| 61st
Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights
Agenda
Item 10: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Statement
by IWRAW Asia Pacific on the Special Rapporteurs on Housing and
Health, and on the question of the Optional Protocol to the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR)
30 March
2005
Geneva, Switzerland
Speaker:
Rea A. Chiongson
I speak on behalf
of International Women’s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW)
an international organisation based in Malaysia and committed to
the domestic implementation of international human rights norms
for the realisation of women’s human rights.
We welcome the
efforts of the Special Rapporteur on Housing to
delve into a deeper understanding of women’s rights to adequate
housing. States have expressed their commitment to gender equality
and non-discrimination through their ratification of the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW), through their adoption and reaffirmation of the Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action, through their equality and
non-discrimination guarantees in their Constitutions and legislations,
among others. In the light of these commitments and consensus, we
urge the members of this Commission to continue the mandate’s
focus on women and to request the Special Rapporteur to consolidate
the gains of the regional consultations and the answers to the questionnaire
and pursue in-depth analysis and discussions on the impact of cultural
practices on women’s right to housing as well as the interlinkages
between women’s housing rights and their enjoyment of their
equal rights to land, property and inheritance. All these should
result in concrete strategies and recommendations for ensuring substantive
equality for women.
We also wish
to take this opportunity to urge the Commission to continue the
mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Health. We
support the rapporteur’s efforts in ensuring that women’s
rights are central to his work. We hope that gender equality and
non-discrimination in relation to the right to health continuous
to be an over-arching framework of the mandate. In this regard,
the mandate should continuously look at the impact of the presence
or absence of health policies and programmes on women. The experiences
of women within groups which are disadvantaged in their access to
health, e.g. persons with disabilities, the poor, indigenous peoples,
rural persons, must be made visible and addressed.
Lastly, IWRAW
is part of the NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
and is fully supportive of its statement. In our view, the value
of an Optional Protocol rests in its ability to strengthen standards
at the domestic level. As it can only be accessed after exhaustion
of domestic remedies, it provides the impetus for national mechanisms
to develop progressive standards.
To significantly contribute
towards the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights,
the Optional Protocol should cover all the rights set forth in the
Covenant, all its components, and all levels of obligation—the
obligations to respect, protect and fulfill. An Optional Protocol
that allows for the selection by States parties of certain rights
or certain aspects of rights undermines the holistic and interdependent
nature of rights.
Furthermore, we emphasise
that the drafting and eventual adoption of an Optional Protocol
is the only option. Failing to do so creates a hierarchy of rights
that diminishes economic, social and cultural rights in favor of
civil and political rights and goes against the consensus in the
1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna that states that,
“All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent
and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights
globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with
the same emphasis”.
We congratulate States
that have participated in the Open-Ended Working Group on the Optional
Protocol for their respect of the views of NGOs and we hope that
the working group will continue to welcome the involvement of NGOs
in the future.
Thank you.
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