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Thursday October 25, 2007

Argentine Senate approves the ratification of the CEDAW Protocol

Claudia Florentín, BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, November 3, 2006

The convention was approved by the United Nations in 1979. In 1985 the National Congress Taxi Heathrow Airport ratified it, and with the constitutional reform of 1994 it became a constitutional measure. The CEDAW Protocol that guarantees the application of the rights established in the convention was adopted by the U.N. in 1999. In December, 2004 Néstor Kirchner, after much coming and going, asked that the protocol be quickly ratified and the consensus reached among the principal parliamentary blocs allowed the matter to go before the parliament without any prior commission study and recommendation.    

The Argentine CEDAW Project of the Inter American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH) has expressed its enormous satisfaction with the parliamentary decision. In a press statement it congratulates the senators who voted for the approval and encourages the House of Representatives to follow in a similarly expeditious manner so as to bring about the final ratification by the executive power. Likewise, it expresses its recognition of the efforts on the part of all the persons, institutions and organizations with which it has been working since its establishment in the country, towards the achieving of this historic objective for human rights in Argentina. 

To date, Argentina is the only member country of MERCOSUR which has not ratified the document, already ratified by 82 countries in the world. According to the women, the step taken by the National Senate brings closer the goal of settling the debt with women’s human rights.

In an interview with Página 12, Soledad García Muñoz, an external consultant for IIDH, reminded that very influential religious sectors have attempted to create myths, such as that of the treaty being an assault against the national sovereignty, or that it opens the doors for the legalizing of abortion. She did recognize though that there are many churches and religious groups that have strongly supported the treaty, for example those that are a part of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI). 

According to the Spanish lawyer, “This is a treaty that does not create new rights. The myths go hand in hand with a lack of understanding existent among many sectors of the population, with regard to the meaning and importance of women’s rights. Fourier once said that the progress of a society can be measured in terms of that of its women, as a group that has been historically relegated in the achieving of its rights. Today Argentina has taken a fundamental step forward toward women’s progress and, therefore, that of all the society.” 

Pastor Viviana Pinto, Coordinator of CLAI’s Women’s Forum in Argentina, told ALC that women from many organizations had gathered in the parliament building, after having completed a list of persons to be authorized to enter. To their great surprise and indignation, access was refused them even though the debate on the protocol should be public. “After a couple of hours and the interceding by some officials, we were able to follow the debate on closed circuit television. We thought it paradoxical, that while a protocol against discrimination was being debated, we were being discriminated against right there and then,” said Pinto. 

After long hours of waiting and unsuccessful attempts to be able to participate in the debate, nothing when compared to the years of struggle for this protocol, it was approved at 9:30 p.m. without reservations, by 32 votes in favor and 12 against. Viviana Pinto, who is a Methodist pastor and who over the last years has headed the demand for this right by the women of CLAI, enthusiastically affirmed that, “It is a step forward but much remains to be done, yet it brings great joy to us all.”