The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW): from its radical preamble to its contemporary intersectional approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT The global women’s movement has been one of the key actors in the origins and development of current United Nations (UN) treaties for women’s human rights, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979). The text of the Preamble to CEDAW, particularly, resulted from non-Western perspectives on women’s organising around the UN International Women’s Year (1975) and the UN Decade for Women (1976–1985). This article traces the longer history of CEDAW and discusses the CEDAW Committee’s subsequent work since the mid-1980s to expand and renew the Treaty by adopting the so-called General Recommendations. It argues that the CEDAW Committee in recent years developed a holistic and explicitly intersectional approach, in line with the Convention’s original but often overlooked Preamble.