We find that ratification of CEDAW leads to real, concrete changes in the lives of women and girls. Yet, inconceivably, the United States is one of only seven countries that has yet to ratify CEDAW, keeping company with the likes of Iran and Somalia. But the moment is upon us.
In 2002, Alyne da Silva Pimentel, a 28-year-old Afro-Brazilian woman, died after being denied basic medical care to address complications in her pregnancy. Her death might be like any one of the other hundreds of thousands of women who die of complications of pregnancy or unsafe abortion each year worldwide, but for one thing: It was taken to court.
For a few brief days during the Egyptian uprising, women felt relatively safe on the streets of Egypt where sexual street harassment has, for many years, been a problem of epidemic proportions. As The Daily Beast reports, “A survey released in 2008 by the Center for Women’s Rights found that 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 pe
For a few brief days during the Egyptian uprising, women felt relatively safe on the streets of Egypt where sexual street harassment has, for many years, been a problem of epidemic proportions.
CEDAW is the international treaty that affirms equal rights for women around the world. The United States has never ratified this agreement. It’s far past time to do so.
For the first time in eight long years, the Senate held a hearing on ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, a treaty which conservatives believe would end the world as we know it.
In 2007 the Mexican Supreme Court upheld a law which decriminalized abortion in Mexico City. Since then, twelve Mexican states have approved constitutional reforms defining personhood as beginning at the moment of conception.
The CEDAW the US would ratify would preclude women from challenging laws based on the physical differences between men and women, including discriminatory maternity coverage or criminal abortion laws.
Women living in the United States can’t appeal to international human rights law when they are inadequately protected by US law — because the US has not signed on to CEDAW.
Childbirth and pregnancy are extremely dangerous endeavors for the women of the world but most especially for women in developing nations and even more especially for teen girls in developing nations. We know this. We know that anti-choice, religious right extremists prefer to throw women and girls under the bus rather than admit to this fact. But it is the truth.
