Hansina Djurhuus Shares her Thoughts about the CEDAW Conference on Concluding Observations

By Hansina Djurhuus

In March, my organisation, Danish Women´s Society, was invited to participate in the CEDAW Conference on Concluding Observations organised by WIDE Network, Karat Coalition and IWRAW Asia Pacific.

The subject of the conference ­ the implementation of the CEDAW Committee´s Concluding Observations ­ immediately aroused my curiosity, and I decided to accept the invitation. As my organisation has not previously worked with the Concluding Observations, this would be a good opportunity to get some ideas on how to start working with them.

The conference was held in Warsaw, Poland, and the organisers had made an interesting and quite ambitious programme for the three days the conference lasted. I found the other participants equally interesting, as they represented a wide range of women´s NGOs from countries of the former Soviet Union, European countries and Asian countries. So, for me, this was a unique opportunity to get some inside information about the fight for women´s rights in such far away places as, for example, Kyrgysztan ­ places we in Denmark know little of.

Shanthi Dairiam gave the first presentation, which focused on CEDAW and the principle of state obligation. Since she is a former member of the CEDAW Committee, she could also throw light on the Committee´s working methods and give examples of how they would act when national reports gave insufficient or wrong information on women´s situation in the country in question. This was very interesting and gave us a glimpse of the immense work the Committee is doing.

The next session revealed that although all the countries present had ratified the Convention, there were major differences in the process of implementing it, and the status of the Convention in general. I would assume that the attitude towards CEDAW within the EU countries would be more or less the same, but this was far from the truth. The participants from Italy told us about their difficulties with working with CEDAW, due to the lack of information in society and that the Convention in many cases was seen as ´exotic´ and not applicable to the domestic legal system.

Having in mind the problems most of the countries were having with implementing CEDAW, I looked forward to hearing about the strategies used by other NGOs in their work with the Concluding Observations. After the presentations given by thedifferent NGOs I must conclude that, on one hand, it was inspiring to hear what you can do in relation to Concluding Observations. On the other hand, there was much too little time allocated for the subject. I think we could easily have used a whole day for the sharing of strategies, because then we might have been able to get into details rather than just getting an overview of the subject. Another format would probably also have been more suitable: the NGOs who had worked in this field could have been mixed with the ones that had not, and the exchange of strategies could then have taken place in groups. Ultimately, each group could have made a catalogue of strategies to be distributed to all participants.

The lack of time was also the problem with an otherwise highly informative session on what strategic fora were useful for the implementation of CEDAW Concluding Observations. I found it very interesting that international as well as regional human rights mechanisms can be used to promote the implementation of the Concluding Observations; that is, that we can make use of other UN Conventions to advance our work with CEDAW. However, this is a somewhat complex matter and requires a more detailed knowledge than we were able to get after listening to the presentation. Hopefully, the organisers will put the various presentations on their websites, for us to study in detail.

The last session on the programme was also the most ambitious one. Our task here was to develop strategic directions in order to further implement the Concluding Observations and to set a timeframe for the action plan. This was easier said than done. In itself, it takes a lot of work to make a useful strategy and even more to pin it down into a detailed action plan. However, as the organisers pointed out, the idea was not to produce a finished action plan, but to start working on it. In that sense, it was a good idea, as it started us thinking about the future work with CEDAW in a more structured way.

Since I have returned to Copenhagen, I have done a lot of thinking about the best way to continue working with CEDAW. At he conference, the first steps were taken to a collaboration between the different NGOs, and I hope that this process will continue. At the moment it is still too early to see what the outcome will be, but despite all our differences, I think this would benefit all of us and strengthen the future work with CEDAW. As the old slogan says, ´Together we´re strong´.

Last, but not least, I will thank the organisers for the great job they did. And remember, the next time you get an invitation to a CEDAW conference, sign up immediately; you will not regret it!

Hansina Djurhuus works for the Danish Women´s Society and is active in the CEDAW working group. You can contact Hansina at hansina.djurhuus[at]danskkvindesamfund.dk

Check out the website of Danish Women´s Society for more information (in Danish).