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Introduction. On 18 December 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

CEDAW is an international human rights treaty adopted in 1979. The UK agreed to follow it in 1986. By following CEDAW, the UK agrees to take measures to ensure women's full enjoyment of human rights on an equal basis with men, including: eradicating stereotyped roles for women and men.

On 18 December 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. It entered into force as an international treaty on 3 September 1981 after the twentieth country had ratified it.

The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (OP-CEDAW) is an international treaty which establishes complaint and inquiry mechanisms for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

CEDAW was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 19, 1979, coming into force as a treaty on December 3, 1981. Today, it is one of the most broadly endorsed human rights treaties – it has been ratified or acceded to by 187 countries to date, or about 90 per cent of the UN membership.

There is a worldwide consensus that the CEDAW principles are important goals: to date, 186 of 193 countries have ratified the treaty. The United States is one of only seven countries—including Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Nauru, Palau and Tonga—that have not yet ratified CEDAW.

Focused and wellorganized grassroots opposition has prevented legislation recommending ratification of CEDAW from making it to a vote on the Senate floor. Ultimately, the answer to the question of why the United States has not ratified CEDAW is that the stakes of doing so are high for both sides.

On December 18, 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was opened for signature. Sweden became the first state to deposit the treaty on July 2, 1980. The treaty came into force and closed for signature on September 3, 1981 with the ratification of 20 states.