New York The Episcopal church has joined about 60 signers of an open letter to the U.S. Senate asking for ratification of the United Nations’ Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The UN adopted CEDAW in 1979, calling on all countries to end discrimination against women in politics, law, employment, education, health care, commercial transactions and domestic relations. The United States is the only industrialized country that has not yet ratified CEDAW. The State Department cleared CEDAW in 1994, referring it to the Senate for ratification, but Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, declined to set a date for hearings. Mr. Helms has announced he will retire next year. The 1991 Phoenix General Convention supported CEDAW and “deplore(d) the continued failure of the U.S. Congress to ratify this simple statement of the humanity of women.” An Executive Council resolution in November of 1996 called on the U.S. government to speak for the women of Afghanistan specifically by “asking that the provision of the United Nations Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women and the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women’s Platform for Action be honored by the Taliban leaders.”