Brunei Darussalam's Record on Women's Rights to Face Scrutiny by UN CEDAW

Brunei Darussalam’s record on women’s rights will be examined by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for the first time on Wednesday 29 October 2014 in meetings that will be webcast live.

Brunei is one of the 188 States parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and is required to submit regular reports to the Committee of 23 independent experts on how it is implementing the Convention.

Among the issues likely to be discussed by the Committee and the government delegation from Brunei from are: 2013 Penal Code’s discriminatory provisions; steps to adopt legislation criminalising all forms of violence against women; marital rape; women’s participation in political and public life; girls who drop out of school; women migrant workers; minimum age for marriage below 18 in contravention of Convention.

Location: Room XVI, Palais des Nations, Geneva
Time and date: 10:00 – 17:00 (16:00 – 23:00 in Brunei) on 29 October

The webcast of the session will be available here.  

Brunei’s report and a full list of issues that are likely to come up can be found here.

A news conference is scheduled for 7 November at 13:30 at Palais des Nations to discuss CEDAW’s concluding observations on Brunei and the other countries being reviewed – Venezuela; Poland; China, China (Hong Kong), China (Macau); Ghana; Belgium; Guinea, Solomon Islands. The concluding observations will be published on 7 November here.

For more information and media requests, please contact Liz Throssell (+41 (0) 22 917 9466 / ethrossell@ohchr.org

To learn more about the Committee on the Elimination of the Discrimination against Women, click here.