Three Decades of CEDAW Committee General Recommendations

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is the most prominent, although not flawless, women’s rights treaty. Yet, the slow, haltered or even backward steps we have witnessed with regard to gender equality beg the question, what role can CEDAW play in delivering a more transformative set of gender-responsive laws at the domestic level? This article is centred on the two-fold goal of stronger domestication of women’s rights norms and the provision of more systematic standards to enhance treaty body reporting. With these goals in mind, this article offers the results of a structured analysis of the CEDAW Committee’s 38 General Recommendations issued between 1986 and 2020, in order to establish a roadmap for the enactment of gender-responsive domestic laws and policies grounded in women’s rights norms. Seven core demands or ‘criteria’ emerge and serve to guide States Parties towards achieving gender-responsive legal and policy reform. At a key juncture in CEDAW’s history and at a moment when, in the eyes of some, international human rights treaties may prove inadequate to manage today’s threats to fundamental human rights, these seven priorities not only provide a viable, scalable and evidence-based roadmap to inform the enactment of gender-responsive domestic laws but they also create a basis for enhanced reporting to and compliance with CEDAW.