TUESDAY 18th JUNE
6.30pm (Registration from 6pm) - 8pm followed by drinks
53-54 Doughty Street, London, WC1N 2LS (click here for a map)
On 18 December 1979 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women - CEDAW. Women throughout the world have reason to celebrate the existence of CEDAW. It provides a universal normative framework for the condemnation of discrimination against women and for the achievement of ‘the full development and advancement of women for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men’.
Through the work of its monitoring Committee, the Convention has transformed the understanding of sex and gender-based discrimination. This has been instrumental in bringing violence against women and girls onto the international agenda, which made governments accountable for the ways in that women are treated through national legal systems and practices and for their failure to exercise due diligence with respect to the acts of non-state actors. In March of this year, the Committee issued its concluding observations to the United Kingdom’s 8th report, with some commendations but also highlighting areas of concern. We might well ask: where would women be without CEDAW?
Doughty Street's Keina Yoshida, an international human rights specialist, will moderate a conversation between two of the world's leading experts on CEDAW and the work of its monitoring committee, Ms Nahla Haidar and Professor Christine Chinkin.
For a ticket please e-mail events@doughtystreet.co.uk
The event is co-hosted with the Feminist Law of Peace and Security Project at LSE's Centre for Women, Peace and Security, funded by the AHRC and British Academy.
Welcome - Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC
Moderator - Keina Yoshida
Speakers
Nahla Haidar is a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Member of the Working Group on Communications under the Optional Protocol to the Convention and CEDAW’s Rapporteur on Reprisals. Nahla has over 30 years of professional experience mainly within the United Nations System, in various capacities, both at headquarters and in the field, ranging from social development, to relief coordination, to peace-building and to development cooperation. She holds an LLM in Law from Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, and Law degree in International Law from Saint-Josef University (USJ) in Beirut- Lebanon as well as a “licence” in Sociology. Arabic is her mother tongue and she is fluent in French and English. She has been recently elected as Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
Christine Chinkin CMG FBA is Professorial Research Fellow in the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she leads three major projects: ‘A Feminist International Law of Peace and Security’ funded by the AHRC, ‘Gendered Peace’ funded by the ERC and the UKRI GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub. Christine was Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security from 2015-2018. She has been a consultant or advisor to UN bodies on a range of issues including human trafficking gender-based persecution in armed conflict, peace agreements and gender and violence against women.
Christine was a member of the UN fact-finding missions to Gaza in 2007 (Beit Hanoun) and 2009 (the Goldstone Report). She was scientific advisor to the Council of Europe Committee that drafted the Convention on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the 'Istanbul Convention'). Christine is a Fellow of the British Academy, a barrister and an academic member of Matrix Chambers. She was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to advancing women's human rights worldwide.
