Disaggregating the Human Rights Treaty Regime

This article discusses the question of treaty efficacy by disaggregating several aspects of the human rights regime and shows that aggregation obscures the nuances of treaty engagement. It shows that compared to other human rights treaties such as the ICCPR, CAT, CMC, or the Rome Statute of the ICC, there is a positive correlation between CEDAW commitment and greater female life expectancy and higher levels of female literacy. In the aggregate, the ratification of CEDAW improves women’s social, economic, and political rights. However, these impacts are conditional on a country’s level of democracy and the presence of strong, autonomous feminist groups.