| Second
Inter-Committee Meeting
of the Human Rights Treaty Bodies
Geneva, Switzerland, 18-20 June 2003
Submission
by International Women’s Rights Action Watch (Asia Pacific)
“Enhancing the Effectiveness of Treaty Bodies”
19 June 2003
The International
Women’s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW Asia Pacific) was set up
in 1993 to work towards the realisation of the human rights of women
through the use of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) and other international human rights instruments.
The cross-cutting
premise justifying IWRAW Asia Pacific’s past, present and
future areas of work is the need for the mobilisation of women’s
groups at the local, national, regional and international levels
to draw accountability from their governments on the domestic application
of human rights standards.
Over the past
ten years, IWRAW Asia Pacific has built up a significant presence
in 12 countries of South and Southeast Asia with some work being
carried out in East Asia, the Pacific and Central Asia. The work
has focused on building capacity of women’s groups to utilise
the CEDAW Convention and its norms as a tool for establishing the
fact of discrimination against women through research-based advocacy,
for gaining recognition of their right to equality at the national
level, for claiming such rights calling on State obligation under
this Convention and for participating in the review process in New
York thus contributing to the creation of evolving jurisprudence
and the elaboration of norms for standard setting at the local levels.
The programme has also worked with several governments in the region
enhancing their capacity to fulfill their obligations under the
treaty. Over these years, IWRAW Asia Pacific has played a significant
role in bridging the gap between the promise of women’s rights
and their actual realisation. Our work in the region has resulted
in the setting up of NGO CEDAW monitoring networks in the countries
of Asia and the creation of tools for assessing fulfillment of State
obligation. This work has been carried out through a project called
Facilitating the Fulfillment of State Obligation to Women’s
Equality.
Since 1997,
the organisation has also coordinated human rights work at the international
level bringing women from all parts of the world to the review process
in New York. This project is called From Global to Local and links
the reality of women’s lives as experienced by them to international
advocacy. This aspect of work is of great significance as it helps
to complete the cycle of reporting at the international level linking
it to an aware constituency of citizenry who can hold governments
accountable for implementing the recommendation of the treaty body
at the national level and in fact where appropriate collaborate
on the follow up.
We hope to extend
this project to other treaty bodies. From 2003 onwards, IWRAW Asia
Pacific seeks to facilitate women’s participation in the sessions
of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR),
the Committee on Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the Human Rights
Committee (HRC). We believe our work must look at the interdependence
of human rights and the interconnectedness of the mechanisms for
its fulfillment.
Our interest
in this meeting comes from our experience in the work we have been
carrying hither to.
Proposals
for Strengthening Treaty Bodies
In addition
to the proposals made in the NGO non-paper on “Treaty Body
Reform following the UN Secretary-General’s Proposals”
which we support (and signed on to), we wish to elaborate on and
provide additional proposals for the consideration of the treaty
bodies, especially those regarding enhancing the effectiveness of
treaty monitoring. In particular, we draw attention to the fact
that reporting at the international level and implementation at
the national level is an interlinked process and thus, in our intervention
we would like to focus on the following issues.
1.
Technical Services and Capacity Building
Technical services
must be provided with a full knowledge of the political situation
in a country and the reasons both technical and political as to
why a States party is not reporting. From our experience in Asia
we have seen that often times, a States party is unclear on the
purpose of the report and its role on treaty implementation. They
do not realise that the report can be used to plan the implementation
of the treaty, to record progress, and to move on to further implementation
in a cyclical manner. For example, the CEDAW, CRC and CESCR Conventions
require policy decisions pertaining to interventions in development
processes, the allocation of appropriate resources in relation to
these interventions, monitoring of effectiveness of interventions
and progressive gains made, and trouble shooting to ensure de facto
realisation of rights. This would require the setting of standards
based on human rights norms, identification of base line status,
setting of benchmarks and related indicators to measure progress.
These requirements were also mentioned by some members at this meeting.
However, since
there is seldom a conscious effort to ‘adopt measures to give
effect to the obligations under the treaty’, report writing
becomes a mere procedural exercise. Also, since efforts have not
been made right at the start to collect appropriate disaggregated
data or even comparative data (the need for which was also mentioned
at this meeting), the report writing becomes a tedious and shallow
exercise. There are many instances were consultants were hired a
year or so before the report is due and the various bureaucrats
in charge of implementing the Convention have no clue as to what
goes in the report. At the political level, high ranking bureaucrats
take no ownership of the substance of the report or the commitments
for action outlined by consultants in the report. The report should
serve a very substantive purpose that provides a framework and guidance
for fulfilling State obligation from the perspective of an aware
State. This can only happen if there are appropriate data bases
developed to ensure monitoring of the effect of the treaties. Specifically,
these data bases must be continuously updated and actual monitoring
of gains must be carried out. The periodic reports will then reflect
its findings.
Technical assistance
services must therefore be cognizant of the fact that failure to
report may not be due so much as not knowing how to write a report
but more because of not having clarity on the content of the rights
concerned, not knowing what this report is all about and not having
continuously gathered the kind of data needed to write the report.
The reasons can also be political. Where CEDAW is concerned, ensuring
equality may become politically hazardous for the regime in power.
Furthermore, technical assistance services must take into consideration
structural problems as every sector of Government has a responsibility
to implement the Convention. A multidisciplinary approach and structural
connections are needed for the purpose of standard setting, ensuring
consistency, monitoring and data collection. Hardly any State has
achieved such intersectoral cooperation. Technical assistance must
consider all these impediments and help to find solutions and not
focus only on the end product, the report.
Detailed guidelines
on the kinds of advisory services and how to access them must therefore
be provided by the OHCHR to State parties. In particular ,capacity
building is needed to help States set up appropriate data bases
and monitoring mechanisms. Advisory services on the need to promote
national level initiatives to strengthen local capacity and the
creation of a pool of resources (human and technical) at the local
level is necessary. Advisory services must focus also on addressing
the need to promote national level activities that can be sustained.
Furthermore,
technical assistance and capacity building must be provided to partners
within and outside government bodies. It must also be noted that
technical assistance will only contribute to strengthening institutional
capacities if the OHCHR takes a proactive approach as to the involvement
of all government branches in the preparation of the State party
report and in the implementation of its Concluding Comments. Lastly,
technical assistance focusing on the follow up to the Concluding
Comments, e.g. assistance on how to draft policy and action plans
after the issuance of Concluding Comments and how to measure its
progress, must be provided to enable the States to move forward.
In this regard, a more holistic approach to follow up activities
may be pursued. Rather than focusing on one treaty, action plans
drafted may consider all the treaties ratified to save on resources
expended for monitoring and implementation. This may be the basis
of further technical assistance.
2.
Quality of the report
It is important
for treaty bodies to assess their effectivity and sustainability
over and above the reporting process. Reporting is not the end goal
but only a tool for the monitoring of the implementation of the
Convention. Reports that have insufficient or inadequate data and
are submitted for compliance sake must be discouraged as they undermine
the treaty system in the same manner as non-reporting. Thus although
the threat of a consideration without a report may produce a report
from the State party, its quality must be ensured, e.g. at least
a list of questions must pursue the information required with an
appropriate deadline set for its submission to the Committees. We
note that some Committees apply this already and urge the others
to consider this proposal.
In some instances,
when faced with a report that has insufficient data, the treaty
body concerned has requested the States party to provide this information
in the next report. This process is unsatisfactory, as several years
will go by before the information is received losing much ground
and timeliness in implementing the obligations. Shorter dead lines
for receipt of such information needs to be set with appropriate
arrangements in place for receiving the information and feedback
given to the State.
3.
NGO Involvement in the Reporting Process and the Follow-Up
Treaty bodies
should look into multiple approaches for enhancing its effectiveness
and in following up its Concluding Comments. It is important to
explore the possibilities of supporting processes outside of the
treaty bodies and the OHCHR.
One important
component to focus on is NGO participation in the treaty reporting
process.
NGOs submit
information to treaty bodies. These information enrich the discussion
and provide an alternative source of data and analysis for the Committees.
It is urged that this must not be curtailed and that guidelines
need to must be developed that incorporate the best practices of
treaty bodies as a standard for all treaty body processes. These
guidelines should allow the widest possible incorporation of NGO
expertise, information and resources into the process.
In addition
to NGOs submission of information, NGOs play an important role in
following up recommendations of the treaty bodies. In our experience,
bringing women in to observe the CEDAW reporting process has brought
positive changes. Knowing the reporting process better, that is
seeing how their States are being held accountable for its international
obligations, has given women NGOs a better understanding of reporting
and a confidence in the CEDAW system. As a best practice of follow
up, e.g. in the case of Nepal, Nepali NGOs have made a shadow report
when the Government reported. The CEDAW Committee accepted their
information and had a dialogue with them on the issues they have
raised. Furthermore, they were present when their government reported
before the CEDAW Committee and noted all their government’s
responses and CEDAW’s comments. After the session, the Nepali
NGOs went back to Nepal and used the Concluding Comments as an opening
to engage their Government in a dialogue. They also used the Concluding
Comments to further legitimise their claim for changes in discriminatory
laws. After mobilising mass support on the need for reforms, the
NGOs succeeded in amending a huge number of discriminatory provisions
in the law. In this case, the CEDAW Concluding Comments played an
important role as a catalyst for change.
In Sri Lanka,
after the CEDAW Session, Sri Lankan NGOs had a consultation with
the Government on every paragraph of the Concluding Comments. They
requested their Government to discuss their plan for implementing
the recommendations of the Committee and offered their expertise
and resources in pursuing the plan of action. Another consultation
will be schedule to measure the progress being made. This GO-NGO
dialogue is important as it shows a conscious effort to pursue the
Committee’s recommendations as well as the building of a GO-NGO
constituency on CEDAW Concluding Comments.
These cases
show the importance of having a national level constituency to follow
up the Concluding Comments. In this regard, NGO follow up activities
must be acknowledged and supported as an important part of the follow
up process. Government’s openness to local promptings provides
us a picture of its seriousness at treaty implementation.
NGOs not only
exert pressure at the national level for treaty implementation but
also provide the necessary technical assistance and expertise in
reporting and implementation. Any measures looking at strengthening
the treaty body system must ensure that NGOs capacity in this regard
must be developed.
4.
Transparency of NGO Information
On the issue
of transparency and availability of information given by NGOs, it
is important to establish guidelines as to when NGO information
received is subject to confidentiality. In this regard, the following
matters, among others, must be taken into consideration:
- the general
human rights situation in the country, especially the situation
of human rights defenders;
- the relationship
of government with NGOs;
- the nature
of the information; (Is it information of a general nature? Is
it collaborative information? Are there other sources of information
that affirms it? Is it an isolated case? Is it information that
illustrates a pattern of violation? etc.)
- ability of
the State Party to implement recommendations based on confidential
information, i.e., will implementation of the treaty bodies recommendations
suffer if information is not made available to the State.
5.
The Usefulness of Inter-Governmental Policy Dialogues
There is a need
for further inter-governmental policy dialogues on the Conventions.
Governments must understand, appreciate and act on their obligations
under the Conventions. It is therefore important to provide a forum
for governments to exchange information, strategies, methodologies,
data requirements and experiences in implementing CEDAW within their
region. Such a forum can also serve to bring about peer pressure
on recalcitrant States. The dialogues further aim to raise awareness
about the importance of the treaty regime in general; to create
clarity on key concepts and principles in relation to women's rights;
to provide information exchange and technical assistance on the
implementation of CEDAW and the Concluding Comments, the purpose
of reporting, key elements of a State Party Report, and the Optional
Protocol to CEDAW; to expound on the role of NGOs; and to identify
areas for technical assistance. In particular, the dialogues must
seek to bring together States which are in the same stages of implementation
in relation to a treaty. NGO participation is important in this
regard to pave the way for a more collaborative GO-NGO partnership.
IWRAW Asia Pacific
has implemented one such a dialogue in collaboration with UNIFEM
for South Asian governments and NGOs and would like to offer it
as a model for other regions.
6.
Interim Reports
We urge the
treaty bodies to provide procedures and guidelines on factors that
will trigger the process for interim reports or reports on an exceptional
basis. The provision of guidelines will answer concerns on selectivity
and provide an independent basis for pursuing the need to hold States
accountable for gross, severe or massive violations of treaty provisions
occurring in between reporting.
7.
The Value of a Day of General Discussion in relation to General
Comments
The practice
of holding a general day of discussion on general comments is one
that allows integration of perspectives not only from the different
treaty bodies but also from experts, including NGOs. We propose
that this practice be institutionalised also by all treaty bodies.
8.
Reservations
Just as treaty
bodies work for universal ratification, a joint effort must also
be made for removing reservations, as well as for declaring when
a reservation is not acceptable as it goes against the object and
purpose of the treaty. Although recognising that States can make
reservations, full implementation of the treaty must be the overarching
goal.
9.
Non-regression
Treaty bodies
in monitoring the implementation of the Conventions encourage States
not to regress. In joint coordination, harmonisation and collaboration,
consensus must be woven not on the least common denominator but
on the best of what each Committee has to offer. There must be a
conscious effort to ensure that the most advance jurisprudence and
recommendations where the mandate overlaps is adopted by all treaty
bodies.
10.
Consultation with NGOs Involved in Domestic Implementation
The OHCHR must
include in their consultations NGOs and academic institutions that
carry out programmes and activities that focus on domestic implementation
of views and recommendation of the Committees. This consultation
could assist the treaty bodies identify best practices and explore
potential partnerships for implementation of follow up activities.
11.
OHCHR and CEDAW
In carrying
out technical assistance and other activities, the OHCHR must ensure
that it provides sufficient resources and expertise to sustain the
work of treaty bodies. In all its activities, the OHCHR must make
certain that technical assistance and capacity building is extended
to the implementation the CEDAW Convention even if it is based in
New York and not in Geneva.
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