EXCITING UPDATE ON THE Cities for CEDAW TASK FORCE

Greetings everyone reading our blog! We have good news in the world of Cities for CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women/Girls).  

Reminder: CEDAW is the only United Nations international human rights treaty that focuses exclusively on the rights of women/girls. Adopted by many countries since 1979, CEDAW has ratified in 187 of 192 countries world wide. Guess what? Our United States is one of the six that has not ratified it. In an effort to pass it in the United States we have gone to a grass roots effort city by city-thereby the name Cities for CEDAW. In the US, 57 cities have resolutions and 7 have ordinances (a binding law) to work on discrimination issues and principals of CEDAW. Fyi-we need approximately 100 cities signed on with Cities for CEDAW to take this back to D.C. for possible ratification.

So, back to where we were here. The Colorado Task Force has been very busy since the last post on this fantastic blog. We have signed on Lafayette and Louisville CO for resolutions and Greeley is on a 5 year plan starting with a proclamation ending in ordinance. We attended the Denver Gender Equity Summit after they completed their gender study. Hundreds of women attended this massive gathering to work on all issues of equality. Kim Desmond (from the Denver Women's Commission) met with us along with Skye Stuart of the City of Denver,  The United Nations Association representatives from Denver/Boulder County and Business and Professional Women of Colorado, shortly after that summit. We have a game plan in the City of Denver, awaiting the legal study being done by UNA Denver. 

In Boulder, the city completed its gender study in March and we met with the City of Boulder again at their City Council meeting June 20-with four speakers to this movement. What exciting times we are in! Boulder is working on a letter from the Human Rights Commission to the City Manager and hopefully they all agree that a AT LEAST a resolution is in order for this city, if not an ordinance. 

Also, we recorded a radio show for The Voice of Bold Business Radio today and it will air on July 21, 2017 after the noon hour on iheart radio, itunes, utube and a few more! Watch for it and we will post it on here with a link. We go into details about our task force and how you can help as well as how much we have all done to move this state forward on Cities for CEDAW and rights of women/girls in this state. 

Please visit our Task Force website at:  www.cedaw-colorado.org and see what you think!! Jump on and give us your logo in support of your non-profit, business or personally! We will post you and let everyone see that you support human rights and women's rights in our state of Colorado. We appreciate you visiting and please do get ahold of me on email at: ssimmons@bpwcolorado.org

Thank you so much fair cities of our state! 

Task Force Members/contributors:  Sharon Simmons, President of BPW Boulder, VP of Advocacy for BPW CO and Veronica Hrutkay of United Nations Association Boulder County and Zonta of Boulder County/Chief Catalyst