Designation of responsibilities

Who is responsible within the State, for fulfilling obligations under the CEDAW Convention? 

This is equal to asking who is responsible for women in the country. In most countries, there is a national machinery for women and it is mistakenly understood that this machinery has prime responsibility to implement the CEDAW Convention, write the report etc. 

The obligations under the CEDAW Convention falls in all fields so every sector and division of government, horizontally and vertically, has to take responsibility. This requires a multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral approach. 

While the CEDAW Convention is a legal instrument, it recognises that legal rights cannot be exercised unless there is development for women in the economic and social fields. Therefore, in order to implement the convention effectively and to facilitate a multi-sectoral approach, it would require acknowledgement of central responsibility from the Attorney General's Office, the Economic Planning Unit, the Public Services Department, and the Treasury. All other sectors would have to take on specific responsibility too.

The national machinery for women in a country would have to play a catalytic and coordinating role to ensure consistency in the understanding of the meaning and scope of the CEDAW Convention among all sectors, to facilitate monitoring of implementation, identification of obstacles and capacity-building. The report itself would have to be the collective expression of a political commitment from all sectors of the Government to implement the CEDAW Convention. The national machinery for women would have to play a critical advocacy role in mobilising this political commitment.