The Women's Convention and its Optional Protocol: Empowering Women to Claim their Internationally Protected Rights

The adoption of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Women's Convention) marks a significant movement in the quest to advance international women's rights. The author argues that the Women's Convention has a weak and indirect means of enforcement, and that the Optional Protocol can help supplement the current enforcement mechanisms by offering a new avenue through which to monitor violations by State Parties of their Convention obligations. The role the Protocol can play as a norm-transforming instrument is however both highly contingent on the domestic facilitation of a woman's right of complaint as well as the limitations within the Protocol itself. Nonetheless, she argues that instruments such as the Optional Protocol can help women lay the foundation for a deeper respect for international women's rights and help achieve their universal application.