IV. GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS ADOPTED BY
THE COMMITTEE ON THE ELIMINATION OF
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN
Thirtieth session (2004)
General recommendation No. 25: Article 4, paragraph 1,
of the Convention (temporary special measures)
I. Introduction
1.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women decided at its twentieth
session (1999), pursuant to article 21 of the Convention, to elaborate a general recommendation on
article 4, paragraph 1, of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women.
This new general recommendation would build, inter alia, on earlier general
recommendations, including general recommendation No. 5 (seventh session, 1988), on temporary
special measures, No. 8 (seventh session, 1988), on implementation of article 8 of the Convention,
and No. 23 (sixteenth session, 1997), on women in public life, as well as on reports of States parties
to the Convention and on the Committee’s concluding comments to those reports.
2.
With the present general recommendation, the Committee aims to clarify the nature and
meaning of article 4, paragraph 1, in order to facilitate and ensure its full utilization by States
parties in the implementation of the Convention. The Committee encourages States parties to
translate this general recommendation into national and local languages and to disseminate it widely
to the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, including their administrative
structures, as well as civil society, including the media, academia, and human rights and women’s
associations and institutions.
II. Background: the object and purpose of the Convention
3.
The Convention is a dynamic instrument. Since the adoption of the Convention in 1979, the
Committee, as well as other actors at the national and international levels, have contributed through
progressive thinking to the clarification and understanding of the substantive content of the
Convention’s articles and the specific nature of discrimination against women and the instruments
for combating such discrimination.
4.
The scope and meaning of article 4, paragraph 1, must be determined in the context of the
overall object and purpose of the Convention, which is to eliminate all forms of discrimination
against women with a view to achieving women’s de jure and de facto equality with men in the
enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. States parties to the Convention are
under a legal obligation to respect, protect, promote and fulfil this right to non-discrimination for
women and to ensure the development and advancement of women in order to improve their
position to one of de jure as well as de facto equality with men.
5.
The Convention goes beyond the concept of discrimination used in many national and
international legal standards and norms. While such standards and norms prohibit discrimination on
the grounds of sex and protect both men and women from treatment based on arbitrary, unfair
and/or unjustifiable distinctions, the Convention focuses on discrimination against women,
emphasizing that women have suffered, and continue to suffer from various forms of discrimination
because they are women.