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Designation
of responsibilities
Who is responsible
within the State, for fulfilling obligations under the CEDAW Convention?
This is equal to asking who is responsible for women in the country.
In most countries, there is a national machinery for women and it
is mistakenly understood that this machinery has prime responsibility
to implement the CEDAW Convention, write the report etc. The obligations
under the CEDAW Convention falls in all fields so every sector and
division of government, horizontally and vertically, has to take
responsibility. This requires a multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral
approach. While the CEDAW Convention is a legal instrument, it recognises
that legal rights cannot be exercised unless there is development
for women in the economic and social fields. Therefore, in order
to implement the convention effectively and to facilitate a multi-sectoral
approach, it would require acknowledgement of central responsibility
from the Attorney General's Office, the Economic Planning Unit,
the Public Services Department, and the Treasury. All other sectors
would have to take on specific responsibility too.
The national
machinery for women in a country would have to play a catalytic
and coordinating role to ensure consistency in the understanding
of the meaning and scope of the CEDAW Convention among all sectors,
to facilitate monitoring of implementation, identification of obstacles
and capacity-building. The report itself would have to be the collective
expression of a political commitment from all sectors of the Government
to implement the CEDAW Convention. The national machinery for women
would have to play a critical advocacy role in mobilising this political
commitment.
This
page was last updated on July 25, 2003
“IWRAW
Asia Pacific is an independent, non-profit, NGO in Special consultative
status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.”
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