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By Rajashri Dasgupta Thirty years after CEDAW, does the Convention really serve a useful purpose? Sunila Abeysekera, Sri Lankan human rights campaigner who heads International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific, says the Convention is a good space for democratic countries to reaffirm that they respect women’s rights
For over two decades, Sunila Abeysekera has been an ardent campaigner of human rights and women’s rights in Sri Lanka and around the world. She defied threats to her life when she brought human rights abuses in Sri Lanka to the attention of the international community. In 1999, she won the UN Human Rights Award and was honoured for her work by Human Rights Watch last year. In this interview, Abeysekera, who heads the International Women’s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW) Asia Pacific, talks about how the UN Convention on The Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) can be “kept alive” to protect the rights of women. It’s been 30 years since CEDAW came into force as an international treaty. What has the Convention achieved? The Convention is now applicable in at least 120 countries that have ratified the treaty. It is often described as an international bill of rights for women. It defines what constitutes discrimination against women, and sets up an agenda for national action to end such discrimination. Countries that have ratified or acceded to the convention are legally bound to put its provisions into practice. Every four years, a committee of experts reviews the work of countries that have ratified the Women’s Convention, as CEDAW is popularly known. They are also committed to submitting national reports on measures they have taken to comply with their treaty obligations. Since Sri Lanka and India have both ratified the Convention, their governments submit a report to the CEDAW Committee (henceforth, Committee) on how well they are doing in terms of applying and making CEDAW rights applicable to women in their countries. Can women’s groups keep the pressure on governments during the review process, to keep alive the spirit of the Convention? After all, government reports can be an eyewash… Exactly. The Committee welcomes the involvement of women’s groups in making a separate submission called the Shadow Report to the Committee. These groups provide bits of information that governments forget, such as about minority groups and poverty. The Committee really tries to encourage a national process which includes different women’s groups working on different issues that represent different communities and issues. How important is the Shadow Report? The way it works, the report provides valuable information to members of the Committee. When the government submits its report, it also sends representatives from the capital, foreign ministry, human rights desk, embassy, and the ambassador in Geneva to attend the review meeting. It is quite an active dialogue between representatives of the government and members of the Committee. Governments often say only good things, not bad about their own country. The sharpness of the questions asked by Committee members to government representatives depends on whether they have alternative and good information from the Shadow Report. Did the Shadow Report from India help to question the Indian government? It is interesting that national organisations like the National Alliance of Women’s Organisations have a comprehensive process whereby they reach out to an extensive network of women’s groups. The report put together was edited by five or six women who have the competence necessary for the task. Largely based on this, the Committee specifically recommended that the government report back later on the status of cases with regard to the Gujarat carnage (in 2002). Women’s groups actually relayed valuable information showing that these cases were being delayed; victims of rape and violence have not got justice… At the end of the review process, as concluding observations, the Committee comes out with a set of recommendations; it could be on reforming the law or a policy that is discriminatory or flawed. In the next four years, the government is meant to implement these recommendations. Women’s groups should be following up on what the government is doing, or not doing. Can the recommendations create international pressure? It can, it can. Whatever the Committee says the Indian government is obliged to take seriously, even though the Committee does not have the power to really enforce the recommendations. Still, for governments like India it is an important process to say ‘we are accountable, we respect women’s rights, we are democratic’. It’s a good space for democratic countries. What is IWRAW’s role in the CEDAW process? We have an office at the High Commission for Human Rights in New York that, every year, puts out a list of countries that will be reviewed. We get advance warning. For instance, this year the committee will review countries including Brazil and Azerbaijan. We send out messages through email or word-of-mouth to women’s groups, that such and such country will be reporting (we have a good network and contacts). Thirty years down the line, many countries have a process going. This year, both Laos and Timor are submitting their first reports to the committee. IWRAW members with expertise visited Laos and Timor to help groups with the process, provide guidelines and technical and legal know-how on how to prepare a Shadow Report. IWRAW also helps and supports groups on following up on the committee’s recommendations. During the review process, IWRAW runs a programme called ‘From the Global to Local’, where women from the community grassroots visit Geneva and New York to take part in the review meeting. They can actually observe the whole process and talk to Committee members before the meeting. But they do not have any speaking space at the meeting. They can only observe the process -- even when their own country is reporting. The dialogue at the meeting is between country representatives and Committee members. But there are many spaces and places where grassroots-level women can interact with Committee members. It’s a dynamic and lively process that enables women to become involved… after all, the whole environment is very conducive to planning and implementing steps concerning women’s rights in the presence and precincts of a committee created for this very purpose, with a clear and specific agenda, supported by experts in this field and women’s groups. Governments, including India, have reservations about many articles of the Women’s Convention. It is ineffective if the Indian government has reservations about articles related to marriage, customs and cultural practices that are discriminatory against women, in the name of non-interference in the personal affairs of communities… There are global and national campaigns by women’s groups against the reservations of governments. Groups are always saying: what is the point of having the Women’s Convention and ratifying it if you also take away some of these rights… The Government of India has reservations based on the fact that it is a multicultural society and does not want to impinge on the cultural rights of minorities (Articles 5 a and 16 i and ii). Many Islamic countries have reservations about Article 2 which is about eliminating discrimination against women, and Article 16 regarding marriage, custody, inheritance, and divorce. Last year we had a really big success when Morocco lifted its reservations on Article 16; there was a strong campaign because it is a North African country. In 2005, the Bangladesh government lifted its reservations on Article 2. Why is it that there is no mention of violence against women in the earlier CEDAW document? If you examine the proceedings of the first world conference on women in 1975, the focus was on economic empowerment. Violence against women was not recognised then as an issue. If you see the proceedings, it is women’s labour that is the focus. Groups worked on the issue of violence in the late-1970s and early-’80s. When groups saw that CEDAW was not reflecting an issue that was so critical to many women they launched a campaign and it was rectified. In 1992, the Committee created something that is called General Recommendation 19 -- it’s about violence against women (VAW) and it went to the UN General Assembly and was adopted as a resolution. Such general recommendations (GRs) then come back and the Committee tells governments that CEDAW is now looking at VAW and that it has to report on it. At this moment, many women’s groups from regions of conflict are talking to the Committee about creating a GR about women affected by conflict; this is not covered by CEDAW. There are other gaps too. The Women’s Convention has an ambiguous section on trafficking of women… There is a separate Article 6 on trafficking but it is couched with the perception of trafficking being very much linked to prostitution and forced prostitution, though these words are not mentioned. Unless the reader is looking for it, she can miss it. There has been a lot of pressure on the Committee to articulate its opinion on trafficking. Since there are other human rights mechanisms like the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, who did a special report on trafficking, the Committee has not moved on this issue. But it is important to push for the rights of trafficked victims; it is the best way to combat the criminalisation of victims of trafficking that we see happening at this point. Infochange News & Features, November 2009
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