Women’s equality in the UK – A health check

Annex 2: The UK’s relationship with the Crown
Dependencies and Overseas Territories
In the Concluding Observations of the CEDAW Committee at the forty-first session in 2008
the Committee called for a national development, implementation and monitoring strategy
covering the UK, the Crown Dependencies and the Overseas Territories. 1 While the UK
Government’s 7th Periodic Report 2 includes greater detail about the UK’s relationship to the
Crown Dependencies (CDs) and Overseas Territories (OTs), there is no evidence of any national
strategy. Due to this, the work relating to the CDs and OTs in the UK is poorly linked up and
carried out by entirely different government departments. 3
It is unclear at this stage whether a delegation from the CDs and OTs will be attending the 2013
CEDAW Committee examination alongside the UK, but we would strongly advocate that State
and NGO delegations are encouraged by the UK to participate in the examination in future.
While we appreciate that it is for the CDs and OTs to request the extension of CEDAW to their
jurisdictions and the UK could not, and should not, force such an extension, politically speaking
the UK wields a great deal of influence in its overseas jurisdictions. If the UK were to increase
its international promotion of CEDAW, then we do not doubt that this would be a powerful
encouraging force for the CDs and OTs to request an extension.
The Crown Dependencies
CEDAW extends to the Isle of Man, but it does not yet extend to Jersey or Guernsey. While both
Jersey and Guernsey have implemented the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR)
into their domestic legislation, they have not yet requested an extension of CEDAW or proposed
the necessary legislation to allow them to implement CEDAW in an equivalent way to the ECHR.
In our view this political process could have valuable influence in the CDs.
Recommendation:
An annual process is set up in the UK where an enquiry is sent to Jersey and Guernsey
each year to share details of the UK’s work on women’s rights and ask them what their
position is on CEDAW
We would emphasise that the ECHR alone does not safeguard women’s rights in Jersey and
Guernsey to the extent required by CEDAW; we would particularly like to draw the CEDAW
Committee’s attention to the invaluable report 4 written for this examination by Jersey
Community Relations Trust (See Appendix: 37). 5
The Isle of Man Trades Union Congress, a leading trade union, informed the UK CEDAW Working
1. CEDAW Committee (2008) Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Forty-first session http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N09/555/92/PDF/
N0955592.pdf?OpenElement Para 263
2. Government Equalities Office (2011) CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women) report. United
Kingdom’s Seventh Periodic Report. GEO: London http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/equalities/international-equality/7thcedaw-report?view=Binary
3. The Crown Dependencies Team located with the Ministry of Justice (as of letter dated 12 May 2011) and the Overseas Territories
Directorate located with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (as of letter dated 3 June 2011).
4. Jersey Community Relations Trust (2012) Contribution to the Women’s Resource Centre, CEDAW Shadow Report
5. While a comparable report is not available from Guernsey we note that women’s representation remains low in the political sphere
see: The Guernsey Press (2012) ‘States equality: Quotas are for fish not women’, The Guernsey Press, 31st August 2012 http://www.
thisisguernsey.com/news/2012/08/31/states-equality-quotas-are-for-fish-not-women/
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