L’application de la Convention sur l’élimination de toutes les formes de discrimination à l’égard des femmes en Bolivie

Abstract

The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international tool key for the progress of gender equality and the defence of women’s rights, at the same time necessary but non sufficient to improve the condition and the situation of woman. Bolivia ratified the CEDAW in 1989, and so committed to organize social and legal mechanism behalf women’s community, enforcing in particular reproductive (and later sexual) rights, one of the principal topics of the Convention. This ratification is accompanied with adoption of important measurements which promote these rights. The social reality of reproductive and sexual health indicates the exercise of such rights, showing a certain improvement then. But this reality, observed and denounced, remains very strongly marked by not planned and non desired, revealing pregnancies of a relative reproductive choice, and by a consequent recourse to the clandestine abortion (illegal in the country) which feeds a high rate of maternal. Women from La Paz and El Alto, met during the study presented here, must face political, social, cultural, symbolical and medical obstacles, which causes vain effects and re-appropriation of international principles, a weak decided maternity, and an insignificant reproductive and sexual decisions’ autonomy.

Keywords

• women
• sexuality
• reproductive and sexual rights
• CEDAW
• health