Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women discusses situation of women in Ukraine, Ireland, Jordan and El Salvador with civil society representatives

GENEVA (13 February 2017) - The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women this afternoon met with representatives of non-governmental organizations and the national human rights institutions to hear information on the situation of women in Ukraine, Ireland, Jordan and El Salvador, whose reports will be considered during the first week of the session.
 
Speakers from the organizations in Ukraine were concerned about the failure of the Parliament to adopt the package of draft laws to combat domestic violence and ratify the Istanbul Convention, and the institutionalization of anti-gender movements in the country.  Hate crime legislation had to be revised and amended, and had to specifically mention sexual orientation and gender identity.  They raised the issue of the negative impact of conditionality imposed by the International Monetary Fund on women and children, as well as the issue of multiple discrimination against Roma women on the basis of gender and ethnicity.
 
Representatives of non-governmental organizations from Ireland delivered oral reports in which they requested a new rights-based National Women’s Strategy which would address multiple discrimination women in Ireland suffered and include actions to address inequalities experienced by Traveller and Roma women, women with disabilities and other groups of women experiencing multi-layered inequalities.  They urged the Committee to call on the Government to swiftly change the laws and adopt legislation on abortion that respected women’s human rights, and to set the timeframe for the completion of deliberations on recognizing the Traveller ethnicity.
 
In Jordan, five priority issues for urgent action included violence against women, women’s killing, women in the so-called protective custody, family violence law, and marriage to rapists; Palestinian women refugees from Syria; the Personal Status Law and the principle of guardianship over women; discrimination against women in the nationality law; and women’s economic participation. 
 
The 2011, the law on equality, equity and for eradication of discrimination against women had still had have an effective implementation mechanism which would ensure the respect for equal rights of women in El Salvador.  The country had one of the most extreme abortion bans in the world, prohibiting the procedure in cases of rape or even to save a woman’s life, and imposing harsh criminal penalties on both women and physicians.  The Committee had to hold El Salvador accountable for such pervasive violations of women’s fundamental rights.

Speaking during the discussion were representatives from Kyiv Gender Studies Institute,  Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Roma Women Fund “Chizicli”, Positive Women, Insight Public Organization, and ADC Memorial from Ukraine;  the National Women’s Council of Ireland (joint statement), Abortion Rights Campaign (joint statement), National Traveller Women’s Forum and Pavee Point, Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, and Stop IGM from Ireland; the Jordanian Women’s Non-governmental organizations; and Feminist Concentration Prudencia Ayala, CLADEM El Salvador, Center for Reproductive Rights (joint statement) from El Salvador.
 
Also speaking were the Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, and the Jordanian National Centre for Human Rights.

When the Committee reconvenes in public on Tuesday, 14 February at 10 a.m., it will begin its consideration of the eighth periodic report of Ukraine CEDAW/C/UKR/8

Statements by Non-Governmental Organizations

Ukraine

A speaker for Kyiv Gender Studies Institute said that the Parliament had failed to adopt the package of draft laws to combat domestic violence and ratify the Istanbul Convention.  They had been voted down because the institutionalization of anti-gender movements had made the operation of national gender machinery even more complicated.  The reform of economic and social protection was being launched without any analysis of their impact on women and families, which created critical challenges for gender equality.
 
A representative of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom spoke about the negative impact of conditionality required by the International Monetary Fund, and, in particular, the cuts in areas such health, education and social services.  As a result, 160,000 civil service jobs had been cut, 12,000 social workers and 25,000 healthcare professionals employed by the state had lost their jobs.  More than 60 per cent of rural women of working age were either self-employed or informally employed, which made them illegible for social security, pensions, and maternity leave. 
 
A speaker from Roma Women Fund “Chizicli” expressed concern about multiple discrimination against Roma women on the basis of gender and ethnicity, preventing them from accessing education and health care, and from exercising political rights on an equal basis.  The adopted plans – the National Roma Strategy and the National Action Plan were not being implemented adequately and must be revised to take into account the needs of Romani women and girls, and should be properly resourced.
 
Positive Women drew the attention to the situation of women who used drugs, women living with HIV/AIDS and sex workers in Ukraine who were facing severe human rights abuses and multiple forms of discrimination.  Drug use was criminalized and repression was mostly directed toward users.  Voluntary sex work among adults remained penalized and everything connected to the organization of sex work constituted a criminal offence.  HIV transmission, even without intent, was criminalized, contributing to stigmatization of women living with HIV, limits their access to treatment, and reduced effectiveness of measures to combat the disease.
 
Insight Public Organization said that, although the National Human Rights Strategy stated the commitment to punishing hate crimes based on race, colour, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability, that commitment had not been realized.  Hate crime legislation needed to be revised and amended, and had to specifically mention sexual orientation and gender identity. 
 
ADC Memorial said that women in Ukraine were banned from work in 450 professions, including in a number of those which were well-paid and attractive for women.  The situation of women from especially vulnerable groups in the war-torn regions of eastern Ukraine was complicated, including for Roma who suffered anti-Roma pogroms organized by separatists in Slavyansk in April 2014.  Roma women were also unable to obtain internally displaced person status and faced barriers in accessing social assistance.   

Ireland

A representative of The National Women’s Council of Ireland highlighted, in a joint statement, six key issues of interest to women in this country, including economic independence and a disproportionate impact of austerity on women.  Civil society organizations requested a new rights-based National Women’s Strategy which would address multiple discrimination women in Ireland suffered and include actions to address inequalities experienced by Traveller and Roma women, women with disabilities and other groups of women experiencing multi-layered inequalities.  The Government needed to establish mandatory annual gender pay gap reporting, reverse cuts to pension entitlements, move towards a Universal Pension, legislate against insecure non-fixed hour jobs, and establish a living wage through policy and practice.
 
Abortion Rights Campaign, in a joint statement, noted that criminalization of abortion in all cases except when a women’s life was at risk, forced women to endure risks to their health, high costs, undue stress, lack of support, fear and stigmatisation.  The impact of the law was felt most by women experiencing intersecting forms of discrimination, such as poverty, disability, travel restrictions, and by minors.  The Committee should call on the Government to swiftly change the laws and adopt legislation on abortion that respected women’s human rights.
 
National Traveller Women’s Forum and Pavee Point said that Traveller and Roma were among the most excluded groups in Ireland due to racism and intersectional, discrimination based on gender and ethnicity.  The Committee should ask Ireland to set a timeframe for the completion of deliberations on recognizing Traveller ethnicity, and to ensure that the National Traveller Roma Strategy had a concrete and measureable implementation plan and adequate resources.
 
Sex Workers Alliance Ireland stated that the current and proposed laws criminalizing sex work in Ireland were not based on evidence or the experiences of sex workers.  They would increase dependency on third parties, susceptibility to traffickers, and harm the right of workers to access justice and work safely.  Ireland should urgently investigate the disproportionate impact of the austerity measures on Traveller and Roma women and girls.
 
Stop IGM said that all forms of intersex genital mutilation practices persisted, advocated and paid for by the public health service and perpetrated in public universities and children’s hospitals, with impunity.  There was no law in Ireland to protect intersex children from the practice, and the Government continued to deny to see this as a human rights issue.   

Jordan
 
Jordanian Women’s Non-governmental Organizations highlighted five priority issues for urgent action, including violence against women, women’s killing, women in the so-called protective custody, family violence law, and marriage to rapists.  Other issues of concern included Palestinian women refugees from Syria, the Personal Status Law and the principle of guardianship over women, discrimination against women in the Nationality law, and women’s economic participation. 
 
Representatives of the Jordanian Women’s Non-governmental Organizations urged the Committee to request the Government to amend the Penal Code to eliminate the use of mitigating factors that allowed for the drop of charges in cases of killing of women by family members, establish specialised services for survivors of gender-based violence based on a survivor-centred approach and not family protection approach.  Further, the Government should ensure that the changes to the Family Violence Law included a clear definition of violence and violence against women, and address the rights of survivors, in conformity with international obligations; and it should repeal the principle of guardianship over women from the Personal Status Law.
 
El Salvador

A representative of Feminist Concentration Prudencia Ayala said that the 2011 law for equality, equity and for eradication of discrimination against women still did not have an effective implementation mechanism which would ensure the respect for equal rights of women.  There was a close link between discrimination against women, violence against women and violation of women’s fundamental rights and freedoms.   Violence against women excluded women from fully enjoying their rights in all realms – in 2012, 628 cases of women’s killing had been reported, but by June 2014 only 34 cases had been investigated.
 
A speaker from CLADEM El Salvador spoke about economic empowerment of rural women and noted their restricted access to credit and inequality in allocation of land and homes.  Only 14 per cent of land owners were women, forcing many rural women to rent land to carry out their subsistence farming.  Rural women suffered high levels of maternal mortality.
 
Center for Reproductive Rights, in a joint statement, said  that El Salvador had one of the most extreme abortion bans in the world, prohibiting the procedure in cases of rape or even to save a woman’s life, and imposing harsh criminal penalties on both women and physicians.  Women who self-induced or consent someone else inducing an abortion could end up prosecuted and sentenced for aggravated homicide.  A survivor, Guadalupe, shared her story of receiving 30 years in prison for a haemorrhage that had occurred during her pregnancy and spending seven years in prison under atrocious conditions, until receiving a commutation.  The Committee had to hold El Salvador accountable for those pervasive violations of women’s fundamental rights.

Questions by Committee Members

Committee Experts took up the issue of abortion in Ireland and asked about multi-stakeholder consultations on the matter, asking for an explanation of the proposed changes in the law and the guarantees on respect for reproductive rights of women.  There was a problem with identification of victims of trafficking, and a vast majority of victims were excluded depending on their nationalities. Could the civil society organizations explain how they were involved in supporting victims of trafficking?

Civil society organizations representatives from Ukraine were asked to provide data on the impact of the  International Monetary Fund conditionality on employment, and on the 12,000 social workers who had lost their jobs.  It was noted that many people chose  to stay in conflict zones in order to access humanitarian assistance, because they did not want to leave as employment opportunities outside of the conflict areas were dire.  What were the deficiencies in the envisaged system of data collection on victims of domestic violence?
 
A Committee Expert noted the lack of data on Palestinian women refugees from Syria and asked how they were protected in Jordan.  How many of the 39 cases of killings of women were from the general population and how many were among the refugees?  It was important to understand that as many Governments claimed that regression and deterioration of human rights situation was due to refugee influx.
 
On El Salvador, Experts asked about the system of justice for women and where women could turn to present complaints.  Where could rural women turn to in their quest for economic and social justice?  Were there specific protocols for investigating femicide?

Replies by Non-governmental Organizations

Non-governmental organizations from Ukraine said that, before accepting any International Monetary Fund conditionality, the Government had had to undertake impact assessment and explain the outcomes.  However, often it would just accept the measure by saying it was the Fund’s requirement.  There were several studies on the impact of the Fund’s conditionality on citizens, and that would be shared with the Committee.  The situation of women living in conflict areas was very hard; access to maternity leave, child support, housing and education in non-conflict areas were tied to successful obtaining of internally displaced person status. 
 
There was a need to improve the data collection by the Government in order to comply with the Istanbul Convention, but, instead, the Government planned to collect such data which would lead to stigmatization of victims of violence rather than to specialized assistance to survivors.  The concern at the moment was the privacy of victims of violence, maintaining the principle of confidentiality and ensuring appropriate assistance to victims.
 
In Ireland, there was a lack of clarity in the consultation process set up by the Government on abortion law and it was not clear what would happen next after the citizen assembly consultations.  Irrespective of the outcome of the consultations, it was important to note that the public opinion of access to abortion had changed.  The concern was that barriers in accessing abortion would remain even in cases of risk to women’s life or health, or for pregnancies from rape or incest.  There was a lack of data on trafficking and it had been recommended to set up a position of national rapporteur on trafficking.

Representatives from non-governmental organizations from Jordan said that the data on number of killings of women among refugees were not known.  Palestinian women refugees from Syria who were married to Jordanian men were discriminated against and their movement was restricted; they were also restricted in accessing humanitarian assistance, under the pretext that it was being done to preserve their right to return to Palestine.
 
A number of judges in El Salvador were reluctant to address femicide,  and many cases were classified as homicides.  That was one issue women had to face in accessing justice.  Another problem was lack of reliable data on femicides; in addition, the State should enforce the guidelines for investigation of those crimes and put in place coordination mechanism between various agencies.  There was no first instance court which could provide swift justice in cases involving access to land, water, or any other human rights.  The only way a woman living in rural areas wishing to lodge a complaint was to lodge one with the Supreme Court.
 
There was a draft law decriminalizing many instances in which women sought medical care, which would correct many injustices women suffered in connection with the criminalization of abortion, and the Committee should urge El Salvador to adopt this law.
 
Dialogue with National Human Rights Institutions
 
AKSANA FILIPISHYNA, Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights,  said that, despite the adoption of the Law on Equality, Ukraine still did not have the definition of discrimination, and the law also lacked the sanctions and mechanism to deal with violations.  Many still did not know about the law, which was one of the reasons why many women who suffered discrimination did not use the law to access justice.  Further, there was a real gender gap in the country, while in rural areas there was no institutionalized system supporting women returning to work.  The list of jobs prohibited to women was endorsed by the Ministry of Labour, although that was a direct violation of the principle of equality.  Women were subjected to different kinds of violence in the family, but they were not yet allowed access to free legal aid preventing them to receive the information about the legal provision and the system of assistance and support they might access.
 
EMILY LOGAN, Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, stated that Ireland had made welcome advances in the area of gender equality, notably with the introduction of marriage equality and the enactment of gender recognition legislation, but more needed to be done to facilitate greater participation of women in political life.  Gender inequalities continued to persist, in austerity and in prosperity, and the concern was about the concentration of women in low paid, part-time work, and on zero hour contracts and in unpaid care work.  Ireland had to take steps to end occupational gender segregation and hold a referendum on Article 41.2 of the Constitution which perpetuated gender stereotypes, and address gender pension gap and pregnancy related discrimination.  Further, measures had to be taken to ensure that all women, particularly marginalized groups at risk of poverty and social exclusion enjoyed benefits of the State’s prosperity; ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and recognize the Traveller ethnicity.  The denial of access to justice to women who suffered abuse while in the care of the State had been criticized by United Nations treaty bodies which included women subjected to abuse in Magdalene Laundries and in Mother and Baby Homes.  The Commission remained concerned that the current legal position in relation to abortion put in place barriers which impeded a women’s right to bodily autonomy and had a disproportionate negative impact on women from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
 
ABEER DABABNEH, Jordanian National Centre for Human Rights, raised concerns about the reservations on article 9 to the Convention in relation to nationality and equal right of women and men to transmit Jordanian nationality to children.  Jordan should trigger a reform on civil rights, particularly on matters of custody of children for women marrying after divorce, while the reform of the Penal Code should remove the provision lifting charges for rape of a minor if the perpetrator agreed to marry the victim.  The Government needed to increase access to crèches and child care in order to facilitate economic participation of women, and it must put in place a mechanism to ensure minimum participation of women in the representatives bodies.  Women’s participation in the judicial sector was vital, and women must be present in courts including the Supreme Court.
 
An Expert asked national human rights institutions from Ukraine, Ireland and Jordan about the legal basis for their institutions, the mandate and the powers they had and the importance given to their recommendations.
 
In Jordan, the list of recommendations did not contain one to pass a law against gender discrimination, why?  What coordination system was in place between different organizations?
 
Responding to Experts’ questions, AKSANA FILIPISHYNA, Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, said that it operated on the basis of the law and the Constitution, and it could monitor the activities and alert state bodies to human rights violations.  The Ombudsman could call upon the Government to immediately remedy the violation, and could also address the Constitutional Court on the cases of compliance with the constitution of different pieces of legislation.  It was the only expert institution under the law which had the ability to determine whether there was discrimination, bring it to the court, and carry checks on discrimination practices in all government institutions.
 
EMILY LOGAN, Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission explained that the institution had been established in 2014 and was an independent body accountable to the Parliament. It had the power to monitor and act of human rights violations, comment on the legislation, and comment on public sector duty.
 
Representatives of the Jordanian National Centre for Human Rights said that it had direct communication with the Prime Minister on two basic issues - the revival of the principle of equality between women and men in the Constitution, and on receiving complaints for human rights violations.

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