Withholding Party Funding from a ‘Discriminating’ Political Party

Abstract

On 7 September 2005 the District Court in The Hague judged that it was unlawful for the Dutch State to continue providing party funding to the ‘Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij’. On the basis of religious considerations, this Calvinist political party excluded women from full membership and denied women the possibility of taking up political and administrative mandates on behalf of the party. This amounted to discrimination of women with regard to their right to political participation, according to the court. Public funding of the SGP was thus contrary to the obligations contained in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

This contribution analyses the court's decision and reasoning to conclude that it is premised on a number of untenable assumptions, regarding the nature and requirements of the principle of nondiscrimination — contained in CEDAW — vis-à-vis other rights and liberties.