Guide to CEDAW’s General Recommendation No. 30 on the Rights of Indigenous Women and Girls

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The Guide has been produced by Indigenous Peoples Rights International in partnership with the International Indigenous Women’s Forum (FIMI). It concerns the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women’s (“CEDAW”) General Recommendation No. 39 on the rights of Indigenous women and girls (“GR39”). CEDAW is one of the ten United Nations ‘treaty bodies’. Treaty bodies are committees of independent experts that monitor compliance with the core United Nations human rights treaties.

CEDAW is composed of 23 experts on women’s rights from around the World, elected by the States parties to the 1979 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (“the Convention”). At present, 189 States have ratified the Convention (known as ‘States parties’), while 114 have ratified the 1999 Optional Protocol to the Convention (“the OP”). The latter allows for the filing of international complaints (known as ‘communications’) in relation to violations of the Convention, including as these may be interpreted by using GR39. It may also provide for access to the ‘inquiry procedure’, which can be used where States parties have agreed to it and CEDAW receives “reliable information indicating grave or systematic violations” of the Convention (this and the communications procedure are discussed in Section III).

Adopted in October 2022, GR39 is an important instrument that seeks to address the specific experiences of Indigenous women and girls and the various forms of discrimination that they face as well as the intersections or connections between Indigenous Peoples’ rights and women’s rights, individually and collectively (see Section II). An Indigenous legal scholar explains that “for indigenous women, the key issue is to pursue a human rights framework that not only simultaneously advances individual and collective rights, but also explicitly addresses gender-specific human rights violations of indigenous women in a way that does not disregard the continued practices and effects of colonialism.”

In addition to violations of their collective rights, Indigenous women and girls experience discrimination and other serious challenges because of their gender, their status as members of Indigenous Peoples, and perhaps for other reasons as well (e.g., as minors or their economic status). This ‘intersection’ of different forms of discrimination as well as the differential impacts on Indigenous women and girls are explained in GR39. It also stresses the role of Indigenous women and girls as leaders and active agents within their communities and outside of them – not as passive victims – observing also that that they often risk serious harm due to their defense of Indigenous Peoples’ and women’s human rights (7, 43).

With this in mind, this Guide explains the standards and procedures used by CEDAW and the role of GR39 in relation to both (Section III and IV). It aims to make CEDAW and GR39 more accessible to Indigenous Peoples, women and girls and to facilitate engagement in support of their rights, both nationally and internationally. While GR39 is a product of CEDAW, importantly, it was promoted by and then developed following substantial consultation with Indigenous Peoples and women and their organizations. It may be (and has been) used to address the rights of Indigenous women and girls by other international and national human rights bodies, national courts or other mechanisms.8 It is, therefore, relevant beyond just CEDAW.

We hope that this Guide assists with this advocacy as well as respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights more broadly. We also strongly recommend that you read and refer to the original text of GR39 if approaching CEDAW or other bodies, not the summarized text herein. References to GR39 in the text or footnotes will be followed by the paragraph number.