KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 30
Bandana Rana, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, has said it is committed to playing a key role as per the committee's mandate in countering the backlash against women's rights and gender equality, addressing these barriers, and ensuring that gender equality initiatives are prioritised and supported across all stages of the peace process, with women's full, equal and meaningful participation.
Addressing a meeting with member states in the capacity of the chair of the Task Force on Afghanistan and focal point of the CEDAW Committee on Women Peace and Security in the United Nations recently, she said, "In doing so we keenly seek consistent, visible, and explicit political support from state parties to address the immense suffering to women and girls caused by violent conflicts and take all possible measures to pave the path to gender equality and inclusive and sustainable peace."
To address the women, peace and security agenda more specifically within its mandate, the committee had adopted the General Recommendation of 2013 on 'Women in Conflict Prevention, Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations'.
The primary aim and purpose of the general recommendation is to provide authoritative guidance to states parties to protect women's human rights at all times, advancing substantive gender equality before, during, and after conflict, and ensuring that women's diverse experiences are fully integrated into all peacebuilding, peacemaking, and reconstruction processes.
"However, the committee remains deeply concerned about the current global conjuncture. The world is experiencing a reversal of generational gains in women's rights while witnessing record numbers of violent conflicts. Armed conflicts in different parts of the world are adversely affecting women's human rights as well as their families, communities and societies. Sexual violence in several extreme forms continues to be used as a means of warfare, across the globe," Rana said.
She stated that the committee had repeatedly expressed concern about the gendered impacts of conflict and women's exclusion from conflict prevention efforts, post-conflict transition and reconstruction processes.
States parties have a due diligence obligation to prevent and protect women and girls in all their diversity from all forms of gender-based violence by state and non-state actors, including in armed conflict, and to prosecute perpetrators.
According to Rana, the committee is now closely monitoring two ongoing armed conflicts - in Afghanistan and Ukraine - through two separate dedicated task forces and its state reporting procedure.
In November 2021, the committee had established the task force on Afghanistan and subsequently requested the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to submit an exceptional report on the situation of women and girls in the country since 15 August 2021.
This was the first interaction by a human rights treaty body with the Afghan de facto authorities. In April, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem and Rana herself undertook a joint technical visit to Kabul, she informed.
Similarly, the CEDAW task force on Ukraine was established in February and seeks to monitor the situation of Ukrainian women and girls through engagement with national and international stakeholders as well as with other treaty bodies.
The committee recently held a constructive dialogue with the Government of Ukraine on its ninth periodic report. "The Constructive Dialogue clearly informed about the dire situation of women and girls in the present conflict situation," Rana said.
A version of this article appears in the print on October 31, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
