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NGO Efforts to Implement CEDAW in
   Southeast Asia

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW for short, can be a difficult set of principles and guidelines to grasp; a framework for promoting gender equality and women’s rights that can be complex and often abstract – words on paper that don’t easily translate into concrete realities on the ground.

 

Fortunately, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world have made it their job to make the Convention come alive. They know that it cannot effectively be implemented unless it has a more ‘human face’, unless people can see how it can change their lives for the better - how it, tangibly, can improve families and communities if put into practice by both men and women in their work and daily lives.

 

Several NGOs in Southeast Asia too have taken on this challenge. They have learned to navigate the processes required to monitor the implementation of the Convention, to create alternative reports on the situation of women in their countries, and to advocate for greater attention to key issues and concerns raised by the CEDAW Committee. They reach out to people on the ground, at the community and grassroots levels, who have never heard of CEDAW, or who might dismiss it as international propaganda or useless rhetoric. In Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, NGOs have also been setting up loose networks of civil society organizations called CEDAW ‘watch groups’ – ongoing citizen monitoring of CEDAW implementation.

 

Raising CEDAW awareness and monitoring its implementation isn’t easy work, and NGOs know they cannot do it on their own. Yet coordination amongst them is a perpetually challenging task – many have had to put aside single-issue agendas, differences in opinions and attitudes, and different methods and ways of working, to forge compromise and find common ground. The process is continuously changing, but it is dynamic, organic, and ultimately enriching.

 

With the support of the international and regional community, NGOs in Southeast Asia are making great strides in raising the profile of the Convention in their countries. They have come together to prepare Shadow Reports to the CEDAW Committee; they have lobbied with their governments to include their research and data in their respective State party’s official reports; and they have organized follow-up efforts after reporting sessions, including training sessions, public forums and media activities to raise greater awareness and ensure that the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Observations are widely disseminated and understood.

 

Many NGOs are also showing a deeper understanding of how to apply the Convention and the Concluding Observations as a framework for their programmes. CEDAW Watch members in Cambodia and Thailand have utilized the Convention to guide their activities to promote women’s participation in local governance, including training female candidates, and raising awareness among voters about the need for more women in public life. NGOs in Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia, have also been using CEDAW as a reference point in their campaign activities during the 16 Days of Activism to end violence against women, an annual global campaign to draw attention to gender violence.

 

Members of CEDAW Watch groups have used CEDAW to review government policies and programmes, and examine existing laws for discriminatory provisions, as well as successfully proposed legislative changes. In Cambodia, an NGO coalition used the CEDAW framework to examine whether laws related to violence against women contain discriminatory provisions that ultimately contravene CEDAW principles, and what the impact of this on women would be. An NGO review of electoral laws in Indonesia, led to important legislative amendments being passed that will encourage and improve women’s participation in the electoral process. In Thailand, NGO advocacy around the drafting of the domestic violence law and the anti-trafficking law, has contributed to both laws being based on CEDAW principles, while in Vietnam similar successes were recorded by the CEDAW Watch group for the country’s new laws on gender equality, and domestic violence.

 

Some NGOs are using CEDAW as a framework to urge for new legislation, or to ensure that gender equality provisions are included in new legislation. In Timor-Leste and Thailand, NGOs worked to ensure that women’s rights were included in their countries’ new constitutions, while in the Philippines, women’s groups are lobbying for a landmark bill, called the Magna Carta for Women, that is based solidly on CEDAW principles.

 

In some countries, CEDAW Watch groups have also concentrated on involving the media in raising awareness about CEDAW, and in some cases, media organizations have themselves joined as CEDAW Watch members. In Indonesia, young journalists who have been trained on CEDAW are now using their new knowledge to inform their reporting. CEDAW was highlighted in a 2007 advertisement campaign in the Philippines organized by a women’s media group, and in Thailand a series of articles on the role of women in politics and the state’s obligations under CEDAW ran in 5 major English and Thai dailies in 2007. During the parliamentary and presidential elections in Timor-Leste in 2007, six radio programmes were aired on women’s participation in politics to raise voter awareness.

 

Local initiatives are increasingly being shared among and between groups across the region. CEDAW Watch networks have been connecting to share knowledge and experiences in monitoring the Convention. In August 2007, for example, groups from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Timor-Leste met in Phnom Penh at a regional workshop to discuss future strategies and activities. Regional NGOs too, such as the Asian Indigenous Women’s Network (AIWN), the Committee for Asian Women (CAW) , Forum Asia, and the Asian Migrants Centre, have begun exploring how they could integrate CEDAW into their work to address the specific needs of marginalized groups of women. They have begun linking their members with CEDAW Watch groups in different countries to ensure particular discriminatory practices against indigenous, ethnic minority, and migrant women are included in analysis and advocacy efforts.

 

Other regional and international NGOs such as the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW-AP), and the Asia-Pacific Women in Law and Development (APWLD), who have developed CEDAW expertise over several years and amassed significant knowledge on how the Convention is being applied in countries around the region, act as valuable resource persons and strong CEDAW advocates.

 

IWRAW-AP provides capacity-building training on CEDAW processes, such as on developing NGO shadow reports and monitoring implementation. They play an important role in facilitating and assisting national groups in their advocacy and monitoring work – training is provided not only to NGOs but also to government agencies. For example, one of IWRAW’s most successful initiatives is its ‘Global to Local’ programme, established in 1997 to facilitate the participation of women activists at the review of their government's report by the CEDAW Committee.

 

APWLD provides regular training on feminist legal theory and practice, based on CEDAW principles, to women’s rights activists and lawyers from civil society and government organizations. They also conduct advocacy campaigns, using the frameworks of CEDAW and other international human rights instruments, to urge for protection of the rights of the most marginalized groups of women.

 

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