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General Recommendations

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General Recommendations (GR) are authoritative statements on the meaning of the provisions in the CEDAW Convention with respect to the rights of women and the obligations of the State, and on what kind of information should be included in State Party reports. These are produced by the CEDAW Committee, as mandated by Article 21 of the CEDAW Convention.

To date, there are 40 General Comments/Recommendations under the CEDAW Convention (as of November 2024). They can be accessed through the UN Treaty Body Database. They deal with issues related to specific articles that have been noted as a concern during consideration of reports; and on Convention-related issues, such as gender-based violence against women (GR 19), women migrant workers (GR 26), older women (GR 27), and Indigenous women and girls (GR 39).

List of General Recommendations

  1. Reporting by States parties (1986)
  2. Reporting guidelines (1987)
  3. Education and public information programmes (1987)
  4. Reservations (1987)
  5. Temporary special measures (1988)
  6. Effective national machinery and publicity (1988)
  7. Resources (1988)
  8. Implementation of Article 8 of the Convention (1988)
  9. Statistical data (1989)
  10. Tenth anniversary of the adoption of CEDAW (1989)
  11. Technical advisory services for reporting obligations (1989)
  12. Violence against women (1989)
  13. Equal remuneration for work of equal value (1989)
  14. Female circumcision (1990)
  15. Avoidance of discrimination against women in national strategies for the prevention and control of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) (1990)
  16. Unpaid women workers in rural and urban family enterprises (1991)
  17. Measurement and quantification of the unremunerated domestic activities of women and their recognition in the gross national product (1991)
  18. Disabled women (1991)
  19. Violence against women (1992)
  20. Reservations to the Convention (1992)
  21. Equality in marriage and family relations (1994)
  22. Amending Article 20 of the Convention (1995)
  23. Political and public life (1997)
  24. Article 12 of the Convention (women and health) (1999)
  25. Article 4, paragraph 1, of the Convention, on temporary special measures (2004)
  26. Women migrant workers (2008)
  27. Older women and protection of their human rights (2010)
  28. Core obligations of States parties under article 2 of the Convention (2010)
  29. Article 16 – Economic consequences of marriage, family relations and their dissolution (2013)
  30. Women in conflict prevention, conflict and post-conflict situations (2013)
  31. Harmful practices (joint General Recommendation/General Comment with Committee on the Rights of the Child) (2014)
  32. Gender-related dimensions of refugee status, asylum, nationality and statelessness of women (2014)
  33. Women’s access to justice (2015)
  34. Rights of rural women (2016)
  35. Gender-based violence against women, updating general recommendation No. 19 (2017)
  36. Right of girls and women to education (2017)
  37. Gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change (2018)
  38. Trafficking in women and girls in the context of global migration (2020)
  39. Rights of Indigenous women and girls (2022)