Commentary on CEDAW, including Art. 12 “Health”

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: A Commentary
ed. Marsha A. Freeman, Christine Chinkin, and Beate Rudolf
Oxford Commentaries on International Law series
Oxford University Press, 792 page book
978-0-19-956506-1,  published 26 January 2012
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This volume is the first comprehensive commentary on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol.    The Commentary describes the application of the Convention through the work of its monitoring body, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. It comprises detailed analyses of the Preamble and each article of the Convention and of the Optional Protocol, by chapter authors from various countries. It also includes a separate chapter on the cross-cutting substantive issue of violence against women.

The book includes a chapter on CEDAW Article 12 (health), by Rebecca Cook and Veronica Undurraga, exploring state obligations to “eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, access to health care services, including those related to family planning” and to “ensure to women appropriate services in connection with pregnancy, confinement and the post-natal period, granting free services where necessary, as well as adequate nutrition during pregnancy and lactation.”  The chapter explores how Article 12 has been applied to date, and serves as an interpretive guide to how the article could be applied to discriminatory health situations.