President Omar Bashir said Sunday that Sudan refused to ratify an international treaty on women's rights as it contradicts national traditions, reported AFP.
Beshir told a rally, held near Khartoum on Friday to celebrate his re-election as president last month, that he found parts of the treaty "contradicted Sudanese values and traditions," AFP said, citing the official SUNA news agency.
SUNA gave no other details of Bashir's announcement regarding the Convention of Eradication of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Bashir's remarks came almost five months after UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Karin Sham Poo urged him to sign the convention which she said "seeks to remove harmful practices and maintain equality between men and women."
"I urge the government of Sudan to ratify CEDAW and make its commitment to its women not a passive one, but an obligation for the succeeding generations to honor and uphold," she said in August last year, according to AFP.
Sudan has already signed the Convention on the Rights for Children (CRC), but had always been reluctant to sign CEDAW amid Islamist and other opposition to the treaty.
The UNICEF official said at the time that ratification of the convention would lead to the "enforcement of monitoring mechanisms to reduce the discriminatory gaps between men and women."
The London-based Amnesty International said that in 1999, the United Nations Human Rights Commission passed a highly critical resolution on the human rights situation in Sudan. Among other things, said Amnesty in its website, the commission urgently appealed to the Sudanese government to put an end to practices that violate the human rights of women.
Since 1989, added the organization, "women in Sudan have become the victims of a host of restrictions and state introduced regulations governing their behavior." -- Albawaba.com
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