Advocate urges Senate to ratify human rights treaty for women

By Linda Myers

"Send a letter to your senators and let them know that 20 years is a long time to wait for ratification of a treaty for basic human rights for women," Linda Tarr-Whelan told a crowd of Law School students and faculty Nov. 4 in the Founders Room of Anabel Taylor Hall.

Linda Tarr-Whelan addresses law students and faculty in the Founder's Room of Anabel Taylor Hall, Nov. 4, while Larry Bush, left, executive director of Cornell's Clarke Center for International and Comparative Legal Studies, looks on. Robert Barker/University Photography

Tarr-Whelan, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on women's issues, was referring to the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW. The U.N.-supported international treaty is up for a U.S. Senate vote this year but must receive 67 votes -- two-thirds of all senators -- to gain U.S. backing.

The treaty merely states that men and women will be treated as equal in both the public and private spheres under the law. It has no actual legal bearing in any country. "Laws must change to bring about equality," said Tarr-Whelan. But "such a treaty can make a huge difference because it's a benchmark that empowers men and women to push their governments to act."

The speaker noted that citizens' movements in the countries that have so far ratified the treaty have already led to improvements in the economic and political status of women, greater involvement of women in political life and greater protections, such as stronger penalties for acts of violence against women.

Spurred two decades ago by an international convention on women's issues, CEDAW has already been ratified by more than 170 nations, including every developed country in the world except the United States, Tarr-Whelan reported. That puts our nation in the company of such past human rights violators as Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iran, she said.

While the treaty may seem like old news -- former President Carter signed it on behalf of the United States in 1980 -- it has been hanging fire in the Senate ever since. It was opposed by Sen. Jesse Helms, who headed the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades and who blocked a full Senate vote. The committee finally approved the treaty, 12 to 7, last summer but "then Iraq took over, and CEDAW sort of slid off the calendar," argued Tarr-Whelan.

Since then, while President George W. Bush has not opposed the treaty, he hasn't advocated for it either, merely presenting it without comment to the Senate for a vote, she noted. However, a requirement has since been imposed that the treaty also be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice, headed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, a vigorous opponent of CEDAW in the past, possibly leading to further delays.

Tarr-Whelan pointed out to the audience: "You live in a place where the birthplace of women's rights is just up the road in Seneca Falls," home to 19th-century suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "but even today women's rights is seen by some as a radical idea." For example, fear and misunderstanding of CEDAW have led to absurdly false claims on web sites of some U.S. right-wing groups that ratifying the treaty will lead to the demise of Mother's Day, she reported.

In the United States, "we think of ourselves as a beacon for human rights," commented Tarr-Whelan. While "we've come a long way," ratifying all other U.N. treaties on human rights, including one on race, "now we need to bring together rhetoric and reality and stand with the rest of the world in support of an international treaty for the rights of women," said Tarr-Whelan. Doing so, she said, "is long overdue."

Tarr-Whelan, who now runs a Washington, D.C.-based consultancy on international women's issues, served as the U.S. Representative to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women in1996-2001. The title she holds of U.N. ambassador is granted for life. Her talk was sponsored by the Feminism and Legal Theory Project and the Berger International Legal Studies Program at Cornell Law School.