• The Latin American

  Experience

  • The Normative Framework

  • Women in the Police

    and Armed Forces

  • Contributions to

    Peace Operations

  • Actors and Instances

  • In the media

• The RESDAL program

  • National case studies

  • International Peacekeeping

    Operations

  • RESDAL Publications

  • Processes supported

    by RESDAL

  • Events

• Basic tools

  • UNSCRs on WPS

  • National  Action Plans

  • Secretary-General reports

  • RESDAL Analysis

  • Other Papers

• Gender Actors

  in Peacekeeping

  • UN Headquarters

  • In the field

  • Mapping the Actors

  • Non-UN Actors

  • Best Practices

• Gender and

  Peacekeepers

  • Progress and Challenges

  • Gender Training

  • Basic Concepts

  • FAQ for the field

• Cases Studies

  • MONUSCO

  • MINUSTAH

  • UNIFIL

The Normative Framework 

Looking at the status of gender in laws and regulations across the region.

 

 

The Normative Framework

 

The protection, promotion and implementation of human rights supporting gender equality are a primary responsibility of national governments. However, it is mostly thanks to international debates that the issues of gender and women’s rights were gradually integrated as national priorities in the policies of Latin American countries. It is indeed with the adoption of international conventions that the States of the Latin American region started to progressively show gender awareness. While the Convention on Women’s Political Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1952, showed a very slow ratification rate by Latin American countries (only four States - El Salvador and Uruguay in 1953, followed by the Dominican Republic and Ecuador); the Convention for the Elimination of any form of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), created in 1979, was ratified by the majority of Latin American countries within the three years from its adoption.

This increased sensitivity towards gender issues developed also at regional level with, for example the Convention Belém do Pará, adopted by the Organisation of American States in 1994 and subscribed by all Latin American countries in only four years.

 

The influence of international tendencies, along with civil society’s pressure, increasingly translated in a better attention to the issue at national level. That is why each Latin American state has started to internally develop national institutions devoted to monitor aspects related to the promotion of women’s situation. This increased national sensitivity also was reflected in the states’ national Constitutions, which embed at different levels aspects related to the promotion of gender equality.