Policy paper

UK CEDAW candidate brochure: Professor Shazia Choudhry (HTML)

Published 22 March 2024

Professor Shazia Choudhry

The United Kingdom looks for your support for the election of Shazia Choudhry to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) 2025 to 2028.

Shazia is an outstanding candidate who will bring insight, deep knowledge, drive and determination to the CEDAW table.

The Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, President of the Board of Trade, and Minister for Women and Equalities.

My entire career has focused on the human rights of women and the impact that international law, in particular, can and should have in this regard. I am therefore hugely honoured and humbled by this nomination for election to CEDAW.

Professor Shazia Choudhry

Minister’s foreword

The United Kingdom is pleased to nominate Professor Shazia Choudhry as its first ever candidate for CEDAW.

The United Kingdom is a leader on the world stage in advancing equality for women and girls. We have a strong global record of striving to end violence against women and girls, promoting their economic empowerment, and safeguarding their rights.

Professor Choudhry fully embodies these principles. Her foundation in law, as a professor at Oxford, and her work as an adviser to UK government bodies, means she is well placed to consider the reports and individual complaints brought before the Committee. Her extensive knowledge of these areas will ensure the necessary rigour in the implementation of the Convention and the elimination of discrimination.

Her international experience demonstrates the depth and breadth of insight she has into discrimination against women around the world. As an evaluator for the European Commission; an expert for the Council of Europe (including participating in the GREVIO monitoring mission to Serbia); and as a consultant for the UNFPA. She is well-versed in working closely with colleagues from around the world to deliver on key principles of fairness.

Professor Choudhry’s scholarship sits at the interface of criminal law, human rights law and family law, and her in-depth research into gender, human rights, and violence against women has had a global impact – reaching Europe, Asia and South America. Her work with Women’s Aid and other NGOs around the world means she has had direct contact with female victims of violence and discrimination. This background will enable her to bring the real-life experiences of women to CEDAW, representing and advocating for them.

Professor Choudhry has the skills a member of CEDAW requires: an in-depth understanding of research and data; first-hand experience with diverse stakeholders; and, a passionate and visible commitment to create global change.

The United Kingdom is a champion of women’s rights and we are committed to promoting the needs of women and girls domestically and internationally. As a dedicated party to the CEDAW Convention, we have worked closely with our international colleagues to deliver on our global obligations. I am confident Professor Choudhry has the insight, vision and ability to ensure that the founding principles of CEDAW are delivered, to help remove the many challenges women face in the world.

This is why I am delighted to nominate Professor Choudhry as our candidate for CEDAW.

The Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, President of the Board of Trade, and Minister for Women and Equalities.

Profile

Professor Choudhry has an exemplary record in women’s rights and is a Professor of Law and the Jeffrey Hackney Tutorial Fellow in Law at Wadham College, University of Oxford.

She has dedicated her professional career to expanding her own and other’s understanding of gender, human rights and violence against women. Her research has a global reach; covering Europe, Asia, and South America, to date; and has been recognised internationally by invitations to present by the Supreme Courts of Mexico and Chile. Her research has also been cited by the Supreme Court of Mexico.

She also has valuable practical experience as an experienced lawyer in the space of gender and human rights, and it is this experience that will give her an insightful and unique perspective to bring to her work as a CEDAW Committee member.

Professor Choudhry will bring her considerable experience as an advisor to the role, including:

• her role as a Specialist Legal Adviser to the UK Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights Inquiry into Violence against Women (2014 to 2015)
• her role on the UK Joint Committee on the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill (2019)
• her role on the UK Joint Parliamentary Committee on Women and Equalities (2023)
• as expert evaluator for the European Commission; and for the Council of Europe (including participating in the GREVIO monitoring mission to Serbia)
• as expert consultant for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), for the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and for the UN

Professor Choudhry’s international expertise led to her being commissioned to provide specific research for the Ministry of Justice in the UK, the Secretariat of the Monitoring Mechanism to the Istanbul Convention (GREVIO) and as the Expert Consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against women and girls, looking into its causes and consequences.

She has also provided judicial training to the legal profession on international standards on violence against women, gender equality, and access to justice in Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Chile and Mexico and in the UK. Her main motivation is a lifelong passionate commitment to the efficacy of human rights in bringing forward the eradication of discrimination against women and girls.

Vision

“Working within the field of the human rights of women and girls as a legal practitioner, as an academic, and an expert consultant, has given me a unique vantage point and a strong skill set to bring to the work of CEDAW.

Engaging closely with survivors as a lawyer and as a researcher means that I understand the realities on the ground for women and girls and what is fundamentally at stake.

As an academic who has researched on the human rights of women, I know and understand the underpinning values that the human rights system framework seeks to promote and the transformative potential of CEDAW.

Advising Governments, Parliamentary Committees and undertaking treaty monitoring work in relation to the Istanbul Convention with GREVIO has made me aware of the vital importance of working with States and Governments to achieve the full implementation of human rights law and policy.

I have always had a grounded approach to human rights. I have directly engaged with survivors and victims of violence and civil society organisations throughout my career to understand better how the human rights system can best deliver on its promise, and it is their and my own faith in the international human rights system and CEDAW that continues to drive me. However, my research has shown that large gaps continue to persist in the national implementation of human rights treaties and that the full enjoyment of human rights remains hard or out of reach to many women and girls. I believe this can change and the CEDAW Committee has a crucial role to play. I want to be part of that change.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impact on women and girls showed that gender equality must remain a constant theme on the international agenda and across the international human rights framework to future proof women from discrimination when new challenges emerge, such as those presented by AI and climate change. CEDAW also needs to work more directly with the private sector, within which many drivers of inequality remain.

If elected to CEDAW my skills and experience will contribute to its work by:

• ensuring that the needs of victims of discrimination are at the centre of CEDAW’s work in translating the gap between the Convention and its implementation on the ground
• ensuring that CEDAW is ready to respond to future threats to gender equality
• ensuring that CEDAW employs an intersectional approach in its work with other major international bodies with the other human rights committees and mandates.
• facilitating CEDAW becoming the sustainable link between the international human rights system and the private sector in relation to gender equality

I am proud that the United Kingdom has nominated me as its first ever candidate to CEDAW. I count on member states’ valuable support for this important role.”

Collaboration

Professor Choudhry is often called upon to collaborate with respected organisations and bodies to enhance their research and ensure informed input on processes and practices across her field.

She has collaborated with Women’s Aid England on research into domestic abuse, human rights and the family courts. This research has been drawn upon in the UK by members of the judiciary, members of Parliament, the Victims Commissioner and the Home Affairs (Parliamentary) Committee in its report on the proposed Domestic Abuse Bill 2018.

She is an academic member of Women Against Violence in Europe (WAVE), a network of over 170 European women’s NGOs, and is a member of the European Network on Gender Violence, an interdisciplinary network of over 500 researchers.

More recently, she has collaborated with a wide network of NGOs and justice actors in England and Wales, France, Spain, Italy, and Bosnia & Herzegovina to conduct research on the experiences of victims of domestic violence within the family justice system.

Educational background and publications

PhD in Law, University of Warwick (2016)

Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (1999)

Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice, The College of Law (1994)

Bachelor of Laws LLB (Hons), University of Liverpool (1993)

Books

With J Herring (Eds), ‘The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Family Law’, Cambridge University Press (2019)

S Choudhry and J Herring, ‘European Human Rights and Family Law’, Hart Publishing (2010)

S Choudhry, J Herring and J Wallbank (Eds), ‘Rights, Gender and Family Law’, Routledge-Cavendish (2009)

Languages

English (native)

Italian (intermediate)