights, and contribute to broader economic
and social well-being through research, capacity building, and advocacy
on issues affecting women's economic, health, and social status in low-
and middle-income countries.
The promulgation and implementation of CEDAW represents a landmark
in efforts to ensure human rights for all. It provides a universal
reference regarding issues to be addressed to guarantee women the
rights enshrined in other treaties and it provides guidelines for how
this can be accomplished. It also provides an important tool for civil
society organizations working to improve the status of women.
Why CEDAW?
Why is CEDAW necessary? It is needed to address the effects of
long-standing and pervasive discrimination against women. As a result
of this discrimination, women and girls are still the poorest, least
educated, most unhealthy, and most marginalized segment of the world's
population. Women lack control of economic assets and often lack
opportunities for education and training. These factors intensify
women's poverty, heighten their vulnerability to violence, increase
their health risks, and undermine their human rights. Despite these
obstacles, women continue to make essential contributions not only to
their own households, but also to their communities and societies.
International conventions and treaties prior to CEDAW failed to
address the specific ways in which women are prevented from realizing
their full human rights. Many of these barriers are codified in
statutory or customary law, reflecting official sanction for, or
acceptance of, women's second class status.
The internationally-agreed upon Millennium Development Goals,\1\
cannot be achieved without eliminating discrimination against women and
facilitating their full participation in all aspects of the economic,
social, political, and cultural life of their communities and nations.
We now have countless examples of development efforts gone wrong
because they failed to involve women and to take into account women's
roles, experiences, and perspectives. The experience of women in
Afghanistan under Taliban rule provides an especially dramatic example
of the consequences of failing to respect and protect women's rights.
On an even larger scale, discrimination against women and girls is
fueling the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic now devastating sub-Saharan
Africa and threatening other regions of the developing world.
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\1\ The Millennium Development Goals were agreed to at the 2000
United Nations Millennium Summit, the largest gathering of world
leaders in history. The Goals represent a renewed commitment to work to
eradicate global poverty and support development. The specific areas
addressed by the goals are poverty, education, gender equality, child
mortality, maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS and other diseases,
environment, and global partnership.
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CEDAW in Action: An Instrument For Change
ICRW's research has found that an increasing number of developing
country governments and non-governmental organizations are referring to
CEDAW as guidance for their national and local efforts to improve the
lives of women. Three examples below illustrate, from an on-the-ground
perspective, the far-reaching changes to improve women's lives that can
be achieved on the basis of CEDAW. They also illustrate CEDAW's use
within executive, legislative, and judicial governmental bodies.
Violence Against Women
Around the world, one in three women experience violence in the
intimate setting of their homes and their marriages.\2\ The threat of
violence is the sub-text of daily life for these women, who represent a
range of age, education, social status, employment and geographic
location.
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\2\ Heise, Lori and Ellsberg, and Gottemoeller, ``Ending Violence
Against Women,'' Population Reports, Vol. XXVII, No. 4. Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, December 1999.
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A recent study in India by ICRW and in-country research partners
found that over half of the women surveyed had experienced physical
violence at least once during marriage.\3\ Nearly two-thirds of those
had experienced physical violence three or more times and half had
experience violence while they were pregnant. Employed women were found
to be a greater risk of violence than women who did not work outside
the home. The study found that violence has both emotional and economic
impacts on individuals and families. Women reported loss of motivation
and energy, a decrease in productivity, with a high percentage having
considered suicide. The economic costs are also very high. A
preliminary estimate indicates that a serious incidence of violence,
leading to hospitalization or inability to work, results in the loss of
30 to 40 percent of the monthly income of rural households.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ ICRW, ``Domestic Violence in India: A Summary Report of a
Multi-Site Household Survey,'' May 2000 [funded by USAID, FAO-A-00-95-
00030-00]
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Efforts in India to reduce domestic violence build on earlier
actions related to its ratification of CEDAW in 1993. Consistent with
Article 24 \4\ of CEDAW, the government, upon ratification, established
a National Commission for Women and assigned it the task of reviewing
existing laws to determine their compliance with the provisions of the
treaty. The Commission identified 22 discrepancies that required
modification of existing laws or promulgation of new laws. Among these,
the Commission found that existing law does not protect women from
domestic violence and therefore is not consistent with Article 2 of
CEDAW, which provides for equal protection under the law.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Article 24: ``States Parties undertake to adopt all necessary
measures at the national level aimed at achieving the full realization
of the rights recognized in the present Convention.''
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As a result, a domestic violence bill is currently being debated in
the Indian Parliament. The bill would add civil remedies such as
protection orders and monetary compensation to existing criminal
provisions on domestic violence. The legislation has generated wide
debate among the public on the issue of domestic violence and key gaps
in the draft law have been identified. Given the intensity of debate,
the bill has now been referred to the Standing Committee of the
Parliament for revisions and the reintroduction of a more comprehensive
law.
Education, Economic Benefits, and Employment
Women's exclusion from opportunities for property ownership, loans,
vocational skills, and employment is a fundamental factor in the global
poverty that President Bush seeks to address through the substantially
increased resources of a Millennium Challenge Account that he pledged
at the U.N. Conference on Financing for Development in Monterey,
Mexico. For example, in Honduras, women earn only half of what men
earn, while in neighboring El Salvador, women earn less than 70 percent
of men's wages in small trade and micro enterprise activities.\5\ Yet,
in both countries, approximately 20 to 25 percent of the households
depend primarily on women's earnings to meet household requirements.
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\5\ Benitez, Manuel, et al., ``A Platform for Action for the
Sustainable Management of Mangroves in the Gulf of Fonseca,''
Washington: ICRW, November 2000.
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In South Africa, which ratified CEDAW in 1996, civil society
organizations have engaged regional government officials in dialogue
about their obligations under the treaty, with special reference to
Article 14, which addresses the particular struggles and contributions
of rural women. \6\ Women farm workers in the Western Cape region of
South Africa have access only to seasonal or ``casual'' labor
opportunities and do not have independent employment contracts or
benefits such as housing.
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\6\ Article 14: States Parties shall take into account the
particular problems faced by rural women and the significant roles
which rural women play in the economic survival of their families,
including their work in the non-monetized sectors of the economy, and
shall take all appropriate measures to ensure the application of the
provisions of this Convention to women in rural areas. States Parties
shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against
women in rural areas in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men
and women, that they participate in and benefit from rural development.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Centre for Rural Legal Studies in 1999, under the USAID-funded
PROWID project, \7\ researched and documented the status of women farm
workers in the Western Cape to establish a baseline with regard to
compliance with relevant CEDAW provisions. Overall, the research
established that low levels of education and access to job training,
high levels of domestic violence (67 percent according to employers),
limited access to health services, and lack of benefits (such as paid
maternity leave) prevent the realization of these women farm workers'
rights. Most women lack knowledge about the laws related to labor and
gender equality and have very limited access to legal recourse. These
circumstances are compounded by their employers' lack of awareness and
general failure to comply with national legislation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ PROWID was a grants program conducted by ICRW, in collaboration
with CEDPA, that sought to improve the lives of women in developing
countries and economies in transition by promoting development based on
practical insights gained from field-tested interventions. Operating
from 1995 to 2000, PROWID grants supported 45 different activities
implemented by partner organizations in over 30 countries, including
action-oriented policy research, pilot interventions, and advocacy that
contributed to economic and social development with women's full
participation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The South African government's Commission on Gender Equity (CGE) is
building on the experience in the Western Cape to educate government
officials in other parts of the country about their obligations under
CEDAW. The CGE is moving to address specific issues, such as pay equity
in agriculture, that were identified through the research conducted by
the Centre for Rural Legal Studies.
CEDAW has also provided a blueprint in South Africa for the
development of gender sensitive indicators for monitoring progress for
rural women. Various categories of indicators have been developed,
including measures related to the focus on rural women in government
programs and budgets; gathering and use of data on women living or
working on farms; compliance with the anti-discrimination obligations
under CEDAW; measures taken to ensure that women living or working on
farms are aware of their rights; the provision of education, training,
and services to fulfill women's rights; and gender awareness and
sensitivity among departmental employees.
Sexual Harassment
Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other
verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature is a specific form of sex
discrimination to which women around the world are routinely subjected.
Sexual harassment creates stress, undermines psychological well-being
and productivity, and may force victims to leave their employment. It
violates the right to a safe and healthy work environment.
The impact of sexual harassment is a growing concern around the
world. The U.S. and other industrialized countries have put in place
laws to prevent sexual harassment and to prosecute those who engage in
such harassment. At the international level, the definition of sexual
harassment is being debated.
In India, the issue was addressed by the Supreme Court in 1998,
when it issued guidelines and norms regarding sexual harassment. These
guidelines were developed with reference to provisions in CEDAW and
recommendations of the International Labour Organization. Subsequently,
the National Commission on Women developed a work place Code of Conduct
based on the Supreme Court guidelines, which was circulated widely to
Ministries and government departments. Last year, the Commission
initiated an on-going assessment of the implementation of the new
guidelines and norms.
The experience in India and other places demonstrates the use of
CEDAW as an important reference in legal judgements. The international
standards and norms codified by CEDAW provide important guidance at the
national and sub-national level on issues related to discrimination
against women.
Conclusion
The United States has long been a leader in promoting the rights of
women. Its ratification of CEDAW would serve to strengthen further its
leadership in this area and give important added weight to the norms
and standards embodied in the treaty. CEDAW is serving in very real and
concrete ways to improve the lives of women around the world. ICRW
therefore urges the speedy ratification by the United States of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women.
______
Statement Submitted by The Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom, United States Section
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF),
founded in 1915 with the goal of achieving peace, security, and women's
full participation in civic life and leadership, welcomes the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee's decision to hold hearings on the U.N.
Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW). We trust that after full consideration the Committee will find
every reason to recommend that the United States take immediate action
to assure its ratification.
The President of the United States declared our national commitment
to the principle of human rights in 2001 when he stated that the United
States ``will always be the world's leader in support of human
rights.'' His commitment to United States leadership in this important
arena and its relevance to CEDAW was echoed in First Lady Laura Bush's
declaration on International Women's Day in 2002 ``our mission to
protect human rights for women . . . in all countries . . . is
essential if we are to achieve a powerful, prosperous and stable
world.''
The Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women is not only in conformity to our national goals and aspirations,
its provisions are consistent with the letter and the spirit of the
United States Constitution and our nation's legal codes. The Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom calls upon the Committee
urge its immediate ratification.
______
Statement Submitted by Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, Ph.D., President, The
League of Women Voters of the United States
The League of Women Voters of the United States urges you to
approve the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The League of Women
Voters is a nonpartisan citizen organization with more than 130,000
members and supporters in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and
the Virgin Islands. For more than 80 years, Leagues across the country
have worked to educate the electorate, register voters and make
government at all levels more accessible and responsive to citizens.
From its inception, the League has worked for equal rights for women.
CEDAW is the most comprehensive international treaty promoting the
advancement of women worldwide. It establishes a legal framework to
which all governments must adhere to ensure the equality of women in
various areas of life including politics, law, employment, education,
health care, commerce and domestic relations. CEDAW sets forth criteria
for discrimination against women and provides a forum for addressing
and resolving women's rights issues.
We believe that U.S. ratification of CEDAW would be an important
statement of support for women worldwide and would give credibility to
the U.S.'s longstanding opposition to human rights abuses. Women in
many parts of the world lack basic legal rights or protection of their
rights under law. CEDAW will allow women to have the legal framework to
improve their own lives in practice, as well as law. For example,
although most countries give women the legal right to vote, the
inequality of women in many countries prevents them from exercising
this right. By ratifying CEDAW, the United States will show the world
that we support equality under the law for all women and girls.
CEDAW is relevant not just to the lives of women in countries with
poor human rights records, but also to the lives of American women. The
Convention assures American women that our government believes in, and
will reinforce, their equality. Most U.S. laws extend rights to all,
but do not affect the specific ways in which women's rights may be
compromised. By ratifying CEDAW, the U.S. will make significant strides
towards ensuring that equality is a political, economic and social
reality for women and girls both here and abroad.
The United Nations adopted CEDAW on December 18, 1979. From the
start, the U.S. was actively involved in drafting CEDAW, but never
ratified the treaty. CEDAW entered into force on September 3, 1981 and
currently has 169 state parties. At the Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing in September 1995, the United States was a signatory
to a document calling for the ratification of CEDAW.
The League of Women Voters believes that the time is right for U.S.
ratification of CEDAW. We urge you to send CEDAW to the full Senate for
ratification. U.S. ratification of the treaty would show the world that
the United States of America supports human rights and gender equality
for women and girls worldwide.
______
Statement Submitted by the General Board of Church and Society of The
United Methodist Church
The General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist
Church is a nongovernmental organization to the United Nations and has
been an ardent supporter of the U.N. since its inception. As an NGO,
the General Board of Church and Society has participated in many
consultations, summits and other international events including the
annual meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women and the yearly
reporting sessions on the implementation of the Convention on the
Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It is through
these experiences, plus our historical traditions and theological
beliefs supporting equal rights for women, that we strongly urge the
United States Senate to ratify CEDAW.
The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church specifically
support rights of women in paragraph 162, III (F) by affirming ``women
and men to be equal in every aspect of their common life. We therefore
urge that every effort be made to eliminate sex-role stereotypes in
activity and portrayal of family life and in all aspects of voluntary
and compensatory participation in the Church and society. We affirm the
right of women to equal treatment in employment, responsibility,
promotion and compensation. We affirm the importance of women in
decision-making positions at all levels of Church life and urge such
bodies to guarantee their presence through policies of employment and
recruitment.'' Additionally, Resolution 181 in the Book of Resolutions
calls for The United Methodist Church ``to urge governments to ratify
the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women,
which was adopted by the United Nations in December 1979.''
The twenty-two year old United Nations Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is the only
comprehensive international standard for eliminating discrimination
against women. It addresses women's rights within social, political,
cultural, economic and social life. The United States is the only
industrialized nation in the world that has not ratified the treaty. To
date, 169 countries have ratified this treaty. Afghanistan, Iran and
several other developing nations have not ratified this document.
CEDAW is consistent with U.S. constitutional principles opposing
discrimination against women. U.S. law is already in substantial
compliance with CEDAW. Where discrepancies exist between CEDAW's
principles of nondiscrimination and U.S. law, CEDAW permits progressive
implementation. The treaty includes 30 specific articles addressing
such issues as nondiscrimination in areas of education, health care,
protection under the law, economic and social life and encourages equal
involvement of women in political life.
Once a country ratifies the treaty, it is responsible for reporting
progress toward implementation at least every four years. The process,
as witnessed by our staff, is thorough and offers an opportunity to,
not only indicate progress and challenges, but also to receive valuable
feedback from the ``panel of experts.''
The United States should be leading the international fight again
gender discrimination. By ratifying this convention, the U.S. could
exercise greater political and moral leadership on human rights in the
international community and would strengthen its position as a champion
of international human rights.
Submitted by:
Linda Bales, Program Director,
Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project,
General Board of Church & Society, The United Methodist Church,
Washington, DC 2002.
______
International Human Rights Law Group,
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights,
June 27 2002
Hon. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Chairman,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Hon. Jesse Helms, Ranking Member,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senators: We, the undersigned human rights and civil rights
organizations write to strongly urge the Senate to give its advice and
consent to ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Ratification of CEDAW by the United States will send an important
message to women in this country and around the world by reaffirming
our nation's deep commitment to women's rights and equality and
providing global leadership on critically important international human
rights for women. We urge the Senate to reject the Administration's
proposed Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations, winch we
believe are unnecessary and inconsistent with the purpose, scope, and
objectives of CEDAW (see attached legal analysis).
More than twenty years have passed since the United States signed
CEDAW and presented the treaty to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. In the interim, 169 nations have ratified the convention,
and numerous U.S. states, cities, counties, and 120 domestic
organizations have formally called for the ratification of CEDAW.
Domestically, ratification of CEDAW is important because, despite
the enactment of laws to establish equality for women, discrimination
against women persists in the United States. Problems such as violence
against women, economic inequality, and access to affordable childcare
continue to plague our society and impede women seeking to achieve full
equality. Ratifying CEDAW will send a strong message that our nation is
deeply committed to equality for all women.
United States ratification of CEDAW will serve to reaffirm the
important leadership role the United States plays in promoting human
rights, democracy, and freedom throughout the world. Nowhere is the
need for this leadership more apparent than the serious human rights
violations suffered by women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Failure
by the United States to ratify this treaty not only undermines our
global leadership and influence in human rights, but also negatively
impacts our ability to shape and determine future human rights
standards.
We strongly urge the Senate to give its advice and consent to
ratification of CEDAW, a treaty that has as its object and purpose the
elimination of discrimination and oppression and the realization of
economic, political, cultural and social equality for all women.
Sincerely,
Michael Posner,
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
Gay McDougall,
International Human Rights Law Group.
Wade Henderson,
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
legal analysis of proposed administration reservations to cedaw
Article 2
States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its
forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a
policy of eliminating discrimination against women and, to this end,
undertake:
(a) To embody the principle of the equality of men and women
in their national constitutions or other appropriate
legislation if not yet incorporated therein and to ensure,
through law and other appropriate means, the practical
realization of this principle;
(b) To adopt appropriate legislative and other measures,
including sanctions where appropriate, prohibiting all
discrimination against women;
(c) To establish legal protection of the rights of women on an
equal basis with men and to ensure through competent national
tribunals and other public institutions the effective
protection of women against any act of discrimination;
(d) To refrain from engaging in any act or practice of
discrimination against women and to ensure that public
authorities and institutions shalt act in conformity with this
obligation;
(e) To take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women by arty person, organization or
enterprise;
(f) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation,
to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and
practices which constitute discrimination against women;
(g) To repeal all national penal provisions which constitute
discrimination against women.
and
Article 3
States Parties shall take in all fields, in particular in the
political, social, economic and cultural fields, all appropriate
measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and
advancement of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise
and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of
equality with men.
and
Article 5
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures:
(a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of
men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of
prejudices and customary and all other practices which are
based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of
either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women;
(b) To ensure that family education includes a proper
understanding of maternity as a social function and the
recognition of the common responsibility of men and women. in
the upbringing and development of their children, it being
understood that the interest of the children is the primordial
consideration in all cases.
Proposed Administration Reservation
The Constitution and laws of the United States establish extensive
protections against discrimination, reaching all forms of governmental
activity as well as significant areas of nongovernmental activity.
However, individual privacy and freedom from governmental interference
in private conduct are also recognized as among the fundamental values
of our free and democratic society. The United States understands that
by its terms the Convention requires broad regulation of private
conduct, in particular under Articles 2, 3 and 5. The United States
does not accept any obligation under the Convention to enact
legislation or to take any other action with respect to private conduct
except as mandated by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
This proposed reservation is undesirable. Even if there were a
conflict between U.S. law and CEDAW which required the U.S. to enact
new laws to meet the requirements of CEDAW, the mere fact that a treaty
establishes standards to which the U.S. does not currently adhere is
not sufficient reason for a reservation. The purpose of treaties is to
undertake new obligations or to make a commitment to the international
community to adhere to existing obligations. If the U.S. ratifies CEDAW
subject to this broad limitation that implies a lack of political
commitment to observe international standards, its actions will rightly
be decried by the international community. It suggests that the U.S.
views these international norms as being applicable only in other
countries and sees no room for improvement in its own rights
performance. If the concern of the Administration is that CEDAW might
require the U.S. to forbid private discrimination which is protected by
the Constitution, it is our position that, under settled principles,
CEDAW may not be construed so as to forbid what is protected by the
Constitution. At most, a reservation saying that under this article the
U.S. is not required to forbid private discrimination which is
protected by the Constitution would be acceptable.
Article 2 (for text, see above)
and
Article 7(b)
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women in the political and public life of the
country and, in particular, shall ensure to women, on equal terms with
men, the right:
(b) To participate in the formulation of government policy and
the implementation thereof and to hold public office and
perform all public functions at all levels of government
Proposed Administration Reservation
Under current U.S. law and practice, women are permitted to
volunteer for military service without restriction, and women in fact
serve in all U.S. armed services, including in combat positions.
However, the United States does not accept an obligation under the
Convention to assign women to all military units and positions which
may require engagement in direct combat.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
This reservation is objectionable. Although the Department of
Defense (``DoD'') and the military policies on women in combat remain
in flux, legal restrictions on women's participation in the military
have now been lifted. See, eg, Defense Authorization Act of 1994. The
military's desire for flexibility is not an appropriate reason for
taking a blanket reservation permitting continued discrimination. After
15 years of conducting its own detailed studies, the DoD has found that
women are fully capable of performing combat roles. In both Panama and
the Persian Gulf, women proved that they could perform in combat as
well as men. See Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf
War, Final Report to Congress, App. R at R-4 (April 1992); Bureau of
International Organization Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, U.S. Report to
the U.N. on the Status of Women 1985-1994 93-94 (1994). Rather than
abdicating any obligation to open direct combat positions to women, the
U.S. should, at a minimum, commit to continuing current efforts to open
all combat positions to women. In doing so, the U.S. would fulfill the
good faith requirement of taking ``appropriate measures'' as the phrase
was construed during drafting of the Convention. See A/32/2 IS at 4
(1977).
Despite recent advances for women, both the Army and the Marines
continue to exclude women from infantry, armor and field artillery
units, and thus block women from advancing along the three main routes
to those branches' senior leadership. The military's policy of
restricting women's participation in direct combat units denies women
significant opportunities for job advancement. Most three-star and
four-star positions require combat experience; at the end of FY 1993,
there were 114 three-star and 36 four-star admirals and generals in the
four combined services. None were women. Further, contrary to the
proposed reservation, women cannot volunteer for military service
without restriction, as women are precluded from certain designated
combat positions.
Article 11(1)(d)
1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women in the field of employment in order to
ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, the same rights, in
particular:
(d) The right to equal remuneration, including benefits, and
to equal treatment in respect of work of equal value, as well
as equality of treatment in the evaluation of the quality of
work.
Proposed Administration Reservation
U.S. law provides strong protections against gender discrimination
in the area of remuneration, including the right to equal pay for equal
work in jobs that are substantially similar. However, the United States
does not accept any obligation under this Convention to enact
legislation establishing the doctrine of comparable worth as that term
is understood in U.S. practice.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
This proposed reservation is unnecessary. During drafting of the
Convention, it was understood that the phrase ``appropriate measures''
would obligate a State to make a good faith effort to implement a
provision of the Convention. See A/32/218 at 4 (1977). Instead of
taking a blanket reservation to enacting comparable worth legislation,
the U.S. should commit to bringing U.S. law into conformity with the
international standards of wage equity evidenced by article 11(1)(d),
General Recommendation No. 13 (encouraging State Parties to ratify ILO
Convention No. 100), and ILO Convention No. 100 (``equal remuneration''
interpreted as ``rates of remuneration established without
discrimination based on sex''). At a minimum, the U.S. should state
that it will continue to implement the object and purpose of Article
11(1)(d) by developing legislative measures where appropriate.
Federal legislation is currently silent on the issue of comparable
worth. While the Supreme Court has suggested that Title VII may permit
claims based on comparable worth, see County of Washington v. Gunther,
452 U.S. 161 (1981), lower courts construing Title VII have held that
it cannot redress broader pay inequities. E.g., AFSCME v. Washington,
770 F.2d 1401 (9th Cir. 1985). However, there continue to be
significant developments expanding the implementation of comparable
worth principles to redress wage discrimination in female-dominated
occupations. For example, over twenty states have adjusted their wages
to correct for sex or race bias. See Institute for Women's Policy
Research, Pay Equity Remedies in State Governments: Assessing Their
Economic Effects (1994). Further, the Fair Pay Act of 1994 (H.R. 4803)
currently pending in Congress would expand the protections of the Equal
Pay Act to cover work of ``equivalent'' value in both the public and
private sector. Ratification of the Convention without the proposed
reservation would reiterate the U.S. commitment to increase women's
access to fair wages.
Article 11(2)(b)
2. In order to prevent discrimination against women on the grounds
of marriage or maternity and to ensure their effective right to work,
States Parties shall take appropriate measures:
(b) To introduce maternity leave with pay or with comparable
social benefits without loss of former employment, seniority or
social allowances.
Proposed Administration Reservation
Current U.S. law contains substantial provisions for maternity
leave in many employment situations but does not require paid maternity
leave. Therefore, the United States does not accept an obligation under
Article 11(2)(b) to introduce maternity leave with pay or with
comparable social benefits without loss of former employment, seniority
or social allowances.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
Rather than take this broad reservation, the U.S. should make a
commitment to take appropriate steps to expand the availability of paid
maternity leave. Such an undertaking would fill a significant gap in
U.S. law. The Family and Medical Leave Act (``FMLA''), 29 U.S.C. 260 1-
54, mandates that employers of 50 or more employees provide twelve
weeks of unpaid leave after childbirth or for other family or medical
purposes. However, no federal law provides for paid maternity or
parental leave, nor does U.S. law require an employer to reinstate a
woman who has taken maternity leave without loss of seniority or
allowances. Laws such as the FMLA and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act,
42 U.S.C. 2000e(k), are of little practical benefit to most women,
given that few can afford unpaid parental leave.
Paid maternity and parental leave policies are already in place in
many industrialized countries, including Germany, France, Italy,
Canada, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the United
Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Portugal, Japan, Sweden and
Spain. While the number of U.S. employers offering paid maternity leave
is small, the Congress has already made a commitment to study the
issue. In 1993, Congress established a Commission on Leave to conduct a
comprehensive study of, among other things, ``policies that provide
temporary wage replacement during periods of family and medical
leave.'' 29 U.S. 2632.
Articles 1-30
[For the complete text of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women see page 79 of this hearing
document.]
Proposed Administration Understanding
The United States understands that this Convention shall be
implemented by the Federal Government to the extent that it exercises
jurisdiction over the matters covered therein, and otherwise by the
state and local governments. To the extent that state and local
governments exercise jurisdiction over such matters, the Federal
Government shall, as necessary, take appropriate measures to ensure the
fulfillment of this Convention.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
The proposed language is not constitutionally necessary, nor is it
desirable. Federal authority in this area is clear. Missouri v.
Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1919). Under the Constitution and international
law, the federal government has the responsibility and the authority to
carry out obligations under CEDAW. Although the federal government has
the ultimate responsibility to see that these obligations are carried
out, it can leave some implementation to the states so long as the
United States government sees to it that this is done. There are few,
if any, matters covered by CEDAW that are subject exclusively to state
jurisdiction. Under the Fourteenth Amendment and other constitutional
provisions, these matters are subject to the treaty and legislative
powers of Congress and the jurisdiction of the federal courts.
Article 5 (for text, see above)
and
Article 7
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women in the political and public life of the
country and, in particular, shall ensure to women, on equal terms with
men, the right:
(a) To vote in all elections and public referenda and to be
eligible for election to all publicly elected bodies;
(b) To participate in the formulation of government policy and
the implementation thereof and to hold public office and
perform all public functions at all levels of government;
(c) To participate in non-governmental organizations and
associations concerned with the public and political life of
the country.
and
Article 8
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure to
women, on equal terms with men and without any discrimination, the
opportunity to represent their Governments at the international level
and to participate in the work of international organizations.
and
Article 13
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women in other areas of economic and social life
in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, the same
rights, in particular:
(a) The right to family benefits:
(b) The right to bank loans, mortgages and other forms of
financial credit;
(c) The right to participate in recreational activities,
sports and all aspects of cultural life.
Proposed Administration Understanding
The Constitution and laws of the United States contain extensive
protections of individual freedom of speech, expression and
association. Accordingly, the United States does not accept any
obligation under this Convention, in particular under Articles 5, 7, 8
and 13, to restrict those rights, through the adoption of legislation
or any other measures, to the extent that they are protected by the
Constitution and laws of the United States.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
Under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the government
may only penalize speech that incites to imminent lawless action.
Similar limits apply to restrictions of expression and association. An
understanding emphasizing that U.S. compliance cannot restrict the free
speech, expression or association protections of the First Amendment
would be appropriate.
Article 12
1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to
ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, access to health care
services, including those related to family planning.
2. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 1 of this article,
States Parties shall ensure to women appropriate services in connection
with pregnancy, confinement and the post-natal period, granting free
services where necessary, as well as adequate nutrition during
pregnancy and lactation.
Proposed Administration Understanding
The United States understands that Article 12 permits States
Parties to determine which health care services are appropriate in
connection with family planning, pregnancy, confinement and the post-
natal period, as well as when the provision of free services is
necessary, and does not mandate the provision of particular services on
a cost-free basis.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
This understanding is unnecessary. Article 12 makes clear that
States Parties shall decide which health services are ``appropriate''
and when it is ``necessary'' to grant free services. Given the lack of
conflict between U.S. law and the requirements of Article 12, the
proposed understanding is superfluous.
Articles 1-30
[For the complete text of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women see page 79 of this hearing
document.]
Proposed Administration Declaration
The United States declares that, for purposes of its domestic law,
the provisions of the Convention are non-self-executing.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
This declaration is not constitutionally required and it is
undesirable. There is no reason for insisting that neither the
Executive nor the courts should give effect to a treaty until Congress
adopts legislation. To do so would go against the spirit of Article 6
of the Constitution as the framers intended it. It would undermine one
of the principal reasons why the Constitution made treaties the law of
the land, and gave the President and the Senate the power to make such
treaties without the consent of the House of Representatives.
Incorporation of this declaration will unnecessarily delay U.S.
compliance with some provisions and set up unnecessary political
obstacles to U.S. compliance generally. Many of the articles will in
fact require Congressional implementation, but some might not.
Determination of what is or is not self-executing should be made
article by article after ratification and by each branch of government
for purposes within its responsibility.
Article 29(1-2)
1. Any dispute between two or more States Parties concerning the
interpretation or application of the present Convention which is not
settled by negotiation shall, at the request of one of them, be
submitted to arbitration. If within six months from the date of the
request for arbitration the parties are unable to agree on the
organization of the arbitration, any one of those parties may refer the
dispute to the International Court of Justice by request in conformity
with the Statute of the Court.
2. Each State Party may at the time of signature or ratification of
this Convention or accession thereto declare that it does not consider
itself bound by paragraph 1 of this article. The other States Parties
shall not be bound by that paragraph with respect to any State Party
which has made such a reservation.
Proposed Administration Declaration
With reference to Article 29(2), the United States declares that it
does not consider itself bound by the provisions of Article 29(1). The
specific consent of the United States to the jurisdiction of the
International Court of Justice concerning disputes over the
interpretation or application of this Convention is required on a case-
by-case basis.
NOW LDEF/LCHR Comment
This proposed declaration is objectionable. When the United States
ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it
declared that it accepted the competence of the Human Rights Committee
to receive and consider communications in which one State Party claimed
that another State Party was not fulfilling its obligations under the
Covenant. Since the dispute resolution mechanism in CEDAW similarly
provides for submission by one of two States to an international body
for dispute resolution, there is no justification for the U.S.
objection. The only difference between the two procedures is, in fact,
that, under CEDAW, the dispute is submitted to the International Court
of Justice. The U.S. is already a party to over 75 treaties which
provide for submission of disputes to the Court. There is no basis to
suspect that the Court will fail to render a fair and impartial verdict
under those treaties, or under CEDAW. If the U.S. is committed to the
rule of law, there is no reason to resist the jurisdiction of the
Court.
______
Statement Submitted by The National Education Association
Chairman Biden and Members of the Committee: Thank you for the
opportunity to submit testimony on the importance of ratification of
the Treaty for the Rights of Women, the Convention on Elimination of
all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
NEA believes that all nations must respect and protect the basic
human and civil rights of every individual, and that all persons,
regardless of gender, must have equal opportunity for employment,
promotion, compensation and leadership. Our 2.7 million members--the
majority of whom are women--know first hand the difference that access
to education makes in building a strong, tolerant society, and in
allowing individuals to fulfill their potential.
Women with access to education can ensure a better future for
themselves and their children. while girls who do not go to school have
little chance to escape poverty and oppression. According to the World
Bank, UNICEF, and the United Nations Development Program, investment in
girls' education is the most cost-efficient route to economic
development and stability. Yet, two-thirds of the 125 million children
worldwide who have never attended primary school are girls, and women
and girls experience discrimination in education around the globe.
The Treaty for the Rights of Women, CEDAW, requires nations that
have ratified it to take action to end discrimination in education,
including in professional and vocational training, access to curricula,
and other means of receiving an equal education. Where ratified, the
Treaty has already made significant inroads in improving access to
education for women and girls. For example:
Following its ratification of the Treaty, Slovenia changed
its school admission policies to benefit girls.
Pakistan introduced co-education in primary schools following
its ratification of the Treaty, and saw sharp increases in
female enrollment, especially in rural areas.
India has made increasing girls' educational opportunities a
key priority, creating the universal Integrated Child
Development Services program. Girls now account for nearly half
of all pre-schoolers in India.
Ratification of the Treaty would enable the United States to play a
stronger role internationally in advocating for women's rights,
including in the area of education. The Treaty would offer an important
tool to advance U.S foreign policy priorities such as increasing access
to education for women and girls in Afghanistan. Ratification would
also promote and improve education for women and girls in the United
States by, for example, opening doors to non-traditional careers and
expanding school sexual harassment prevention programs.
Nearly 170 nations have ratified CEDAW, the Treaty for the Rights
of Women, including all Latin American/Caribbean nations, the
overwhelming majority of European and African nations, and a large
number of Asian and Middle Eastern nations. The United States'
continued failure to ratify the Treaty jeopardizes our foreign policy
objectives and reinforces the message that our nation is inconsistent
in the human rights standards we set for other countries and ourselves.
We urge the Senate to take immediate action to ratify this
important human rights Treaty.
Thank you.
______
Statement Submitted for the Record by NOW Legal Defense and Education
Fund in Support of Senate Ratification of the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
We thank you for holding a hearing on the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (``CEDAW'').
As you are well aware, the struggle for human rights and equality for
women has yet to result in full equality in this country and abroad,
and the struggle continues today. United States ratification of this
important international treaty will reiterate the commitment of the
United States to the human rights and full equality of women. NOW Legal
Defense and Education Fund strongly urges you to ratify CEDAW and to
reject the Administration's proposed Reservations, Understandings, and
Declarations.
NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund is a leading national non-
profit civil rights organization that performs a broad range of legal
and educational services to define and defend women's rights. NOW Legal
Defense was founded as an independent organization in 1970 by leaders
of the National Organization for Women. NOW Legal Defense's goals
include United States recognition of women's human rights and equality.
i. ratification of cedaw will ensure that the united states continues
to play a leadership role in human rights
CEDAW is the only international agreement to comprehensively
address the human rights and equality of women. The United States was
instrumental in drafting CEDAW, which was adopted by the United Nations
General Assembly on December 18, 1979 and entered into force in 1981.
President Jimmy Carter signed CEDAW on behalf of the United States on
July 17, 1980, and sent it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
November 1980, over twenty years ago. Despite the overwhelming domestic
support for CEDAW ratification, and despite the fact that the United
States publicly stated its intention in 1995 at the Fourth World
Conference on Women to ratify CEDAW by the year 2000, the Senate has
not yet taken action to ratify CEDAW. Since its adoption, CEDAW has
been ratified by 169 countries. The United States remains the only
industrialized nation not to have ratified CEDAW and, in failing to
ratify CEDAW, is in the company of Iran, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
The world looks to the United States for leadership in the global
movement to promote freedom and human rights. That movement undoubtedly
includes the struggle for the human rights and equality of women, as
recent events in Afghanistan have made clear. First Lady Laura Bush
recently emphasized the importance of United States efforts to promote
women's human rights and equality. In an address to the United Nations
Commission on the Status of Women on International Women's Day, she
said:
[W]e affirm our mission to protect human rights for women in
Afghanistan and around the world. . . . Our dedication to
respecting and protecting women's rights in all countries must
continue if we are to achieve a peaceful, prosperous, and
stable world. . . . Human dignity, private property, free
speech, equal justice, education, and health care--these rights
must be guaranteed throughout the world. Together, the United
States, the United Nations and our allies will prove that the
forces of terror can't stop the momentum of freedom. \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Remarks by Laura Bush to the United Nations Commission on the
Status of Women, Mar. 8, 2002; see also Radio Address by Laura Bush,
Nov. 17, 2001, (``Fighting brutality against women and children is not
the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our
common humanity--a commitment shared by people of good will on every
continent. . . . The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the
rights and dignity of women.'').
President Bush also has stated that ``the world must know'' that
the United States ``will always be the world's leader in support of
human rights.'' \2\ Yet, failure to ratify CEDAW undermines the United
States' credibility and influence in the human rights arena. In order
to ensure that the world continues to view United States as a leader in
human rights, the Senate must ratify CEDAW.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Remarks by President George W. Bush in Recognition of Cuba
Independence Day, May 18, 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition to sending a message that the United States supports
women's human rights and equality, ratification of CEDAW will enable
the United States to play a role in shaping international human rights
norms relating to women's equality. For instance, only States Parties
to CEDAW may elect members to and influence the agenda of the Committee
on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women charged with
encouraging implementation of CEDAW. \3\ Since the United States has
not yet ratified CEDAW, it cannot yet participate in that process and
in the discussions of how to protect women around the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ See CEDAW, art. 17.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ii. ratification of cedaw will reaffirm the united states' commitment
to women's human rights and equality
Perhaps the most important reason to ratify CEDAW is to reaffirm
the nation's commitment to women's equality and human rights in the
United States. Although the United States has enacted a number of laws
to protect women from many forms of discrimination and oppression--
including the Nineteenth Amendment, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, Title IX of the Education Reform Act of 1972, the Equal Pay
Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Family and Medical Leave
Act, and the Violence Against Women Act--as set out below,
discrimination against women persists in many sectors. Ratification of
CEDAW will reassure the nation that the United States is still
committed to working toward eradicating each of those forms of
discrimination and achieving equality for women.
A. Eradicating Violence Against Women
One form of discrimination against women that CEDAW addresses is
violence against women. CEDAW calls for states to undertake efforts to
eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, and Article 1 of
the treaty defines ``discrimination against women'' as ``any
distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which
has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition,
enjoyment or exercise by women irrespective of their marital status, on
a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental
freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any
other field.'' As the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women has recognized, ``[g]ender-based violence, which impairs
or nullifies the enjoyment by women of human rights and fundamental
freedoms under general international law or under human rights
conventions, is discrimination within the meaning of article 1 of the
Convention.'' \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ See Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women, Gen'l Rec. No. 19, at Sec. 7 (11th Sess. 1992).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the United States, forms of violence that disproportionately
affect women, such as domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and
sexual harassment, are major contributing factors in women's continued
lower socio-economic status. As many as 60% of women receiving welfare
have been victims of domestic violence as adults, and as many as 30%
reported abuse within the last year. Female victims of domestic
violence and sexual assault are more likely than men to be homeless and
unemployed, and their physical and mental health are more likely to be
threatened. CEDAW therefore encourages States to take measures to
eliminate violence against women so that women can equally enjoy basic
human rights and freedoms.
Ratifying CEDAW will reinforce the United States' commitment to
eliminating violence against women. The United States currently
recognizes and punishes the perpetration of domestic violence, rape,
sexual assault, stalking, female genital mutilation, sexual harassment
and the trafficking in and prostitution of women and girls. Civil and
criminal remedies are available to women who have become victims of
these crimes, and funds and resources have been made available to aid
in the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators as well as the
physical, material and emotional rehabilitation of victims. In other
words, CEDAW's obligation that State Parties take appropriate measures
to combat gender-based violence is consistent with United States law
and policy.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that women in the United States are
still disproportionately subjected to violence, both in their own homes
and in the public sphere. Although the United States has made great
strides in addressing gender-based violence and ensuring women's
safety, there is still much to be done. According to the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, each year approximately 1.3 million women are
victims of domestic violence. \5\ Another 1 million women are stalked
annually in the United States, \6\ and one in every six women have been
victims of attempted or completed rape. \7\ Overall, a woman in the
United States is ten times more likely than a man to be raped, \8\ and
she is more than twice as likely as a man to be injured during a rape
or physical assault. \9\ These statistics point to the stark reality
that despite our best efforts, women are still the victims of violence
simply because they are women. Ratification of CEDAW will send a
message that the United States will continue to fight against gender-
based violence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ United States Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs,
Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence
Against Women, Research Report (Nov. 2000) at iv.
\6\ Id.
\7\ Id. at 13.
\8\ Id. at 43.
\9\ Id. at 49.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
B. Promoting Economic Justice for Women
Ratification of CEDAW will also signal the United States'
commitment to elevating women from poverty and achieving their economic
equality. For instance, Article 11(1) of CEDAW requires States Parties
to ``take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against
women in the field of employment,'' including by ensuring ``the right
to the same employment opportunities,'' ``the right to receive
vocational training,'' and ``the right to equal remuneration.'' While
United States law prohibits employment and other economic
discrimination against women, the fact remains that women in the United
States are still denied the economic opportunities available to men and
still make up the vast majority of this nation's poor. Women still make
only $0.74 for every dollar paid to a man for the same work. \10\ This
is the case despite the fact that a majority of college graduates are
women. \11\ For women who have earned high school, but not college,
degrees, the inequities in pay between men and women--with women making
an average of $9,000 less annually than men with comparable
educations--contribute significantly to the number of women who live
below the poverty level. \12\ Thus, despite advancements in the law,
the United States must continue to work to end economic discrimination
against women.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ See State Action.org, Solutions for the New Economy: Building
Blocks for a Strong and Healthy Economy, Families and Communities.
\11\ Id.
\12\ U.S. Dep't. of Labor, Women's Bureau, ``20 Facts on Women
Workers'' (Mar. 2000).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Effective implementation of CEDAW's principles would improve the
economic status of women in the United States. For instance, CEDAW's
emphasis on increasing opportunities for women to receive education and
job training in occupations that have traditionally been filled by men
would help to move women from lower paying work sectors traditionally
associated with women to higher paying skilled positions. Women
comprise the majority of low-wage workers in this country, making up
59% of workers earning no more than $7.91 an hour in 1998. \13\ By
contrast, nontraditional jobs in those occupations in which women
comprise 25% or less of total workers pay 20% to 30% more on average
than traditionally female occupations. Nontraditional employment offers
women high wages, good benefits and opportunities for advancement, and
provides an avenue for many low-income women to move up and out of
poverty. Thus job training and education will lead to greater
employment opportunities--opportunities that are not predominantly made
available, as they are currently, to individuals of one gender and not
the other.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Marlene Kim, Women Paid Low Wages: Who They Are and Where They
Work, Monthly Labor Rev., Sept. 2000, at 26.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The United States has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to
equal opportunity for men and women in the workplace and in the
nation's economy in general, but more needs to be done. Ratifying CEDAW
will show the nation and the world that the United States stands behind
its commitment and recognizes that raising the standard of living among
women is an on-going challenge, one in which the United States plans to
be a world leader.
C. Promoting Access to Support Services, Including Child Care
CEDAW also addresses the pressing need for working women to have
access to reliable and affordable child care. Women make up a
significant portion of the workforce in the United States, and they
also remain the primary caregivers in their families. Three-quarters of
all women with children between the ages of 6 and 17 work outside the
home. \14\ Women with preschool age children have also entered the
workforce in dramatic numbers; by 1996, 62% of working women had young
children--a rate five times higher than in 1947. \15\ It is inevitable
that work and family commitments will come into conflict; yet it is
clearly within our nation's best interest that women be given the
support and resources they need to be effective and productive in their
essential roles as workers, professionals and mothers. Article 11(2)(c)
of CEDAW suggests that in order to achieve this interest, states
parties to the convention should ``encourage the provision of the
necessary supporting social services to enable parents to combine
family obligations with work responsibilities and participation in
public life.'' Such ``supporting social services'' may include
childcare. The health of our economy and the health of our families
depend on the commitment to assist women to become the best workers and
professionals and mothers that they can be. Ratification of CEDAW will
demonstrate this commitment.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives,
1998 Green Book Background Material and Data on Programs within the
Jurisdiction of the Committee of Ways and Means, 105th Congress, 2d
Sess., at 660 (May 19, 1998).
\15\ Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives,
1998 Green Book Background Material and Data on Programs within the
Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means, 105th Congress, 2d
Sess., at 660 (April 1997).
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D. Promoting Women's Equality in Other Areas
CEDAW encourages States Parties to take measures to improve women's
lives and ensure their equality in a number of other areas, including
health care, \16\ education, \17\ and politics, \18\ among others.
Again, the United States should ratify CEDAW to demonstrate its
dedication to promoting women's equality and human rights in all areas.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ See CEDAW art. 12.
\17\ See CEDAW arts. 5, 10-11, 13-14.
\18\ See CEDAW arts. 7-9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
iii. there is widespread domestic support for ratification of cedaw
There is widespread domestic support for ratification of CEDAW.
Sixteen states and dozens of cities and counties have passed
resolutions urging the United States to ratify CEDAW. Over 120
organizations have similarly called for ratification. In 1993, 68
United States Senators sent a letter to President Clinton in support of
CEDAW.
Enthusiasm for CEDAW is so strong that a number of cities and
counties are undertaking innovative efforts to implement CEDAW locally.
For instance, in April 1998, San Francisco enacted a local ordinance
designed to implement the principles of CEDAW in the city. The San
Francisco CEDAW ordinance commits the city to ``work towards
integrating gender equity and human rights principles into all of its
operations, including policy, program and budgetary decision-making.''
\19\ To do so, the ordinance sets specific programmatic goals in the
areas of economic development, violence against women and girls, and
health care. It also requires selected city departments, programs, and
other entities to ``undergo a gender analysis'' and to ``develop an
Action Plan'' containing ``specific recommendations on how [each
entity] will correct any identified deficiencies and integrated human
rights principles and the local principles of CEDAW into its
operations.'' \20\ The San Francisco CEDAW ordinance compliments local,
state, and federal anti-discrimination laws by proactively promoting
women's human rights and taking measures to prevent discrimination
before it occurs. It recognizes that women's human rights are advanced
not only by prohibitions on discrimination but also by taking women's
needs and concerns into account at all levels of decision-making.
Similar efforts to implement CEDAW locally are also underway in New
York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz
County, and Santa Clara.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ San Fran. Admin. Code, Sec. 12K.4(a) (amended Dec. 2000).
\20\ Id. Sec. 12K.4(b).
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Federal ratification of CEDAW will encourage these innovative local
efforts to promote women's equality and human rights, efforts which
provide a roadmap for future positive initiatives both here and abroad.
iv. the united states should ratify cedaw without qualification and
should reject most of the administration's proposed reservations,
declarations and understandings
The substantive provisions of CEDAW are consistent with the letter
and spirit of the United States Constitution and laws, both state and
federal. The United States can and should accept virtually all of
CEDAW's obligations and undertakings without qualification.
We are deeply troubled, however, by the reservations,
understandings, and declarations (``RUDs'') proposed by the
Administration. We believe that only one understanding, that relating
to limitations on free speech, expression and association, is
advisable. The remaining RUDs, eight in number, are all designed to
support the Administration's view that this treaty should not, in any
way, change, or commit us to change, anything in United States law or
practice, now or in the future. This approach is troubling as there are
several areas where the United States is not in compliance and lags
behind much of the industrial world in guaranteeing full equality to
women. The Administration appears to have sought to identify such areas
and then, by its RUDs, to preclude any obligation to work to improve
the record of the United States in these areas. At a minimum, the
Administration should commit publicly, and on the record, to seek
improvement of its performance in each area, rather than seek to
preclude all change through the use of RUDs.
We are very disappointed to observe that the qualifications
proposed by the Administration reflect the same three principles as did
the qualifications attached to the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Racial Discrimination (the ``Race Convention'') and as did
those attached by the previous Administration to the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the ``ICCPR''). Each of these
principles is misguided.
The first principle--that the United States will undertake to do
only what it is already doing--is incompatible with the object and
purpose of the treaty. The purpose of treaties generally is to
undertake new obligations or to make a commitment to the international
community to adhere to existing obligations. The mere fact that a
treaty establishes standards to which the United States does not
currently adhere is not sufficient reason for a reservation. A specific
reservation should be added if a particular treaty provision is found
to be unacceptable. But there should not be a wholesale rejection of
change. If the United States ratifies CEDAW subject to broad
limitations that imply a lack of political commitment to observe
international standards, its actions will rightly be decried by the
international community. It will suggest that the United States views
these international norms as being applicable only in other countries.
In fact, there has been just such a reaction by other countries in
regard to the RUDs the United States attached to the ICCPR--at least 10
countries have filed objections with the United Nations.
The second principle--declaring the articles of CEDAW not to be
self-executing--is both constitutionally unnecessary and inconsistent
with the spirit of Article 6 of the Constitution as the framers
conceived it. There is no reason for insisting that neither the
Executive nor the courts should give effect to a treaty until Congress
adopts legislation. Adoption of this declaration would undermine one of
the principal reasons why the Constitution made treaties the law of the
land and gave the President and the Senate the power to make such
treaties. While some articles of CEDAW may require Congress to pass
appropriate implementing legislation, others do not. Determination of
which provisions are, and which are not, self-executing should be made
article by article after ratification and by each branch of government
for purposes within its responsibility.
The third principle, reflected in the ``states' rights
understanding,'' is also unnecessary and undermines the full
implications of the treaty. There are few matters covered by the
Constitution that are subject exclusively to state jurisdiction. Under
the Fourteenth Amendment and other Constitutional provisions, these
matters are subject to the treaty and legislative powers of Congress
and the jurisdiction of federal courts. If the intention is to clarify
that the obligations of CEDAW may in some cases be implemented by the
states, the Administration should simply say so; it requires no
declaration upon ratification, and to make such a declaration only
causes confusion.
Overall, the Administration's qualifying language applies one set
of rules to the United States and another set of rules to the rest of
the world. No other nations, including our closest allies, have taken
this view. We believe it is wrong, and undermines the basic purpose of
the treaty. Other countries, including our allies, will continue to
view ratification in this manner as hypocritical. They will see it as
an attempt by the United States to obtain the benefit of being a party
to the treaty without undertaking the obligations that accompany that
status.
Furthermore, we are concerned that United States ratification
subject to the principle of ``no domestic application'' may be imitated
cynically by other states, which seek the diplomatic benefits of
ratification but cling to the view that adherence to international
human rights standards violates their sovereignty. The universal
application of human rights is a matter of intense struggle in the
world today. Many nations seek to excuse their denial of these rights
under the guise of cultural relativity. The United States, which has
long been a leader in calling for the universal application of human
rights (rights which in many instances are modeled on those first
recognized in the United States), cannot insist that other nations
respect human rights as the universal inheritance of every person while
refusing to grant those rights to its own citizens.
v. conclusion
In sum, NOW Legal Defense strongly urges the United States to
ratify CEDAW (1) to bolster the United States' world leadership role in
human rights, (2) to reaffirm the nation's commitment to women's human
rights and equality, and (3) to recognize and encourage the widespread
local support for CEDAW. NOW Legal Defense further urges the United
States to reject most of the Administration's proposed RUDs as
unnecessary and inconsistent with the spirit of CEDAW.
______
Statement Submitted by Zoe Hudson of the Open Society Policy Center
Our experience in Afghanistan serves as a vivid reminder about the
crippling effects of discrimination against women and girls. In
Afghanistan today, there are two generations of girls who have never
stepped foot into a classroom. Women were not allowed to hold jobs,
have access to basic health care, vote, or to participate in civil
society.
Unfortunately, the women in Afghanistan are not alone. It is
estimated that every year, more than two million girls are sold into
sexual slavery; one in four women experience domestic violence; and
more than 500,000 women die from complications in childbirth. In some
countries, women cannot own property or pass it along to their
daughters.
The Treaty for the Rights of Women is the one international
agreement that establishes a framework to address violence and
discrimination against women. Formally called the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the
Treaty has been ratified by 169 nations. Ratification would not require
the United States to change a single law. But it would give us a
powerful new tool to partner with other countries to improve the lives
of women.
The Treaty for the Rights of Women has already helped women and
girls around the world. After ratification, Turkey, Columbia, Costa
Rica, Nepal and others adopted new legislation to prosecute and prevent
domestic violence. India instituted new education programs and girls
now account for half of all pre-schoolers. Australia and Israel
launched new education campaigns about cancer. To be sure, more still
needs to be done. But the United States cannot ask other countries to
remain true to their commitments until we ourselves ratify the Treaty.
The U.S. has a long bipartisan tradition of support for human
rights treaties. Presidents Regan, Bush, and Clinton ratified treaties
on genocide, civil and political rights, torture, and race.
Ratification of the Treaty for the Rights of Women would continue in
this tradition--recognizing that guaranteeing the basic rights of women
is vital to a strong democracy and healthy families.
As First Lady Laura Bush has stated, the Taliban's isolation of
women is ``not normal--not by international standards, not by Islamic
standards and not by Afghanistan's own standards.'' The Treaty for the
Rights of Women is the one international agreement that articulates
those standards. The United States should ratify it this year.
______
Peace & Joy Care Center,
Carson, CA.
Hon. Joseph R. Biden, Jr.,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Biden: I am writing to express my strong support for
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women, or CEDAW. I appreciate your leadership on this issue and
would like to encourage you to hold hearings for CEDAW in the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
To date, 168 countries have ratified CEDAW. The United States is
the only industrialized nation that has failed to do so and as such is
in the company of countries such as Iran and Afghanistan. We must work
to lead in the support of women's rights at home and around the world.
Ensuring the health and safety of women everywhere is in the best
interest of all people.
Again, please hold hearings for CEDAW in the near future. There is
no better way to celebrate International Women's Day (March 8th) than
the Senate's ratification of this important treaty.
Sincerely,
Wilma M. Wilson, RN, MFS, MFT,
Executive Director.
______
Statement Submitted by Werner Fornos, President, The Population
Institute
The United States Senate should, with all deliberate speed, take
action towards the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the
Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In its ongoing
quest to achieve universal access to family planning and reproductive
health, the Population Institute recognizes that perhaps the most
effective intervention toward this goal is the empowerment of women
everywhere.
We, in the United States, take for granted the extension of
fundamental human rights to women as well as to men. In our view, these
rights include, among others, the right to vote, access to education;
access to employment; the right to own property; and the right to plan
the size of our families.
Women in many parts of the world are less fortunate. Women perform
2/3 of the world's work, but earn only 1/10 of its income. Women grow
one half of the world's food, but own only 1 percent of its property.
Nearly 2/3 of the world's 876 million illiterate people are women.
Nearly 1,500 women die every day because of complications from
pregnancy and childbirth. Some 300 million women around the world who
either did not want their last child, do not want another child, or
want to space their pregnancies, lack access to family planning.
Only a year ago, on May 18, 2001, President George W. Bush stated
that ``repressed people around the world must know this about the
United States . . . . We will always be the world's leader in support
of human rights.'' The record shows that women are among the most
repressed people around the world; that women are among the poorest of
the world's poor; that women in many regions and countries of the world
are denied education, employment and across-the-board equity. Were men
in virtually any country in the world subjected to the same
indignities, the same suppression of basic rights, as are all too many
women in these same countries, they would take arms against their
leaders.
The United States--where one of the most cherished symbols of what
we stand for, the Statue of Liberty, is depicted as a woman, where
Justice herself is depicted as a woman--should be at the forefront of
efforts to reverse the deplorable worldwide repression of women. Yet,
inexplicably and incredibly, the United States is the only
industrialized country not among the 169 nations that have signed
CEDAW. The United States cannot expect other nations to follow our lead
on supporting human rights for all when we fail to support a document
that calls for ensuring human rights for half the population of the
world.
Seven years ago, at the United Nations Conference on Women in
Beijing, the United States delegation publicly endorsed CEDAW. in a
recent letter I received from Senator Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland,
the Senator said the ``key provisions'' of this treaty are ``basic
human rights. If even a handful of these provisions were observed, the
lives of women around the world would dramatically improve.'' I could
not agree more.
The United States' failure to ratify CEDAW is more than an
oversight, it is a travesty of purposeful and unconscionable neglect.
if the United States Senate is serious about equity, equality and
empowerment of women, it will ratify CEDAW--which does not commit the
United States to one solitary thing it is not already doing, nor does
it change any U.S. law. If the President is serious about his pledge to
the repressed people of the world that the United States is today,
tomorrow and always committed to human rights, be will affix his
signature to a ratified CEDAW. For anything less, puts the United
States in the untenable position of supporting the denial of basic
human rights to half of the world's more than 6 billion people.
Furthermore, and finally, failure to support this reasonable and
necessary document opens legitimate questions regarding the United
States' exertion of moral leadership and adherence to the principles of
democracy.
______
Statement Submitted by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), which
represents a network of approximately 2,000 battered women's shelters
and community-based programs, as well as individual battered and
formerly battered women throughout the nation, submits this testimony
in support of the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of
all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the International
Treaty for the Rights of Women.
The International Consensus on Women's Human Rights
Discrimination against women infects societies and cultures,
hurting women and children around the world. To eliminate this social
disease, every nation must call upon its educational and legislative
resources and commit to ending discrimination against women.
Encouragingly, 169 nations have adopted CEDAW but unfortunately,
although we helped draft CEDAW, the United States stands alone among
industrialized nations as the sole holdout in ratification. We are
among the company of nations such as Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan.
America's Commitment to Human Rights
The United States has always prided itself in being among the
world's leaders in the promotion of human rights, both at home and
abroad. But we cannot continue to maintain our stance of moral
superiority if we continue to ignore the fundamental human rights of
over half the world's population. By not ratifying CEDAW, we undermine
the very goals we purport to advance. In addition, our inaction has
resulted in a loss of credibility on issues pertaining to international
human rights and has degraded our ability to comment on the
mistreatment of women and to push for critical portions of our
international human rights agenda. It is time for us to resume
leadership in the international human rights arena. The time has come
for us to adopt CEDAW.
Internationally, violence against women is not new, but in recent
years it has received increased attention. The media has been inundated
with images and stories of orphaned children forced into sexual slavery
in Thailand, of rape camps in war torn Yugoslavia being used as a form
of ethnic cleansing and sexual terrorism, and of the repression women
faced under the Taliban in Afghanistan, including public executions and
stonings. It is now more clear than ever that the effects of
discrimination against women are beyond devastating, they are deadly.
We are now at a critical juncture. Afghanistan is in the process of
re-building itself and it is in everyone's best interests that in the
new Afghan society women have a place alongside men as equal partners
in their mutual future. Leaders in Afghanistan and throughout the
world, often cite our lack of support for CEDAW as a reason for them to
ignore the treaty and the rights of women. Furthermore, American
diplomats have complained that whenever they attempt to address the
issue of women's rights, they face criticism over the United States'
refusal to ratify CEDAW. Although this is clearly done to evade the
true issues, it has been an effective tool in deflecting our criticism
and has often frustrated diplomatic efforts to effectively discuss and
address international human rights.
CEDAW's Usefulness
In addition to restoring our legitimacy as an international leader
in the arena of human rights, ratifying CEDAW will also result in real
gains for women throughout the world. For instance, the women of
Nigeria, Christian and Muslim alike, are often subjected to the brutal
procedure known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This practice often
results in infection and even death. CEDAW can provide relief for
individuals who are subjected to this form of oppression, but without
the United States joining the Convention, we have no say in how or even
if it is enforced and whether or not these women's rights are
protected. We have no representation on the Committee on the
Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and are thus denied the
most effective arena in which to share with the rest of the world, the
benefits of our own experiences in eliminating discrimination against
women in the United States.
The repercussions of our ratification will not always be as visible
as ending gender apartheid in Afghanistan or combating FGM in Nigeria
but the less visible advancements of women are equally as important to
concerned individuals around the world. While CEDAW does not dictate
specific changes, it serves as a framework or guideline for policy
making. CEDAW has been cited by many countries which have adopted it,
as a reference for change. Since its inception, CEDAW's principles have
been used to assist in writing new constitutions in Brazil and Uganda,
and as of 2001, had resulted in twenty-two countries adopting laws to
advance equal participation of women in decision-making. CEDAW has also
been used to advance the interests of women in education. Pakistan
recently introduced co-education in primary schools and as a result,
there were sharp increases in female enrollment. Similar programs in
India have increased the numbers of girls in pre-schools to be nearly
equal to boys. These advancements are promising not only for the girls
who directly benefit from these programs but also for all those who
will be affected by the reduction in poverty that generally accompanies
increased levels of education. Australian women have benefited on the
employment front as a result of CEDAW. They now have national
legislation against sexual harassment in employment. CEDAW has also
been used to promote women's health. In Argentina, there now exists a
program to prevent early maternity among teens, and when it does occur,
to provide necessary pre-natal care. And in the Philippines, there is a
new Maternal Health Care Program, and immunizations for newborns. CEDAW
has also paved the way to economic improvements for women. For
instance, in China, The Women's Act was passed guaranteeing equal
rights to property inheritance. All these examples demonstrate that
adopting CEDAW is not simply giving lipservice to human rights, the
gains are real and measurable.
The Importance of Women's Human Rights and CEDAW
Now more than ever, it is imperative that the United States send a
message to the world that human rights includes women's rights. We have
seen what discrimination against women has done, and we have also seen
what international cooperation can accomplish. By advancing the rights
and interests of women throughout the world, we will increase access to
education, health care, involvement in government, and employment
opportunities. Advancements in these areas will also serve to combat
poverty, malnutrition, and many other global ailments that serve to
strengthen the forces of despair and extremism. Since September 11th,
we have all become painfully aware that these issues are not just the
problems of other nations. To advance the goals of peace, we must
eliminate the seeds of despair and inequality that contribute to the
perpetuation of terrorism; ratification of CEDAW is a clear starting
point for the accomplishment of this goal.
Social, economic, and political discrimination against women in our
society and culture all nurture an environment that accepts violence
against women. When women are not empowered in these areas, their lives
and the quality of life for them and their children is at risk. We have
seen this throughout history and most recently in Afghanistan. Abroad
and at home, discrimination and violence against women are closely
linked. Statistics of violence against women are appalling, according
to a February 2000 study conducted by the United Nations Report on the
Commission on the Status of Women, internationally, at least one in
three women and girls has been beaten or sexually abused in her
lifetime. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
in the United States, 1 in 6 women has experienced an attempted or
completed sexual assault.
Congress, and in particular the Senate, has often taken a
leadership role in upholding human rights at home and abroad.
Continuing in this tradition, we call upon this body to once again
reaffirm its commitment to the values that it has time and again
demonstrated dedication to. Ratifying CEDAW will not only prove our
unwavering support for human rights and equality, it will disarm the
true human rights abusers of their greatest ammunition in this
international debate, our past inaction. We urge the Senate to move to
ratify CEDAW today.
______
Maine/Rio Grande Do Norte Chapter,
Partners of the Americas,
Cape Elizabeth, ME.
Committee on Foreign Relations,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Re:U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW)
Honorable Members: The Maine Chapter of Partners of the Americas
urges you to recommend ratification of the U.N. Convention on the
Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women, including the
Proposed Reservations, Understandings and Declarations of the United
States (S. Res. 286), scheduled for hearing before your committee on
May 15. We submit this testimony for the Committee's Hearing Record.
Maine's partnership with the state of Rio Grande do Norte in
northeastern Brazil is one of 60 POA partnerships linking U.S. States
with countries, states or regions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Partners of the Americas is the largest private voluntary organization
in the Western Hemisphere engaged in international cooperation and
training.
Our partnership is deeply concerned with the rights of women. Our
immediate focus is domestic violence, a particularly virulent form of
discrimination against women. We exchange judges, legal experts and
others with our Brazilian counterparts. But our leadership in ensuring
women's rights worldwide is in question when the U.S. has failed to
ratify the CEDAW since the U.N. adopted the Convention in 1979. With
169 other countries signing the Convention the U.S. is the only
industrial democracy not to ratify the treaty. Ironically, Brazil
incorporated the Convention into its constitution in 1988.
We see nothing in the treaty with the proposed reservations,
understanding and declarations that contravenes or conflicts with
national or state laws. On the contrary, adoption of the Convention can
only help where our standards need strengthening, implementing or
enforcing. Accordingly, the Maine Legislature and several other states
have memorialized the U.S. Senate to ratify CEDAW.
It is not good for our country or its citizens to be on the
sideline of this important international treaty without the ability to
exercise leadership or to influence its direction. We urge you to vote
S. Res. 286 out favorably.
Sincerely,
Stephen P. Simonds,
Secretary.
______
Joy R. Simonson,
Washington, DC,
May 12, 2002.
Hon. Colin Powell,
Secretary of State,
U.S. Department of State,
Washington, DC.
Dear Secretary Powell: I am writing to urge strongly that the
United States Government support U.S. ratification of the Convention on
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The
Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to hold a long-overdue
hearing on this matter in the near future, which will be the
appropriate time for you to speak out on behalf of ratification.
In 1980 at the United Nations' Mid-Decade Conference on Women in
Copenhagen I was thrilled to see Sarah Weddington, representing the
United States, sign the Convention which was the major product of that
meeting. The knowledge that the treaty has been ratified by the rest of
the industrialized world and not our country is humiliating.
The United States--and this Administration--advocate for human
rights throughout the world. There is no doubt that women's rights are
human rights. It is surely time for us to take this essential step to
underscore our commitment to the well-being of the world's women.
Thank you for you consideration of this urgent appeal.
Sincerely,
Joy R. Simonson.
cc: President George W. Bush
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
______
Statement Submitted by Sheryl J. Swed, President, UNIFEM/USA
On behalf of the United States Committee for the United Nations
Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM/USA), I would like to thank you for
this opportunity to submit testimony on CEDAW, the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
UNIFEM/USA is a voluntary committee that works to support the
mission of UNIFEM, the Women's Fund at the United Nations. UNIFEM/USA,
one of 19 National Committees worldwide, provides support to UNIFEM by
increasing public awareness of UNIFEM's mission, and by fundraising in
the United State for UNIFEM's programs.
UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, was created
by a United Nations General Assembly resolution in 1976. It is an
autonomous agency of the United Nations and is the only fund
established specifically to support women. Since its inception, UNIFEM
has established itself as a leader in the pursuit of human rights for
women by funding innovative initiatives for women in developing
countries. Currently, UNIFEM provides financial and technical
assistance to programs and strategies in over 100 countries around the
world.
UNIFEM/USA and UNIFEM share a vision: a world where women live
their lives free from poverty, violence, and inequality. The Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
is an essential and powerful tool to achieve this mission. CEDAW is a
vital precondition to granting and protecting the basic human rights of
women around the world.
The plight of women in Afghanistan is the most recent and visible
example of why the world's women need the protection of CEDAW. The
leadership that the Congress and the United States demonstrated on
Afghanistan now needs to be extended to CEDAW. Without the United
States, the Convention lacks the necessary strength to effectively and
positively defend women's status and security in nations around the
world. Therefore, UNIFEM/USA urges the United States Senate to ratify
CEDAW as a critical demonstration of support from the world's leader on
human rights issues. To effectively ensure that CEDAW is taken
seriously, the United States must be one of its chief supporters.
CEDAW includes provisions on areas of discrimination as varied as:
political and public life; education; employment and equal pay; health
care; financial benefits and property; equality in marriage and family;
as well as issues of violence and trafficking. Just as gender
discrimination can touch each area of a women's life, so too can CEDAW
positively affect women's lives in each of these areas. In addition,
CEDAW can be an extremely important resource for two key issues in
today's world: ensuring women's human rights during the rebuilding of a
nation's constitution and legislation, and effectively addressing the
HIV/AIDS pandemic.
As detailed in a UNIFEM publication ``Bringing Equality Home:
Implementing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW has been used around the world to
benefit women by strengthening policies, enhancing women's legal
protections, and moving us closer to our ideal of gender equality.
For example if Afghanistan ratifies CEDAW, this essential and
powerful resource can be utilized to make women's human rights an
inalienable right in that nation as the new constitution and
legislation is drafted and the civil society rebuilt. Women must be
included as equals in the new Afghanistan. The women of Afghanistan
need CEDAW to ensure that their human rights are protected. By
ratifying CEDAW, the United States strengthens the Convention and will
be in the position to urge Afghanistan to ratify as well.
As reported in a UNIFEM publication, ``Turning the Tide: CEDAW and
the Gender Dimensions of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic,'' just as CEDAW can be
a critical tool in ensuring that women's human rights are protected
under constitutions and national legislation, so too can CEDAW serve as
a vital resource when addressing the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS.
At the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS
in June 2000, there was overwhelming recognition of the fact that HIV/
AIDS poses a greater threat to women and girls than to men. Gender
inequality and discrimination greatly increase women's vulnerability to
infection and results in heavy burdens on the family and the community.
Women and girls have less access to HIV/AIDS-related information,
prevention, treatment, and services.
CEDAW can help ensure that gender is a guiding principle in the
fight against HIV/AIDS and that gender issues are included in all
policies, legislation and allocations. CEDAW can help make this happen
by providing a framework for advocacy on human rights, including issues
of health care, care-giving, and women's leadership.
Women's inequality and disempowerment in the family and community,
in education, in government, in cultural norms, and in the economy has
resulted in the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. Women are not only more
biologically susceptible to contracting HIV/AIDS, but are also socially
vulnerable as well. Inequality in the family and community, as well as
economic dependence and threats of violence, may lead to unprotected
sex. Adequate care and treatment is inaccessible.
CEDAW can play an important role in each of these areas, as it
specifically targets inequality in relation to health services,
education, family, employment, violence against women, and harmful
cultural stereotypes and practices. The United States' ratification of
CEDAW can strengthen the acceptance and implementation of this
Convention and can help ``turn the tide'' of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Ratifying and implementing CEDAW is a critical step in building a
culture that respects and promotes women's human rights and women's
equality. UNIFEM will continue working with women in developing
countries to strengthen policies and programs that ensure a world where
women live their lives free from poverty, violence, and inequality. We
urge the United States Senate to ratify CEDAW, the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, to ensure
equal access to their full human rights for women around the world.
On behalf of the United States Committee for UNIFEM, the United
Nations Developmental Fund for Women, thank you again for this
opportunity to submit testimony on this vital issue. I would be more
than happy to answer any written questions you may have and look
forward to an open dialogue with you on this issue.
______
Wake County Chapter,
United Nations Association/USA,
Raleigh, NC.
Hon. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and
Hon. Barbara Boxer,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Biden and Senator Boxer: On behalf of the Board of
Directors and the 140 members of the Wake County Chapter of the United
Nations Association in Raleigh, North Carolina, I wish to commend you
for your action in scheduling hearings on the Convention to Eliminate
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It is shameful that the United
States Senate has not yet ratified this convention which was adopted in
1979 by the General Assembly, signed in 1980 by President Carter, and
went into effect in 1981.
By providing a forum for countries to address women's rights
issues, it can be an effective means of advancing those rights around
the world. While the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban may
have been the worst in the world, women's rights are severely limited
in many countries. We understand that the convention's provisions are
consistent with U.S. law, which already provides strong protections for
American women.
Although ratification would not change the rights of women in the
U.S., it would strengthen U.S. efforts to improve the status of women
elsewhere and our ratification would enhance CEDAW's legitimacy. By
failing to ratify CEDAW, the U.S. loses credibility as a global leader
for human rights.
Besides being the right thing to do for women, U.S. ratification
could lead to increased participation of the U.S. in the evaluation and
recommendation of policies that affect women throughout the world.
Changed policies could lead to an improvement in the education and
employment of women which could lead to a reduction of both the spread
of HIV/AIDS and population growth, thereby reducing the disruptive
economic and environmental impact they cause.
To ensure approval of ratification, I am sure that you will want to
stress in the hearing that the Convention has no enforcement authority
that would enable it to supersede U.S. sovereignty or laws.
I trust that the record of hearings will show that our Chapter
supported ratification of CEDAW.
Sincerely,
Isaac T. Littleton,
President, Wake County (NC) Chapter.
______
John Vanderstar,
Waynesville, NC,
May 4, 2002.
To the Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
Dear Senators: It is my understanding that the Committee will soon
take up the Convention To End Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). I
applaud this decision and write to urge that you report favorably on
ratification of CEDAW by the full Senate.
I am the father of four daughters, now in their 30s. One Sunday
morning in church one of my daughters, then age 9 or so, asked me why
we always gave God thanks ``for all thy goodness and loving kindness to
us and to all men,'' I was stumped for an answer, and I still am
stumped. But I am now and have been for many years a committed
feminist. That is, I believe women and girls are entitled to take their
place alongside men and boys in such of life's adventures as they are
individually capable of and must not be channeled solely because of
their gender. This I believe is a matter of natural law:
So God created Adam (humankind) in his image,
in the image of God he created him (them);
male and female he created them.--Genesis 1:27.
Christians embrace this principle firmly:
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer
slave or free, there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.--Galatians 3:28.
I have long been active in the Episcopal Church. Presently I am a
Member of the House of Deputies of our General Convention, the
``national legislature'' of the Church, from the Diocese of Washington
(DC), although I am writing from my summer home in North Carolina. I am
also a Trustee of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation.
Sadly, Christian churches have been as guilty of this sorry history
as other institutions in society; Scripture has often been cited in
support of treating women as second-class citizens (as it was once
cited in support of slavery). But progress is being made, and in 1991
the General Convention of the Episcopal Church endorsed CEDAW.
It is with this background that I appeal to the Senate to take this
next step in pursuit of liberation of females from millennia of
discrimination by ratifying CEDAW.
Very truly yours,
John Vanderstar.
______
Vicki L. Hinton,
Santa Cruz, CA,
June 7, 2002.
President George W. Bush: It is with great pleasure that we have
learned of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on CEDAW,
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women, to begin June 13.
We are aware that the United States was one of the nations most
active in developing this treaty, which is so important to women
throughout the world, and that the United States signed CEDAW in 1980.
We are also aware that, following earlier hearings by the Committee,
the Treaty was recommended for passage in 1994, prior to the Fourth
World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China. We also note that
CEDAW is listed by you as a treaty your Administration believes is
generally desirable and should be approved.
It is appropriate for the world to see that the United States
promotes women's human rights, here at home as well as throughout the
world.
Therefore, we most strongly urge you to give your favorable support
to the hearing and ratification of the Convention.
Sincerely yours,
Vicki Lynn Hinton.
______
Carol J. Voelker, Ph.D.,
La Jolla, CA,
May 30, 2002.
Hon. George W. Bush, President,
The White House, Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. President: Your favorable support of the CEDAW hearing and
ratification is vital at this time if our country is to be counted
among the 169 countries in the world that support gender equality and
the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women is a powerful mandate for bringing about concrete changes
to realize women's human rights.
Please: it has been 22 years since the United States signed CEDAW.
It is past time for the United States Senate to ratify it. Your help is
needed to win this battle.
Sincerely,
Carol J. Voelker, Ph.D.,
AARP State Legislative Committee Member,
Soroptimist International Board Member.
______
Statement Submitted by Women's Action for New Directions and the Women
Legislators' Lobby
Women's Actions for New Directions (WAND) and its program, the
Women Legislators' Lobby (WiLL), applaud the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee's decision to hold hearings on the United Nation's Convention
on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW). WAND/WiLL strongly support the ratification of CEDAW, and
urges the Senate to ratify this important human rights document.
WAND is a national, grassroots arms control & disarmament
organization that has worked since 1980 to empower women to act
politically to reduce violence and militarism, and to redirect
excessive military resources toward unmet human and environmental
needs. Since articles 7 and 8 of the treaty address equality of
opportunity for women everywhere to engage in political and public
life, WAND, whose mission begins ``to empower women to act
politically,'' enthusiastically supports this treaty because it will
encourage the active and equal participation of women in government.
Violence against women is the most common human rights violation,
taking many forms and cutting across ethnicity and socio-economic
status. CEDAW is an important international tool to suppress violence
and gender discrimination toward women. In fact, the treaty has
persuaded governments in Turkey, Nepal, South Africa, and the Republic
of Korea to develop laws that protect women from domestic violence.
The Women Legislators' Lobby (WiLL), a program of WAND, is a
national multipartisan network of women state legislators working
together to influence federal policies that impact state and local
communities. With members in all 50 states, WiLL members account for
one-third of all women legislators and represent over 33 million
citizens across the country. Because CEDAW is the only international
instrument that comprehensively addresses women's rights within
political, economic, cultural, and social spheres, it is a powerful
tool in promoting and assessing women's equality. The Women
Legislators' Lobby recognizes that until our nation ratifies CEDAW, the
United States is constrained in its international promotion of women's
emancipation. To highlight this point, legislators in 23 states have
introduced resolutions urging U.S. ratification of CEDAW.
To date, 169 countries have ratified CEDAW. The United States
stands alone as the only industrialized democracy that has not ratified
the treaty. The United States' ratification of CEDAW will strengthen
the treaty and will assure our nation's credibility. To encourage non-
violence and peace, and to ensure women's political equality, Women's
Action for New Directions and the Women Legislators' Lobby stand in
solidarity with women worldwide in support of this important treaty.
______
Statement Submitted by the Women's Commission,
County of Santa Cruz, California
Dear Senator Boxer and Members of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee: It is with the greatest pleasure that we look forward to the
upcoming hearings on the ratification of the Convention to Eliminate
All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). We most strongly
urge your Committee to recommend immediate ratification of CEDAW to the
full Senate.
Since 1994, when the previous 13-5 recommendation in favor of
ratification was made by your Committee, we have actively sought Senate
ratification of CEDAW. It was a great disappointment for the women of
the United States that we attended the Fourth World Conference on Women
in Beijing, 1995, as representatives of an unratified nation. It is an
even greater disappointment that in 2002, the United States is the only
unratified nation in the Western Hemisphere, and the only remaining
unratified developed nation in the world.
Surely, a status that places us on a level with Afghanistan
demonstrates to the world that in the United States, women's rights are
not yet human rights. We are asked to make enormous sacrifices to
ensure the liberation of Afghan women--yet here at home the status of
American women is not ensured.
Because our Federal government has failed to extend to women in the
United States the human rights recognized as essential throughout the
world, we have been working locally in Santa Cruz County, California,
and with other cities and counties throughout the State towards local
legislation and implementation of CEDAW. For several years, this took
the form of work on implementation of the Platform for Action. However,
a piecemeal approach is not an effective way to operate, when such an
excellent blueprint as CEDAW is available to us.
Therefore, following San Francisco's lead, we determined to pursue
a local countywide CEDAW ordinance. In 2002, we formed a CEDAW Task
Force as a part of the Santa Cruz County Women's Commission, and since
then have been speaking about CEDAW and learning about our community's
needs with respect to women's human rights. Working in coalition with
other organizations, we are identifying the issues of greatest concern
to women locally, and extending awareness across groups to increase our
support for each other. We have met with neighboring County Commissions
on the Status of Women to share ideas. And we have worked with our
local Board of Supervisors to gain approval for the concept of
meaningful, comprehensive legislation based on CEDAW, which will
coordinate and codify much of what is already in place.
However, this is still a piecemeal approach to addressing the
problems women face throughout the United States. Gertrude Mongella of
Tanzania, Convenor of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on
Women, has said: ``The problems of women do not differ from country to
country; they differ only in intensity.'' We would say that the
problems of women do not differ from State to State. Poverty, lack of
access to education and health care, inadequate political
representation, the particular concerns of women of color and immigrant
women--these affect all women here to varying degrees, and therefore
affect the larger community of which women are an inseparable part.
In these times, when the economic stresses that disproportionately
affect women have intensified, local governments are balancing their
budgets by cutting programs and services that benefit women including,
in the County, the dedicated staffing for the Women's Commission. While
we will persevere, this means that the local CEDAW effort will have to
rely totally on volunteers. A fully ratified CEDAW will serve to
strengthen ongoing local efforts throughout the country as well as
restoring this nation to its proper place as a world leader in
recognizing, affirming, and upholding the human rights of women.
Sincerely yours,
Sheila De Lany and Alison Harlow,
Santa Cruz County CEDAW Task Force Co-Chairs,
Santa Cruz Women's Commission.
Material Submitted in Opposition to Ratification of the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
Petition in opposition to ratification of CEDAW
Petition in opposition to ratification of CEDAW (continued)
------
Statement Submitted by Tanya K. Skeen, Vice President, Family Action
Council International, Charlottesville, Virginia
Honorable Chairwoman and Committee members, I would like to thank
you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Tanya K.
Skeen. I am married and am the mother of 9 children (8 are living) who
range in age from 25 to 7. I am also the vice president of Family
Action Council International (FACI), a Virginia-based non-profit
organization whose mission is to promote measures designed to maintain
and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society. I have
become acquainted with CEDAW through participating as a non-
governmental organization in United Nations proceedings, where I have
met and discussed family issues with many delegates and ambassadors. I
come here, not just as a representative of an organization supportive
of the family, but as a representative of millions of American women,
women who value their unique role as mothers.
I, and others like me, feel greatly blessed to live in this great
country of the United States of America. This is a land of freedom
where we may each decide how best to live our lives. My husband and I
have chosen to have a large family. We planned from the beginning that
I would stay at home and raise our children. We made these decisions in
part because of our religious values. We believe, as a wise man once
said, that ``no other success can compensate for failure in the home.''
My life as a mother has been the most important part of my life. My
husband and I agree with Urie Bronfenbrermer's observation in an
article from Psychology Today entitled Nobody Home: The Erosion of the
American Family (May 1977, p. 43) that every ``child should spend a
substantial amount of time with somebody who's crazy about him. . . .
[T]here has to be at least one person who has an irrational involvement
with that child, someone who thinks that kid is more important than
other people's kids, someone who's in love with him and whom he loves
in return . . . `You can't pay a woman to do what a mother will do for
free.' ''
There are some who may view me as a downtrodden woman--burdened
with the responsibility of raising 8 children when I should be making a
``REAL'' contribution to society by proving that I as a woman can stand
toe to toe with any executive in the board room. They may say I should
not be saddled with changing diapers, doing laundry, wiping up spills,
taxiing children from here to there, bandaging scraped knees, fixing
dinners, and making birthday cakes. But in the process, I am teaching
them correct principles, including fair play, respect for others,
kindness, honesty and that integrity counts. I am also correcting
negative behavior on the spot, teaching them how to clean and to be
clean, teaching them to pray and to value great music, teaching them to
read and to value the words of the great books, including the ``Good
Book.''
But this is the life I have chosen for myself. And there are
millions of American women who feel the same way I do. Perhaps I
represent the traditional woman stereotype that the CEDAW Committee is
seeking to combat. The truth of the matter is I cannot imagine a
happier, more fulfilling, or more purposeful life.
Contrary to the views of the CEDAW Committee, the idea that
motherhood, as a career, is a most valuable role is not so unique. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the member nations of
the U.N. in 1948 provides that ``The family is the natural and
fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by
society and the State (Article 17) . . . [M]otherhood and childhood are
entitled to special care and assistance.'' (Article 25)
So why am I here today? It is out of grave concern that CEDAW does
NOT protect motherhood and childhood, and, in fact, is destructive to
the family. Admittedly, many of the goals of CEDAW are worthwhile.
There are certainly abuses perpetrated against women throughout the
world that need to be eliminated. And its goal of bringing equality to
women is laudable. However, CEDAW goes far beyond the initial purpose
of eliminating atrocities against women and puts families and
motherhood at risk. It ``throws out the baby with the bath water'' so
to speak. The CEDAW Committee, which is charged with interpreting the
international treaty, seems bent on imposing requirements on parties to
CEDAW that, I believe, the average American would find astonishing and
abhorrent! One woman has stated, ``If I wanted to destroy society, I
would launch an all-out blitz on women.'' While CEDAW purports to
protect women, ironically, carrying out the CEDAW Committee's
directives amounts to a blitz on women.
CEDAW would deny the differences between mothers and fathers, men
and women.\1\ It encourages ratifying nations to develop policies to
move mothers to work outside the home, ignoring the special need of
infants and small children for their mothers' presence and
nurturing.\2\ CEDAW attacks the special role of motherhood. Thus, the
CEDAW Committee has objected to the ``over-protective measures for
pregnancy and motherhood . . .\3\ In effect, CEDAW encourages the
separation of children from their parents at the earliest possible age
to be placed in daycare so that the mother may work full-time. For
example, in Slovenia, the CEDAW Committee recommended the creation of
more formal and institutionalized child-care establishments for
children under three years of age as well as for those from three to
six.\4\ This, by the way, is in direct contradiction to the 1959 U.N.
``Declaration on the Rights of the Child'' that states that ``[a] child
of tender years shall not, save in exceptional circumstances, be
separated from his mother.''
Implicit in CEDAW is the idea that a woman can only be fulfilled
when she is freed from the responsibility of raising her children.
Referring to the Republic of Georgia, the CEDAW Committee wrote: ``The
Committee notes with concern . . . the prevalence of stereotyped roles
of women in Government policies, in the family, in public life based on
patterns of behavior and attitudes that overemphasize the role of women
as mothers.'' \5\ In Belarus, the CEDAW Committee, has even encouraged
the elimination of Mother's Day.\6\ While the Committee says that
motherhood is a ``harmful stereotype,'' \7\ it encourages the
legalization of prostitution\8\ and prods governments to bring women
engaged in prostitution into the mainstream and under the protection of
social law. Thus, for example, the Committee expressed concern to
Germany that ``although they are legally obliged to pay taxes,
prostitutes still do not enjoy the protection of labor and social
law.'' \9\
It seems ironic, and is a further testament of the indifference and
even hostility of CEDAW to motherhood, that in the entire CEDAW treaty,
which purports to protect and advance the role of women, the word
``mother'' is never used. The concept of motherhood is only indirectly
referred to in the negative context of a ``stereotyped role.''
In the United States, we go to excruciatingly great lengths in
selecting who will interpret our laws, and by democratic and
constitutional processes, judges are selected whom we entrust to make
wise, balanced decisions. In contrast the CEDAW Committee are self-
styled, so-called ``experts'', working with NGO volunteers, who are
selected precisely because their personal agendas are unwaveringly
supportive of liberating women from the constraints of home, family and
religion. Their role is to interpret the meaning of the treaty's
language and to judge the compliance of ratifying nations. They are not
elected, and they likely hold no allegiance to our laws or
constitutional principles. Many or most are not, of course, American
citizens. Their selection is through a process far removed from
democratic principles or from any concept of the judiciary that we as
Americans know and accept. And yet they have the power to critique
sovereign nations, indeed to advance their philosophy of the family and
of the role of women and to insist upon its acceptance by every nation
that ratifies this treaty.
Why are we even considering ratifying this treaty which will
subject the United States to the interpretations and recommendations of
the CEDAW Committee and the personal and or political agenda of its
members? And what is their agenda? From all appearances, it is to
develop policies that will change our cultural values and religious
beliefs, that will push women out of the home into the workforce, that
will push the youngest of children into daycare centers, and will shift
what are now generally men's responsibilities to protect and provide
for their families onto women. To Indonesia, the Committee
``expresse[d] great concern about existing social, religious and
cultural norms that recognize men as the head of the family and
breadwinner and confine women to the roles of mother and wife, which
are reflected in various laws, Government policies and guidelines. It
is unclear what steps the government is proposing to take to modify
such attitudes, which present a serious obstacle to the advancement of
women. . . .'' \10\ And, is the CEDAW Committee acting within the scope
of CEDAW treaty itself? All we have to do is go back and read the
treaty, and we see that the answer is yes.
In addition to promoting policies counter to the traditional roles
of mother and father, the CEDAW Committee appears to take a hostile
attitude toward religion. They seem to believe, perhaps rightly, that
religion helps perpetuate the traditional roles of men and women. The
CEDAW Committee has instructed one country to reinterpret its holy writ
to conform to the CEDAW Committee's directives.\11\ As a further
example of this hostility, I made a phone call to one U.N. agency that
works to educate NGOs on CEDAW. I was asked to identify my organization
and, specifically, to indicate whether we were a religious
organization. I said that ours is not affiliated with any specific
religion. The person's response was, ``Good, religion does not know
what is good for families. Religion is not good for families.''
One argument put forth for our ratification of CEDAW is that the
United States should support the many nations of the world who have
embraced this treaty. I suggest that we take a closer look at those
countries and the circumstances under which they agreed to adopt the
treaty. I can tell you that a U.N. delegate from one country, in a
private, confidential conversation, said to me in regard to CEDAW:
``Where were you when we needed you. When we ratified CEDAW a few years
ago, we did not understand it, we did not know what it meant. It is
terrible and now we can do nothing about it. Where were you then?''
Some have suggested that possible unacceptable interpretations by
the CEDAW Committee can be dealt with through our specifying
reservations. The CEDAW Committee has made it perfectly clear, with
respect to the reservations of some nations, that they have no
intention of honoring them. For example, in the case of China, which
inserted reservations with respect to religion, the Committee stated:
``Of particular concern is the reservation exempting `the affairs of
religious denominations or orders' from the scope of the Convention.''
\12\ The CEDAW Committee was even more direct with regard to Libya's
religious reservation in stating: ``Reservations that [are]
incompatible with the goals of the Convention [are] not acceptable.''
\13\ Furthermore, the General Assembly of the United Nations, in regard
to CEDAW, has ``called on governments to ratify the Convention, limit
the extent of any reservations to it, and withdraw reservations which
[are] contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention or otherwise
incompatible with international treaty law.'' \14\
I want my children to be able to raise their children in a world
where mothers are respected, honored and valued. I want my daughters to
be able to be ``stay-at-home'' mothers, if they choose, and to be able
to raise their children in a safe, nurturing and loving home, without
any interference or discouragement from government policy.
By not having ratified CEDAW to date, the United States has not
yielded to the pressure to adopt international law or policy that would
undermine and even destroy the traditional roles of mother and father
in the family. While there is still room for improvement in the rights
and protections afforded women, progress is being made and can continue
to be made through existing laws and processes. We do not need CEDAW to
achieve these ends, and CEDAW brings significant risks. I plead with
you to consider very, very carefully the impact that this treaty would
have in matters of gender and family law; and the implications that
this treaty would have on the traditional role of motherhood, including
the right of a woman to choose full-time motherhood as an honored and
respected way of life. CEDAW is BAD LAW, and Family Action Council
International urges you to reject it. Thank you.
notes
1. ``For the purposes of the present Convention, the term
`discrimination against women' shall mean any distinction, exclusion or
restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of
impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by
women, irrespective of their marital status, on the basis of equality
of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the
political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.''
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) Article 1.
2. See, e.g., CEDAW Committee notes to Colombia directing that
women be integrated into the labor force. CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess.
(1999) Concluding Observations for the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women: Columbia. Para. 382.
3. ``The Committee also notes with concern the increase in over-
protective measures for pregnancy and motherhood. . . .'' CEDAW
Committee, 18th Sess. (1998) Concluding Observations for the Committee
on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: Czech Republic,
Para. 196.
4. CEDAW Committee, 16th Sess. (1997), Concluding Observations of
the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women:
Slovenia, Para. 114.
5. CEDAW Committee, 21st Sess. (1999) ``Concluding Observations for
the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women:
Georgia,'' Para. 99.
6. CEDAW Committee, 22nd Sess. (2000) ``Concluding Observations for
the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women:
Belarus,'' Para. 361.
7. ``The Committee strongly urged the Government to use the
education system and the electronic media to combat the traditional
stereotype of women `in the noble role of mother' . . . '' CEDAW
Committee, 17th Sess. (1997) ``Concluding Observations for the
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women:
Armenia'', Para. 65. Also, CEDAW Committee, 19th Sess. (1998)
``Concluding Observations for the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women: Peru'', Para. 269: ``[The U.N.]
recommends, as a matter of priority, the inclusion in gender equality
programs of a component to promote the gradual elimination of such
harmful stereotypes, and a general awareness-raising campaign to
eradicate them.''
8. ``The Committee recommends decriminalization of prostitution.''
CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess. (1999) ``Concluding Observations for the
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: China'',
Para. 289. ``The Committee is concerned that prostitution . . . is
illegal in China.'' CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess. (1999) ``Concluding
Observations for the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women: China'', Para. 288.
9. CEDAW Committee, 22nd Sess. (2000) ``Concluding Observations for
the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women:
Germany'', Para. 325.
10. CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1999) ``Concluding Observations of
the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women :
Indonesia,'' Para. 289.
11. CEDAW Committee, 13th Sess. (1995) ``Report of the Committee on
the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Supplement No. 38 (A/
49/38),'' Para. 132.
12. CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess. (1999) ``Concluding Observations of
the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women:
China,'' Para. 314.
13. CEDAW Committee, 13th Sess. (1995) ``Report of the Committee on
the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Supplement No. 38 (A/
49/38),'' Para. 132.
14. Twenty-third special session of the General Assembly ``Women
2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first
century, June 2000.
______
Treaty Trap: Should the U.S. Ratify a Feminist Convention?
by ramesh ponnuru, june 10, 2002
(National Review Online)
The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979, but progress
toward Eliminating All Forms of Discrimination has been held up by
America's failure to ratify the convention. From time to time,
feminists have tried to push ratification--in 1999, ten female House
Democrats marched over to a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee to pressure then-chairman Jesse Helms on the matter. (He
threw them out for disrupting the hearing.) But it's usually a very
low-priority issue.
Recently, however, Democratic senators Joseph Biden and Barbara
Boxer have made a renewed push for ratification. The Bush
administration is determining its position. Social conservatives, led
by Austin Ruse's Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, are
lobbying it to oppose.
The text of CEDAW commits governments that are party to it to
abolishing all legal distinctions based on sex that impair the exercise
of ``human rights and fundamental freedoms.'' Further, it commits those
governments to eliminating all discrimination against women ``by any
person, organization, or enterprise'' and to modifying ``the social and
cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving
the elimination of . . . all . . . practices which are based on . . .
stereotyped roles for men and women.''
Parties to the convention must regularly appear before a U.N.
committee to detail the progress they are making toward reaching these
rather coercive and utopian goals. The CEDAW committee tends to take an
expansive view of its mandate. It has, for example, criticized Ireland
for prohibiting abortion, and warned Belarus that its establishment of
Mother's Day could promote stereotypes.
The debate within the administration does not fall neatly along the
lines one might expect. Some conservatives are looking for a treaty
that the administration can support, since they have already spurned
enlightened European opinion on Kyoto, the International Criminal
Court, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the like. They think that
various legal reservations and understandings can limit the damage the
convention can do. Richard Wilkins, a law professor at Brigham Young
University, persuasively argues that this is wishful thinking.
Opponents of the convention are hoping that Elliott Abrams, the
National Security Council official in charge of reviewing the
convention, weighs in against it.
Trafficking in Folly
Last Wednesday, the State Department released a report on sex
trafficking around the world. The department is obligated to issue such
a report under a law aimed mainly at ``sex trafficking in which a
commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which
the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of
age.''
Most of the media has treated the report, to the extent it's been
noticed at all, as a step forward in the fight against trafficking. But
that's not the way the activists who fought for the trafficking law see
it. A group of such activists--mostly but not exclusively
conservatives--greeted the State Department's briefers with skepticism
bordering on incredulity.
State divides countries into three tiers, with Tier One being
relatively clean and Tier Three abysmal. Tier Two countries are
``making significant efforts'' against trafficking. It's Tier Two that
has drawn most of the criticism. Countries can get into it without
prosecuting a single trafficker, so long as they, for example, set up
programs to assist victims of the trade.
The report fails to provide details about the countries involved,
or about the methods it uses to classify them. How many prosecutions
have there been in India or Thailand? At the briefing, department
officials claimed vaguely that there had been prosecutions;
International Justice Mission, an anti-trafficking group, says that
there are no confirmed convictions, or dismissals of police officials
working with the traffickers, in either country.
The activists also say that Tier Two is too large a category to
provide useful information. Israel and Romania have done much more to
fight trafficking than Moldova or Sierra Leone--but they're all
together in Tier Two. Some countries that are well known to have major
trafficking problems, such as Australia, aren't in the report at all,
State having failed to find 100 confirmed cases of victimization.
Senator Biden is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. If he
is interested in improving the lot of women around the world, and not
just in scoring points with feminists, he'll put CEDAW back on the
backburner--and hold oversight hearings about State's lame efforts
against sex trafficking.
______
Statement Submitted by Patrick Fagan, The Heritage Foundation
Mr. Chairman, Senator Boxer, and all other members of the Foreign
Relations committee, I thank you for this opportunity to submit
testimony. To begin I must stress that, while I serve as William H.G.
FitzGerald Fellow in Family and Cultural Issues at the Heritage
Foundation, the views that I express are entirely my own, and should
not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage
Foundation. Again, let me say how grateful I am for the opportunity to
submit testimony on the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Despite the many good elements within CEDAW few Americans are aware
that CEDAW is also used by certain agencies within the United Nations
system in a campaign to undermine the foundations of society--the two-
parent married family, the religions that espouse the primary
importance of marriage and traditional sexual morality, and the legal
and social structures that protect these institutions. 1
Using the pretext of international treaties that promote women's
rights, the social policy sector of the United Nations--specifically,
committees that oversee implementation of U.N. treaties in social
policy areas and assisted by special-interest groups--is urging
countries to change their domestic laws and national constitutions to
adopt policies that will adversely affect women and children.
2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The key U.N. bodies involved include the Office of the U.N.
High Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of
the Child and the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women that work under the Office of the High Commissioner, the
Economic and Social Council, and the bureaucracies of the United
Nations Children's Fund, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the
World Food Programme, the U.N. Development Programme, the U.N.
Environment Programme, and the U.N. Centre for Human Settlements
(Habitat).
\2\ A compilation of numerous excerpts from the actual reports
issued by these committees to the member states and to the U.N. General
Assembly is available at http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/
bg1407quotes.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a troubling agenda. And it is incompatible with the U.N's
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It states that ``the family is
the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to
protection by society and the state.'' 3 The United Nations
historically has included in treaties and documents language affirming
a nation's right to determine its cultural norms and practices. The
U.N. Charter itself states that ``Nothing contained [herein] shall
authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are
essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall
require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the
present Charter.'' 4 And a 1960 General Assembly Resolution
states that ``All peoples have an inalienable right to complete
freedom, the exercise of their sovereignty and the integrity of their
national territory.'' 5
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16, at http://
ww.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm .
\4\ United Nations Charter, Article 2, Para. 7.
\5\ U.N. General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), December 14, 1960,
reiterated in General Assembly Resolution 52/119, December 12, 1997:
``Popular sovereignty intensifies and fortifies the claim about the
vital role that popular sovereignty plays in protecting and enhancing
fundamental international human rights.'' See Robert John Araujo,
``Sovereignty, Human Rights and Self-Determination: The Meaning of
International Law,'' Brigham Young University Conference on the United
Nations and the Family, June 2000, p. 14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
But the U.N.'s long-standing respect for the right of sovereign
nations to set their own domestic policies has yielded to a new
countercultural agenda espoused in U.N. committee reports and
documents, particularly those relating to the implementation of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW). 6 Under the auspices of the U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, along with many laudable recommendations
these committee reports urge countries to undertake some very radical
and destablizing initiatives:
\6\ The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) includes 23 ``experts''
on women's issues. Its mandate is to monitor progress made by
signatories in fulfilling treaty obligations. At biannual meetings,
members review reports submitted by states the year after signing the
treaty and every four years thereafter. See http://www.un.org/
womenwatch/daw/cedaw/reports.htm for most of the CEDAW reports cited in
this study.
Remove their prohibitions on prostitution and eventually
legitimize it; for example, a CEDAW committee report on
Germany--which has legalized prostitution--notes with disdain
that ``although they are legally obliged to pay taxes,
prostitutes still do not enjoy the protection of labor and
social law [in Germany].'' 7
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ CEDAW Committee, 22nd Sess. (2000), ``Report on Germany,''
Para. 39.
Make abortion a ``demand right'' protected by national and
international law, with unrestricted access for teenagers, and
make the non-provision of abortion illegal in all cases, even
for reasons of conscience. A report to Croatia, for example,
finds ``the refusal, by some hospitals, to provide abortions on
the basis of conscientious objection of doctors . . .
[constitutes] an infringement of women's reproductive rights.''
8
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, 13th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 53rd Sess. (1998), ``Report on Croatia,'' Document
#A/53/38, Para. 109.
De-emphasize the role of mothers and increase incentives for
them to work rather than stay home to care for children.
9 The U.N. criticized the republic of Georgia, for
example, for ``the prevalence of stereotyped roles of women in
Government policies, in the family, in public life based on
patterns of behavior and attitudes that overemphasize the role
of women as mothers.'' 10 One country report even
criticized the observance of Mother's Day.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ See Mark Genuis, The Myth of Quality Day Care (Calgary,
Alberta: National Foundation for Family Research and Education, 2000).
\10\ CEDAW Committee, 21st Sess. (1999), ``Report on Georgia,''
Para. 30.
Encourage governments to alter religious rules and customs
that impede its efforts. A report on Indonesia states, for
example, that ``the most significant factors inhibiting women's
ability to participate in public life have been the cultural
framework of values and religious beliefs.'' 11
Indeed, with such language, social policy agents working for
and at the United Nations are promoting an agenda that attacks
the natural rights of the family and the independent
sovereignty of nations to determine their own domestic policies
on parental rights and the free expression of religious values
and beliefs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, 18th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 53rd Sess. (1998), ``Report on Indonesia,''
Document #A/53/38, Para. 10.
The U.N.'s CEDAW implementing committee may insist that its
recommendations are in the best interests of women, but in reality they
will greatly expand government programs and government power and
adversely affect women and children. 12 The consequences
could be severe.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Nicky Ali Jackson, ``Observational Experiences of
Intrapersonal Conflict and Teenage Victimization: A Comparative Study
Among Spouses and Cohabitors,'' Journal of Family Violence, Vol. 11
(1996), pp. 191-203. For a review of literature on the effects of
family structure on child abuse, see Patrick F. Fagan, ``The Child
Abuse Crisis: The Disintegration of Marriage, Family, and Community,''
Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1115, May 15, 1997, at http://
www.heritage.org/library/categories/family/bg1115.html..
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rigorous academic studies show, for example, that separating a
child from his mother too early or for too long can have serious long-
term damaging effects on the child. 13 Yet the U.N.
committees both disparage stay-at-home mothers and urge nations to make
publicly funded day care widely available, even for newborns, so that
more women can go to work or go back to work sooner after giving birth.
Many studies show that family structure affects income, health, and
happiness, 14 yet the committees advocate policies that will
increase out-of-wedlock births, especially among teenagers. Studies
also show that children of married families that worship have better
incomes, better health, higher education, and lower rates of crime,
abuse, addiction, and suicide. Married families in developed nations
also exhibit less violence against women and children. 15
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ For a review of the literature, see Robert Karen, Becoming
Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). See also Patrick F. Fagan,
``How Broken Families Rob Children of Their Future Income,'' Heritage
Foundation Backgrounder No. 1283, June 1999, and National Foundation
for Family Research and Education (Canada), ``The Myth of Quality Day
Care,'' April 2000.
\14\ See, for example, Nadine F. Marks and James D. Lambert,
``Marital Status Continuity and Change Among Young and Midlife Adults:
Longitudinal Effects on Psychological Well-Being,'' Journal of Family
Issues, Vol. 19 (1998), pp. 652-686. For a review of the literature on
the effects on income, see Patrick F. Fagan, ``How Broken Families Rob
Children of Their Future Income,'' Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No.
1283, June 1999, Chart 10, at http://www.heritage.org/library/
backgrounder/bg1283.html. For findings on Great Britain, see F.
McAllister, Marital Breakdown and the Health of the Nation (London: One
Plus One, 1995).
\15\ For a review of the literature, see Linda Waite and Maggie
Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (New York: Doubleday, 2000), pp. 150-
160, Chapter 11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Social science research continues to show that the married, two-
parent family that worships regularly provides the best environment in
which to raise healthy, well-adjusted children. Moreover, polls show
that a growing number of mothers want to stay at home to raise their
young children, but that if they have to work, they want their children
in family care, not government-run day care. 16
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ A 1998 Wirthlin Worldwide poll, for example, found that 74
percent of parents in the market for day care want their children in
family or extended family day care. Options for care were, in order of
preference: (1) with the mother; (2) with a grandmother or other family
member; (3) with the parents working split shifts; (4) at a church-run
center; (5) with a trusted neighbor or friend; (6) with a day-care
provider at home; (7) with a nanny or au pair; (8) at a commercial day-
care center; and (9) at a government-run day-care center. See also
Stuart M. Butler and Kim R. Holmes, eds., Issues 2000: The Candidate's
Briefing Book (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 2000).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.S. Role
As yet, the CEDAW has not been signed or ratified by the United
States. Leaders in Congress and past Administrations considered both
treaties too controversial. Because it has not ratified this treaty,
the United States has not received a similar assessment of its policies
from a U.N. implementing committee. Nevertheless, under President
Clinton, U.S. representatives supported the general policy direction of
this treaty throughout the international debate over women's rights,
and became a major force behind the implementation efforts.
That support was demonstrated by the United States in 1997 when it
joined a U.N. voting bloc on social issues, a bloc that includes Japan,
the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. 17
The Clinton Administration joined the coalition on very controversial
social issues in proceedings leading up to the five-year follow-up to
the 1994 Beijing World Conference on Women (known as Beijing+5). The
bloc voted to remove the conscience protection on abortion matters for
medical personnel and to legalize voluntary prostitution. 18
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ The bloc is known as JUSCANZ. Members may vary, and additional
states may join depending on the issues they are voting on. The United
States first became part of this voting bloc during the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan, in December
1997.
\18\ See, for example, George Archibald, ``Feminist Proposals
Routed at Conference; Sexual Orientation Is the Sticking Point,'' The
Washington Times, June 12, 2000; ``U.S. Seeks Softer Stance on Hookers;
Clinton-Led Agenda Weakens Porn Curb,'' The Washington Times, June 7,
2000; and ``China `Sex Workers' Treaty Backed; Shalala Does Not See Any
Clash in White House Policies,'' The Washington Times, June 1, 2000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The United States Senate should recognize that issues of personal
freedom and the rights of parents, peoples, and institutions are at
stake in every U.N. debate on social policies. Rather than supporting
U.N. committee efforts to use the CEDAW treaty to push policy changes
that would ultimately deconstruct the two-parent married family and
counter traditional religious norms in various countries, the Senate
should examine the documents emanating from U.N. implementing
committees, develop a plan to strengthen the voices of U.N. members
that oppose this agenda, and take the lead in restoring the U.N.'s
traditional approach of letting sovereign nations determine their own
domestic policies on marriage, parenting, and religion.
Washington, for example, should urge nations that signed the CEDAW
to consider not cooperating with the U.N. reporting system in this
area. The United States should assist small and poor nations that face
reprisals for taking this principled approach, perhaps by offering to
work with them to develop ways to protect their sovereignty. It should
also work to establish a U.N. voting bloc of those countries that want
to protect and strengthen the family, religious freedom, and national
sovereignty--and, as an ultimate recourse, refuse to fund activities
aimed at undermining traditional family and religious norms.
The U.N.'s Countercultural Agenda
The nuclear family has always received special and honorable
treatment because of the value it adds to social order. In many of the
U.N.'s foundational declarations and treaties that are still in force,
not only is the central role of the family recognized, but the
inability of the state to replace the family's role in society is
acknowledged and religious freedom is stressed.
For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--in addition
to declaring that the family is ``entitled to protection by society and
the state'' 19--specifies that ``Motherhood and childhood
are entitled to special care and assistance.'' 20 On its
surface, at least, this implies that society should enable mothers to
nurture their children and not push policies that would force mothers
to forfeit precious time with their young children to go to work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16.
\20\ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, Para. 2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Such an understanding is also manifested in the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 21 one of
two agreements to implement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It states that:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 16, 1966.
The widest possible protection and assistance should be
accorded to the family, which is the natural and fundamental
group unit of society, particularly for its establishment and
while it is responsible for the care and education of dependent
children. 22
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, Article 10 (emphasis added). The covenant entered into force on
January 3, 1976.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
23 the second treaty signed to implement the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, states that ``The family is the natural
and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by
society and the State.'' 24 It also states that ``Everyone
shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion--
and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in
public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship,
observance, practice and teaching.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\23\ Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 16, 1966.
\24\ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article
23.1 (emphasis added).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yet, on the issue of women's rights, the U.N. High Commissioner on
Human Rights has permitted committees and agents under the U.N.
umbrella to directly violate these principles as they communicate with
the signatories of the CEDAW treaty. These agents are targeting
patterns of behavior and social norms that have had the greatest
positive effects on society and the individual: marriage, motherhood
and fatherhood, caring for children in the family, chastity, and the
special role of religion. They have asked nations to change their
domestic laws in ways that ultimately will promote sexual activity
among adolescents, increase abortion and legitimize prostitution, and
in general alter the foundations of society. The sexual norms they
promote, moreover, are primarily those sought by radical feminists.
They are becoming the tenets of a new ``moral'' code against which all
religions, domestic policies, and cultures would be judged.
Reinterpreting Treaties and Agreements
International law and the U.N. Charter recognize a society's right
to self-determination, especially when it comes to marriage and the
family. In democratic nations, sovereignty is derived not from
individual rulers but from the popular will of citizens. The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights state
in their opening articles that ``All peoples have the right to self-
determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their
political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural
development.'' 25 Yet the CEDAW committee is violating such
rules by modifying and reinterpreting treaties.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\ Ibid., Article 1.1, and International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, Article 1.1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For example, in December 1996, human rights officials held a
roundtable in New York specifically to determine how to modify existing
international agreements with regard to abortion and sexual
orientation. Their conclusion:
A human rights approach to women's health creates an
international standard that transcends culture, tradition and
societal norms. Although these forces may bind society
together, they cannot justify value systems which perpetuate
women's subordination. 26
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\26\ United Nations, ``Round Table of Human Rights Treaty Bodies on
Human Rights Approaches to Women's Health, with a Focus on Sexual and
Reproductive Health and Rights,'' Glen Cove, New York, December 1996,
p. 7.
In other words, according to the social policy agents of the U.N.,
not having full access to abortion, even for teenagers, 27
is a form of subordination that violates human rights. But there is
little reason to believe that U.N. representatives and bureaucrats know
better than individual societies how they should shape their own
cultures and laws on family, marriage, sexual behavior, and the raising
and education of children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\27\ In its directions to nations, the CRC committee urges
``medical and legal counseling without parental consent'' to mean
particularly abortion and contraceptive services. See, for example, CRC
Committee, 20th Sess. (1999), ``Report on Belize,'' and CRC Committee,
20th Sess. (2000), ``Report on Austria.'' See also discussion on
``Expanding Children's Rights.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the excerpts from the country reports that follow show, the U.N.
committees have found a quiet way to subvert the sovereignty of
nations: by changing the meaning of international agreements. Every 10
years, and increasingly now every five years, the U.N. holds
conferences on the CEDAW treaty to reevaluate it and change how
signatories are to interpret and implement it. In almost every case,
the U.N. committees advocate interpretations that are more and more
hostile to the married family, the role of parents (particularly stay-
at-home mothers), and religious norms. As far as the U.N. bureaucracy
is concerned, the language of a treaty is treated as something that is
continuously in flux; even though the treaties were negotiated
carefully by the signatories, they can be continuously reinterpreted to
meet the goals of each phase of an evolving ideological agenda.
Giving Standing to Special Interests
The U.N., through these committees, also undermines the standing
and sovereignty of nations by subtly promoting the status of non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote radical social policies
in meetings where treaties and agreements are developed and interpreted
and the strategies for implementation are designed. At the 1994 U.N.
Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, for example, the
chairman of the committee drafting the conference document was the
president of International Planned Parenthood.
Such standing complicates the objective process of formulating
international agreements and policies and weakens the role of official
state diplomats at the conferences. It also undermines the ability and
authority of state governments to make their own domestic policy
decisions. Australia has stepped out in front to object to this type of
interference, which gives special-interest NGOs a way to outflank a
government's exercise of its legitimate authority. Australia recently
informed the U.N. that it would no longer cooperate with U.N. reporting
systems because doing so had enabled environmental NGOs in Australia to
sue the government for alleged non-compliance with a U.N. treaty in a
matter that clearly lay within the purview of the country's national
sovereignty--mining. 28 Its decision to oppose the U.N.'s
encroachment in matters of traditional sovereignty provides a model for
countries that want to resist the U.N.'s new social policy agenda.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\28\ See Shawn Donnan, ``Australia Vows to Stop Working with UN
Panels,'' The Financial Times, August 30, 2000. At issue was control of
mining on property designated by the U.N. as a World Heritage site.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Undermining the Fundamental Role of the Family
To most readers, the very idea that the U.N. might be involved in
efforts to denigrate motherhood and the married family sounds
farfetched. But few will be able to dispute the contrast between the
assertions about family structure that are being put forth in U.N.
committee reports and the mounting and contrary evidence provided by
social science research that fractured families produce weaker
generations of children. In the United States, the growth in single-
parent families, divorced families, and out-of-wedlock births has led
to more government programs to treat the problems such weak family
structures create. 29 If the objective is to increase state
control of all functions of society, then the U.N. approach makes
sense, but if the object is to make for a better social order there is
little to nothing to show for it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\29\ For an overview of the issues and research, see Patrick F.
Fagan, ``The American Family: Rebuilding Society's Most Important
Institution,'' in Butler and Holmes, eds., Issues 2000, at http://
www.heritage.org/issues/chap6.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the social science research, all family forms other than the
natural family in which children are raised by a married mother and
father, are associated with higher rates of crime, illegitimacy,
dependence on welfare, and drug and alcohol addiction, as well as lower
levels of education, less income, poorer health, and lower life
expectancy. Out-of-wedlock births are associated with higher risk of
infant mortality, especially among teenage mothers; retarded cognitive
and verbal development; increased behavior and emotional problems; and
higher rates of juvenile crime. 30 The social sciences also
document the effects of divorce on children, 31 which
include juvenile delinquency and child abuse, increased poverty,
diminished social competence, earlier sexual involvement, more out-of-
wedlock births, and higher rates of cohabitation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\30\ See Patrick F. Fagan, ``Rising Illegitimacy: America's Social
Catastrophe,'' Heritage Foundation F.Y.I. No. 19/94, June 29, 1994.
\31\ For an overview of the literature, see Patrick F. Fagan and
Robert Rector, ``The Effects of Divorce on America,'' Heritage
Foundation Backgrounder No. 1373, June 3, 2000, at http://
www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/bg1373.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite such findings, the U.N. is not pursuing programs that would
help nations stabilize marriage and strengthen families. Instead, the
U.N. committees are pushing policies that ultimately will weaken the
traditional married family. The discussion of U.N. reports that follows
offers specific examples of this unfolding agenda, a compilation of the
directives U.N. committees have given nations over the past six years.
Most of these reports are instructions to signatories on how they can
best implement the next stages of the CEDAW agreement.
Undermining the Roles and Rights of Parents
University of Chicago Nobel Laureate Gary Becker concludes from his
research that a woman staying at home to raise her children makes a
greater economic contribution to her family and community than her
husband makes by working in the marketplace. 32 While women
in all cultures have made great contributions outside of the family (in
art, literature, education, science, medicine, politics, and business),
women also achieve greatness by raising healthy and happy children. The
U.N. member states acknowledged this in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which states that ``Motherhood and childhood are entitled
to special care and assistance.'' 33
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\32\ Becker stressed this fact, for example, in a keynote address
at a 1998 U.N.-sponsored conference on the family in Caracas,
Venezuela.
\33\ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, Para. 2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yet, in the recent past, the U.N. committee recommendations to
nations about women's rights demonstrate a great disdain for
motherhood, frequently dismissing the role as mere stereotype. Rather
than point out to member nations the fallacy of policies that
jeopardize the position of women who want to stay at home to raise
their children, U.N. statements denigrate the role of the stay-at-home
mother as unfulfilling and damaging to her own welfare and decry
national policies that support her.
The U.N. reports instruct nations to eliminate, through
legislation, cultural norms that support the role of the mother at
home. In the name of elevating the status of women and reducing
discrimination, the U.N. committee reports make recommendations that
denigrate the standing of women as mothers. The reports recommend,
among other policies, that nations:
Regard motherhood as an unimportant ``social construct'' and
Mother's Day as ``disturbing'';
Change their constitutions where they protect the role of
the stay-at-home mother; and
Emphasize that professional women working outside the home
have a higher social status than those who stay at home.
A CEDAW plenary session report, for example, recommended that the
government of New Zealand ``recognize maternity as a social function
which must not constitute a structural disadvantage for women with
regard to their employment.'' 34 It also expressed to
Ireland ``its concern about the continuing existence, in Article 41.2
of the Irish Constitution, of concepts that reflect a ``stereotypical
view'' of the role of women in the home and as mothers.'' 35
In that article, the constitution makes a clear statement of the
importance of family and mothers to society:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\34\ CEDAW Committee, 19th Sess. (1998), ``Report on New Zealand,''
Para. 269.
\35\ CEDAW Committee, 21st Sess. (1999), ``Report on Ireland,''
Para. 193.
The state, therefore, guarantees to protect the family in its
constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social
order and as indispensable to the welfare of the nation and the
state. In particular, the state recognizes that by her life
within the home, woman gives to the state a support without
which the common good cannot be achieved. The state shall,
therefore, endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged
by economic necessity to engage in labor to the neglect of
their duties in the home.'' 36
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\36\ See http://www.irlgov.ie:80/taoiseach/publication/
constitution/english/contents.htm (emphasis added).
The U.N. committee members apparently saw such a role as demeaning
to women. To overturn it, the CEDAW committee ``strongly'' urged the
U.S. government, for example, to use the education system and the
electronic media to combat the traditional stereotype of women in the
role of mother. 37 The committee also criticized Belarus for
the ``prevalence of sex-role stereotypes, as also exemplified by--such
symbols as a Mother's Day and a Mother's Award, which it sees as
encouraging women's traditional roles.'' 38
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\37\ CEDAW Committee, 17th Sess. (1997), ``Report on Armenia,''
Para. 65.
\38\ CEDAW Committee, 22nd Sess. (1999), ``Report on Belarus,''
Para. 27.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recommendations for less developed countries are not as benign as
they seem. Concerning Indonesia, the U.N. committee expressed ``great
concern about existing social, religious and cultural norms that
recognize men as the head of the family and breadwinner and confine
women to the roles of mother and wife, which are reflected in various
laws, Government policies and guidelines. It is unclear what steps the
Government is proposing to take to modify such attitudes . . . ''
39
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\39\ CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Indonesia,''
Para. 289.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This theme is repeated in reports to other countries such as
Croatia 40 and the Czech Republic. 41 The message
to these countries is clear: women should be encouraged to be workers
in the marketplace, not to stay at home to raise their young children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\40\ The U.N. explained that the ``Committee is particularly
concerned about the consistent emphasis placed on women's roles as
mothers and caregivers in Croatian legislation pertaining to a variety
of areas.'' Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women, 18th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 53rd Sess. (1998), ``Report on Croatia,'' Document
#A/53/38, Para. 103.
\41\ The U.N. committee expressed concern about ``the increase in
over-protective measures for pregnancy and motherhood--[and] the
cultural glorification of women's family roles [that] could exacerbate
the negative impact of economic rationalization policies on women.''
Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, 18th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 53rd Sess. (1998), ``Report on Czech Republic,''
Document #A/53/38, Para. 185 and Para. 196, at http://www.un.org/
womenwatch/daw/cedaw/18report.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.N. is not just ``concerned'' about the elevated status of
stay-at-home mothers. It seeks to deconstruct the status of the family
by encouraging states to normalize out-of-wedlock birth. The Island
nation of St. Kitts was criticized, for example, for ``the apparent
lack of legal protection with respect to the rights . . . of children
born out of wedlock.'' 42 The committees also submitted
reports encouraging some states to demote the status of married
fatherhood in public policy, institute massive transfers of payments to
compensate for the deficits of fractured families, and change family
law to eliminate the status of marriage regarding property.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\42\ CEDAW Committee, 21st Sess. (1999), ``Report on St. Kitts,''
Para. 21.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step by step, each of these recommendations seeks to change
cultural values and norms to weaken the standing of the married family
in society. Though children born out of wedlock deserve fair and loving
treatment, this does not mean that the importance of marriage to the
stability of the family, and the role of married mothers and fathers in
raising good citizens, should be diminished either in law or in public
policy.
State-Sponsored Child Care as Surrogate Family
To help more mothers enter the workforce, U.N. reports insist that
countries modify their laws to ensure that:
Child care is widely available even for newborns, and
Government funds preschool education (another form of
government child care).
The U.N. implementing committees consistently push for nations to
boost government-managed and subsidized day care, despite overwhelming
polling data showing that most mothers around the world prefer to stay
at home to raise their young children 43 and research
demonstrating that child care outside the home often has lasting
negative effects on children. For example, a recent analysis by the
Canadian National Foundation for Family Research and Education found
that on average, children in day care fare worse intellectually,
emotionally, and socially than their stay-at-home peers. 44
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\43\ Wirthlin polling data, op. cit.
\44\ Researchers analyzed data on over 32,000 children for a
variety of variables, including sponsor of care (for-profit nursery
schools, government-run centers, ``the woman down the street'');
education of the caregivers; caregiver-to-child ratio; and program
quality. Negative effects persisted, regardless even of the ``quality''
of care. See National Foundation for Family Research and Education
(Canada), ``The Myth of Quality Day Care,'' April 2000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the reports on day care that the U.N. sends to less developed
nations, and even in reports to highly developed and rich nations, the
best interests of the child are never put forth as a reason to
intervene. To Slovakia, for example, the U.N. stated that the
``decrease in pre-school childcare is particularly detrimental to
women's equal opportunity in the employment market since, owing to lack
of childcare, they have to interrupt their employment career.''
45 The committee recommended to Slovenia ``the creation of
more formal and institutionalized child-care establishments for
children under three years of age as well as for those from three to
six.'' 46 The committee expressed disdain that only 30
percent of the children under age three were placed in formal day care,
while the rest were cared for by family members and other private
individuals. 47
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\45\ CEDAW Committee, 19th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Slovakia,''
Para. 89.
\46\ CEDAW Committee, 16th Sess. (1997), ``Report on Slovenia,''
Para. 115.
\47\ Ibid., Para. 161.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The CEDAW committee was direct in recommending that Colombia change
its domestic laws:
[A]ppropriate measures [should] be taken to improve the
status of working women, including through the establishment of
child-care centers and the introduction for training programs,
to promote the integration of women into the labor force and
diversify their participation through the implementation of
legislative measures . . .. 48
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\48\ CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess. (1999), ``Report on Colombia,''
Para. 388.
With regards to Germany's policies, the U.N. committee was
``concerned that measures aimed at the reconciliation of family and
work entrench stereotypical expectations for women and men. In that
regard the Committee is concerned with the unmet need for kindergarten
places for the 0-3 age group.'' 49
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\49\ CEDAW Committee, 22nd Sess. (2000), ``Report on Germany,''
Para. 27 (emphasis added).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The public cost involved in subsidizing day care is least bearable
among underdeveloped and developing countries. Yet, the U.N. CEDAW
committee ignores this substantial issue in its reports.
Changing Cultures By Changing Sexual Norms
For society, the benefits of channeling sexuality and reproduction
into marriage are significant. Ironically, such a cultural norm
ensures, better than any reform, the reduction of violence against
women and children, which also happens to be one of the goals of the
feminist movement. It also ensures the lowest crime rates, greater
social cohesiveness, longer life spans, better health, higher levels of
education, and higher levels of income. 50
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\50\ For an overview of the issues and research, see Fagan, ``The
American Family.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yet, the U.N. actively promotes sex outside of marriage as an
acceptable cultural norm, and this agenda is made clear in its policies
on abortion, contraception, gender definitions, prostitution, and
pornography. The U.N. encourages governments to lend legal and
financial support to the effort to change long-held and wise cultural
norms. Whereas traditional cultures regulate sexual intercourse by
shepherding the act toward marriage, the U.N. promotes unconstrained
consensual sex coupled with larger social insurance ``safety nets'' to
address the problematic effects. If the U.N. can change the sexual
norms of youth, it can change the structure of the family.
Reshaping Sexual Norms
Contraception for teenagers is a highly controversial issue,
especially when governments advocate access for minors over the wishes
of parents. Nowhere in the U.N.'s committee reports or on its Web site
does the organization propose abstinence until marriage. Instead, the
CEDAW committee repeatedly urge that teenagers have universal access to
contraceptives and abortions without their parents' permission, and
access to medical counseling services without their parents' consent.
For example, the U.N. committee urged Ireland to ``improve family
planning services and the availability of contraception, including for
teenagers and young adults.'' 51 Yet, since making
contraception available to single people three decades ago,
52 Ireland has seen its rates of divorce, out-of-wedlock
birth, 53 sexually transmitted disease, 54
violence, and abortion 55 soar. The U.N. committees also
give similar advice to other countries, including Peru, 56
Russia, 57 the Maldives, 58 Yemen, 59
and Macedonia. 60
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\51\ CEDAW Committee, 21st Sess. (1999), ``Report on Ireland,''
Para. 26.
\52\ Contraception was first legalized by the courts in Ireland in
1973; legalized by the Dail in 1980; liberalized in 1985 by Desmond
O'Malley, Minister for Health and long-term member of the U.N.'s oldest
NGO, International Planned Parenthood; and further liberalized in 1992
and 1994.
\53\ Out-of-wedlock births in 1980 represented 5 percent of all
births; by 1998, they represented 28.3 percent of all births.
\54\ Sexually transmitted diseases have increased 400 percent
between 1982 and 1998, from 1,823 to 7,436 per 100,000 population.
\55\ Abortion as a percentage of total live births increased from
4.5 percent in 1980 to 11 percent in 1998.
\56\ CEDAW Committee, 19th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Peru,'' Para.
341.
\57\ CRC Committee, 22nd Sess. (2000), ``Report on Russia,'' Para.
48.
\58\ CRC Committee, 18th Sess. (1999), ``Report on Maldives,''
Para. 39.
\59\ CRC Committee, 20th Sess. (2000), ``Report on Yemen,'' Para.
25.
\60\ CRC Committee, 23rd Sess. (2000), ``Report on Macedonia,''
Para. 41.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.N. committees have long sought the protection of abortion in
domestic law; but at the 1995 CEDAW conference in Beijing and at the
2000 Beijing+5 conference in New York, enough participating nations
repeatedly voted not to include the protection of abortion in the
treaty, effectively removing it from the U.N.'s legitimate agenda.
Despite such a clear outcome, the U.N. implementing committees continue
to advocate a denial of parental authority and instead advocate an
expansion of state authority into this intimate domain of family life:
In countries where abortion is highly controversial, such as
Peru, the U.N. committee advocates abortion on the grounds of
safety (though abortion is about four times more dangerous to
the mother's health than childbirth 61);
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\61\ David C. Reardon, ``Abortion Is Four Times Deadlier Than
Childbirth,'' The Post-Abortion Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (April-June
2000).
In countries where laws forbid abortion, such as Mexico, the
U.N. committee encourages the local and district governments to
``review their legislation so that, where necessary, women are
granted access to rapid and easy abortion.'' 62 The
committee even urges the Mexican national government to ``weigh
the possibility of authorizing the use of the RU-486
contraceptive, which is cheap and easy to use, as soon as it
becomes available.'' 63
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\62\ CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Mexico,''
Para. 426.
\63\ Ibid., Para. 408.
In countries where the constitution forbids abortion, such
as Ireland, the U.N. ``urges the Government to facilitate a
national dialogue on women's reproductive rights, including on
the restrictive abortion laws.'' 64 The people of
Ireland, however, already have rejected two recent referenda to
change the national constitution to allow abortions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\64\ See http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/Irl.htm (September
19, 1999).
The U.N. committee even goes so far as to attack freedom-of-
conscience provisions in national law. It has reprimanded Croatia, for
example, for the refusal by some of its hospitals to offer abortions to
patients because their doctors on staff object. 65 When
there is a clash between traditional or sacred norms of personal
freedom and the new but radical ``rights'' promoted by the
international feminist movement, the U.N. committees target the old and
true to make room for the new. For example, the committee ``expressed
particular concern with regard to the limited availability of abortion
services for women in southern Italy, as a result of the high incidence
of conscientious objection among doctors and hospital personnel.''
66
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\65\ Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, 18th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 53rd Sess. (1998), ``Report on Croatia,'' Document
# A/53/38, Para. 109.
\66\ Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, 17th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 52nd Sess. (1997), ``Report on Italy,'' Document
#A/52/38/Rev. 1, Para. 353 and Para. 360.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Legitimizing and Promoting Prostitution
The U.N. recommendations concerning prostitution dramatically
illustrate one of that organization's social policy goals: the
decoupling of the reproductive act and marriage. A review of CEDAW
committee recommendations makes clear that the U.N. implementing
committees want to elevate the status of prostitution to that of a
profession and afford it the full protection of labor law and the
social benefits accorded other professions. The initial steps the
committees recommend to nations that prohibit prostitution are benign,
but the recommendations progress to full legitimization in nations that
already legally allow it. From the reports, the process involves these
steps:
Eliminate the economic vulnerability of poor women who
prostitute themselves for income;
Combat the feminization of poverty;
Rehabilitate prostitutes;
End international trafficking in prostitution;
Enforce some laws concerning prostitution;
Punish pimps and procurers;
Decriminalize prostitution;
Legalize prostitution;
Regulate prostitution; and
Grant the full protection of labor and social law to
prostitution as a profession.
Consider the progression in the actual report excerpts that follow.
The U.N. committee advises the Czech Republic to ``take effective
action to combat feminization of poverty and to improve the economic
situation of women in order to prevent trafficking and prostitution.''
67 The U.N. committee urges Bulgaria ``to cooperate at the
regional and international levels with regard to the problem of
trafficking in women and their exploitation through prostitution. [The
U.N.] suggests that in order to tackle the problem of trafficking in
women, it is essential to address women's economic vulnerability, which
is the root cause of the problem.'' 68
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\67\ CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Czech
Republic,'' Para. 208.
\68\ CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Bulgaria,''
Para. 256.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The last sentence reveals that for the U.N. committee, the
``problem'' is solely a woman's economic condition, not also the sexual
exploitation of women. But in France, Germany, the Netherlands,
Belgium, 69 and other highly developed economies,
prostitution prospers; neither poverty nor ``economic vulnerability''
is the root societal cause of this type of prostitution. Furthermore,
in developed Western countries, the feminization of poverty is largely
due to the breakdown of marriage, as social science research has
demonstrated. 70
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\69\ The top eight destination countries for women in illegal
prostitution rings include the Netherlands, Germany, the United States,
Greece, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and Kosovo. According to Dr. Laura
Lederer of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government,
``Over the last 10 years the number of women and children who have been
trafficked have multiplied so that they are now on a par with estimates
of the numbers of Africans who were enslaved in the 16th and 17th
centuries.'' Laura J. Lederer, Ph.D., ``The New Slavery,'' presented at
a Conference on Sex Trafficking, U.S. Senate Caucus Room, September 13,
1999.
\70\ For a review of the literature, see Patrick F. Fagan, ``How
Broken Families Rob Children of Their Chances for Future Prosperity,''
Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1283, June 11, 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.N. committee is also pushing Mexico to legalize prostitution,
as it ``strongly recommends that new legislation should not
discriminate against prostitutes but should punish pimps and
procurers.'' 71 To tiny Liechtenstein, the U.N. recommends
that ``a review be made of the law relating to prostitution to ensure
that prostitutes are not penalized.'' 72 The U.N. policy
goal becomes clear in the report to Greece, where prostitution has been
decriminalized and ``instead is dealt with in a regulatory manner''--
though the U.N. ``is concerned that inadequate structures exist to
ensure compliance with the regulatory framework.'' 73 To
Germany, the U.N.'s advice is to raise the standing of the legalized
profession even higher because, ``although they are legally obliged to
pay taxes, prostitutes still do not enjoy the protection of labor and
social law.'' 74
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\71\ CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Mexico,''
Para. 414.
\72\ CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess. (1999), ``Report on
Liechtenstein,'' Para. 168.
\73\ CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess. (1999), ``Report on Greece,''
Para. 197.
\74\ CEDAW Committee, 22nd Sess. (2000), ``Report on Germany,''
Para. 39.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This progression, from urging countries that prohibit prostitution
to move quickly to foster a national debate on legalizing the activity
75 to chastising Germany for not elevating it to the status
of a legally protected profession, is even more startling when one
considers that for the U.N. committees, the celebration of Mother's Day
is disturbing, and policies and laws that protect the role of the
mother at home are offensive.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\75\ CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Mexico,''
Para. 414.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Redefining Gender: Reconstructing Social Norms
The U.N. is intent on removing the cultural and legal structures
that have shepherded reproduction and the nurturing of children into
the married family. The U.N. committees recommend:
Combating traditional sex roles and stereotypes;
Defining gender as merely a social construct, not a
biological distinction;
Rewriting textbooks and curricula in all school grades to
promote the new definition of gender;
Funding gender studies that will foster these attitudes;
Retraining professions in gender issues and gender equity;
and
Conducting public relations campaigns on gender issues.
To the layman, the issue of redefining gender sounds like a strange
battle in semantics, since the definition of gender is a biological
distinction: male and female. But in U.N. policy documents, gender is
seen as a ``social construct,'' a delineation of the ways men and women
act differently and the structures society organizes around these
differences. In this way, ``gender'' includes alternative lifestyles
like homosexuality.
Redefining gender has two components: eliminating social
constraints and creating a new framework whereby homosexuality and
other non-traditional lifestyles are accepted as norm. 76
According to the U.N. bureaucracy, all ``constructs'' should have equal
standing in society and law; all aspects of gender that reinforce the
biological differences between males and females, including the
traditional roles they hold, are to be eliminated.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\76\ Also worthy of note is that the Department of State delegation
to 1996 Habitat negotiations in Istanbul held out for language that
called for equal respect of ``various forms of the family,'' including
homosexual couples. During that same week, on September 21, 1996,
President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (P.L. 104-199),
which protects states from having homosexual ``marriage'' forced upon
them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.N. committees refering to gender are either referring to the
different treatment that men and women receive or the treatment of
heterosexuals and homosexuals. Recent international debates at the U.N.
illustrate the determination of developed nations to eradicate these
gender distinctions in social policy. For example, a number of wealthy
nations allied with radical feminist NGOs at the Beijing+5 conference
in New York in June 2000 sought to have the term ``sexual orientation''
included in the final conference document. 77 Despite the
fact that enough delegates had voted to delete references to ``sexual
orientation'' and to replace them with ``other status,'' members of
this alliance declared that they would not abide by the agreed-upon
language, and would instead interpret references to ``other status'' to
include sexual orientation. 78 Such definitional battles are
at the forefront of ongoing debates over cultural issues at the U.N.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\77\ The alliance included member nations of the European Union and
JUSCANZ, a voting bloc made up of Japan, the United States, Canada, and
New Zealand, as well as other nations depending on the issues.
\78\ See http://www.iisd.ca/4wcw/csw44/informals.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Animus Toward Religious Freedom
Western moral norms are founded generally on the Judeo-Christian
tradition. Both have powerful norms for personal behavior. The U.N.,
because it seeks the acceptance of behaviors that have long been
prohibited by these major religions, realizes that its policies
eventually will provoke a direct clash with these religions. To quote
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Violence Against
Women:
The right to self-determination [of nations] is pitted
against the CEDAW articles that oblige the state to correct any
inconsistency between international human rights laws
79 and the religious and customary laws operating
within its territory . . . While international human rights law
moves forward to meet the demands of the international women's
movement, the reality in many societies is that women's rights
[as interpreted by the feminist movement] are under challenge
from alternative cultural expressions.`` The movement is not
only generating new interpretations of existing human rights
doctrine--but it is also generating new rights. The most
controversial is the issue of sexual rights''. One can only
hope that the common values of human dignity and freedom will
triumph over parochial forces attempting to confine women to
the home. 80.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\79\ In this case, the family, moral, and religious issues
discussed in this paper.
\80\ Radhika Coomaraswamy, Reinventing International Law: Women's
Rights as Human Rights in the International Community (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Human Rights Program, 1997).
The moral issue of abortion highlights this clash of cultures. The
U.N. committee believes, for example, that religiously affiliated
hospitals that refuse to offer abortions discriminate against women.
81 Hospitals and doctors that adhere to their religious
beliefs and uphold a tradition that traces back to ancient Greece and
Hippocrates are targeted for violating human rights by the Office of
the U.N. Commissioner on Human Rights. One illustration of this is the
U.N. report to Italy, which noted ``particular concern with regard to
the limited availability of abortion services for women in southern
Italy, as a result of the high incidence of conscientious objection
among doctors and hospital personnel.'' 82 In such a
strongly Catholic part of Italy, it would be paradoxical if the
opposite were the case.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\81\ CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1998) ``Report on Croatia,''
Para. 109.
\82\ Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, 17th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 52nd Sess. (1997), ``Report on Italy,'' Document
#A/52/38, Para. 353 (emphasis added).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the United States and many other countries, a clear distinction
is drawn between the roles of church and state in ensuring religious
freedom. This is not applicable to the United Nations. The U.N.
committees directly attack the national religious culture of Ireland by
suggesting that expressions of the popular will, even in democracies,
are invalid precisely because the people have deeply held beliefs with
religious roots. The people of Ireland have voted down two referenda
that sought to legalize abortion. The CEDAW committee objects to this
free and democratic expression of the public will. Its report asserts
that:
. . . although Ireland is a secular State, the influence of
the Church is strongly felt not only in attitudes and
stereotypes, but also in official State policy. In particular,
women's right to health, including reproductive health [i.e.,
abortion], is compromised by this influence . . ..83
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\83\ See http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/Irl.htm (September
19, 1999).
And to highly secular Norway, which protects religious minorities
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
in law, the U.N. writes:
The Committee is especially concerned with provisions in the
Norwegian legislation to exempt certain religious communities
from compliance with the equal rights law. Since women often
face greater discrimination in family and personal affairs in
certain communities and in religion, they asked the Government
to amend the Norwegian Equal Status Act to eliminate exceptions
based on religion. 84
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\84\ Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, 14th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 50th Sess. (1995), ``Report on Norway,'' Document
#A/50/38, Para. 460.
The U.N. officials' hostility to religious freedom is also clear in
its recommendation to Indonesia, which is vastly different in culture
from Ireland: ``Cultural and religious values cannot be allowed to
undermine the universality of women's rights,'' 85 and
``[i]n all countries the most significant factors inhibiting women's
ability to participate in public life have been the cultural framework
of values and religious beliefs.'' 86
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\85\ Report of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women, 18th Sess., to the General Assembly of
the United Nations, 53rd Sess. (1998), ``Report on Indonesia,''
Document #A/53/38, Para. 282.
\86\ Ibid., Para. 10.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Croatia, the U.N. officials' state, ``there is evidence that
church-related organizations adversely influence the government's
policies concerning women and thereby impede full implementation of the
[CEDAW] Convention.'' 87 And the U.N. committee tells China,
after it had sought to uphold the tradition of religious freedom in
Hong Kong following the takeover from Britain, that it is most
concerned with the fact that China ``entered seven reservations and
declarations in respect of the provisions of the Convention as applied
to Hong Kong.'' Of particular concern is the reservation exempting
``the affairs of religious denominations or orders'' from the scope of
the Convention. 88
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\87\ CEDAW Committee, 18th Sess. (1998), ``Report on Croatia,''
Para. 108.
\88\ CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess. (1999), ``Report on China,'' Para.
314.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The U.N. committee even recommends that the government of Libya
reinterpret the country's religious laws and scripture in order to pave
the way for other governments in Islamic countires to do the same.
89
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\89\ CEDAW Committee, 13th Sess. (1995), ``Report on Libya,'' Para.
132 (emphasis added).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clearly, this hostility to any manifestation of religious belief in
public policy will bring the U.N. into direct confrontation with
peoples that hold traditional beliefs. 90
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\90\ Coomaraswamy, Reinventing International Law.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What The United States Must Do
The United States and other signatories of the U.N. Charter
recognize that each nation has a right to determine its own domestic
policies. The United States protects its own sovereignty and on
principle should respect the sovereignty of other nations when their
policies do not conflict with vital U.S. interests. Clearly, while the
United States is working to strengthen the family domestically through
legislation like welfare reform and buttressing parents' rights, these
same efforts among nations that have signed and ratified the U.N.'s
Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women are
under attack.
Though it has not ratified either of these treaties, the United
States under recent past administrations has supported the efforts of
the U.N. implementing bodies to force nations that afford legal and
institutional support for the two-parent married family, for the role
of mothers and fathers in raising their children, and for the
importance of traditional social norms to change those laws and
policies. As the leader of the free world and a strong proponent of
individual and religious freedoms, the United States must take the lead
in efforts to expose the fallacies inherent in this radical new agenda
at the United Nations. To this end, members of the United States Senate
should:
Emphasize to the United Nations that the United States will
not sign the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women because of the U.N.'s
controversial interpretations of and efforts to implement it.
Urge U.N. member states to refuse, as Australia has done, to
cooperate with U.N. reporting systems when U.N. committees work
to undermine their sovereignty. The United States should
counter reprisals against countries that follow this
recommendation. Norway, Sweden, and Germany, for example,
threatened to withdraw their aid from Nicaragua last year
unless it removed its Minister of the Family, Max Padilla, from
his post. At the Cairo+5 and Beijing+5 preparatory conferences,
Padilla had blocked resolutions by a voting bloc known as
JUSCANZ 91 to redefine gender, to require all
obstetricians and gynecologists to learn to perform abortions
regardless of their beliefs, and to remove ``conscience
clause'' protections. For Nicaragua, with its faltering
economy, 92 losing that source of revenue was a
significant threat to which it would have difficulty adjusting
in the short term, so the president removed Padilla from his
post. To take the teeth out of such threats, the United States
should emphasize that it will assist countries that are
threatened for rejecting U.N. proposals. Too many small
countries have little recourse and are too dependent on
development assistance to fight assaults on sovereignty by the
U.N. bureaucracy. The United States must protect the legitimate
interests of these countries as well. For example, it should
assist representatives from non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) that support the family and marriage and countries that
oppose the committee's attacks on these valuable institutions
in enabling them to attend U.N. conferences be heard alongside
those of extreme NGOs that promote anti-marriage and anti-
family policies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\91\ See footnote 19.
\92\ Nicaragua is one of the hemisphere's poorest countries, with
an estimated 50 percent of the population below the poverty line in
1999, an estimated GDP per capita of $2,650 in 1999, and huge external
debt. See CIA World Factbook 2000, at http://www.odci.gov/cia/
publications/factbook/geos/nu.html#Econ.
Hold hearings on the efforts of agents of the U.N. to force
nations to implement policies that undermine the family,
religious freedom, and national sovereignty, and to give
particular attention to how the United States has voted and
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
will vote at U.N. conferences on these social issues.
Require the Department of State to submit an annual
performance report on the activities of all U.N. agencies and
committees. U.S. contributions to the U.N. agencies should be
weighed against performance, 93 consistent with
national interests, and meet an acceptable level of
professional competence. Congress should set benchmarks for
performance with regard to strengthening the family and
traditional religious institutions. Funding for U.N. agencies
and organizations that work deliberately to undermine the right
of sovereign nations to determine their own domestic policies
should be restricted. U.N. agencies should be subjected to the
same oversight Congress gives domestic programs. Congress
demands performance outcome reporting from U.S. government
agencies under the Government Performance and Results Act; it
should expect no less an accounting from international bodies
that spend U.S. tax dollars. It should use these reports each
year to determine whether the U.N. programs, agencies, and
affiliated organizations deserve continued funding.
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\93\ For more on this reform, see Virginia L. Thomas, ``Restoring
Government Integrity Through Performance, Results, and
Accountability,'' Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1380, June 23,
2000.
Require the Assistant Secretary of State for International
Organizations, in coordination with the State Department's
Legal Adviser, in the State Department's annual President's
Report to Congress on U.S. Participation in the U.N., to report
on the performance and activities of the U.N. CEDAW committee
and to develop new instructions for the involvement of the
United States in any conventions and meetings addressing issues
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of the family, marriage, sexual activity, and abortion.
Attach a rider to funding for the U.N. and the World Bank
specifying that any distribution of U.S. funds or contracts
awarded to NGOs be made publicly available in a manner similar
to that practiced by the U.S. government in its competitive
bidding process. Funds should not be appropriated for
activities that violate traditional family and religious norms
or that undermine a nation's sovereignty.
Request that the U.S. General Accounting Office assess the
flow of funds from the United States to NGOs acting under the
auspices of the U.N. in the past eight years to determine
whether there has been any indirect support of their
countercultural activities.
Start forming a new alliance at the U.N. with countries that
work to protect and strengthen the family, religious freedom,
and national sovereignty.
In conclusion, United Nations policy committees have become the
instruments of an ideologically extreme policy that would promote a
radical restructuring of society, particularly in matters relating to
marriage and the family. UN officials are attempting to sway nations to
accept an agenda that, from the U.N.'s foundation, has been outside its
jurisdiction. These officials and their ideological allies are
advancing their agenda primarily by promoting the reinterpretation of
the CEDAW treaty at the five- and ten-year follow-up conferences and by
the three-year evaluation reports on CEDAW. The object is to
continuously encourage nations to change their domestic policies
concerning marriage and the family.
The United States should object to interference in domestic life of
nations that undermines the traditional family. The United States
should instead work to reverse this trend, for the benefit of families,
women, and children around the world.
The Congress and the President should devote the time and resources
necessary to assess the danger these U.N. policies pose to the
sovereignty and stability of nations and to build an alliance of
family-friendly nations that will work together to ensure that and the
the full capacities of all women are advanced in U.N. policies, while
the legitimate rights of parents and the freedom of religion is
protected. These are social goods. They are not in opposition, but in a
good society, they are mutually supportive. Rather than ratifying
CEDAW, the United States Senate would do more to advance the role of
women by opposing it. The United States should stand with the forces of
freedom, and not with those whose intrusive policies would undermine
that freedom. That is natural alliance for America. May it move in this
direction.
Thank you for the great privilege and opportunity to testify.
______
American Life League,
Stafford, VA 22555,
June 3, 2002.
Hon. Jesse Helms,
U. S. Senate,
Washington, DC 20510.
Dear Senator Helms: Once again, American Life League would like to
express our profound gratitude for your tireless defense of children
and the family.
This time we thank you for your steadfast opposition to CEDAW. The
treaty blatantly promotes abortion and contraception. Moreover, how can
any treaty promoting women at the same time promote prostitution?
As you said to Congress on March 8, 2000: ``This treaty is not
about opportunities for women. It is about denigrating motherhood and
undermining the family.''
We are urging President Bush to get the United States out of this
treaty. And we trust that you will do all that is possible to see that
the U. S. has no part of CEDAW.
Thank you again.
Sincerely yours in the Lord Who IS Life,
Judie Brown,
President.
P.S. Be assured of our prayers for you and your family. It will be sad
to see you leave the Senate.
______
Denmark Told To Change Laws by CEDAW Committee,
Raising Fears in U.S.
FRIDAY FAX, June 21, 2002
Volume 5, Number 26
A familiar refrain of proponents of the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is
that US ratification of the controversial U.N. document would not
result in significant changes in US law. Since the United States
already recognizes the equal status of women, they say, US ratification
is necessary solely to bolster the standing of the Convention in the
rest of the world. For instance, Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), a CEDAW
supporter, said at last week's Senate CEDAW hearing that it is
``highly, highly, highly unlikely'' that the Convention would have any
important domestic impact.
In a June 18 article, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof
repeated this point, stating that ``frankly, the treaty has almost
nothing to do with American women, who already enjoy the rights the
treaty supports.Instead, it has everything to do with the half of the
globe where to be female is to be persecuted until, often, death.''
But the most recent examination of Denmark by the CEDAW Committee
seems to contradict these arguments. At meetings beginning on June 12,
the Committee concluded that even Denmark's extremely progressive laws
and social policies were not sufficient, and that Denmark would need to
make substantial changes in order to comply with the Convention.
According to a U.N. press release, one CEDAW expert asked ``How
often had the Convention been invoked in the country's courts?''
Another expert pointed out ``that Denmark's Constitution contained no
specific provision on discrimination against women. It was important to
fully integrate the country's domestic legislation with the
Convention.''
One Committee expert showed concern that, ``although Danish women
were now allowed employment in all ranks of the Armed Services, even if
that involved direct participation in military operations or combat,''
women had not yet ``reached the top level in the military.''
A Committee expert also stated that ``In order to protect women
engaged in prostitution, the tendency should be to penalize those
engaged in pimping even more heavily.'' To allay this concern, a Danish
representative reported that ``in 1999 the Parliament had amended the
criminal code to decriminalize prostitution and passive pimping.''
One expert wondered how Danish families divided household duties
and chores. ``It was gratifying to know that fathers were increasingly
taking care of babies,'' but the expert ``also wanted to know how they
participated in bringing up older children and shared in housework.''
In response, a Danish delegate assured the Committee that ``continuous
monitoring was being carried out'' on fathers and their household
activities.
Wendy Wright, senior policy director at Concerned Women for
America, told the Friday Fax that such statements by the CEDAW
Committee show that it does not seek basic equality, but the radical
transformation of society, and that it would make the same kinds of
demands on the US, if it ratified CEDAW. ``If even Denmark doesn't
satisfy the CEDAW Committee and must change its constitution, then
surely no country's actions will appease these `experts' on genderless
feminism,'' she said.
Copyright--C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute). Permission
granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
______
Dark Cloud Shades U.N. Women's Treaty
Tuesday, June 18, 2002
By Wendy McElroy foxnews.com
The U.S. Senate is debating ratification of a U.N. treaty that has
been pending for over two decades. However, a stubborn cloud hangs over
the treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Of the many reasons to oppose
CEDAW, one of them is the U.N.'s probable complicity in China's one-
child policy that forces women to abort pregnancies if they already
have a child. It is a shadow that darkens all U.N. programs regarding
women and children.
The U.N. Population Fund provides mega-financing to developing
nations, including China, to assist them in family planning. Currently
at issue is Congress' appropriation of 34 million dollars for the
UNFPA. Will American tax dollars facilitate coerced abortions?
The UNFPA says ``no.''
In 1999, Dr. Nafis Sadik--then executive director of the UNFPA--
said that in the ``32 pilot counties [targeted by UNFPA], the Chinese
have agreed to a program that lifts all birth quotas and targets
including the one-child policy.'' In other words, forced abortions
would not happen where the UNFPA had to see them.
In a few months, however, China's unofficial one-child policy will
become nationwide law. Yet, a recent UNFPA fact-finding ``study tour''
of China discovered no evidence of coerced family planning. Thus, the
flood of first-hand horror stories from Chinese women--the sort of
evidence that the U.N. finds compelling on virtually every other
issue--is dismissed.
According to critics of the UNFPA, the study-tour was able to reach
its see-no-evil, speak-no-evil conclusions because Chinese authorities
only allowed UNFPA delegates to tour a tiny area with controlled
interviews.
Establishing the facts is essential, but an underlying assumption
of the discussion must also be addressed: Namely, that the world is
overpopulated and reproduction needs to be governed. Overpopulation is
said to cause poverty, starvation, disease, war, environmental disaster
. . . virtually all evil is laid at the feet of parents who wish to
have children.
The idea of overpopulation is inextricably mixed with the UNFPA,
U.N. family planning and forced abortion. This makes it intimately
connected to CEDAW, which promotes ``reproductive rights.'' Or does
CEDAW promote the right not to have children rather than the right to
reproduce? There are several grounds on which to challenge the
overpopulation assumption, including:
Factually: The UNFPA offers math-enshrouded charts and graphs based
on a soaring world population. But how do they really know what the
world population is?
Africa, for example, is ravaged by war and disease; much of it is
inaccessible and without birth records. Statistician Bjorn Lornborg
disputes U.N. data, stating: ``The rate of increase has been declining
ever since [the early 1960s]. It is now 1.26 percent and is expected to
fall to 0.46 percent in 2050.''
He also disputes the alleged rise of poverty. ``[T]he proportion of
people in developing countries who are starving has dropped from 45
percent in 1949 to 18 percent today, and is expected to decrease even
further to 12 percent in 2010.''
Politically: ``Overpopulation causes poverty!'' is the cry of U.N.
voices that wish to restrict reproduction. Totalitarian governments
must find that cry convenient: If the Chinese starve, it is not because
of disastrous governmental policies. Instead, the ``exonerated''
government can join the U.N. in pointing an accusing finger at parents
who selfishly desire families. Shifting the blame disguises the fact
that taxation, monopoly privileges, government waste, and regulation
create poverty.
``Poor'' areas of the world, like Hong Kong and South Korea,
prosper when government gets out of the way.
Economically: Even if UNFPA estimates of population are correct,
why is that frightening? One answer usually comes back with
predictability: because the world's natural resources are being
depleted.
In his article ``The Population Problem That Isn't,'' political
commentator Sheldon Richman rebuts that point. Richman argues: ``[in
practical terms, the supply of a resource is not finite. It is
integrally dependent on human ingenuity. If we were to think of ways to
double the efficiency with which we use oil, it would be equivalent to
doubling the supply of oil.''
Human ingenuity, not government, solves the problem of scarcity.
The nations in which poverty is greatest are those that restrain human
ingenuity--that is, freedom--and punish initiative.
Powerful voices are demanding that the U.S. ratify CEDAW. In an
article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled ``Senate Needs to
Ratify the Treaty for the Rights of Women,'' Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
D-Del., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., declare CEDAW to be ``an
international bill of rights.'' They call the treaty ``a tool that
women around the world can use in their struggle for basic human
rights.''
Until the UNFPA ceases to be a tool used by the Chinese
dictatorship to brutalize women, the words ``basic human rights'' and
``United Nations'' should not be used in the same sentence.
CEDAW allegedly champions women's reproductive rights. The treaty
cannot be divorced from the U.N.'s general policies of population
control. The U.N.'s hypocrisy in condemning some human rights
atrocities while tacitly supporting others taints CEDAW.
More government is not the answer to poverty or human well being.
Individual freedom is.
______
Family Research Council
Washington, DC 20001,
June 7, 2002.
Hon. George Bush,
President of the United States,
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC 20500.
Dear President Bush: On behalf of the families represented by
Family Research Council, we write to express our grave concern about
the heavy push being made by radical feminist organizations, as well as
many in the U.S. Congress, to urge U.S. consideration and ratification
of the dangerous and unnecessary U.N. Convention on the Elimination of
all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It has come to our
attention that some within your administration are supportive of CEDAW,
generating further concern.
CEDAW has been languishing in the Senate for more than two decades;
since 1980 when President Carter submitted the treaty to the Senate, it
has never been brought up for a vote, not even during the 10 years when
the Democratic Party controlled the Senate. Even when Democrats
controlled the Senate during the first 2 years of the Clinton
administration, they never saw fit to bring this radical treaty to a
vote. According to Senator Helms, CEDAW has never been ratified because
``it is a bad treaty; it is a terrible treaty negotiated by radical
feminists with the intent of enshrining their radical anti-family
agenda into international law.''
Not only have America's elected officials rejected the ratification
of this radical treaty, the American citizenry rejected CEDAW decades
ago with the overwhelming defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA);
CEDAW is the ERA multiplied one hundred fold.
CEDAW calls for an absolute leveling of every kind of distinction
between men and women at every level of society. This is not about
opportunities for women, it is about denigrating motherhood and
undermining the family. The nature of the family as the fundamental
social structure must be recognized, and the rights of the family must
be protected, not ``modified.'' The deliberately vague language and
undefined terms in the treaty permit interpretations that are
destructive of the social order and harmful to individuals and
families, resulting in what is merely a proposal for social
manipulation.
Following are just a few examples of what the ``expert'' committee
responsible for implementing CEDAW found problematic in signatory
nations:
Denmark: The Committee noted with concern that stereotypical
perceptions of gender role continued to exist in society [that]
kept men from assuming an equal share of funnily
responsibilities.
Belarus: The Committee complained that ``Mother's Day'' and
the ``Mothers Award'' encourage women's traditional roles.
Armenia: The Committee urged them to ``combat the traditional
stereotype of women in the noble role of mother.''
Luxembourg: The Committee complained about its ``stereotypical
attitudes that tend to portray men as heads of households and
breadwinners, and women primarily as mothers and homemakers.''
Ireland: The Committee complained that the influence of the
Church is still strongly felt and that because of this, ``with
very limited exceptions, abortion remains illegal in Ireland,''
and women do not have sufficient access to reproductive health
services.
Slovenia: The Committee derided the fact that only 30 percent
of children under age three were in daycare, claiming the other
70 percent would miss out on education and social opportunities
offered in daycare.
Romania: The Committee encouraged ``the Government to include
sex education systematically in schools . . .'' and to ``place
priority on the review and revision of teaching materials.''
Kyrgyzatan: The Committee ordered that ``lesbianism be
reconceptualized as a sexual orientation and that penalties for
its practice be abolished.''
China: The Committee called upon them to ``decriminalize
prostitution.''
Germany: Prostitution is legal but the Committee expressed
concern that prostitutes still do not enjoy the protection of
labor and social law.
As these examples make clear, CEDAW seeks to impose its broad and
radical social agenda on signatory nations without respect for
sovereign nations' laws regarding marriage, family, life, and other
social issues, and without respect for the religious and moral
foundations that support these nations' laws.
Mr. President, we strongly urge you to oppose and condemn CEDAW on
behalf of American women and American families. The United States of
America will work to eradicate legitimate discrimination against women
the world over, but the U.S. government cannot support the undermining
of the family unit, the denigration of motherhood, and the usurpation
of our national sovereignty. To support such propositions would be, in
our opinion, un-American.
Thank you for your attention to our concerns and for your continued
work to protect and defend life and families in the international
arena.
Sincerely,
Connie Mackey,
Vice President of Government Affairs.
______
Letters to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal in Opposition to CEDAW
human rights are fought for, not declared
Editor:
Sen. Joseph Biden invokes the Declaration of Independence in
support of the U.S. ratification of CEDAW, the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Christina
Hoff Sommers, ``Look Who's Preaching to Us!'' editorial page, June 26).
But the Declaration is Exhibit A against CEDAW.
The Declaration is a document of general aspiration; that is why
its premise that all men are created equal and are endowed with
unalienable rights applied to both women and men and in time became a
powerful weapon in the battle for women's rights. And the Declaration
was much more than aspiration: It was a self-executing political act.
The men who signed it thereby took responsibility for realizing its
aspirations by establishing free and independent states, failing which
they would be hanged.
CEDAW, in contrast, is, like the old Soviet constitution, a long
list of policy promises drafted by people who, for the most part, have
no intention to take responsibility for achieving those promises. No
one thinks CEDAW is going to produce ``comparable worth'' wage
regulation in Haiti or Uganda, or end forced abortions of baby girls in
China or North Korea, or provide rudimentary legal rights for the women
of Saudi Arabia or Yemen. The governments of these nations (all CEDAW
signatories) could, if they wished, actually pursue those policies at
home--and take the political credit or blame according to the views of
their citizens--rather than just recommending them to others. Sen.
Biden is an influential political leader in his own nation; if he
really wants to promote nationalized day care (as Vice President Gore
proposed to do in the 2000 presidential campaign) or equal wages for
stenographers and firemen, he has the means and responsibility to do so
without reference to CEDAW.
CEDAW promotes the notion that rights are things that exist in the
abstract--manna from globocrats, NGOs and activist lawyers rather than
the responsibilities of nation-states and their political leaders.
Those who signed the Declaration of Independence stood and fought for
the opposite proposition--that rights are secured by governments whose
powers to do so are derived from the consent of the governed.
Christopher DeMuth,
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research,
Washington.
end preferential physical fitness standards first
Editor:
I wonder how many of those in this country who support CEDAW also
support the elimination of preferential physical fitness standards for
women. If discrimination is `` any distinction . . . on the basis of
sex'' in ``any . . . field,'' such differential standards are
definitely discriminatory. Article 5 calls for ``the elimination of all
practices which are based on stereotyped roles for men and women.''
Isn't it stereotyping to assume women cannot meet minimum standards?
I am a 36-year-old mother of two with a professional career and I
can still meet the strictest minimum military standards for men ages
17-21 (52 sit-ups in two minutes, 42 push-ups in two minutes, and a
two-mile run in 15:54). The minimum standards for a woman of my age are
so absurd (35 sit-ups and 14 push-ups) that I can do them in one
quarter of the allotted time and I can complete the two-mile run in the
required 22 minutes and 36 seconds backward. Hurray for ending
discrimination! Make women meet the same standards. Laws and
Conventions don't create equality. Hard work and dedication do.
Molly Espey,
Six Mile, SC.
______
A Women's Treaty For Radical Feminism
john leo, syndicated columnist
Once again the push is on for the Senate to ratify CEDAW, the
U.N.'s women's rights treaty that has been hanging around since 1979.
CEDAW is the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against
Women.
There's a good reason why the Senate has ignored it for a
generation:It's an incredibly toxic document, the work of international
bureaucrats determined to impose a worldwide makeover of family
relations and ``gender roles.'' CEDAW is a blueprint for foisting the
West's radical feminism on every nation gullible enough to sign on.
(talk about cultural imperialism.) Some 167 nations have signed the
treaty, many with no intention of observing it. But the CEDAW
ferociously monitors every nation's compliance. It has a few
enforcement mechanisms and plans more. The idea is that someday,
nations may not be able to resist.
CEDAW is a more perverse version of American radical feminism,
circa 1975: It bristles with contempt for family, motherhood, religion
and tradition. Parents and the family don't count. The state will watch
out for children's rights. The treaty extends access to contraception
and abortion to very young girls, and imposes ``gender studies'' on
schools and feminist approved textbooks on students.
The committee enforcing CEDAW criticized Belarus for reintroducing
Mother's Day (``a sex-role stereotype'') and strongly urged Armenia to
combat the image of ``the noble role of mother.'' It complained that
voters in Ireland seem to reflect Roman Catholic values and warned
Libya that the Koran can only be followed within ``permissible'' limits
set by CEDAW. Feminists will decide what religions may teach. CEDAW
busy bodies are always eager to intrude. Recently they leaned on
Denmark for not providing data on whether Danish fathers are doing
their share of chores around the house.
One of the CEDAW committee's techniques is to use broad language,
which is then tightened and given a radical interpretation after
signatories have accepted it. CEDAW did not announce that women's
``right to free choice of profession and employment'' would turn out to
mean (as the committee now says) that prostitution must be
decriminalized around the world. Similarly, CEDAW'S ban on ``any
distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex'' seems
to make legal approval of homosexual marriage mandatory. Some analysts
think CEDAW'S ban on ``orientation'' bias will make pedophile sex
legal, since some people are ``oriented'' toward children. Linguistic
sinkholes are so common that Muslim women wanted assurance that the
term ``sexual slavery'' would not be defined later as including
marriage.
CEDAW reflects the rising importance of international conferences
and the United Nations' nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). CEDAW
bureaucrats constantly monitor and hector the world's nations to
comply. The World Bank now seems primed to serve as an enforcer for
CEDAW: One World Bank document is titled ``Integrating Gender Into the
World's Bank's Work: A Strategy for Action.'' The feminists talk about
the World Bank's ``accountability mechanisms.'' Translation: No CEDAW
compliance, no loan.
Worse, CEDAW backers intend to use the new International Criminal
Court as an enforcement tool. Patrick Fagan of the Heritage Foundation,
who follows CEDAW closely, predicts that the CEDAW committee will bring
an ICC case against Catholic hospitals to break the hospitals' refusal
to perform abortions. Language setting up the court is so vague that
radical prosecutors and judges might be able to jail clerics who refuse
to perform same-sex unions or who decline to ordain women.
The lesson here is that small groups of dedicated bureaucrats, out
of the public eye, can make rules affecting the domestic affairs of
countries that would be difficult or impossible to achieve
democratically. The trick is to create ``customary international law''
out of marginal views, constantly repeated on the world stage. Rita
Joseph, an Australian human rights specialist, says: ``The basic plan
is ingeniously simple. The idea is to couch the feminist agenda in
language of human rights'' and then assert the ascendancy of human
rights over the sovereign rights of nations.
Still, over the past five or six years, as awareness of the
radicalization of the United Nations has set in, nonradical American
NGOs have mounted resistance, often with the help of the Vatican and
Muslim nations. This alliance has had some success in exposing the
language and parliamentary games played by the radicals.
CEDAW is coming up again now because of a fumble in the State
Department. Someone listed CEDAW as a treaty the administration
considered low-level but acceptable. President Bush now has to choose
between antagonizing his base by calling for Senate ratification or
antagonizing female voters by seeming to come out against women's
rights. But if he can't dodge the issue, he will have to oppose the
treaty. CEDAW is dangerous as well as stupid.