Improving Women's Rights in Southeast Asia

The programme contributed to stronger accountability and monitoring mechanisms on women’s rights through the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) reporting process. The programme also developed a guidance tool for CEDAW State report writing which is expected to be adopted by the CEDAW Committee as its global guidance. Results achieved as of the end of the project (June 2016) include: (1) 1 410 gender equality champions in eight program countries including government officials senior officers parliamentarians lawyers CSO private sector and government parliamentarians public security (police) Supreme court prosecutors representatives improved their knowledge and skills related to CEDAW; (2) national and subnational government officials improved their understanding of how to integrate the principles of international conventions such as CEDAW into national and subnational laws and policies; (3)several regional and national non-governmental organizations improved their advocacy skills and were better equipped to monitor national policies and programmes and encourage CEDAW compliance; (4) National human rights commissions in Indonesia Thailand Timor-Leste and the Philippines proactively played a role in monitoring women’s human rights; (5)partnerships were developed with judicial training institutions judges parliaments and ministries of justice to ensure that laws being developed were CEDAW-compliant; and (6) 25 laws or strategies were enacted with inputs pertaining to gender equality across all countries with the exception of Myanmar.