ENHANCING
THE REALISATION OF RIGHTS
International Advocacy
IWRAW Asia
Pacific's work in facilitating a process by which women actively
claim their rights is not limited only to creating spaces for
action and dialogue at the national level. It is at the international
level that the most significant advances to the development of
human rights theory have been made and thus it is at this level
that conceptual clarity on universality and interconnectedness
of all rights must be sought. Moreover, it has been mainly by
participating in United Nations fora that women's groups have
been able to transform their own understanding of the relationship
between the local and the global experiences of discrimination
against women.
Phase I
(1993-1996) and Phase II (1997-2001)
"From
Global to Local" was the first international project coordinated
by IWRAW Asia Pacific. It facilitates the participation of women
from reporting countries in the review process. Since 1997, over
100 organisations from all over the world have participated in
this project. Through it, women have been able to directly observe
their government's performance in reporting to the CEDAW Committee
while providing information and interacting with the CEDAW Committee
members to raise their awareness about issues critical to women
in their respective country, a strategy that enhances the effectiveness
of this UN monitoring mechanism. This process of interaction with
the CEDAW Committee also allows women's perspectives to be integrated
into the interpretations of the articles of the CEDAW Convention
and their scope for domestic applicability, as well as in the
formulations of General Recommendations. Click
here for details.
Phase III
(2002-2005)
In this phase
of our work, IWRAW Asia Pacific seeks to expand the "From
Global to Local" project to encompass other human rights
mechanisms. Having consolidated efforts to promote the CEDAW Convention,
it is timely to gather the lessons learnt and expand our areas
of work into the other treaty bodies. As we continue to advocate
for the domestic implementation of human rights as interdependent,
our work also needs to draw on the inter-connectedness of all
human rights mechanisms. Hence, we will be adding more components
to the From Global to Local project to facilitate women's activism
in the sessions of the Committee of Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (CESCR) and the Human Rights Committee (HRC).
