INFORMATION on CEDAW

CEDAW, the only United Nations' women's human rights treaty body, is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Convention, adopted in 1979, incorporates the norms against gender based discrimination as well as all of the standards relating to women or having particular significance for women that have been set by past human rights instruments.

CEDAW goes much further than formal equality; it mandates the removal of barriers to substantive equality. Substantive equality requires that the actual conditions experienced by groups and individuals be examined, an discriminatory structural barriers be eliminated.

International law has historically come from several sources: treaties and conventions; custom, general principles of law recognized by civilized nations; and the views of expert judicial publicists and academics. States vary to the degree to which they admit international law into cases heard in their courts.

Although domestic law takes precedence over international conventions (and provisions for enforcement by international bodies are weak--but nonetheless exist), Supreme Court of Canada decisions have made it clear that Convention provisions are germane to the interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Constitution Act 1982, as enacted by Canada Act (UK) 1982, c. 11, Schedule B, and that the Charter's interpretations should not be narrower than the equivalent provisions of human rights conventions that Canada has ratified. Despite the paramouncy of domestic law, reference had been made to international conventions, including C EDAW, in nearly 100 Charter cases by 1990. More detailed information on the impact of CEDAW can be found in the Reports of Canada, of which there are four to date. The most recent (1995) covers the period from January 1991 to 31 March 1994.

Anne Bayefsky's book, International Human Rights Law: Use in Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Litigation, Toronto: Butterworth, 1993, is an invaluable source that goes through a number of international human rights covenants and agreements and shows how they are reproduced, reflected in and represented in the Charter.

Reports of CEDAW and other United Nations issues related to the status of women agreements and implementation can be obtained at Status of Women Canada.

http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/direct.html