消除对妇女歧视委员会

2016年7月4日

消除对妇女歧视委员会今日上午召开第六十四届会议，听取了联合国人权事务副高级专员办事处凯特•吉尔摩（Kate Gilmore）的声明，并通过了本次会议的议程和工作方案。

吉尔摩女士在开场发言中表示，《2030年可持续发展议程》制定了下一个十五年工作的愿景框架。这是史无前例的，因其承诺不落下任何人，它也承诺解决边缘化和排斥问题和确保没有人被锁在自由行使其权利的门外。《议程》对妇女的权利和处境依然十分重要，特别是对于年轻妇女，其处境在非常新兴的国家中至关重要，这些国家也在可持续发展中较为落后，承受了气候变化的不利影响，更易于遭遇冲突。副高级专员表达了消除对妇女歧视委员会的高度希望和期望，它在实现《2030年议程》目标的过程中、在解决基于性别的陈规定型和基于性别的歧视过程中都发挥着宝贵的核心作用。

委员会主席林阳子（Yoko Hayashi）满意地表示，摩纳哥加入《任择议定书》令其缔约国总数增加至107个。《公约》缔约国仍为189个，接受第二十条第一款关于《公约》中委员会会议时间的修正案的缔约国数量仍为70个。自上一次会议开始以来，五个国家提交了定期报告：肯尼亚、阿曼、朝鲜民主主义人民共和国、新西兰和斐济，摩纳哥提交了首份报告。布基纳法索和黑山共和国提交了之前以纸质形式提交的报告的电子版，毛里求斯提交了更新的共同核心文件，从而符合简化报告程序规定的呈交已逾期的第八次报告的标准。

委员会通过了第六十四届会议的临时议程和工作安排，听取了关于后续报告状况的报告，以及关于第六十四届会议会前工作组的报告，还听取了有关委员会专家在闭会期间开展活动的最新情况。

委员会将在今天下午3点复会，与非政府组织和国家人权机构就菲律宾、缅甸和法国状况举行非正式公开会议，这些国家的报告将在本周接受委员会的审议。

Opening Statements

KATE GILMORE, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, in her opening remarks, said that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development would provide a framing vision for work over the next decade and a half. This Agenda was unprecedented not only because it had been unanimously accepted by States but also because its goals were universal and indivisible, and because of the promise it had made not to leave anyone behind. Being left behind was the product of being left out, being locked out of the freedom to exercise rights, she said. The Agenda made a universal promise to address marginalization and exclusion, and this was a fantastic opportunity for human rights. It remained critical for the rights of women and was absolutely crucial to elevating the status of women, removing impediments to the realization of the human rights of women, and bringing women to the negotiating and decision-making table. One crucial issue was the situation of young women: the world had never seen this many adolescents before, and the countries that were lagging behind in sustainable development, suffered adverse impacts of climate change and were more prone to conflicts were those with the youngest population. The average age in Austria was 46, it was 44 in Germany, while it stood at 17 in Yemen and 15 in Uganda – this meant that in those countries, the situation of young women was the deal-breaker, stressed Ms. Gilmore.

In this, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women had a central and valuable role to play and was crucial in addressing gender-based stereotypes and gender-based discrimination. Ms. Gilmore recognized the challenges facing the Committee in this task, including the lack of resources and continuous increase in the workload. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was delighted by the Human Rights Council’s adoption of resolutions on violence against women, in particular indigenous women and girls, on the elimination of female genital mutilation, on the right to education, and on the establishment of the mandate on violence and discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons. The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights noted the disagreements between States during the adoption of those resolutions, particularly on issues of abortion, sexuality education, and the extension of the mandate of the Working Group on the elimination of discrimination against women in law and in practice. In closing, Ms. Gilmore said that the role of the Committee in all those issues would be crucial and thanked the Committee for their leadership.

In the ensuing discussion, Committee Experts remarked that accountability of States for the implementation of the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was crucial, without which the concrete realization of the human rights of women would not be possible. The Committee was receiving an increased number of individual complaints, with 46 cases currently pending, but the limited capacity of the Secretariat to process the petitions markedly slowed down the work of the Committee on petitions and the fact that decisions were delivered only several years after the petitions were filed seriously eroded the work of the Committee in this area. The Committee also needed more substantive support by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and its Secretariat to make it more effective, particularly in terms of data processing and analytics.

Experts asked about the position of the Office on the proposed Convention on Violence against Women, whether the creation of a new Division in the Office on the Human Rights Council and treaty bodies had resulted in increased synergy between them, which measures would ensure greater visibility of the work of the Committee among other human rights mechanisms and States, and the real role that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights wanted to play in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Responding to questions and issues raised by the Committee Experts, Ms. Gilmore said that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was an operational plan and that the implementation agenda was one which States had already accepted, namely the chapeau of international norms and standards. The 2030 Agenda was an implementing platform for international human rights treaties, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and this cascade of logic should be driving the implementation of the Agenda. The whole United Nations family must be ready to change themselves and come together to realize that Agenda. Expressing her personal views, the Deputy High Commissioner said that United Nations Member States had lost sight of the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter, which opened with the statement “We, the peoples”, and not “We, the nation States”; and talking about persons, meant talking about human rights. The United Nations had lost sight that its highest duty was to people, and the Agenda introduced a possibility to re-introduce the person at the centre, and not just a bleached person, but a person who had gender, age, culture, ability, etc. The Agenda promised to leave no one behind, which meant that it was person-centred.

The Office had increased the capacity building activity of the United Nations system, it had trained United Nations resident coordinators in human rights and introduced human rights in the guidelines for resident coordinators. Further, the Office had also started a series of the so-called Frontier Dialogues, through which it was bringing the United Nations family together to look at the frontier issues and try to understand what they meant for the future of human rights. Ms. Gilmore noted the highly constrained resource environment – the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights received only three per cent of the regular budget of the United Nations Secretariat - and said that the Office must get smarter at positioning resources and using tools which would get it a disproportionate change. Looking at the challenges that the world was facing, the Office was frustrated and wished it could give more to the Committees which were doing life-saving work, because that was what petitions, for example, were. No one was happy by the rate of the progress in the elimination of violence against women. Everyone was frustrated at women being exposed to violence in most intimate places, by those they were most intimate with. The answer was not more guidelines and standards, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was enough; the answer was action, action, action, and more resources.

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-fourth session.

YOKO HAYASHI, Chairperson of the Committee, presenting her report on activities undertaken since the last session, noted that the number of States parties to the Convention remained at 189, and that 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 70. The Chairperson was pleased to say that Monaco had acceded to the Optional Protocol to the Convention, bringing the total number of States parties to 107. Five States had submitted their periodic reports since the beginning of the last session: Kenya, Oman, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, New Zealand and Fiji, while Monaco had submitted its initial report. Burkina Faso and Montenegro had submitted electronic versions of the reports previously submitted in hard copy, and Mauritius had submitted an updated common core document and thus had met the criteria to present its overdue eighth report under the simplified reporting procedure.

Ms. Hayashi had participated in the opening of the sixtieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women and had also met with the United Nations Secretary-General on 18 March to brief him on the work of the Committee on the Sustainable Development Goals, gender-based violence against women, disaster risk reduction, and climate change. From 30 May to 3 June, Ms. Hayashi had attended the twenty-eighth annual meeting of Chairpersons in New York, during which the role of Chairs in relation to procedural matters had been discussed, including on formulating conclusions on issues related to working methods, follow-up to the General Assembly resolution 68/268, the implementation of the Addis Ababa guidelines on the independence and impartiality of members of treaty bodies, and the implementation of the San José guidelines against intimidation and reprisals.

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

Pre-session Working Group Report and the Follow-up

THEODORA NWANKWO, Committee Expert, briefed the Committee on the pre-sessional working group and said that it had prepared lists of issues with regard to reports of Albania, France, Mali, Myanmar, Philippines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey and Uruguay, as well as a list of issues prior to reporting for Ireland, whose report would be considered at the Committee’s sixty-sixth session. The list 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 during the previous session, she had met with representatives of Indonesia who had appreciated the information shared. Follow-up letters had been sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cuba, Greece, Lesotho, Panama, Samoa, South Africa, and Tajikistan, and first reminders of overdue follow-up reports to Andorra and Benin. The Committee had received delayed follow-up reports from Cambodia, Guyana, Republic of Moldova, Pakistan, Serbia, and Syria, while Finland and the United Kingdom had sent their reports on time.

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