Women Deliver Conference, and CEDAW

Greetings from Washington DC! I hope you are all enjoying you're Thursday Morning!

I had the (very educational) opportunity of attending a panel about CEDAW at the Women Deliver Conference yesterday.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is known as the International Bill of Rights for Women. 185 countries have ratified the treaty, 7 countries have not. The United States, embarrassingly has not ratified.

There is a cool Feminist Majority Foundation PDF on CEDAW and also an Amnesty International PDF too. If you need more information on the Convention.

But basically the gist of today's panel was to start working on ratification of CEDAW this year. In order to ratify, 67 Senators or 2/3 of the Senate must vote in support of the treaty. Without ratification, the United States is not bound to CEDAW's guidelines. Ratification would mean the U.S. would have to publish a report on the services provided to women in the states, and future goals to achieve equality. We need to ratify CEDAW so that we don't look like such hyprocrites abroad when we preach about human rights. Because that's exactly what CEDAW is about human rights! "Women's Issues" do not just affect women! They affect entire communities. Men, women, children- we're all in this together. This is why we feminists must talk to anyone we can about CEDAW!!

Photo Credit: Andi HungryMind on Flickr