'Cedaw recommendations to hopefully benefit minority women'.

LAHORE -- The recommendations of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw) Committee are a timely response, especially the ones focusing on women from the religious minority communities, to the current impasse reached in parliament regarding proposed bills.

This was stated by Peter Jacob, the executive director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), while referring to the recommendations given by the committee a few days ago specifically for Pakistan following the 75th review session held recently in Geneva. The committee is a monitoring body that measures the compliance levels of individual states through Cedaw.

Mr Jacob said that in the committee's report, particularly interesting from the perspective of minority women were the concerns raised under Article 48 whereby the committee enjoined the state party to 'provide collected information on women facing intersecting forms of discrimination disaggregated by sex, age disability, ethnicity, religion and geographical location'.

'In terms of legislative change, in Para 50, it also calls upon the government to...