Sneaking gender identity into the unofficial German version of the UN Convention
Although the Yogyakarta Principles have no legal validity, the German CEDAW Alliance refers to them in its interpretation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and disseminates a distorted translation into German.
The CEDAW Alliance is a „civil, open network“ of 32 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) under the umbrella of the National Council of German Women’s Organizations. The Federal Trans Association (Bundesverband Trans) is also part of the network.
The official UN languages of CEDAW are English, Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish. However, following the ratification of the Convention by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1980, the German legislator published a German translation of the CEDAW in its Law on the Convention of 18 December 1979 on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The law was passed on 25 April 1985.
The text includes men now
In its CEDAW dossier: The UN Women’s Rights Convention in Germany of 10 September 2021, the CEDAW Alliance has translated and supplemented central passages of this German translation of the legislator in such a way that men who claim to be women on the basis of their „gender identity“ are now included.
The first article of the German „Law on the Convention of 18 December 1979 on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women“ reads:
The Convention of 18 December 1979 on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, signed by the Federal Republic of Germany in Copenhagen on 17 July 1980, is hereby approved on the understanding that Article 7(b) of the Convention shall not be applied insofar as Article 12a(4), second sentence, of the Basic Law conflicts with it. The Convention is published below.
[Article 12 a, paragraph 4, sentence 2 of the Basic Law stipulates that women may under no circumstances be obliged to serve with a weapon.]
In German law, this first article is followed by the wording of the CEDAW in English, French and German. The German translation of Part I, Article 1 of the CEDAW states:
In the present Convention, the term „discrimination against women“ means any distinction, exclusion or restriction based on sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on the basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civic or any other field.
(For the purposes of the present Convention, the term „discrimination against women“ shall mean any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field).
In contrast to the translation in the German law, the CEDAW Alliance Germany’s falsified rendering of these passages reads:
CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) is an international convention of the United Nations on women’s rights. The UN Women’s Rights Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and aims to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women. It is the most important, binding international instrument for strengthening and realising women’s rights. The Convention obliges the 189 states that have ratified CEDAW in a legally binding manner to take measures to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex/gender [Geschlecht] and gender identity in their countries. Approximately every four years, states parties must report on their progress to the United Nations CEDAW Committee.
With the backing of the Minister for Women
This manipulative translation and interpretation of CEDAW by the CEDAW Alliance Germany was also disseminated in 2022 in workshops for women’s and gender equality officers sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.
However, the working basis for equality and women’s representatives is the Federal Equality Act and the respective state equality laws, which are derived from Article 3 of the Basic Law. Just like the official language versions of the CEDAW, these refer to sex and not the transgender ideological concept of „gender identity“.