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I. STARTING UP THE COMMITTEE
A. Introduction
This Article discusses the early years of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and some of the difficulties it faced in its efforts to become an effective voice for women's rights. It shows how CEDAW helped to make violence against women a human rights issue. It is part of a study of CEDAW in its first ten years, which aims to show something of the internal dynamics of the Committee and how that affected its work. It is a tribute to the members whose commitment to women's rights helped to establish CEDAW's identity. It is based, in part, on the author's own impressions and first-hand experience and therefore should be understood in that light.
B. The United Nations Takes Up Women's Rights
From time to time the question is raised whether women's rights should be treated separately or integrated into the broader field of human rights. When the United Nations (U.N.) was founded in 1945, however, the female delegates had no doubt that there should be a permanent body in the U.N. to deal with women's rights. They got their way, and the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was established. Among its activities, the CSW drafted several conventions and declarations, including the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in 1967.(1) CSW promoted International Women's Year in 1975, the
Women's Decade that followed, and the major women's conferences, held at Mexico, Copenhagen, and Nairobi.2
C. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
The impetus from the Mexico Conference and the Women's Decade carried forward work on the draft Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Women's Convention or Convention).3 The Women's Convention was adopted in 1979 and came into force on September 3, 1981.(4) Within ten years there were 110 States as parties, and by May 2001 the number had risen to 168. The Convention is now the second most widely ratified human rights treaty, after the Convention on the Rights of the Child.5
There were already three major U.N. human rights instruments in force in 1976: (1) the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination...