Ghana at 59th United Nations Session on CEDAW to defend gender rights
A 25-member Ghanaian delegation is in Geneva, Switzerland, attending the 59th session of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to defend Ghana’s records on gender rights.
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This move is in response to the requirement that State Parties who are signatories to the CEDAW report to a Committee on the legislative, judicial, administrative or other measures that they have adopted to give effect to the provisions of the Convention and on the progress made in that respect.
The delegation, led by the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, will, for five hours, face a 23-member international panel of highly specialised experts to answer questions based on Ghana’s sixth and seventh CEDAW reports.
Four Members of Parliament (MPs) are part of Ghana’s delegation which also include experts from the health, education, justice and gender sectors and they will answer questions relating to their sectors, which include discrimination against women, gender equality, girls, education, spousal rights, domestic violence and child trafficking, witches camps and rural women.
Other countries
Seven other countries, Belgium, Brunei Darussalam, China, Guinea, Poland, Solomon Islands and Venezuela are also at the session to take part in the dialogues.
In addition to the dialogues with the State Parties of the Convention, the panel of experts will meet with UN bodies and specialised agencies, other international organisations and NGOs and come out with general recommendations towards the strengthening of State Parties .
The committee will then make suggestions and general recommendations based on the examination of the reports and information received from the State Parties, which will be included in a report to the General Assembly.
Opening statement
In a statement to open the conference, Ms Flavia Pansieri, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, said a landmark resolution adopted in April this year not only responded to the call to grant the treaty bodies additional resources to address backlogs of reports, but also made numerous suggestions to harmonise the working methods and procedures of treaty bodies.
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She said it was decided at the last session, “to offer, on a pilot basis, the simplified reporting procedure to State Parties wishing to avail themselves of this procedure for the submission of their periodic reports, provided that they have submitted an updated common core document.”
Other gender-related activities
Touching on activities and events that had occurred since the last session that had a bearing on the work of the committee, Ms Pansieri said several resolutions relating to women’s rights were adopted at the recently concluded 27th session of the Human Rights Council.
The resolutions, she explained, focused on girls’ and women’s right to education; good practices and major challenges in preventing and eliminating Female Genital Mutilation (FGM); acts of violence and discrimination in all regions of the world against individuals because of their sexual orientation; and gender identity, maternal mortality and morbidity, as well as child, early and forced marriages.