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Govt wants to fully implement CEDAW in its tenure

TAWFIQUE ALI
The government intends to fully implement the UN convention on elimination of all forms of discrimination against women during its tenure, Women and Children Affairs Minister Khurshid Jahan Haque said.
"If other Muslim countries can ratify, we too will be able to do so," she said on her return from the 31st session of the UN Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) recently.
Although Bangladesh ratified the CEDAW in 1984, it has ever since shown reservation to the articles, which provide for women's equal rights in matters of property, marriage, divorce and equal guardianship over children.
Women's rights activists said the government's reservation to the articles spelled out a departure from the spirit of the convention.
The successive governments sat reforming personal laws dealing
with women's equal rights to property, marriage and divorce on grounds that they contradicted the existing Shariah laws on family matters.
The government is yet to ratify the article that obliges a state party to take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to establish equality of men and women at all levels and eliminate all forms of discriminations against women.
The minister said she talked to the prime minister and her ministry was currently holding discussions
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with various ministries concerned. She hoped that a positive result would emerge.
Although the minister did not make any direct response as to why the two articles were not ratified during past two decades, she said two other governments in the past did not do the job.
Khurshid Jahan said mere ratification would not ensure an end to women repression, adding: "Women have to earn selfreliance through economic and educational capacity-building to get rid of repression and discrimination."
"Elimination of discrimination against women primarily at the family level is a vital precondition to implementing the CEDAW convention meaningfully," said Khushi Kabir of Nijera Kori, a rights group.
On the government stand that alteration of family laws may hurt people's religious sentiment, Khushi said while criminal, commercial and other civil laws are not determined by religion, why personal matters should be governed by it.
"The existing family laws prescribed by different religions are discriminatory to women and deprive them of their equal rights
to property and personal decision making," she said.
Reservation to a key article, which deals with laws on women's equal inheritance to property and equal rights in personal and family matters, makes partial ratification of the convention virtually meaningless, said Professor Mizanur Rahman, who teaches law at Dhaka University.
Bangladesh's reservation to Article 2, which is regarded as the 'heart of the convention', is a major impediment to establishing the very spirit of the convention -equal rights and elimination of discrimination against women, said Ayesha Khanam of Mahila Parishad, who also attended the UN committee meeting on the CEDAW.
"The government's reservation to it is virtually a departure from the spirit of the convention," she said, "Moreover, it corroborates the country's constitution and does not contradict social values and practices either."
She said that the existing family laws were the root cause of rising dreadful domestic violence.
If a Bangladeshi man marries a foreign woman, the wife and children automatically become Bangladeshi citizens, but the same is not true in case a woman
marries a foreign man, she said.
"The government must enact and enforce appropriate laws and repeal discriminatory ones to ensure equality of women with men in property, inheritance, marriage, divorce and guardianship over children," said the Parishad leader Dr Maleka Banu.
Although the government has increased maternity leave from three to four months, women working in the private sector can not enjoy the benefit, she said.
A 17-member government delegation led by the women affairs minister attended the 31st UN committee session, which reviewed Bangladesh's 5th periodic report on the status of CEDAW implementation in the first week of July in New York.
Advocate Salma Ali, who attended the UN committee session, said the government committed to the UN committee that it would withdraw reservations to the articles, but without specific timeframe.
She said ratification of the convention would not make any sense until and unless articles 2 and 16.1/C were ratified and a uniform family code was framed against domestic violence.