The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW) is essentially a dead letter in Islamic countries, because of Sharia — and the Koran’s command to beat disobedient women (4:34).
“Human Rights vs. Sharia: Violence Against Women,” by Valentina Colombo for Hudson NY, October 5:
The great irony of the recent International Conference on Violence Against Women hosted by the Italian Ministry for Equal Opportunities, is that if the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW), ratified by 185 countries, or over 90% of the United Nations, were implemented, there would be no need for this conference.
One if the main problems is the distance between laws, international conventions and treaties – and their implementation.
In Islamic countries, for example, although 46 out of 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) ratified it, they did so with “reservations.” It seems there are Muslim intellectuals and human rights defenders who are still ambivalent about pursuing engagement with Islam and Islamic law, and gender equality and women’s empowerment in Muslim societies.
Even though the 1990 Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, the 1994 Charter on Human Rights, and the 2005 OIC Covenant on the Rights of the Child in Islam indicate that the relationship between Islam and Human Rights is crucial – – due to the place of Islam and Islamic law in the social, cultural, political, and legal affairs of states’ parties – CEDAW has more “reservations” placed on it than any other Human Rights treaty. States’ parties identified as Islamic have placed “reservations” even broader in scope and ground, maintaining that they will not implement any article against the principles of sharia. The Convention ends up, therefore, as though they had never signed it.
In October 2000, even the Saudi Government signed the Convention, but now is Saudia Arabia, as someone said, women are not persons: they cannot drive – they cannot do anything – without their “guardian’s” permission. Is this a contradiction? Not at all: Saudi Arabia signed CEDAW with the following “reservations”:
· “1. In case of contradiction between any term of the Convention and the norms of Islamic law, the Kingdom is not under obligation to observe the contradictory terms of the Convention.
· “2. The Kingdom does not consider itself bound by paragraph 2 of article 9 of the Convention and paragraph 1 of article 29 of the Convention.”…