English - CEDAW Southeast Asia

PREFACE
Gender inequality is at the root of discrimination, abuse and exploitation of women. Laws and
policies that reinforce discrimination and exclusion exacerbate unequal power relations.
Gender equality advocates have addressed this by pressing for a legislative environment that
guarantees gender equality, and protects and promotes women’s rights, and removal of discriminatory
provisions in existing laws and policies to ensure compliance with the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other international
human rights standards. To date, 185 countries had ratified the Convention and 96 have
ratified its Optional Protocol. CEDAW represents international consensus on the fundamental
rights of women, and is deemed the most comprehensive international human rights instrument
addressing discrimination against women. CEDAW establishes norms and standards for
laws and policies that should be put in place to eliminate discrimination against women.
States parties have de jure obligations and de facto obligations. To achieve de jure compliance,
a State party must ensure that its constitution and legislation accords with substantive
provisions of CEDAW, and that monitoring mechanisms are established to ensure the implementation
of the Convention. This requires amendment or repeal of discriminatory laws, modification
of existing laws, or enactment of new laws. The need for new laws to achieve de jure
compliance has given rise to a trend to develop and enact gender equality laws - a different
response to the traditional approach of incorporating gender equality provisions into existing
legislation. As with any legal reform process however, serious attention must be paid to implementation
and enforcement. De jure provisions of equality for women must be matched by de
facto equality in everyday life.
In recent years many countries have initiated legislative reform, with the support of
UNIFEM and other partners, helping to lay the foundation for advancing gender equality and
women’s rights. These reforms have included removal of discriminatory provisions in national
and local legislation in areas such as employment, property ownership and inheritance, and
the incorporation of new gender equality provisions into national constitutions. Success stories
in efforts to integrate gender equality goals into national development have been documented.
These efforts result in improvement of government accountability to women. These are critical
in the context of aid effectiveness, where nationally-owned plans form the basis for international
development support. Gender equality plans, policies and laws provide a basis upon
which advocates can argue for increased attention to gender equality as a national priority.
Amidst the positive trend, the slow pace of implementation remains a profound concern
within Southeast Asia and beyond. For example, legislative frameworks still include genderdiscriminatory
provisions, and have serious gaps in the area of protection of women’s rights.
Where new laws have been adopted, they often provide little or no enforcement measures,
and include no provisions for redress. This is often the case with laws prohibiting violence
against women.
Bold initiatives must be taken to ensure that commitment to international agreements
are translated into concrete legal measures at national level to further the realization of
women’s human rights and gender equality in our region. Once adopted, moreover, these laws
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CEDAW and the Law: