Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women opens sixty-first session

Committee on the Elimination
of Discrimination against Women

6 July 2015

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women this morning opened its sixty-first session, hearing a statement from James Heenan, Chief of the Groups in Focus Section, Human Rights Treaties Division, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and adopting its agenda and programme of work for the session. 

Mr. Heenan said that the two keys issues for the human rights community in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals were the framework for accountability and indicators, and stressed that at this session, the Committee, together with United Nations Women, would explore how to feed its expertise into the construction of indicators, particularly around Goal 5 on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.  During their twenty-seventh annual meeting in Costa Rica, the treaty bodies Chairpersons had endorsed a set of guidelines against intimidation or reprisals, agreed and aligned processes for the consultation and elaboration of general recommendations, and issued a statement on human rights in the Sustainable Development Goals process.  Mr. Heenan welcomed the appointment of former Committee member Dubravka Simonovic as Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, and the election of the Committee Expert Ayse Feride Acar as a founding member of the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) monitoring the Council of Europe Istanbul Convention.

Yoko Hayashi, Chairperson of the Committee, noted with satisfaction that South Sudan had acceded to the Convention and the Optional Protocol, bringing the number of States parties to both instruments up to 189 and 106, respectively.  The number of States parties having accepted the amendment to article 20, paragraph 1 on the Convention concerning the meeting time of the Committee remained at 69.  Six States had submitted their periodic reports since the beginning of the last session: Bhutan, Canada, Sri Lanka, Thailand, El Salvador, and Jordan, while Armenia, Bangladesh and Mali re-submitted reports which had been returned to them because they had exceeded word limit.  Four States had requested to submit their next periodic reports under the simplified reporting procedure. 

The Committee heard reports on the status of the follow up reports and on the pre-session working group for the sixty-first session, as well as an update on the activities conducted by the Committee Experts during the intersessional period.

The Committee will reconvene at 3 p.m. this afternoon to hold an informal public meeting with non-governmental organizations and national human rights institutions with respect to Senegal, Spain, the Gambia, and Viet Nam, whose reports will be considered by the Committee this week.

Opening Statement

JAMES HEENAN, Chief of the Groups in Focus Section, Human Rights Treaties Division, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in his opening remarks said that the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women had regularly sounded the call for the post-2015 development framework to be anchored in internationally agreed norms and standards.  The Sustainable Development Goals would be adopted in the September Summit, and two key issues for the human rights community were the framework for accountability, termed “follow-up and review” in the Zero Draft Outcome Document, and indicators.  At the international level, it was proposed that follow-up and review of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals would be entrusted to the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development under the Economic and Social Council, and many were realizing that the information gathered and analysed by human rights mechanisms, including treaty bodies, was a tremendous asset that should be exploited.  The preliminary list of indicators which would measure progress towards the targets and goals would be released in November 2015.  Indicators would provide crucial means of ensuring that human rights were at the heart of the post-2015 architecture by ensuring that information collected exposed the reality on the ground of people’s enjoyment of their human rights.  At this session, the Committee, together with United Nations Women, would explore how to feed its expertise into the construction of indicators, particularly around Goal 5 on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. 

Turning to the twenty-seventh annual meeting of Chairpersons which had just concluded in Costa Rica, Mr. Heenan said that Chairpersons had endorsed a set of guidelines against intimidation or reprisals, agreed and aligned processes for the consultation and elaboration of general recommendations, and issued a statement on human rights in the Sustainable Development Goals process.  In terms of relevant development from across the United Nations system since the last session, Mr. Heenan said that the General Assembly had adopted a resolution 69/293, declaring 19 June as the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, while the Human Rights Council had adopted a resolution on Accelerating Efforts to Eliminate all Forms of Violence against Women: Domestic Violence, a resolution on prevention and elimination of children, early and forced marriage, and a resolution on protection of the family and elimination of discrimination against women.  The Council had further appointed former Committee member Dubravka Simonovic as Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, while Committee Expert Ayse Feride Acar had been elected as a founding member of the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) monitoring the Council of Europe Istanbul Convention.

Committee Experts said that the Committee should debate several of the points raised by Mr. Heenan, including the recent successes in the United Nations system and the outcomes of the Chairpersons meeting in Costa Rica, which related to the work of the Committee.  Another Expert took up the issue of indicators and statistics to measure progress in human rights and asked whether there were enough national statistics to build on, cautioning that new internationally-devised sets of indicators might pose an additional burden on governments. 

Responding, Mr. Heenan said that the work on human rights indicators would hopefully be a subset of development indicators, and stressed that this was all still work in progress.  From the perspective of the human rights community, many of the chronic human rights challenges were hidden, and this called for building capacity to collect indicators and statistics.

Adoption of the Agenda and Organization of Work and the Report of the Chairperson

The Committee adopted the provisional agenda and organization of work for the sixty-first session.

YOKO HAYASHI, Chairperson of the Committee, presenting her report on activities undertaken since the last session, noted with satisfaction that South Sudan had acceded to the Convention and the Optional Protocol, bringing the number of States parties to both instruments up to 189 and 106, respectively.  The number of States parties having accepted the amendment to article 20, paragraph 1 on the Convention concerning the meeting time of the Committee remained at 69.  Six States had submitted their periodic reports since the beginning of the last session: Bhutan, Canada, Sri Lanka, Thailand, El Salvador, and Jordan, while Armenia, Bangladesh and Mali re-submitted reports which had been returned to them because they had exceeded word limit.  Four States had requested to submit their next periodic reports under the simplified reporting procedure.  The Chairperson had participated in March 2015 in a a High-Level Thematic Panel of the President of the General Assembly on “Advancing gender equality and empowerment of women and girls for a transformative post-2015 development agenda”, where she had made a presentation on girl’s education.  Also in March, Ms. Hayashi had participated in the opening of the fifty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women, and had delivered a statement emphasizing the importance of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women as a legal framework for the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, as well as of the post-2015 development agenda. 

Pre-session Working Group Report and Follow-up

PATRUCIA SHULZ, Committee Expert, briefed the Committee on the pre-session working group and said that it had prepared lists of issues with regard to reports of Bolivia, Croatia, Gambia, Namibia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Spain, and Viet Nam.  The lists of issues and questions, which had focused on themes covered by the Convention, had been transmitted to the States parties concerned.

XIAOQIAO ZOU, Committee Expert and the Reporter on Follow-up, briefed the Committee on the status of follow-up reports received from States parties in reply to the Committee’s concluding observations, and said that she had met with representatives of Tunisia and Zimbabwe.  Follow-up letters had been sent to the Bahamas, Bulgaria, Jordan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.  First and second reminders had been sent to a number of countries.  The Committee had received delayed follow-up reports from Chile, Cyprus, Kuwait, Malta, Mexico, and Turkmenistan. Hungary had sent its report on time, while the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia presented its report ahead of time.

Committee Experts provided an update on their activities during the intersessional period.

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