We welcome the opportunity to provide this parallel report to inform the List of Issues Prior to Reporting being adopted by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women at its 88th Pre-Sessional Working Group meeting, in advance of its forthcoming examination of Ireland’s compliance with the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (‘CEDAW’).
We would like to draw the Committee’s particular attention to a number of thematic areas requiring priority focus during Ireland’s examination, informed by our Strategy Statement and ongoing engagement with civil society. While there have been positive developments since 2017, the Concluding Observations by the Committee have not seen sufficient progress. CEDAW has not yet been incorporated into domestic law, and the State maintains its reservations to Articles 11(1), 13(a) and 16(1)(d) and 16(1)(f) despite the Committee’s recommendations. Furthermore, our consistent observation, including throughout UN review processes, is that while the State publishes numerous strategies and action plans, they do not adequately improve rights protections for communities in practice, due to insufficient monitoring and implementation.
In writing this report, we have reflected the Committee’s position that:
“intersectionality is a basic concept for understanding the scope of the general obligations of State parties.”
This report considers the multiple and intersecting inequalities experienced by structurally vulnerable women throughout, as well as focusing on specific groups of women in the final section, in line with the Committee’s thematic approach.