Individual communications

CEDAW Working Methods and Guidelines on Individual Communications

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women can receive and consider individual communications, also known as complaints, from or on behalf of a person or group of persons claiming to be victims of a violation of the Convention by a State party (set out in the Optional Protocol to the Convention).

For the Committee to be able to receive individual complaints, the State party concerned must have recognized the Committee’s competence by ratifying the Optional Protocol. You can check this here.

The Committee has adopted Working Methods on individual communications:

• CEDAW Working Methods on individual communications (Word)

Recent complaints

The Committee publishes a list of all complaints that have been registered on an annual basis. This list is not comprehensive:

• Table of pending cases (Excel)

Follow up

The CEDAW Working Group on communications under the Optional Protocol follows up on ongoing CEDAW communications. For more information on the follow-up procedure to CEDAW views, see the following link.

• Table of Follow-up to Views

Learn more: Treaty bodies communications page.