The Unites States prides itself as an industrialised country and a leading democracy that upholds human rights of its citizens, but at the ongoing 54th session on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, this super power is unable to stand tall.
Failure to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has taken away the country’s moral authority to engage with other countries on matters around the Convention.
This reality is so painful for those who have been pushing for this ratification from America, particularly now that a meeting to discuss how countries have performed on safeguarding women’s rights is being held in their backyard.
Ironically, Americans played a key role in the drafting of the CEDAW and was among the first countries to sign it in 1980 when Jimmy Carter was the President. Now it is classified with poor nations such as Iran, Nauru, Palau, Sudan, Tonga, and failed states like Somalia, which have not ratified the treaty.
At the Beijing Conference in 1995 in China, the United States promised to ratify it. Nothing has happened 15 years later.
Back at home, efforts to get the convention ratified by the US government have hit several obstacles, with some senators blocking it, sometimes when the deal was seen as good as done.
An attempt by some senators to call for new hearings on CEDAW, for instance, are said to have been thwarted for many years by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Former President Bill Clinton is said to have tried to have the Senate ratify it without success.
Only in 2002, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Joseph Biden, current Vice-President, managed to approve the ratification. The move was killed on the floor of the Senate.
The reasons as to why there is such systemic apathy in the country against the Convention has been driven by what gender advocates term as a misunderstanding among the citizens and even some senior people in government.
In her presentation on why America has not ratified the convention, Ms Anita Sivakumar of Women NC and member of North Carolina Committee for CEDAW/CSW said the public has been fed with a lot of misconceptions about the instrument.
One of this is that the Convention pushes and expands the rights to abortion. Well funded and networked anti-choice campaigners and other religious groupings in the United States have latched on this argument to rally support against the Convention.
The other reason is America sees the ratification of the Convention as tantamount to surrendering its sovereignty, especially when they will be required to report periodically on what the country has done in advancing women’s rights in line with the CEDAW requirements.
There those who argue that the CEDAW will make the government have a legal obligation to implement its articles if ratified. While there is another section of the senators and influential persons who argue that the country is already implementing CEDAW provision even without the ratification.
In such poisoned environment, possibilities of the Convention being ratified this year are remote, particularly with the elections just around the corner.
Those against the Convention may use it as campaign issue against those supporting it, particularly because it has been associated with pushing for abortion rights and free access to medical care.
Acutely aware of this, civil society organisations in the United States are putting in place a machinery that is going, from next year, to educate the public on the benefits of their government ratifying the Convention.
The United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ms Susan Rice, says in a statement posted on the Mission’s website and which she repeated on Monday when she met NGOs attending the CSW:
“The Obama administration strongly supports this landmark treaty, and is committed to United States ratification.”
She adds: “The battle to eliminate discrimination and enshrine women’s equal rights is not yet won. The US will not rest until, when with others, we make this shared goal a reality.”
But going by what is happening in some States, there is some ray of hope. The States of Iowa, Massachusetts and North Carolina have passed resolutions in support of the CEDAW. San Francisco has changed its laws in accordance with the ordinance to CEDAW.
For now, the encouraging pronouncements being made remain statements of intention until the ratification is done.
