My reply is a result of the perspectives I gained from convening and leading a successful initiative to secure a Resolution in Support of CEDAW for Fairfax County, Virginia. My county has one million people and is located on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. (USA) We secured the CEDAW Resolution on March 8, 2022, International Women’s Day.

Cities for CEDAW is a grassroots civil society campaign that provides advocacy tools and educational materials to dynamic persevering women focused on promoting human rights. This campaign‘s mission is to “Make the Global Local.” It aims to plant human rights principles of fairness, equity, and dignity for women in the minds of individuals across all borders, in towns large and small, and regardless of overarching entrenched legal frameworks.

This campaign was organized in 2014 under the leadership of the Women’s Intercultural Network, in partnership with The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights/The Leadership Conference Education Fund and the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, New York. While this campaign has its foothold in the United States, it has relevance to women everywhere and especially to those living in local communities.

The worldwide response to COVID 19 challenges the belief that national governments, most of whom have adopted CEDAW, have comprehensive human rights protections for women. Cities for CEDAW’s resources and movers and shakers, now more than ever, support a cultural shift towards viewing decisions and policies through a human rights lens.

Cities for CEDAW is an organic local movement. It takes individuals on a journey from inspiration to action. Once a person’s awareness is raised of the disproportionate impact Covid 19 has on women in our own communities, it becomes critically important to push back against policy decisions that ignore or minimize increased poverty rates for women, increased gender-based violence, reduced economic opportunities and decreased access to reproductive health care. When national governments fail to adopt CEDAW or own up to their obligations under CEDAW, then it is time for local advocates to embed human rights-based decisions in their community culture.

Women have been planting this seed for generations. As the UN Human Rights Committee’s first Chairperson Eleanor Roosevelt said: universal human rights begin “in small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world… Such are the places where every man, woman and child seek equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.” https://www.un.org/en/%E2%80%9Cclose-home%E2%80%9D-universal-declaration-human-rights-0

Local Cities for CEDAW initiatives are sprouting across the USA. The catalogue of recent city and county CEDAW resolutions and ordinances can be accessed at http://www.citiesforcedaw.org At the same time, a coalition of US based NGO’s pursues federal adoption of CEDAW. The coalition, known as the RATIFY MOVEMENT, counts the IAW among its charter members. https://www.una-sf.org/ratify-movement#:~:text=The%20RATIFY%20MOVEMENT%20Coalition%20is,are%20kept%20to%20a%20minimum.