"The
Areas of Common Grounds Among Various UN Guiding Instruments -
CEDAW, Beijing Platform for Action, and the Outcomes Document"
Shanthi
Dairiam, Director, IWRAW Asia Pacific
Presented
at the ESCAP Expert Group Meeting on
Regional Implementation and Monitoring of the Beijing Platform
for Action and the
Outcome of the 23rd Special Session of the UN General Assembly
Relating to Women
2-4 December 2002
Bangkok, Thailand
The world has witnessed two decades of development for women.
During this period, many global initiatives had been taken to
promote, respect and enforce women's rights. They include the
Declaration of the Decade for Women (1975-1985), the adoption
of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women, (the CEDAW Convention) four world conferences on
women, the adoption by consensus of the Nairobi Forward Looking
Strategies (1985), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
(BPFA) 1995 as well as the adoption of Further Actions and Initiatives
to Implement the BPFA (2000) and the in the same year the adoption
of the Millenium Development Goals. Other world conferences, in
particular, the Vienna Conference on Human Rights and the International
Conference on Population and Development have greatly advanced
the understanding and global commitment to women's rights.
All of these
efforts do not run contrary to each other; they have the same
intention of advancing the status of women and achieving equality
between women and men. However, there is some variance in the
potential to effectively bring about change. The BPFA is a programme
of action for the advancement of women and identifies several
programmatic steps including gender-sensitisation and gender mainstreaming.
in the context of 13 critical areas, which need to be addressed.
The Outcomes Document is more strategic in that it identifies
obstacles that impede the advancement of women and clearly points
out to the need "to redress inequalities between women and
men and to ensure equal rights, responsibilities, opportunities
and possibilities." While the BPFA remains the core document,
the insights and actions from the Outcomes document need to inform
the efforts to implement the BPFA. The instrument through which
this harmonisation can be brought about is the CEDAW Convention
Inequality
has persisted over the years. Globally, progress in the achievement
of women's rights has been slow. When the assessment of the implementation
of the Forward Looking Strategies was carried out at the Fourth
World Conference on Women, it was acknowledged that a decade after
Nairobi, equality between women and men has not been achieved.
More than two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults are women.
Absolute poverty, and the feminisation of poverty, continued violence
against women and the widespread exclusion of half of humanity
from institutions of power and governance underscore the need
to continue the search for development, peace and security. Discrimination
affects women throughout their lives and in many situations, discriminatory
practices against women including violence against women start
at the earliest stages in life.
At the level
of State practice many interventions have also been put in. There
are constitutional guarantees for prohibition of discrimination
on the basis of sex, national policies on women, action plans
drawn up to implement the Beijing Platform, the ICPD, etc. Commonwealth
countries have the Commonwealth plan of action to reckon with
as well. One of the main strategies proposed by all these interventions
is the mainstreaming of women's interests into national development.
We need to harmonise all these interventions and develop an integrated
programme for ensuring the advancement of women. It is futile
to look at all these interventions as separate and independent.
But above all we need to address the persistent inequality that
women continue to face in spite of so much good effort. I propose
to present the CEDAW onvention as having the potential to provide
us with a framework that can integrate all efforts and address
the structural and systemic nature of women's inequality.
Introducing
Gender Sensitivity into Development Practice is a Complex Process
Gender sensitisation and mainstreaming is a complex process. First
of all we need to consider the gendered experiences of our lives
current and historical and the interrelated aspect of the various
forms of discrimination and how that has moulded male and female
responses to life situations. Merely including equality clauses
in various legal instruments or having national policy and plans
of action for women without changing institutional practices has
not necessarily benefited women. There is a need for a clear understanding
of the various factors that work against women and holistic approaches
developed to give women the capability to exercise their rights
developed. Such measures have to take into consideration the link
between civil and political rights and economic and social rights,
the need for intervention in the private and public sphere, the
adverse effects of culture and tradition and to make a distinction
between immediate relief aimed at ameliorating the conditions
of women and long term measures that will elevate the position
of women in society.
For example,
the labour legislation in many countries has provisions for equal
pay. However, in most countries, women are ghettoised into traditional
low paying jobs, most women work inside and outside the home and
at the same time face the risk of physical insecurity within the
home, at the work site and in other public places hampering their
mobility. Their lack of exposure and at times limited skills development,
the absence of male responsibility for family care, the lack of
family support services and the possible lack of autonomy at the
personal level may prevent women from accessing opportunities
for upward mobility. All of this is compounded by the fact that
there are very few women in decision-making positions to effect
proactive women-centred policies. Under these conditions, the
existence of an equal pay for equal work clause does not really
benefit women. This is not to underestimate the importance of
the principle of equal pay for equal work but to remind ourselves
that it is not enough.
What is needed
are mechanisms through which a gendered analysis of human rights
principles can be made to mandate pro-active pro-woman policies
and practices. Mechanisms that will not only ask whether there
are laws that guarantee equal pay for equal work but which will
also ask whether there are programmatic measures to free women
from family support services, that make special provisions to
ensure personal security. We need mechanisms that ensure affirmative
action for training opportunities, long-term measures that attempt
to change cultural patterns of conduct that place women and men
in stereotypical roles that disadvantage women or measures that
ensure that structures that facilitate all of this is not male-dominated
so that discriminatory decisions are not continuously made.
So it means
more than just considering whether women are an affected group
but analysing why, bringing to light the socio-economic characteristics
that can deny women civil and political rights and vice-versa.
As women's rights are violated not only in the civil and political
sphere, but also in the socio-economic sphere (i.e. access to
resources) on the basis of their sex, equality provisions based
on the assumption that men and women are the same, face the same
obstacles, and on male models of attributes and needs do not benefit
women.
The analysis
has to unpack the systemic nature of discrimination and reveal
the complex processes by which social norms practised at the private
and community level underpin the manner in which institutions
such as the family, the community, the market and the state reproduce
discrimination through law and policy and practice.
It is here
that the CEDAW Convention shows promise.
About the
CEDAW Convention
The CEDAW
Convention is an international human rights treaty ratified by
or acceded to by170 countries. It is a comprehensive bill of rights
for women and combines concerns that had been hitherto addressed
in an ad-hoc manner through the UN system. The CEDAW Convention
is monitored by the CEDAW Committee which operates out of the
United Nations in New York. States Parties to the CEDAW Convention
are obligated to report to the committee one year after ratification,
and thereafter every four years. On review of each report of States
Parties, the CEDAW Committee issues a report of its assessments
along with its recommendations. These are referred to as Concluding
Comments.
The CEDAW
Convention's Guarantee of Equal Rights and Non- discrimination
What the CEDAW
Convention brings to the process of advancing the status of women
is the imperative of a rights-based approach and the insistence
of norms and standards such as equality and non-discrimination
which cannot be compromised. The concept of equality under the
CEDAW Convention is very empowering as it goes beyond formal equality
and insists not only the creation of equality of opportunity but
also equality of access to the opportunity and equality of results.
In other words, it insists on ensuring de facto rights. To do
this, the elimination of discrimination is critical. Discrimination
under the CEDAW Convention (article 1) includes both direct and
indirect discrimination or anything that has a discriminatory
effect though discrimination was not intended. The elimination
of discrimination against women and ensuring equal rights for
women should underpin all efforts to advance the status of women.
The CEDAW Convention contains guarantees for equality and freedom
from discrimination, which may occur in the private or public
sphere. It is these guarantees that make the CEDAW Convention
a powerful instrument for promoting the advancement of women in
every sphere, for it provides a theoretical framework by which
to identify barriers to women's advancement, to assess needs,
to set goals, to identify measures and to evaluate accomplishments.
This does not make the convention an exclusive instrument for
planning the development of women. Rather, it provides an essential
framework comprising principles, norms and desired outcomes on
which to pin the specific actions arising out of other international
initiatives like those of the World Conferences.
The CEDAW
Convention is a legal instrument hence it does not define every
context nor it does it give the details of the content of action
that needs to be implemented in the way the BPFA does. These can
be taken from sources such as documents of the world conferences.
The guidance for their choice comes from an assessment of whether
they will promote equality. For example, article 7 of the CEDAW
Convention provides for the equal rights of women to participate
in public life. But in the text it merely says that:
The CEDAW
Convention does not spell out what the appropriate measures should
be as this is left to be formulated according to the context by
the State. These measures have to be identified on the basis of
whether they will eliminate discrimination against women and promote
equality of outcome.
A look at
the BPFA will show us a range of strategic objectives and actions
to bring about the outcomes demanded by the CEDAW Convention such
as recruiting, training financially assisting women candidates,
amending electoral processes, developing campaigns directed at
equal participation, setting numerical goals and quotas, targeting
women for appointments to public positions, etc.
While the
CEDAW Convention does not detail exhaustively the specific types
of discrimination that women may face in different cultures, it
provides a framework within which a range of issues pertaining
to discrimination may be addressed, based on its core understanding
of non-discrimination and equality. The application of the convention
is being continually updated to include new insights and new issues
that are brought to the CEDAW Committee's attention, through the
formulation of General Recommendations. For example, taking into
consideration the absence of any mention of violence against women
in the CEDAW Convention, the committee was of the opinion that
violence against women was a pernicious form of discrimination
against women and formulated General Recommendation 19 identifying
the various articles under which violence against women should
be reported by the states. It is this interpretative quality of
the CEDAW Convention that gives it its dynamism and sets it apart
from a programme or plan of action.
More Reasons
to Use the Framework of the CEDAW Convention to Plan Development
for Women
The CEDAW
Convention is based on the recognition that development for women
has to be based on a framework of rights and it obligates governments
to be major actors in eradicating discrimination against women
that occurs not only in social and material terms, but also of
eradicating ideology and beliefs and practices which are based
on the idea of the "inferiority or the superiority"
of either sex or on stereotyped roles for women and men, (article
5). Article 1 which defines discrimination and article 5 give
the CEDAW Convention the widest applicability in identifying measures
for eliminating discrimination, as together they can be interpreted
to refer to almost any situation that adversely affects women.
The CEDAW
Convention is unique in that it dispenses with the dichotomy between
the private and public levels by recognising violations of women
in the private sphere, i.e. the home, as violations of women's
human rights and obligates governments to eradicate discrimination
against women at both these levels. It also obligates governments
to regulate private enterprise in the interests of women's equality.
It addresses the need to tackle power relations between women
and men in all the institutions, the family, the community, the
market and the State.
Secondly, the CEDAW Convention recognises that despite legal rights
being granted to women in many countries, discrimination persists,
and women's access to legal rights are curtailed by a denial of
women's rights to economic and social development. Hence it bridges
the traditional divisions between civil and political and socio-economic
rights and it mandates both legal and development policy measures
to guarantee the rights of women.
State obligations
as envisioned by the CEDAW Convention arise out of the above understanding
of what equality means and how it can be achieved.
Above all,
ratification of the treaty subjects the State to periodic scrutiny
by an independent body, the CEDAW Committee and draws accountability
for its obligations under treaty law. This is the final strength
of the CEDAW Convention. There is a monitoring mechanism and it
forces us to set targets and bench marks for progress This subjects
the State to compliance with the minimum normative standards of
performance set collectively by the State and an independent body
covering all commitments whether under the CEDAW Convention or
as parties to World Conferences. The obligations of the State
under the CEDAW Convention are legally binding and the State can
even be made answerable in the domestic courts for non-compliance.
Furthermore since reporting has to take place every four years
it facilitates the setting of time bound targets and goals.
Conclusion
The CEDAW
Convention provides a strategic framework for it demands the recognition
that development for women has to be based on the principles of
rights, equality and non-discrimination. This framework should
underpin all efforts that promote the advancement of women and
the implementation of the CEDAW Convention should therefore not
be seen as a separate initiative. The development of indicators
under such a framework has to be multi-layered and inter-related.
Not only should there be indicators of achievement such as improvement
in literacy rates etc. but also indicators of discrimination that
need to be eliminated and indicators of State action that need
to be in place as given below:
Data
Requirements
- What
is the status of women in all fields in comparison with
men (indicators)?
- What
are the obstacles to improving women's equality status?
(Lack of opportunity or lack of access, indicators of
discrimination: direct and indirect)
- What
action has the State taken and its effectiveness:
De
Jure: Law, policy, programme, services (opportunities
created)
Indicators of State obligation as required under articles
2 and 3: Policy for eliminating discrimination, constitutional
and legal guarantees for equality, for the prohibition
and prevention of discrimination and for penalising
discrimination when it occurs; establishment of competent
tribunals and other public institutions to protect women
against discrimination; measures to ensure that public
authorities and institutions do not discriminate against
women. Measures to ensure that no person, organisation
or enterprise discriminates against women; measures
to abolish customs and practices that discriminate against
women; the repeal of all discriminatory laws.
Indicators
of access created by removing obstacles
Indicators
of weak State action such as gender bias contributing
to lack of access, that needs to be eliminated
- What
is the status of the practical realisation of rights?
Indicators of de facto rights (results)
- Time-frames
goals and indicators of further action the State should
undertake
(Source:
IWRAW Asia Pacific Training Materials)
|
Hitherto to
conceptually, development had been addressing women's lack of
productive resources without addressing inequality in the family.
Nor was there a framework on the principles of equality underlying
these initiatives. Hence, in spite of the many years of development
for women there had only been incremental gain for women. There
was very little change in the social positioning, stereotyped
roles of men and women hardly changed and male preference has
persisted in all institutions of society. This situation needs
to change for we are all committed to it through various legal
and policy measures. What remains to be done is to bridge the
gap between law, policy and reality. It is the CEDAW Convention's
potential that will help us in accomplishing this.
Summary
of Distinction and Link Between Treaties and World Conference
Platforms/Plans of Action
| TREATIES |
WORLD
CONFERENCES |
International
law, hence legally binding. The treaty provides a framework
for the achievement of women's rights.
Implementer is the State.
Each State's fulfillment of obligation is monitored by the
CEDAW Committee.The treaty is rights-based on principles,
norms and standards.
For example, the norms and principles of the CEDAW Convention
are equality, non-discrimination, and State obligation.
Principles are interpreted - scope of rights evolves and can
be broadenedThe CEDAW Committee provides meanings to the provisions
of the CEDAW Convention and jurisprudence constantly evolves. |
Programme
of action and hence not legally binding.
Implementer is the State.
No State by State review but only a global review every five
years with no binding effect on any State.
The Conference Document provides objectives, strategies, actions
and actors. We could take the rights framework of the CEDAW
Convention and look for suggestions in the world conference
document to see how to fulfil the rights given in the treaties.
Actions need to be frames and evaluated on the basis of the
principles and standards set in the treaty and by the CEDAW
Committee through dialogue with the States party. |
The review
of the implementation of both sets of obligations can be combined
using the same data and evaluating the actions based on the principles
and standards of the treaties - only the format of reporting needs
to be altered.
(Source:
IWRAW Asia Pacific Training materials)
