International Gender and Women's Studies Topics : United Nations

These are some of the main United Nations Conventions related to women and International Human Rights.

Unless otherwise indicated, to find the status of ratification, reservations and declarations for each convention, follow the link to the full text of the convention.  At the next page, click "Status of ratification, reservations and declarations" in the upper left corner. At the next page, click on the name of your convention.

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by UN in 1948)
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted by UN in 1966)
• International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (adopted by UN in 1966)
• International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) (adopted by UN in 1965)
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (adopted by UN in 1979)
• Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (adopted by UN in 1984)
• Convention on the Rights of the Child (adopted by UN in 1989)
• Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Adopted by UN in 2006)
• Convention against Transnational Organized Crime(adopted by UN in 2000) includes
  • Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (protocol starts on numbered page 41; 49th page of PDF document)
    • For the status of ratification, go to this section of the UN Treaty database, and click the link for "Chapter XVIII: Penal matters." At the next page, click the link for the "Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons..." (#12a).

  • Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air (protocol starts on numbered page 53; 61st page of PDF document)
    • For the status of ratification, go to this section of the UN Treaty database, and click the link for "Chapter XVIII: Penal matters." At the next page, click the link for the "Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants..." (#12b).

• Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (convention adopted by UN in 1951; protocol in 1967)
  • For the status of ratification, go to this section of the UN Treaty database, and click on the link for "Chapter V, Refugees and Stateless Persons." At the next page, click the link for the convention (#2) or the protocol (#5).
• Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages (adopted by UN in 1962)
  • For the status of ratification, go to this section of the UN Treaty database, and click on the link for "Chapter XVI, Status of Women." At the next page, click the link for "Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age..." (#3).

The best way to find UN entities that deal with women/gender in addition to their other focuses, is through the Womenwatch UN Entities page. You may also use the links below to go directly to some of them.

• The News Centre site of the Office of Public Information can be searched for "women" or "gender" news releases from the last 2 weeks, 30 days or 45 days. The Radio section can also be searched, as well as other formats of the UN Multimedia site.
• The Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific has a website for its Gender Equality and Empowerment. section
• UNICEF (UN Children's Fund) has a Gender Mainstreaming in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene page, a report "Women Teachers Empowered in India: Teacher Training Through A Gender Lens" (52p), and more (use the search engine and search for "gender").
• World Survey on the Role of Women in Development is prepared at 5-year intervals for the UN General Assembly.
• The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has a Division for Social Policy and Development. It is interested in social development issues, including aging, civil society, disability, indigenous peoples, poverty, etc. It has published Indigenous Women and the United Nations System: Good Practices and Lessons Learned, and other publications.
• The Development Programme has a Women's Empowerment site with numerous documents that discuss how to incorporate gender into develop programs of various sorts.
• The Office for Disarmament Affairs has a Gender and Disarmament area.
• The Economic Commission for Europe has a Gender area.
• The Food and Agriculture Organization has a Gender section.
• The Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) site has a Gender area, and several publications in fulltext on the site (search the entire site for "women" or "gender").
• The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights site includes a Human Rights Bodies section (the entities that monitor human rights treaties including CEDAW), and information about the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences.
• News on gender issues from Integrated Regional Information Networks, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
• The Department of Peacekeeping Operations has a Gender Resource Package.
• The Population Fund publishes the report series "State of the World Population." Many are wholly or substantially about women.The Population Fund has also mounted a web exhibit on ending violence against women and has many other publications on gender equality.
• The Population Information Network of the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs includes World Abortion Policies 2011, World Contraceptive Use 2011, World Fertility Patterns 2009, and many population charts and trends by world region and country.
• The High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) site has a page on "women." The whole UNHCR site is searchable. Search for "refugee women," putting the phrase in quotation marks.
• Humanitarian Affairs sponsors ReliefWeb, which offers documents from the UN and others concerning relief operations. Browse the theme "gender."
• The Secretariat has an Office for the Focal Point on Women to monitor the status of women employees of the Secretariat.
• UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict and a broader campaign "Stop Rape Now."
• The Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) has a searchable database of policy papers, summaries of conference presentations, etc.
• The Statistics Division has mounted Millenium Indicators, charting progress toward such goals as promoting gender equality and empowering women, eradicting poverty and hunger, improving material health, etc. Additional UN statistical resources are linked from the WomenWatch Statistics and Indicators page.

ADVANCED SEARCH of the entire UN website

UNBISNet (United Nations Bibliographic Information System)

Has citations to, and, quite often, the full text of United Nations publications and documents from 1979 forward.

This is the place to start when you want to find out what UN member nations or UN bodies actually said, on the record, about a particular issue.

UNBISNet is much more like a library catalog or article database than a typical web site.  There is great content here, including older documents, but you have to search the indexes/databases to find that content.

The Bibliographic Records index covers:

• UN sales publications
• selected periodical articles
• Official Records
• mimeographed documents from UN bodies and committees
• some non-UN publications held by the UN's Dag Hammarskjöld Library

This searches the most records. I recommend starting with the New Keyword Search.

Separate indexes cover

• Voting records, which list how individual countries voted on resolutions before the
  • General Assembly (1983-)
  • Security Council (1946- )
• Speeches made before UN bodies (a good way to see how a country thought about a particular issue), including
  • General Assembly (1983- )
  • Economic and Social Council (1983- )
  • Security Council (1983- )
  • Trusteeship Council (1982-1994)

Unfortunately, not every citation manual provides exact examples of how to cite United Nations documents, but the following resources may help.

You can check the index of your citation manual for the sections that deal with "United Nations" or "government documents" for examples and guidance.

Also, remember to apply your style's rules about citing electronic publications to any citations of government documents.  In some cases, this could mean including a url or "date accessed" information.

General
 
The Complete Guide to Citing Government Information Resources: a Manual for Social Science & Business Research. Bethesda, MD: LexisNexis ; Congressional Information Service, c2002.

• Memorial Library location: Memorial Library Reference Desk, Room 262, Call Number: J9.5 G37 2002 (non-circulating)
• Other locations
• Best sections for examples: section L3.1, page 34, and section 5.3d, pages 129-131. Also check the index for "United Nations" and "masthead documents."
• This guide is not specific to any one style, but gives some examples, and principles of how to cite UN materials.

APA

Nothing specific about UN documents.

Chicago Manual of Style
Online
Chicago Manual of Style Online. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006-.

• Available outside UW libraries to UW students, staff, and faculty.
• Section 14.302 covers treaties (CEDAW can be considered a treaty).
• Section 14.317 addresses "international legal and public documents online."

Print
The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2003.

• Memorial Library location: Memorial Library Reference Desk, Room 262, Call Number: Z253 U69 2003 (non-circulating)
• Other locations

MLA
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed. New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2009.

• Memorial Library Location: Memorial Library Reference Desk, Room 262, Call Number: LB2369 G53 2009 (non-circulating)
• Other locations
• Section 5.5.20, pages 174-177, has general guidelines on citing several kinds of government publications.

Turabian
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Kate L. Turabian. 7th ed. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2007.

• Memorial Library Location: Memorial Library Reference Desk, Room 262, Call Number: LB2369 T8 2007 (non-circulating)
• Index term for all government documents is "public documents."
• Government/public documents section is on pages 205-215; "international bodies" are covered on page 214.

UNBISnet is a database with descriptions of and links to the full text of many documents published by the United Nations.

• Most documents are from the 1990s and afterwards, but some go back as far as the 1940s.
• In most cases, you can find documents using the "New Keyword Search" in the "Bibliographic Records" section of the page.
• Once in the "Bibliographic Record -- Keyword Search" mode, you can search for terms anywhere in the record by clicking in the "search by" box and changing it to "general keyword."