The monitoring committee in charge of "progress," which is created by Article 17, consists of "23 experts," on which the United States might some day have one vote out of 23. The current committee includes representatives from Algeria, Cuba and Bangladesh and a vice chairman from Zimbabwe.

No doubt the "experts" will always be "experts" in feminist ideology and tactics. The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women's international "experts" have already issued negative reports about the practices of countries that were foolish enough to ratify the treaty.

The committee criticized Ireland for "promoting a stereotypical view of the role of women in the home and as mothers," Belarus for "such symbols as a Mother's Day" because it promotes "a negative cultural stereotype," and Slovenia because fewer "than 30 percent of children under 3 years of age were in formal day care." The committee recommended "the decriminalization of prostitution in China."

Article 16 also orders a massive interference with U.S. laws as well as with federal-state balance of powers by obligating the federal government to take over all family law, including marriage, divorce, child custody, and marital property.

When Edmund S. Muskie was Secretary of State, he issued a memo stating that the treaty completely fails to take into account "the division of authority between the state and federal governments in the United States." His memo also admitted that this treaty applies "to private organizations and areas of personal conduct not covered by U.S. law."

United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women would give busybody global bureaucrats and activist judges extraordinary powers to revise U.S. laws, education and customs to comport with radical feminist ideology.

If President Bush wants to re-establish friendly connections with pro-family voters, whom he conspicuously ignored in his State of the Union speech, he should unsign this Carter-signed U.N. Treaty just as he unsigned the Clinton-signed International Criminal Court Treaty.