A Digest of Case Law on the Human Rights of Women - Asia Pacific ...

Introduction
This digest is a collection <strong>of</strong> judicial verdicts on women’s rights claims from the Asia
Pacific. It illustrates the contentious issues, complex barriers, and the commonalities
in women’s rights activism across the diversity <strong>of</strong> the region. In doing so, it reflects
judicial treatment <strong>of</strong> women’s rights claims and the disparate successes with the law,
thereby taking stock <strong>of</strong> the achievements and challenges <strong>of</strong> the region.
<strong>Law</strong> has been a significant site <strong>of</strong> women’s rights struggles. The wide ratification <strong>of</strong>
the Convention on the Elimination <strong>of</strong> All forms <strong>of</strong> Discrimination Against Women
[CEDAW] in the region, particularly after the World Conference on Women in Beijing,
1995, has considerably strengthened the claims for justiciability <strong>of</strong> women’s rights.
The increasing reliance upon CEDAW by women’s rights activists to firstly, challenge
discrimination in law and secondly, to expand narrow judicial interpretation <strong>of</strong> national
laws is evidence <strong>of</strong> the Convention’s growing importance. While it may be too
premature to definitively comment on whether or not this has actually enabled better
results, it is clear that the ratification <strong>of</strong> CEDAW has lent legitimacy and moral force
to feminist engagement with the law in many national contexts. The court room in
the last decade has been an arena where many <strong>of</strong> these struggles, developments and
politics have been played out - it is visible in the increasing reliance on international
law, universal standards, in the terminology used and the formulation <strong>of</strong> the claims. It
is equally evident in the judicial responses to them - regardless <strong>of</strong> the upholding <strong>of</strong> or
rejection <strong>of</strong> the claims.
The litigation being pursued to advance women’s rights from the Asia Pacific are
not adequately documented, reported or available for making linkages in women’s
activism regionally. This vacuum formed the core need for this project. In our work,
particularly the regional trainings <strong>of</strong> APWLD on ‘Feminist Legal Theory and Practice’,
it was a struggle to source information on litigation strategies and case law from the
countries <strong>of</strong> this region. One <strong>of</strong>ten heard from the participants in the trainings and the
national NGOs about examples from their countries, but these remained unverified,
undocumented and therefore difficult to retrieve and share for wider usage. Instead, it
was easier to rely upon ‘international case law’ that is well documented and therefore
well known; inadvertently reinforcing the notion that there were no significant legal
challenges from Asia Pacific. This digest endeavors to fill this gap by consolidating a
decade <strong>of</strong> women’s rights cases from the region, from 1990 to 2000.
Implicit in the regional coverage <strong>of</strong> judgments was the challenge <strong>of</strong> working with
different languages, different legal systems and diverse socio economic, customary/
cultural contexts. How could one cobble together the disparate standards, terminology
and systems, maintain lucidity and coherence <strong>of</strong> legal texts that are inherently
complicated and verbose, for a wider usage? The process <strong>of</strong> preparing this digest was
in a sense built into the type <strong>of</strong> output desired. It required involvement <strong>of</strong> national and
1