The Other Human Rights Treaty Body: The Work of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women 14 Yale Journal of International Law 1989

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14 Yale J. Int'l L. 1 (1989)
The Other Human Rights Treaty Body: The Work of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

handle is hein.journals/yjil14 and id is 7 raw text is: THE YALE JOURNAL
OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Volume 14, Number 1, Winter 1989
Articles
The Other Human Rights Treaty Body: The
Work of the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women
Andrew C. Byrnest
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ............................................................ 2
I. THE CONVENTION AND THE COMMITTEE ............................... 4
II. CRITERIA FOR ASSESSING THE COMMITTEE'S WORK ..................... 6
III. THE COMPOSITION OF THE COMMITTEE ................................ 8
A. CEDAW'S Membership ........................................... 8
B. The Independence of CEDAW Members ............................. 10
C. The Influence of Regional Groupings on the Work of the Committee ..... 11
IV. THE REPORTING PROCEDURE ............................................. 12
A. The Reports of States Parties: Submission and Adequacy .............. 12
1. Status and quality of the reports ................................ 13
2. Reasons for overdue and inadequate reports ....................... 17
3. Suggestions for improvements .................................. 18
V. CONSIDERATION OF REPORTS BY THE COMMITTEE ....................... 19
A. At Constructive Dialogue . ....................................... 19
B. General Features ................................................. 22
C. CEDAW's Procedures ............................................. 23
t B.A. (Hons), LL.B. (Hons), Australian National University, LL.M., Harvard; Faculty
of Law, University of Hong Kong.
This article was written in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Juridical Science in the Faculty of Law, Columbia University. Much of the research on which
this article is based was carried out during the time I held a Bretzfelder International Law
scholarship at Columbia.
I would like to thank Oscar Schachter, Lori Damrosch, Philip Alston, Rebecca Cook, James
Crawford, Mal Chen, David Stuart, Chafika Sellami-Meslem, Herta Kaschitz, Jacques du
Guerny, and Stephen Isaacs, as well as the editors for their comments on various drafts of this
article. I have also benefited from discussions with Felice Gaer, Arvonne Fraser, John Quinn
and Marjorie Lightman. My particular thanks to Alena Soucek of Columbia University Law
Library for her assistance with my endless requests for assistance in locating U.N. documents.