The CEDAW committee: global leader in tackling violence against women and girls

The article examines how the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women has been instrumental in developing state obligations for tackling gender-based violence against women. The Committee first adopted a General Recommendation on violence against women in 1989 and then brought it unequivocally into international human rights law through its ground-breaking General Recommendation 19 in 1992. Twenty-five years later, in 2017, in light of the continuing and deadly violence against women that “remains pervasive in all countries, with high levels of impunity” the Committee updated its work in a further General Recommendation, No. 35. This Recommendation provides guidance to and an anchoring of the legal standards that have evolved over the last 25 years, while also looking forward in terms of current and emerging challenges and trends in this field.