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Shadow Report Sheds Light on Women’s Issues
Many people are still in the dark about the reality of violence that Filipino women face everyday.
All over the country, women continue to suffer discrimination and unequal relations. In rural areas, women dislocated from their homes end up in low-paying jobs or in harsh working conditions. The desire of Filipino women to migrate to other countries to find better jobs has led them to fall prey to trafficking and prostitution. Newspapers are rife with accounts of overseas Filipino women workers coming home physically and emotionally abused.
The different faces of women
These difficult situations that women face were recounted by women’s groups in Women’s Legal Bureau (WLB) Shadow Report and presented to the CEDAW Committee.
According to WLB Executive Director Mae Buenaventura, “Shadow reporting needs to be done because the government will always try to put their best foot forward. The CEDAW Committee realized that States Parties would want to show the progress in their implementation of laws, and thus provided a space for NGOs to give an alternative report.”
In 2006, WLB, with support from the UNIFEM (now UN Women) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) under the CEDAW Southeast Asia Programme (CEDAW-SEAP) led an advocacy campaign for the Philippine Shadow reporting.
WLB, in collaboration with Women's Education, Development and Productivity, Research and Advocacy Organization (WEDPRO), held a national training on CEDAW with back-to-back skills workshops on shadow reporting.
In order to shed light on the reality of violence against women, WLB gathered insights from over a hundred women’s groups from the major islands Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. This effort was deemed historic, because for the first time, WLB was able to get the support of so many women’s groups.
“The reports of the women’s NGOs and their wealth of experience from their work on the ground truly enriched the Shadow Report and it took on a more national scope,” says Buenaventura. “Our final shadow report reflected the different faces of women – rural and urban poor women, laborers, peasants, migrant women, indigenous and Muslim women, lesbian women, and leaders of different women’s NGOs,” she adds.
The workshops and consultations for the shadow report and shadow report training were also an empowering process for the women’s groups. WLB notes that the enthusiasm of the participants in wanting to get involved and making their voices count was “simply overwhelming.” Even beyond shadow reporting, the women’s groups expressed interest in launching an advocacy campaign for CEDAW.
Writing the actual shadow report took several months of drafting and editing, but after their hard work, the report proved to be very comprehensive, encompassing major women’s concerns in the Philippines, including policies, local representation, the environment, women and the law, with sectoral issues of the migrant, rural women with fisherfolk, labor and Violence against Women (VAW).
NGO reporting to the CEDAW Committee in New York
After the report was completed, the NGO representatives set off to present their Shadow Report to the CEDAW Committee in New York from August 13-17, 2006. The NGO delegation consisted of Maureen C. Pagaduan of WLB, Mary Lou C. Alcid of Kanlungan, an NGO advocating migrant rights, Clara Rita Padilla of EnGendeRights, Reena Marcelo of Reproductive Rights Resource Group, . Rosa R. Presno of the Pambansang Koalisyon ng Kababaihan sa Kanayunan (PKKK) a rural women’s network and Liza Masa of GABRIELA, a women’s party list representive in Congress. Prior to leaving for New York, they met to delineate their speaking roles, sequence and time slots so that they could maximize the limited 15 minutes allocated to their group during the actual dialogue with the CEDAW Committee.
The women’s groups were determined to bring their issues to light and lobbied tirelessly with individual CEDAW experts.
NGO women representatives were given three minutes to present concise oral interventions, on five focus areas of concern: rural women, indigenous and Muslim women, migrant women, reproductive health rights, and political killings of women.
Aside from the fact that the shadow report was done through the collaborative efforts of so many women’s groups, the event was also historic because the shadow report was delivered both orally and in written format, ensuring a better impact.
Going beyond shadow reporting
With the success of the women’s NGOs in preparing and sharing their shadow reports, other women’s groups were inspired to produce sectoral shadow reports. According to Buenaventura, the value in this is that women’s groups could spend most of the 30-page limit on their own issues, giving it more depth, unlike contributing only a few key points in a collaborative report.
With the next CEDAW Committee session review for the Philippines slated in 2010, women’s groups have already started preparing their shadow reports for presentation. However, Buenvantura says that the presentation to the CEDAW Committee is just one arena for women’s groups to use in their continuing advocacy. Buenaventura claims that the shadow report can be used by women’s NGOs in so many ways, including reports for media, multilateral bodies, for advocacy, campaigning, lobbying, and even fundraising.
“The trick now is for women’s groups to be able to highlight what they’ve been doing all along in line with CEDAW and use this as a platform for their work” says Buenaventura.
However, in the end, the greatest impact lies in the effective use of the Philippine Shadow Report as an advocacy tool for demanding state accountability in protecting and promoting women’s human rights.
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