Issues

Types of Issues Currently Working on in 2009

CEDAW: Karen Kondej, kondej@cox.net

Women’s Health Care: Leader TBD

Anti-Violence against Women: Leader TBD

---

"Rape Is Rape" Protest

Carol Corsica - 4rd from right,
Nicole Deopere, 2nd from right and
Karen Kondej on the end

---

Waiting for CEDAW
by: Karen Kondej

Almost thirty years ago President Jimmy Carter signed the UN International Human Rights Treaty know as CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). This global treaty has been ratified by 186 sovereign nations, but the United States remains derelict. U.S. treaty ratification requires two-thirds, or 67, Senate votes. Twice, in 1994 and again in 2002, CEDAW made it through the Foreign Relations Committee only to be abandoned in the Senate after opponents (conservatives) gutted the treaty with crippling “Reservations.”
(Note: RUDs are Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations that ratifying nations can attach to treaties. Supposedly, CEDAW is the most “Reserved” of all the UN Human Rights Treaties, as individual states attempt to particularize the treaty to their own cultural interpretation of the rights of women.)

Currently the State Department under Secretary Clinton’s leadership is reviewing the treaty and later this year or early next year the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold new hearings on the treaty. We and numerous other women’s rights groups will be ready to push for CEDAW ratification. The nature and pervasiveness of discrimination against women is cruel, unremedied, and an affront to our human dignity. Thirty years is too long to wait.

---

CEDAW

Purpose:
“Inform and Fire-up” the Base between now and March 8, 2010

March 8, 2010 is the NOW national day of action. Activists will be called on to lobby their U.S. Senators urging them to push for immediate ratification of CEDAW. Some cities will have rallies

Inform in Steps:

History of Cedaw, i.e., how it evolved from the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the universal human was male!) and the treaty’s insignificant beginnings: The committed met once a year and states did not nominate serious people to the CEDAW Committee. Many wives of Ambassadors were appointed. CEDAW had reputation as a “boutique Committee” where women just went shopping.

1. The U.S. history with CEDAW
2. How CEDAW has benefited women in other countries that have ratified the treaty. (Great opportunity to highlight the breath and insidious depth of patriarchy. The global condition of women is inequality with men.)
3. How CEDAW will benefit U.S. women. This is most important. This we where we fire-up the base. The CEDAW committee now plays an important role in creating jurisprudence. The treaty is dynamic and forward-looking.
4. March 8, 2010 we are equipped to make a strong case with for the ratification of CEDAW.