Ecuador’s record on women’s rights to face scrutiny

Ecuador’s record on women’s rights to face scrutiny by UN Committee

GENEVA (13 February 2015) – Ecuador’s record on women’s rights will be examined by the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on Thursday 19 February in meetings that will be webcast live.

Ecuador is one of the 188 States parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and so is required to submit regular reports to the Committee of 23 independent experts on how it is implementing the Convention.

The Committee will engage in a dialogue with the delegation from the Ecuadorean Government on questions relating to the promotion and protection of women’s rights in the country, and will also hear from NGO representatives. The session will take place in Conference Room XVI at Palais des Nations in Geneva from 10:00- 17:00 (04:00 – 11:.00 in Quito). The live webcast can be viewed athttp://www.treatybodywebcast.org/.

Among the possible issues to be discussed are: violence against women; criminalization of women who undergo abortion in cases of rape; measures to tackle practices such as “de-homosexualization” clinics; sexual violence against girls in schools, lack of prosecutions and convictions against perpetrators; access to education for women and girls in rural areas; measures to address high rate of teenage pregnancy; increasing prevalence of HIV/AIDS; discrimination against women in accessing formal employment, and impact on women’s rights of megaprojects to exploit natural resources, including water, mining and oil.

Ecuador’s written report and more information can be found here:
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/SessionDetails1.aspx?SessionID=901&Lang=en

The concluding observations on Ecuador and the other States being examined – Gabon, Azerbaijan, Tuvalu, Denmark, Kyrgyzstan, Eritrea, and Maldives - will be published on 6 March here:
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/SessionDetails1.aspx?SessionID=901&Lang=en

ENDS

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