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NGOs
and CEDAW
The CEDAW Convention
provides a positive legal framework for women's rights but it will
not automatically confer rights on women. What it does is that it
legitimises women's claims for rights and women can be transformed
from being passive beneficiaries to active claimants. It creates
the space for women's agency.
The CEDAW Convention
is largely dependent on the political will of governments. This
political will can be created through a strong and highly conscious
constituency, not only among women and women's groups but within
government bureaucracy as well. The urgent need is to raise awareness
and develop skills at various levels in relation to the CEDAW Convention
among women, government functionaries, lawyers and members of the
judicial system. At the ground level, advocacy for the application
of the norms of the CEDAW Convention has to be linked to the international
mandate of equality and non-discrimination.
This linkage
also requires the establishment of a relationship between women's
groups and the CEDAW Committee that monitors States parties' compliance
with their obligations under the CEDAW Convention. Women's interaction
with the CEDAW Committee can help integrate their perspectives into
the interpretation of the convention's articles. This in turn will
increase the CEDAW Convention's scope for domestic application and
contribute to the development of women's rights jurisprudence within
the UN system. Women can thus transform the CEDAW Convention into
a truly living instrument and be critical actors in establishing
norms and in the setting of standards for women's rights.
The participation
of women from all regions and in all their diversity in the setting
of international norms is also critical because of the need for
universal minimum standards of human rights. This is so especially
in the light of rising fundamentalism in our countries. There is
a need to engage in the process of evolving core set of universal
norms and standards for women's rights. Otherwise, rights for women
will be subject to changing ideologies and shifting socio-economic
and political contexts. The women we are working with are ready
to engage in such standard-setting. In fact it is vital that they
do that, so that their experiences and needs form the basis of such
standard setting, thus linking the national to the global and the
global to the national.
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.”
©IWRAW Asia Pacific
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