A Study on Reservations made to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol : How to Guarantee the Effectiveness of Treaties(Part 3)(Special Issue Dedicated to Professor Hiromi ANDO)

This paper analyzes the influence of reservations to the effectiveness of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (hereinafter referred as "CEDAW") and of the Optional Protocol to this Convention (hereinafter referred as "the Optional Protocol") in guaranteeing women's human rights. Reservations to treaties allow states to join a multilateral treaty when states agree to the object and purpose of the treaty in general but find that some provisions do not comform to their domestic laws, customs, or practices. At the same time, however, reservations pose the danger of tampering with the object and purpose of treaties, especially when it comes to human rights treaties. In this part, I classify all the reservations made to CEDAW using the following criteria: the reasons for reservations that States Parties claim for each provision; specific objects of reservations, the terrotorial affiliation of reservations, temporal reservations, and various other kinds of reservations. My findings reveal that most developed countries cite their domestic laws as the reason for their reservations, while Islamic countries cite either their religion or domesic laws, which are based on the Islamic Shariah. I also classify all the States Parties which made reservations to CEDAW provision by provision, and by objections raised by other States Parties. My findings demonstrate that except Mexico, only Western European and other states, namely developed countries, raise objections to the reservations made by States Parties which are all developing countries. At the same time, almost no States Parties raised objections to Western countries which made many reservations, such as France and the United Kingdom. Indeed, this fact may suggest the existence of a double-standard among developed countries concerning the promotion of women's human rights.10KJ00005058112論文Articledepartmental bulletin pape