NEW YORK, July 22, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The United Nations Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has met with the Maltese delegation to continue discussion of that country’s compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Malta entered and maintains a set of ‘reservations’ to the full implementation of the treaty, which it ratified in 1991. Abortion is illegal in overwhelmingly Catholic Malta and the Maltese appear determined to keep it that way.
The Committee met again with the Maltese representatives on July 19th to hear replies to questions posed to it on July 13th. The Committee is putting the pressure on to adopt the so-called Optional Protocol of the treaty, which, once signed, would forbid Malta to make further reservations to the Commitee’s demands, including abortion.
Sina Bugeja, of the Maltese Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity, said that it was not the Government’s intention to transpose the Convention into domestic legislation. Bugeja noted that the Convention itself gave States the right to make reservations. She said that Malta was among over 55 States that had entered reservations to the Convention, and it was exercising its right as a sovereign State to do so. The Government was currently considering signing the Convention’s Optional Protocol, she added. However the UN ‘experts’ were not satisfied with the right of a sovereign state to make laws according to the wishes of its population. A UN report of the meeting shows the gathered experts pressuring the Maltese to “reconsider” their reservations about instituting abortion on demand. Committee Vice-Chairperson Heisoo Shin, the expert from the Republic of Korea urged the Maltese delegation to adopt the Optional Protocol.
Bugeja responded that one reservation had been entered to allow for legislation considered necessary to protect the health and safety of the woman or the human fetus. Furthermore, Bugeja was forthright in saying that the reservation to article 16 on marriage and family life had been intended to leave no room for interpreting the provisions of that article as an obligation by Malta to legalize abortion.
Read previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage: https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jul/04071503.html ph