Candidate from Azerbaijan elected member of UN committee on elimination of discrimination against women

Elections were held on June 26 in New York as part of the 24th meeting of states parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

As reported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, candidates from 20 countries competed for 12 seats on the Committee. Representative of the State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs Elgun Safarov was elected in the first round of voting.

The CEDAW Committee is the main UN treaty body monitoring implementation of the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. It consists of 23 independent experts elected by states parties.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also noted that over the past two weeks, Azerbaijani representatives were elected to two more UN human rights treaty bodies — the Human Rights Committee (ICCPR) and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

In addition, Azerbaijan is already represented on the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (CMW).

Thus, the country’s representatives serve on five of the ten existing UN human rights treaty bodies, which, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, places Azerbaijan in second–third place in the world in terms of representation, alongside China.