| Description: | Organized a city-wide event on “Bringing the Women’s Human Rights Treaty to Buffalo: Implementing CEDAW Locally,” designed to grow a local initiative to create a city-based monitoring and accountability system to implement CEDAW’s human rights commitments locally, following the example of a growing number of cities nation-wide. CEDAW, the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, is an international human rights treaty, ratified by 187 of 193 United Nations member states worldwide, that creates an important set of principles-driven framework obligations for addressing gender-based discrimination in all areas of public and private life, including employment, wages, job security, public safety, child-care, domestic violence and reproductive health. Participants included Karen Mulhauser, Chair of the United Nations Association-USA, and driver behind the national and Washington-based “Cities for CEDAW” movement; Sawrie Becker, Chair of the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women; Mary Travers Murphy, Executive Director of the Family Justice Center; Alyssa Weiss, Chief of Staff to Buffalo Common Councilmember Michael LoCurto; and a wide range of other women’s rights advocates and activists from throughout the Buffalo community. The response was remarkable; it was agreed that Cities for CEDAW in Buffalo was not only a good idea, but a necessary initiative. Participants committed to form a steering committee to begin the launch of a campaign to get Buffalo city government to adopt a CEDAW ordinance, with binding annual audit and reporting requirements on the gender impacts of city policies, drawing from the example of San Francisco and Los Angeles, yet tailored to the unique needs of Buffalo, N.Y. This effort will be taken forward over the 2015-2016 academic year, although important strategic advocacy initiatives before the Buffalo Common Council have been underway over the past months, including initiatives to transform the current Commission on Citizens’ Rights and Community Relations into a genuine Commission on Human Rights for the City of Buffalo, the latter being able to serve as the institutional monitoring umbrella for the CEDAW Task Force. |
| Project/Activity Leader(s): | Tara Melish, Associate Professor and Director, Buffalo Human Rights Center |
| Unit: | Law School |
| Department: | Law School |
| City: | Buffalo |
| State: | NY |
| Country: | United States |
| External Funding: | No |
| Start Date: | 2015-04 |
| End Date: | active |
| Internal Partners: | Buffalo Human Rights Center |
| External Partners: | Erie County Commission on the Status of Women; Family Justice Center; United Nations Foundation-USA |
| Are UB students involved? | Yes |
