Introducing the CEDAW ROCS dataset: A Dataset on the United Nations Treaty the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women––Reservations and Objections of Committed States

Abstract

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Reservations and Objections of Committed States (CEDAW ROCS) dataset provides a rich source of information about the United Nations CEDAW treaty from 1979 to 2022. For the first time, all the signatories, ratifiers, reservations, and objections to CEDAW, quantitatively are visible in one place. The dataset provides details about which states objected to which types of CEDAW reservations, when states withdrew CEDAW reservations, and the most prevalent reservations on CEDAW to date. The data are available in country year format. This research note discusses the motivation for the creation of this dataset and discusses coding decisions for key variables. Descriptive statistics and illustrations of the data are provided. The dataset's capabilities for current human rights and international law scholars are also discussed.

L'ensemble de données sur les réserves et objections des États engagés au CEDAW (CEDAW ROCS) fournit une source d'informations particulièrement riche sur la Convention des Nations Unies sur l’élimination de toutes les formes de discriminations à l'encontre des femmes (CEDAW) entre 1979 et 2022. Pour la première fois, tous les États signataires, États ayant ratifié le traité, toutes les réservations et objections à la CEDAW sont visibles de façon quantitative au même endroit. L'ensemble de données nous renseigne quant aux États ayant formulé une objection à certains types de réserves à la CEDAW, au moment où les États ont retiré leurs réserves et aux réserves prédominantes encore aujourd'hui. Les données sont disponibles sous un format pays/année. Cette note de recherche s'intéresse aux motivations derrière la création de cet ensemble de données et aborde les décisions d'encodage de variables clés. Elle fournit des données statistiques descriptives et des illustrations de données. Elle traite également des capacités de l'ensemble de données pour les chercheurs actuels dans les domaines des droits de l'homme et du droit international.

El conjunto de datos de la CEDAW sobre Reservas y Objeciones de los Estados comprometidos (CEDAWROCS) proporciona una importante fuente de información sobre el tratado de la Convención de las Naciones Unidas sobre la Eliminación de Todas las Formas de Discriminación contra la Mujer (CEDAW, por sus siglas en inglés) entre 1979 y 2022. Por primera vez, pueden verse todos los signatarios, ratificantes, reservas y objeciones a la CEDAW, de forma cuantitativa, en un solo lugar. El conjunto de datos proporciona detalles sobre qué Estados objetaron a qué tipos de reservas de la CEDAW, cuándo los Estados retiraron las reservas de la CEDAW y las reservas más prevalentes sobre la CEDAW hasta la fecha. Los datos están disponibles en formato país-año. Esta nota de investigación debate la motivación para la creación de este conjunto de datos y analiza las decisiones en materia de codificación para las variables clave. Se proporcionan estadísticas descriptivas e ilustraciones de los datos. También debatimos sobre las posibilidades que encierra este conjunto de datos para los académicos actuales en los campos de los derechos humanos y el derecho internacional.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was created in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. The treaty is made up of twenty-nine¹ articles and aims to help increase women's rights and address abuses against women throughout the world. The CEDAW Reservations and Objections of Committed States (CEDAW ROCS) dataset is a detailed resource of use to scholars in international relations and law. The CEDAW ROCS dataset brings together qualitative data on CEDAW provided by the United Nations Treaty Collection (UNTC) into one user-friendly resource. This data links the discussion of state commitment to human rights through treaties as well as the practice of naming and shaming to make changes to behavior surrounding treaties. In Mobilizing for Human Rights Beth Simmons discusses the importance of CEDAW as a human rights treaty to spreading norms (2009). Simmons argues that CEDAW is the most influential human rights treaty, inspiring change for women all over the world (2009); as demonstrated by the paragraph from the beginning of CEDAW below calling for changes to women's livelihood globally.

Recalling that discrimination against women violates the principles of equality of rights and respect for human dignity, is an obstacle to the participation of women, on equal terms with men, in the political, social, economic and cultural life of their countries, hampers the growth of the prosperity of society and the family and makes more difficult the full development of the potentialities of women in the service of their countries and of humanity…. (CEDAW 2023)

The commitment of states to treaties is an imperative vehicle for protecting human rights and conferring meaningful aid to intended beneficiaries. This dataset provides scholars of human rights, law, and international institutions the ability to study the commitment of states to the most influential women's rights treaty (Simmons 2009) and the shortcomings in its use.

Current data on CEDAW can be found through qualitative country and sessional reports provided by the UN, and quantitative data on CEDAW exists within datasets that examine UN treaty commitments. (Englehart and Miller 2014; Zvobgo, Sandholtz, and Mulesky 2020; Eldredge and Shannon 2022; CEDAW 2023; Boyes et al. 2024). However, the CEDAW ROCS dataset provides a new cross-national, time-series dataset on state commitment to CEDAW through ratification, reservations, and objections from 1979 to 2022 in one place. This dataset adds to the current literature on human rights treaty ratification, reservations, objections, and withdrawals (Zvobgo, Sandholtz, and Mulesky 2020; Eldredge and Shannon 2022; Comstock and Vilán 2024; Mulesky, Sandholtz, and Zvobgo 2024; Boyes et al. 2024). This dataset can aid in questions relating to commitment to human rights, laws and procedures of reservations on treaties, and how influential institutions can be in implementing their own on-the-ground goals and will allow scholars to advance scientific research in international law, human rights, international institutions, and gender (Riddle 2002; Simmons 2009; Lupu 2013; Simmons 2013; Englehart and Miller 2014). It can aid in questions relating to commitment to human rights, laws and procedures of reservations on treaties, and how influential institutions can be in implementing their own on-the-ground goals. Additional information regarding the dataset's purpose, construction, and implications are outlined below.

Purpose of Dataset

My contribution to this research is two-fold. First, the CEDAW ROCS dataset provides information about key variables of countries' commitments to CEDAW. These can be expected to influence human rights, domestic law, and women's rights across the globe (Simmons 2009; Byrnes and Freeman 2012; Lupu 2013; Hill and Watson 2019; Edry 2020; Kreutzer and Mitchell 2024). The CEDAW ROCS dataset draws on the UNTC and takes all qualitative data collected by the United Nations Treaty Series on CEDAW and quantifies it into a large-N dataset. By examining which articles states’ place reservations on, scholars can see exactly how committed states are to the goals of the treaty. The number and magnitude of reservations can influence human rights within the state, discussion around the influence of treaties on their intended beneficiaries, and better enforcement of treaties.

Previous research has found that CEDAW has a positive impact on women's rights and behavior toward human rights generally within the state (Simmons 2009; Hill 2010; Lupu 2013). Some scholars have found that CEDAW is a rare treaty in that it does impact human rights levels whereas many other human rights treaties do not (Englehart and Miller 2014). These works establish that states who ratify CEDAW have better human rights metrics, however, they exclusively consider those that ratify. With this dataset, scholars can examine how committed states are, and which articles they hold reservations on, thereby influencing their human rights responses. The study of reservation withdrawal is still a growing field in human rights and international relations. This dataset positions researchers to address this gap, opening the possibility of examining why and when states remove reservations from human rights treaties. Boyes et al. (2024) find social pressure through the practice of naming and shaming influences the withdrawal of reservations from human rights treaties. However, these findings reflect only ratification data and the Universal Perioidic Review (UPR) process. Kreutzer and Mitchell (2024) find that states that fully commit to CEDAW with no reservations have better women's rights than those that ratify with reservations. Using the CEDAW ROCS dataset, these studies could examine the level of commitment states have to CEDAW beyond ratification by reviewing how many reservations they have, if they have reservation withdrawals, the reasons for the reservation withdrawals, and if the reservations they hold conflict with key treaty goals. Re-examining these and other related research questions via the CEDAW ROCS dataset has great potential for guiding policy, practice, and future scholarship.

Secondly, past studies on naming and shaming have examined the UPR process, speeches, and media outlets to examine countries calling upon others to change their behavior (Hafner-Burton 2008; Domínguez-Redondo 2012; Terman and Voeten 2018; DeMerritt and Conrad 2019; Cowell 2021; Kim 2023). These works have found that naming and shaming is a helpful tool for influencing state behavior towards human rights. This dataset creates a quantitative account of states naming and shaming practices toward others who do not follow CEDAW, or place reservations that may influence women's rights practices within their country. This unveils the timeline of states naming and shaming practices and their influence on CEDAW reservation removal, trade relationships, sanctions, and implications on alliances and rivalries. Including objections to CEDAW reservations is important as it captures how states interact with CEDAW and the other countries involved in the treaty over time. CEDAW ROCS shows which states object to reservations held by other countries, and voice their discontent. Through the documentation of reservations, withdrawals, and objections researchers can track which countries use this practice and its influences. It can show international relations and law scholars the networks and implications that reputation and major power may or may not hold on others' behavior choices around international norms.

By creating a comprehensive dataset that examines states commitment to CEDAW, the CEDAW ROCS dataset is an important step to understanding questions unanswered by previous research. There is interest among human rights scholars and international law scholars on how reservations, and their withdrawal, shape the impact treaties have on their intended beneficiaries (Kreutzer working paper, Boyes et al. 2024). Figure 1 demonstrates different levels of country commitment to CEDAW. This shows clear variation between states and establishes the importance of examining this relationship.

The CEDAW ROCS dataset is foreseeably of interest to scholars at the intersection of law and international relations. Law scholars and international relations scholars who are interested in the law could use this dataset to examine how treaties are enacted, how the law in different states affects human rights, and how law plays a role in the implementation of treaties. This dataset is also salient to the research agendas of scholars who are interested in human rights, international institutions, and gender. These scholars could use CEDAW ROCS to explore the impacts human rights treaties have on human rights scores, conflict recurrence, domestic laws and norms, and women's rights within countries. The data is structured to facilitate easy merging with other International Relations (IR) datasets, creating the opportunity for scholars to examine the treaty variables alongside conflict, human rights, naming and shaming of states, foreign aid, and countless other outcomes across space and time.

This dataset overcomes limitations of previous analyses that were confined to examining states that ratified CEDAW in that the field is now readily able to examine states who had no reservations, those that only had reservations, or those who have numerous objections against them. Expanding on prior analyses is consequential as reservations can influence the level of commitment these countries have to human rights, and if they do have significant improvements within the state or not.

Sources and Coding Protocols

The United Nations Treaty Collections (CEDAW 2023) provided extensive qualitative data on the commitment states must CEDAW from its creation in 1979–2022. This information includes signatories, ratification, reservations, and objections to reservations. CEDAW ROCS houses this rich information so that it can be applied quantitatively, allowing scholars to see patterns of CEDAW intervention through patterns of human rights, conflict, and state interaction.

For each signatory, ratifier, declaration, and reservation from 1979 to 2014, I gathered data and coded information from the UNTC database.³ When the collection and coding were done, a third party examined the entirety of the dataset using specific coding instructions.⁴ For all reservations and declarations from 2015 to 2022 as well as all objections from 1979 to 2022, two research assistants were assigned to continue this research. The objections were collected from the UNTC database following a parallel process. When collection and coding were complete, each research assistant reviewed the other's coding, and the project lead verified both a third time for consistency. In cases where there was a discrepancy, all parties delved into extensive case research for a solution. The entire data collection process took approximately 4 years. Future updates to the dataset will aim to continue adding information each year based on reservations and objections and incorporate UPR processes for naming and shaming practices. The CEDAW ROCS dataset has information for each variable from 1979 to 2022. Key variables in the dataset are country year, signature, ratification, reservations, articles 1–29, declarations, partial withdraws, and objections.⁵ These variables are central to the remaining discussion.

Key Aspects of Commitment

CEDAW Signature and Ratification

Examining the signatories and ratifiers of CEDAW is not a new contribution of this dataset. While this has been previously done by (Simmons 2009; Hill 2010; Lupu 2013), none of these works had this information up to the year 2022. Therefore, we followed the processes applied in previous research and included signatories and ratifiers of CEDAW from 1979 to 2022. For this dataset, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties definition of signatory “Where the signature is subject to ratification, acceptance or approval, the signature does not establish the consent to be bound. However, it is a means of authentication and expresses the willingness of the signatory state to continue the treaty-making process” was applied (UNTC, VCLT 1969, Article 10). Signatory states, or those that only sign onto CEDAW and do not ratify, are not legally bound by the treaties' specific provisions and obligations. Conversely, a ratifier state is legally bound to the treaty's specific provisions. The CEDAW ROCS dataset follows the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties definition of ratification “Ratification defines the international act whereby a state indicates its consent to be bound to a treaty if the parties intended to show their consent by such an act. In the case of bilateral treaties, ratification is usually accomplished by exchanging the requisite instruments, while in the case of multilateral treaties, the usual procedure is for the depositary to collect the ratifications of all states, keeping all parties informed of the situation.” (UNTC, VCLT 1969, Article 80). Collecting this information from the UNTC database signatories were coded as a binary variable, along with ratifiers. Since 1979, 103 states have signed CEDAW, while 191 states have ratified the treaty.

Declarations

An aspect of CEDAW that often is not discussed in the literature is declarations. For the CEDAW ROCS dataset, a declaration is defined by the United Nations Treaty Collection as “clarifying the state's position and do not purport to exclude or modify the legal effect of a treaty” (CEDAW 2023). These are when states are not making formal reservations on articles, rather they are declaring grievances with articles. However, states can make formal declarations on specific articles, arguing they will not abide by them. Therefore, declarations are coded as a binary variable. Of states that signed CEDAW 7.3 percent had declarations, and 9.5 percent of states that ratified CEDAW had declarations. An example of Niger is below:

Declaration:

The Government of the Republic of the Niger declares that the term “family education” which appears in article 5, paragraph (b), of the Convention should be interpreted as referring to public education concerning the family, and that in any event, article 5 would be applied in compliance with article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. (CEDAW 2023)

However, declarations that specifically state they will not be following a specific reservation are instead coded as a reservation. An example is China:

Declaration made upon signature and confirmed upon ratification: The People's Republic of China does not consider itself bound by paragraph 1 of article 29 of the Convention. (CEDAW 2023)

This declaration demonstrates that China will not uphold a certain article of the treaty, much like a reservation would do. Therefore, they are treated equivalently in the dataset.

Reservations

The CEDAW ROCS dataset has each reservation broken down by country year, the reservation definition follows the Vienna Convention of the Law Treaties “A reservation is a declaration made by a state by which it purports to exclude or alter the legal effect of certain provisions of the treaty in their application to that state. A reservation enables a state to accept a multilateral treaty as a whole by giving it the possibility not to apply certain provisions with which it does not want to comply. Reservations can be made when the treaty is signed, ratified, accepted, approved, or acceded to. Reservations must not be incompatible with the object and the purpose of the treaty.” (UNTC, VCLT 1969, Article 2). Reservations are a binary variable for each of the twenty-nine articles within CEDAW. Of CEDAW ratifying states, 25.78 percent hold reservations. Table 1 below outlines the articles with the most reservations per country year.

Four out of five of these articles deal with women's social and political rights, making reservations on these articles stands against the core of CEDAW goals. Articles 2 and 15 outline political rights for women, as discussed below in Article 2 discussing eliminating discrimination in national constitutions, laws, provisions, customs, and institutions.

Article 2

States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women and, to this end, undertake: (a) To embody the principle of the equality of men and women in their national constitutions or other appropriate legislation if not yet incorporated therein and to ensure, through law and other appropriate means, the practical realization of this principle;

(b) To adopt appropriate legislative and other measures, including sanctions where appropriate, prohibiting all discrimination against women;

(c) To establish legal protection of the rights of women on an equal basis with men and to ensure through competent national tribunals and other public institutions the effective protection of women against any act of discrimination;

(d) To refrain from engaging in any act or practice of discrimination against women and to ensure that public authorities and institutions shall act in conformity with this obligation;

(e) To take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise;

(f) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women;

(g) To repeal all national penal provisions which constitute discrimination against women. (CEDAW 2023)

Articles 9 and 16 deal with women's social rights, in the case of Article 9 below this article of CEDAW discusses women's nationality and their childrens nationality when married.

Article 9

1. States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men to acquire, change or retain their nationality. They shall ensure in particular that neither marriage to an alien nor change of nationality by the husband during marriage shall automatically change the nationality of the wife, render her stateless or force upon her the nationality of the husband.

2. States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children. (CEDAW 2023)

However, Article 29, which the first paragraph of is outlined below, is a procedural article discussing dispute resolution between states and the request for arbitration.

Article 29

1. Any dispute between two or more States Parties concerning the interpretation or application of the present Convention which is not settled by negotiation shall, at the request of one of them, be submitted to arbitration. If within six months from the date of the request for arbitration the parties are unable to agree on the organization of the arbitration, any one of those parties may refer the dispute to the International Court of Justice by request in conformity with the Statute of the Court. (CEDAW 2023)

Article 29 holds the most reservations and demonstrates the reach of the Convention and how little intervention can be done by the CEDAW Committee if disputes occur.

It is also imperative to examine the states that hold reservations on most of the articles⁶. These states have reservations on most of the articles within CEDAW. An interesting pattern is that this list has both democracies and autocracies, global south and global north countries, and major and minor powers within the international system. Examining which articles countries have reservations on allows scholars to see which parts of CEDAW states do not adhere to the most.

Reservations allow states to ratify without considering articles it does not want to commit to (Riddle 2002). Scholarship on this type of modification to UN treaties has demonstrated reservations are imperative to studying state commitment to human rights (Neumayer 2007; Zvobgo, Sandholtz, and Mulesky 2020; Eldredge and Shannon 2022; Kreutzer and Mitchell 2024). Scholars have found that with serious reservations to CEDAW, human rights may be negatively impacted (Landman 2005; Cho 2013). There is also scholarship that explores reservations’ relationships with democratization, domestic laws, and behavioral change (Hill 2016; Comstock and Vilan 2024; Hill and Watson 2019). As demonstrated in table 2 above, this dataset adds to the discussion of authoritarian and democratic compliance with human rights treaties, contributing to Hill and Watson (2019) work on treaty effectiveness based on regime type. These reservations mean changes at the international and domestic levels, and with the detailed description CEDAW ROCS provides, this research can be more thorough and up-to-date.

This dataset also accounts for the withdrawal, and partial withdrawal, of reservations from CEDAW. States are also able to withdraw the reservations they place on CEDAW. This is an important part of states' relationships with CEDAW, especially as gender equality and women's rights become increasingly normative in the international system. Of those countries with reservations, 7 percent have partially withdrawn one or more reservations, while 20 percent have withdrawn one or more reservations entirely.

Objections

The UNTC database holds a large amount of qualitative data on countries' reactions to reservations other states hold, and previous scholars have quantitatively outlined the importance of objections to states’ commitment to human rights treaties such as CEDAW (Eldredge and Shannon 2022). Objections are defined following the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties “Any signatory or contracting state has the option of objecting to a reservation, inter alia, if, in its opinion, the reservation is incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty.” (UNTC, VCLT 1969, Article 20–23). These objections are important to the discussion around CEDAW, withdrawal of reservations, and the reservation process in general. Objections are coded to collect multiple objections per country per year. Of the countries that have ratified CEDAW between 1979 and 2022, 11.5 percent have an objection against another state's reservation, and of those 11 percent have multiple objections filed. Table 3 shows the countries with the most objections.

The objections variable is also coded to collect the type of article the objection is against including articles that pertain to women's economic rights, political rights, social rights, general human rights articles, articles that deal with procedures as they pertain to CEDAW, and articles that are not specified. These articles were placed into these categories based on the language and nature of the article. Table 4 demonstrates the distribution of the objections to these articles.

Connecting CEDAW ROCS to IR and Beyond

Next, an illustration is offered for how the CEDAW ROCS dataset can be used in conjunction with a familiar dataset for IR and human rights scholars: the CIRI (Cingranelli and Richards 2010) dataset measures women's human rights ratings across the world. The relationship between CEDAW ROCS and measures of women's rights is important for many reasons. First, CEDAW is a treaty that specifically focuses on improving the rights of women globally. Examining how women's rights change over time after the creation, signature, and ratification of CEDAW is necessary to understand its effect on its intended beneficiaries. Previous scholars have identified the positive relationship between CEDAW and its impact on human rights in general (Simmons 2009; Hill 2010; Lupu 2013). When examining women's rights, previous scholars have also demonstrated that CEDAW now only serves as an effective monitoring body for women's rights (O'Rourke and Swaine 2018), but that it also has a positive influence on women's rights, specifically women's political rights (Englehart and Miller 2014). However, the level of commitment that shapes human rights outcomes remains unknown.

Second, by connecting these two datasets, which reservations are making the largest impact on states that ratify CEDAW become identifiable. Rendering this understanding can influence how the United Nations enforces the reservation process, or how often reservations should be revisited. Figures 2 and 3 are taken from Kreutzer and Mitchell (2024) examining the variation in commitment levels to CEDAW's impact on women's rights using the (CIRIGHTS 2023) dataset, and this new dataset. They demonstrate how different levels of commitment to CEDAW (no ratification, ratification with reservations, and ratification without reservations) can influence women's political and social rights. States that fully ratify CEDAW without reservations have higher levels of women's political and social rights than those that ratify CEDAW with reservations. It is expected that those who do not ratify CEDAW will have a lower level of women's rights, but the importance of this data is demonstrated in the variation in commitment to the human rights treaty.

These results demonstrate that this dataset has implications for how scholars’ study international human rights law, treaty commitments, women's rights, treaty reservations, naming and shaming, and how international organizations interact with states. The detailed analysis that can be done with this new dataset has implications for changing past research that uses commitment as a standard measurement, but also future research that wants to examine country-level, regional-level, and international systems dedication to human rights, women's rights, and treaties in overall.

Conclusion

This research note introduces the CEDAW ROCS dataset, a new dataset with information on CEDAW signatories, ratifiers, declarations, reservations, articles, and objections from 1979 to 2022. While research on CEDAW and human rights treaties has expanded in recent years, the level of analysis has still been limited in nuance. This dataset helps the field of political science engage with the different levels of state commitments to human rights treaties and the implications this has for citizens on the ground. This level of commitment matters to how human rights are implemented and how states navigate the international system.

Although this dataset only looks at one UN treaty, future research in this area should work toward gathering this type of data for all United Nations treaties. Understanding how countries interact with vital human rights treaties would give scholars a new collection of information to analyze how these different types of commitment impact the target populations of these treaties.

The CEDAW ROCS dataset provides international relations and law scholars with a unique opportunity to interact with one of the most influential human rights treaties and state behavior. This dataset focuses specifically on how states use institutional protocols, reservations, and objections, to interact with one another. The CEDAW ROCS dataset has the capacity to be a critical mechanism for connecting the various fields of large-N international relations to law to find new ways to protect and advance women's rights.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my two research assistants Payton Riley and Caleb Slater for their help coding the reservations in this dataset from 2014 to 2022 and for their work in coding all objections for each country from 1979 to 2022. It would not have been completed without their hard work and dedication to this project. I would also like to thank Sara Mitchell for her help throughout this project that grew out of our co-authored work. Finally, I would like to thank Brian Lai for his continued support and enthusiasm.

Footnotes

References