Report to United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women to support its Eighth Review of Ireland

FLAC's report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (‘CEDAW’) to support its eighth review of Ireland in advance of its 91^st session where it will consider Ireland’s State Report.

FLAC’s report is informed by our experience of promoting gender equality and access to justice for women and girls across various areas of our work. The majority of callers to FLAC’s Telephone Information and Referral Line are women. FLAC provides thousands of women with early legal information and advice in the areas of family and employment law each year. However, we cannot meet the overwhelming demand for these service.

Since 2015, equality/discrimination has consistently been one of the areas of law in which FLAC most often provides legal representation. We frequently represent women who have experienced intersectional discrimination (i.e. discrimination on two or more grounds where the discriminatory treatment is linked to the combination of grounds, rather than to each ground separately), including Roma women who wear traditional Roma attire and who experience discrimination on the basis of their ethnicity and gender. We draw from our experience of providing legal assistance in our policy, research and law reform work.

In 2017, CEDAW adopted several recommendations made by FLAC.