Realizing Women's Human Rights in Asia: The UN Women's Convention and the Optional Protocol

Abstract

Different international legal agreements have been arrived at by nations to deal with the global problem of discrimination against women, the most important of which is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (the Women's Convention). This paper discusses the importance of the Optional Protocol to the Women's Convention for Asian women, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1999. It provides for an individual complaint procedure against violations of women's rights and allows the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to conduct special investigations into violations of women's rights.Asian countries have been very slow to ratify the Protocol. Many Asian women are not aware of the potential gains and protection that could come from international human rights law for women. To benefit from the Optional Protocol, women's groups and NGOs in Asia would have to promote the idea of individual complaints against their own governments through education and publicity. Their support to individual women to pursue their cases at the international level is deemed indispensable.