Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women concludes sixty-fifth session

ROUNDUP
 
Adopts Concluding Observations on the Reports of Canada, Burundi, Bhutan, Belarus, Argentina, Switzerland, Honduras, Armenia, Bangladesh, Estonia, and the Netherlands
 
GENEVA (18 November 2016) - The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women concluded its sixty-fifth session today after adopting its concluding observations and recommendations on the implementation of the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by Canada, Burundi, Bhutan, Belarus, Argentina, Switzerland, Honduras, Armenia, Bangladesh, Estonia, and the Netherlands.

The Committee’s concluding observations and recommendations on the 11 reports are available on the webpage of the session.  Press releases on the public meetings in which the reports were considered can be found here.

During the session, in addition to considering the reports of the States parties, the Committee held public informal meetings with non-governmental organizations and national human rights institutions to discuss the situation in the countries whose reports were considered.  It also looked at individual complaints, as well as inquiries under the Optional Protocol to the Convention, in closed meetings.
 
At the beginning of the meeting, Patricia Schulz, Committee Rapporteur, introduced a draft report enclosing the concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of the States parties considered, and the draft report of the Working Group of the Whole.  The Committee adopted the two reports, as well as the provisional agenda for the sixty-sixth session and the provisional report of the sixty-fifth session.
 
In her closing remarks, Yoko Hayashi, Committee Chairperson, expressed satisfaction that 71 States had attended the informal meeting with the States parties to the Convention on 17 November; this confirmed that the Committee was comprehensively covering very relevant issues, such as gender-based violence against women, disaster risk reduction and climate change, and the right to education.  The Committee had held many stimulating meetings during the session, including with the International Parliamentary Union and its President on the national implementation of the Convention; with the Special Rapporteur on violence against women to strategize the work of the respective mandates; with the Chief of the United Nations Statistics Division on the development of indicators of the Sustainable Development Goal 5.1.1; and with the Committee against Torture to exchange experiences in addressing violence against women.
 
The Chairperson stressed that with the support of all experts, the Committee was able to engage in constructive dialogues with 11 States parties and adopt concluding observations on their periodic reports.  One cross-cutting issue in those dialogues and concluding observations was the question of resources, both human and financial, allocated to national machineries for the advancement of women.  In each case, the Committee made it clear to the States parties that sufficient resources needed to be allocated to their national machineries to enable them to play a leading role in the implementation of the Convention and the coordination of related programmes and policies.
 
Ms. Hayashi then turned to the outgoing Committee members: Ms. Al-Dosari, Ms. Bailey, Mr. Bruun, Ms. Pimentel, Ms. Pomeranzi, and Ms. Zou, and thanked them for their outstanding contributions.  As her term as Chairperson was coming to end, Ms. Hayashi thanked all Committee members for their support and cooperation over the past two years and stressed that the Committee’s work would be even more needed in the current socio-political environment.
 
The sixty-sixth session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women will take place in Geneva from 13 February to 3 March 2017, during which reports of the following States parties will be considered: El Salvador, Germany, Ireland, Jordan, Micronesia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine.

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For use of the information media; not an official record