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What
NGOs Can Do
NGOs can play
a crucial role in alerting States to their obligations, collaborating
with States on their programmes where NGOs are better placed to
forge links with communities and households, developing alternative
models to State models of intervention, and monitoring State activities
and their impact. Importantly, NGOs can serve as a facilitating
link with communities and individuals, and feed information to and
from State institutions to citizens.
NGOs become
particularly vital centres of advocacy around women's interests
and rights given State resistance to implementing change. This may
arise in different contexts from a combination of factors: the ideology
of governing parties or rulers, the resources that a State has and
how it chooses to distribute them, the people who staff state institutions
and their biases and prejudices, their distance from communities
and field realities, the size of implementing agencies and so on.
NGOs offer a viable organisational alternative, particularly where
they may be smaller in size, and located within communities. NGOs,
particularly where staffed or influenced strongly by feminist agendas,
can play a particularly effective role in addressing issues of women's
rights and empowerment at local levels, and feeding insights from
the field into national and international advocacy.
NGO interventions
and advocacy in relation to specific processes of the CEDAW Convention
can have several spin-off effects. At the international level, NGO
involvement in the CEDAW Convention reporting process can help to
feed important information to other bodies of the UN and ultimately
influence international processes, policies and programmes. It can
also work its influence domestically, where it helps to bring NGOs
together to discuss important aspects of State action, emphasise
collaborative work in expanding ideas and activism around rights,
create greater media awareness, and ensure that state interventions
are being monitored and assessed for effectiveness. NGOs can also
publicise State reports and the concluding comments of the CEDAW
Committee to a wider national audience, where States may avoid doing
so. At the local level, discussions around concepts and practice
of women's rights can provide a very sound basis for influencing
policy and creating spaces for change.
The following
are specific ways in which NGOs can participate in the CEDAW process:
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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