Can CEDAW address the issue of Gender-based Poverty in Urban Areas?
By 2050, 66 per cent of the world’s population is projected to live in urban areas, and UN Women estimates that one in seven people live in deprived urban areas today. Women will form the majority of the people living in cities and evidence from UN Habitat shows that they are increasingly affected by urban poverty such as inadequate access to shelter and service. However, none of the UN human rights conventions or treaties include a specific reference to gender-based poverty in urban areas or explicit human rights obligations to address this concern. Nevertheless, despite the supposed limitation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) framework to rural areas, the argument of “rural-like” living conditions raised in L.A. et al v North Macedonia before the CEDAW Committee provides an opportunity to address gender-based poverty in urban areas.
See the full Blog Post written by Kelly Bishop on the Oxford Human Rights Blog.
