The Reservations of Some Islamic and European States to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Within the Framework of the legal System of Reservations

After World War II, fundamental developments occurred in international law. At that time, many treaties were adopted by League of Nations, some of which were human rights treaties. These treaties are very valuable as one of the sources of international law. The supportive nature of these treaties creates the possibility of analysis issues such as the right of reservation in a different way. The CEDAW (1979) is the most important treaty on women`s status and has the highest number of reservations among human rights treaties. Many of these reservations relate to the substantive provisions of the treaty, which has two main characteristics: generality, and being contrary to the purpose and object of the treaty. The purpose of CEDAW is indicated in its preamble. It calls for equality of women and men and also stipulates many specific areas where discrimination against women should be eliminated. Therefore, it is important to analyze these reservations. At first, the study examined how the treaty is ratified, it then defined the right to make reservation and finally it analyzed some reservations made by the Islamic and European states.