Indivisible Rights and Intersectional Identities or, What Do Women's Human Rights Have to Do with the Race Convention
![handle is hein.journals/howlj40 and id is 627 raw text is: Indivisible Rights and Intersectional
Identities or, What Do Women's
Human Rights Have to Do with the
Race Convention?
LISA A. CRooMs*
Because I am black
Because I am woman
Because I am short
Because I am young
Because I am African
I am Human.'
INTRODUCTION
On December 21, 1965, the United Nations (U.N.) General As-
sembly unanimously adopted the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).2 The
treaty was entered into force on January 4, 1969.? Although the
United States signed CERD in 1966, it did not ratify the treaty until
November 20, 1994.4 U.S. ratification was accompanied by a package
of Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations (RUDs), some of
* Associate Professor, Howard University School of Law. B.A. 1984, Howard University;
J.D. 1991, University of Michigan Law School. I would like to thank Fatina Purdie and the
members of the Howard Law Journal for their editorial work. As always, the views expressed in
this article as well as any errors remain my own.
1. Diormm FA1u~s, Human, on WrnD SEED - WILD FLOWER (Columbia Records 1994).
2. International Convention on the Elimination ofAll Forms of Racial Discrimination, G.A.
Res. 2106A, U.N. GAOR, 20th Sess., Supp. No. 14, at 47, U.N. Doc. A/6014 (1965) [hereinafter
CERD].
3. Id.
4. See, e.g., Connie de la Vega, Civil Rights During the 1990s: New Treaty Law Could Help
Immensely, 65 U. Cn. L. REv. 423,423 (1997) (noting that U.S. ratification of CERD in Novem-
ber 1994 was a mere twenty-nine years after it was unanimously adopted by the United Nations
General Assembly and twenty-eight years after it was signed by the United States).
1997 Vol. 40 No. 3
619](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/howlj40&div=24&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Indivisible Rights and Intersectional Identities or, What Do Women's Human Rights Have to Do with the Race Convention
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