Islamic Reservations to Human Rights Conventions. A Critical Assessment

In this article, a variety of Islamic reservations to CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child that have been entered by Muslim countries are discussed and compared. The author concludes that after having encountered many criticisms that were directed at Islamic reservations, some Muslim countries have reacted by formulating or rewriting reservations in ways that that are meant to disguise the nature and scope of the discriminatory policies behind their reservations. The result is that the purport of the reservations will likely be unclear to persons not already familiar with the treatment of women in the legal systems involved. The author finds that although states are growing more reluctant to stipulate that Islamic law stands in the way of adhering to human rights, this does not mean that they are actually rethinking substantive policies that conflict with human rights.