Human Rights Protection of Vulnerable Groups The Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 1979

The ladies' compartment on a Mumbai local exists because everyone accepts that one rule for all, one ticket and one seat, does not give everyone the same journey. Human rights law reached the same conclusion. The Universal Declaration and the two Covenants promise rights to every person, yet women, children, persons with disabilities and older people kept finding that the general promise did not reach them. Why did the world write separate conventions for them, and what do those conventions add?

In two minutes

CEDAW (1979), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (adopted 2006, in force 2008) and the still-developing framework for older persons take the general promise of equal rights and spell out what it demands for each group; in India they work through Articles 14, 15(3), 21, 51(c) and 253 and through domestic statutes.

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