Gender equality and the United Nations: Implementation of CEDAW in Nigeria and South Africa

ABSTRACT: The focus of this study is on obstacles against the implementation of the international agreement; Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women [CEDAW] by national institutions in Nigeria and South Africa. The researcher uses feminist-institutionalism as the theoretical framework within which she carries out the research. The main thesis the researcher tries to sustain is that; there are domestic institutional obstacles against the implementation of CEDAW in Nigeria and South Africa that must be overcome for effective implementation to take place. These obstacles include, cultural and religious imperatives, constitutional and legal system, inadequate funding and corruption, poverty, ignorance among others. The study critically examines and compares history, obligations of the two countries to women‟s rights stemming from Customary International Human Rights Law [CIHRL] and the law of treaties, current gender situation, institutions and processes involve in the implementation of CEDAW in both countries as well as the obstacles facing them. The researcher therefore adopts comparative analysis using both WebPages and hardcopy sources including books, journal articles, reports, and legal documents. The main findings of this study reveal that obstacles to the successful implementation of CEDAW are mostly national rather than international. In other words, change the national institutions, and you eliminate all forms of discrimination against women. This therefore, is in line with expectation and in accordance with the hypothesis that states; changes in national institutions tend to improve implementation of CEDAW. Hence, changes to national institutions is important if we are to overcome the obstacles, and if the efforts of the international institutions on gender equality and the rights of women will have meaningful impacts on the lives of women in Nigeria, South Africa, and the world at large. Therefore, the findings are base on the comparative analysis of the implementation of CEDAW in the two countries since return to democracy. Thus, based on theories on policy implementation, the cases studied help us to analyze how institutions serve to exclude women through political culture and other factors. Similarly, it discovers that the focus area should now be more on equality in education, and political representation and participation of women especially in the National Parliament. Thus, the researcher concludes by suggesting on the need to carry out further research on empirical evidence of cases where these obstacles do not exist or have been overcome, as well as in empirical evidence of practical contributions to the status of women, through equality in political representation and participation of women in Parliament. Keywords: gender equality, discrimination, institutions, implementation, CEDAW, and obstacles. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………