This week, on 8 March, we mark International Women’s Day, under the theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.” The call is clear: dismantle discriminatory laws and harmful social norms.
“Worldwide, women hold only 64 per cent of the legal rights enjoyed by men. Even where protections exist, women face higher barriers to access legal aid or the courts,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a message to mark the day.
Ensuring every country commits to dismantling discriminatory laws, and to enforcing rights in practice is key to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly.
To discuss what this means in concrete terms, we spoke with Corinne Dettmeijer-Vermeulen, Vice-Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) for the 2025-2028 term. The committee is a body of 23 independent experts on women’s rights from around the world that monitors the implementation of CEDAW.
As you begin your new four-year term, what priorities will guide your work to ensure that all women and girls can fully realise their rights?
What I find most important is the visibility of the Convention. Women and girls must know what their rights are. 189 countries (State Parties) have ratified the Convention, making CEDAW the most widely ratified human rights treaty. This must translate into visibility and access to justice.
What does the CEDAW Committee do for women and girls worldwide?
The CEDAW Committee creates tangible outcomes for women and girls all over the world through its monitoring of States parties, its General Recommendations, and its work under the Optional Protocol.
This Protocol allows the CEDAW Committee to receive complaints from individuals or groups and conduct inquiries if they believe they are victims of a breach of the Convention.
Perhaps because of my background as a judge, I believe we should devote more time and effort to individual communications, as stories of individual violations are more accessible to the public.
During your previous term, you chaired the Working Group on Communications, reviewing individual violations of the CEDAW Convention. What have you learned from these cases?
I greatly enjoyed that work and I consider it extremely important. I have learned that there are many differences in how States Parties address, for example, the protection of women from gender-based violence (GBV), and in the domestic avenues available to women to access justice.
Where can we make progress to achieve equal access to justice for women and girls?
We see that in many countries the law has been written from a male perspective. Criminal law, for example, focuses primarily on the perpetrator. In cases of femicide and violence against women, this often means that the data does not reflect the proportion of women who are or have been victims. And we need data to reflect the full scope of the problem.
The Committee recommended to the Netherlands, for instance, following the “constructive dialogue” on 6 February 2026, to adopt a gender-responsive legislative framework on domestic violence that recognises it as a deeply gendered phenomenon.
Constructive dialogues are discussions where, as independent experts on the Committee, we meet with government representatives to review how their country is implementing the Convention and to assess progress in fulfilling their commitments.
What is your message for young girls who inspire a career in the judiciary and/or international (legal) sector?
Law touches every aspect of our lives in society. Human rights, including women’s rights, must be firmly embedded in national law. Yet this is still not the case everywhere, and that remains a significant challenge at both national and international levels.
This is where you can make a difference. The law is powerful not only in individual cases, where it can transform a single life, but also at a more abstract level, where it can create lasting change for many.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) requires 189 State Parties to eliminate discrimination against women in public and private life, including employment, education, and politics, ensuring equality under the law. Every four years, State Parties submit a report on the implementation of the Convention to the CEDAW Committee.
Early February, the Kingdom of the Netherlands conducted an “exam”, and later that month the CEDAW Committee adopted its tailor-made recommendations (“concluding observations”). The CEDAW Committee recommended the Kingdom of the Netherlands amongst other things to prevent and address forced prostitution and sex work among minors, simplify access to exit programmes for women and girls who wish to leave sex work; to introduce affordable daycare more quickly; and to improve access to safe abortion services throughout the Kingdom.