Article 23 and Article 24 of the CEDAW
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/07
Article 23
Nothing in the present Convention shall affect any provisions that are more conducive to the achievement of equality between men and women which may be contained: (a) In the legislation of a State Party; or
(b) In any other international convention, treaty or agreement in force for that State.
Article 24
States Parties undertake to adopt all necessary measures at the national level aimed at achieving the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Convention.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979)
The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women or the Convention deals with some of the aspects of equality of men and women around the world, which includes the stipulations about the necessary measures by nations bound to it.
The measures needed to be able to enforce equality, of which the country has considered themselves agreed to via being a signatory to the Convention. That makes the Convention’s moral statements about gender equality ethical imperatives rather than dreams.
Article 23 deals with the relative consideration of gender equality. That is, some means of stipulations enforced in different parts of the world provide a firmer foundation for the equality of the sexes. In the instances of the other documents listed at the separate appendix of this article, and others, some may have more appropriate or better ideas for gender equality.
Within that frame of viewing the world, the ideals within any of these documents exist subservient or subordinate in emphasis, purpose, and eventual implementation to the ones that will, likely, produce the greater attainment of the lofty ideal – though quite mundane in any rational analysis – of gender equality.
The idea is to make an environment in which there are more conducive situations for the equality of the sexes, or of “men and women.” Article 23(a) speaks to the legislation of the State Party or of the government in power at that particular moment in the country’s history.
If a nation or State Party becomes morally and legally bound to the Convention, there exists the tacit assumption of consistency on the part of the country to continue to endorse and implement gender equality, whether socialist, liberal, conservative, or other political parties happen to win the vote and take power in the nation. This gives a sense of the higher-order ethical deliberation here.
This higher-order implementation of gender equality becomes international emphasized – where the national emphasis is in Article 23(a) – in Article 23(b). It speaks to the series of international conventions, treaties, and agreements to be enforced at the level of the nation-state.
Those international rights documents stipulate the need to provide some level of force for gender equality at the level of each bound nation. With respect to the emphasis, the eventual implementation is at the level of the State Party, even though the stipulation may include the national or the international statement of emphasis in its particular statement.
Article 24 speaks to the similar emphasis of the nations using any reasonable measures within their powers throughout the country to enforce the equality. Because the need is of the “full realization” of the rights of women with men.
It comes in a variety of packaged forms, but it does not emphasize anything current instantiation of the Convention. As covered in other articles, the Convention can be updated at any point based on stipulations, in itself, that state the need to update the Convention based on scientific and technological advances, especially those coming more rapidly at us.
These two related articles merely stipulate the need to have the equality statements in the international documents and then to have those equal rights implemented at the national level, but the implementation should come with the caveat: if there are better or worse means by which to set about actualizing those rights, then we should work within those better representations of the rights in reality – because cultural and social differences exist, and similar with the notions of what should or should not be emphasized more or less in their own country.
–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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