Sudan Ratifies Women's Rights Convention — With Exceptions

KHARTOUM, SUDAN - Sudan's Ministers Council this week ratified the United Nations' 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). 

However, the majority-male council declined to endorse the notion that women are equal with men at all political and social levels and have equal rights in marriage, divorce and parenting.  Women's rights groups criticized those reservations, saying they will not accept them.  Ihsan Fagiri, the chief of the initiative No for Women's Repression, said the transitional government tends to lower the ambitions of Sudanese people, and women in particular. She said ratifying the convention with reservations of acts like those in Article 2 contradicts the goal of the convention, as that article concerns equality. The government, she stressed, does not want women to have equality with men in the local legislations.