Dr. Sima Samar is one of the bravest women I have ever known. Time and again this Afghan physician defied the Taliban to cross secretly into her country from Pakistan to provide medical care for Afghan women and girls. Now she is calling for U.S. ratification of the global treaty on women's rights known as CEDAW. And the U.S. should listen. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is a landmark international agreement for human rights and women's equality. It holds up a blueprint that decision-makers in every country can use to measure their progress for women and girls. It has long awaited a ratification vote in the U.S. Senate. This should happen as soon as possible.
At the Feminist Majority Foundation, we have witnessed first- hand CEDAW's importance to women and girls worldwide. In fact, the U.S. failure to ratify CEDAW is a source of mystification to many of them.
Afghan activist Wazhma Frogh, for example, recalls that she cited CEDAW to assert that women's rights are universal when she was working to remove a provision of Sharia family law that barred women from leaving the house without a male relative's permission. Fundamentalist opponents argued that such rights for women couldn't be universal since the United States, that self-proclaimed defender of women's rights, had not ratified CEDAW. "I had no answer," she said.
Wazhma and Sima are both tireless workers for human rights and women's rights; Sima chairs the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Why do they need to urge the United States to ratify CEDAW when the rest of the world already has?
The treaty has been ratified by 186 of the 193 UN member nations. The other six holdouts are the embarrassing bedfellows of Iran, Sudan, and Somalia, as well as three small Pacific Island nations: Palau, Tonga and Nauru. The U.S. failure to ratify this treaty compromises U.S. credibility worldwide.
Where CEDAW has been ratified, women's groups like Sima's and Wazhmas have used the treaty to encourage their governments to change discriminatory laws and policies. After such efforts, Kuwait gave women the right to vote. Bangladesh broadened women's access to education and job training; Kenya ended forced marriage and guaranteed inheritance rights to women.
In Afghanistan CEDAW has been especially important. The Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) has had a Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls since 1997, first to help end gender apartheid and then, after the fall of the Taliban, to help Afghan women and girls. Women's organizations and women leaders have told FMF repeatedly that CEDAW has been essential in their drive to achieve full rights and freedom from violence and discrimination. Wazhma's effort succeeded; another led the government to approve a law targeting violence against women and declaring for the first time that rape is a crime.
These actions are critically important. The U.S. effort to create a civil society in Afghanistan is premised on our certain knowledge that equal rights for women are fundamental to any country's national security and economic growth. Peace there should not be at women's expense; their rights must not be bargained away. U.S. ratification of CEDAW would strengthen our arguments to that effect.
The United States has long promised to ratify CEDAW: it is a signatory to the concluding documents of several gatherings that called for ratification, including the UN Conference on Human Rights in 1993, the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, and the Vienna/Helsinki agreements of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved CEDAW in 2002, and the Obama administration has put it among its top ratification priorities. A Senate Judiciary subcommittee began the process with a recent hearing on Nov. 18, where Wazhma pleaded for action.
The American public strongly supports the principles and values CEDAW affirms, including education, equality, fairness and basic rights. Similar agreements on race relations, torture and genocide were ratified under Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. CEDAW terms are fully consistent with U.S. laws; the treaty would require no additional spending.
CEDAW ratification provides a framework upon which women worldwide can measure their own status against the global standard of equality. As Sima Samar tells us, it is long past time for the United States to affirm that standard for U.S. women, for women in Afghanistan, and for women worldwide. The Senate should move to approve CEDAW without delay.
Smeal is Co-Founder and President of the Feminist Majority Foundation and former President of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and serves on the board of the Leadership Circle of the Alliance for Ratification of CEDAW.
Copyright (C) 2010 by American Forum. 11/2010
TOP