International standards on womenan's rights and gender equality

• Author: Deniz Devrim - Roland Blomeyer - Paul Dalton - Senni Mut-Tracy
• Pages: 12-15

Policy Department, Directorate-General for Extern al Policies

12

1 International standards on women’s rights and gender

equality

1.1 UN and regional treaties on discrimination against women and

gender equality

There is a sizeable corpus of international treaties, declarations and programmes for action on

discrimination against women and gender equality, including the International Covenant on Civil and

Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Elimination of All For ms o f Discrim inatio n ag ainst Women

(CEDAW), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPfA), the Declar ation on the Elimination of

Violence aga inst Wo men, and the Vienn a Declaration and Programme o f Action. At t he regional level

treaties include the Inter-American Convention on the Eradication of Violence against Women

(Organisation of American States), the Maputo Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (African Union),

and the Is tanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic

violence (Council of Europe) . The principle of gender equality is central to the UN Sustainable Development

Goals, bot h as one of the goals themselves, but also as a cross-cuttin g element, eit her explicitly or im plicitly,

for the a chievement o f all 17 goa ls.