Across the world, women and girls are often denied their fundamental human rights – not always because protection doesn’t exist in legislation, but because laws are poorly implemented or ignored. International and regional human rights treaties provide binding commitments that States must uphold, offering a critical foundation for advancing all women’s and girls’ rights.
Most international and regional treaties have a committee of human rights experts that measure how well countries are living up to their obligations under the specific treaty. Countries report on their progress and civil society and advocacy groups can provide information, including complaints of violations in individual cases, to the committee to assess how well a country is doing.
Together with our partners, we use international laws and mechanisms to challenge injustice, drive legal reform, and amplify the voices of survivors and advocates.
In 2024, we made 40 legal submissions covering 26 countries to UN bodies. So far, three quarters have directly shaped official recommendations.
International human rights advocacy involves engaging with various UN and regional mechanisms in order to advance the protection and promotion of the human rights of all women and girls. There are two types of human rights monitoring mechanisms within the United Nations system: treaty-based bodies and charter-based bodies.
Civil society organizations (CSOs) working on the promotion and protection of women’s and girls’ rights have a vital role to play in ensuring governments promote and protect human rights for all, including:
Of the ten core international human rights treaties, these three are the most critical to our work:
Sometimes described as the “bill of rights” for women, this treaty was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and was the first to address women’s rights as human rights. CEDAW is the international standard used to measure individual countries’ progress to eliminate laws that discriminate against or harm women and girls.
Outlining the rights of children, including civil, social, economic, and health rights, this treaty changed the way children are viewed and treated as human beings with their own distinct set of rights. This treaty is especially useful to us when we take on cases of girls’ rights.
Because the Palermo Protocol commits ratifying states to prevent and combat trafficking in persons, protect and assist victims of trafficking and promote cooperation among states to meet those objectives, it is essential to our work to end trafficking for sexual exploitation.
Alongside global treaties, powerful regional systems have emerged. These provide specific, locally adapted legal standards and powerful venues for civil society advocacy.
As one of the most advanced and progressive legal tools on women’s rights, the Maputo Protocol is a groundbreaking treaty for Africa and a model for other nations. We, as a founder member of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR), campaigned for the development, adoption, and ratification of the Protocol and continue to advocate for African nations to use the Protocol as a roadmap for promoting women’s rights. The treaty sets a high standard and, with SOAWR, we have helped build the capacity and skills of thousands of activists, legal practitioners, and state officials to use it effectively.
This was the first instrument to specifically define violence against women and to call for systems to protect and defend women’s rights as a way to combat violence and discrimination. This treaty spells out the commitment of nations in the Americas to protect and defend women’s rights and prevent abuse.
The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence is based on the understanding that violence against women is a form of gender-based violence that is committed against women because they are women.
The state must fully address it in all its forms and to take measures to prevent violence against women, protect its victims, and prosecute the perpetrators. Failure to do so would make it the responsibility of the state.
The convention leaves no doubt: there can be no real equality between women and men if women experience gender-based violence on a large scale and state agencies and institutions turn a blind eye.
The Directive provides binding legislation to prevent trafficking, to prosecute criminals effectively, and better to protect the victims, in line with the highest European standards. The Directive takes a victim-centered approach, including a gender perspective, to cover actions in different areas such as criminal law provisions, prosecution of offenders, victims’ support and victims’ rights in criminal proceedings, prevention, and monitoring of the implementation.
Like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Children’s Charter is a comprehensive instrument that sets out rights and defines universal principles and norms for the status of children. The ACRWC and the CRC are the only international and regional human rights treaties that cover the whole spectrum of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights.
