Section 3 - Educating and Partnering for CEDAW

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This was followed up by occasional “brown bag” lunch sessions on a staggered schedule throughout the year. The sessions were one to two hour informal discussion on gender-related topics such as violence against women, reproductive health, child labor etc. UN agencies took turns in volunteering topics, resource persons and hosting the venue. Sometimes, these took on the format of a mini film festival screening gender-relevant films followed by film analysis. These were patronized well especially when popcorn and snacks were thrown in. Other activities were big-ticket affairs such as joining NCRFW to fill up a stadium for the International Women’s Day celebration, or co-sponsoring a rock concert to celebrate the CEDAW’s 25th anniversary, or a multi-venue Feminist Film Festival for the centennial of the feminist movement in the country. In between these activities, UN-GMC members, mostly women, took time to review and plan their next steps in some corner of coffee and pastry bars in the UN complex, including strategies on how to involve more men. Linking CEDAW, HRBA and MDG Upon assuming the post of National Coordinator of the CEDAW SEAP in June 2004, I was immediately invited to join the UN-GMC and to help in refining the UN Gender Strategy Framework in the Philippines (2005-2009). From thereon, the succeeding plans and activities of the UN-GMC explicitly had CEDAW in its agenda both in its advocacy work within and outside the UN. I have been keenly aware of UNIFEM’s limited project presence in the country compared to others which are considered resident agencies, i.e. with full authority to operate a comprehensive range of programs in the country, with more programme staff complement, more budget and other resources, and led by a country representative. I had to keep in mind UNIFEM’s niche in terms of how Lucy Lazo, the UNIFEM Regional Programme Director in 2004, described it: “UNIFEM is an innovative laboratory for gender-responsive methodologies. Once gender framework, tools and processes such as CEDAW’s are proven to work, other UN partners have to scale it up across its various programmes.” I also realized that CEDAW SEAP has very limited resources compared to the urgent need of covering as many areas of women’s human rights as possible. The Philippine budget for CEDAW SEAP is only a trickle compared to the bulk of resources the other UN agencies held. Hence, it was a conscious strategy to link up with other partners since the first year when a CEDAW programme awareness campaign was launched in various fora around the country. The UNDP was then wrapping up its successful “Ten-to-Ten Campaign” for transparency and accountability in governance at the close of 2004. So I designed a sequel dubbed as “March-to-Ten: A Learning Dialogue and Partnership for 154
Gender and Human Rights-Based Governance” in 2005. “March-to-Ten” means “to march” or to advance women’s human rights starting in the women’s month of March and to engage the human rights-based approach (HRBA) to governance, an agenda highlighted on International Human Rights Day, December 10. “Ten” connotes excellence and fullness that can only be achieved by weaving in women’s human rights as a framework and women’s participation in the process. “Does not human rights-based approach already include being gender responsive” I recall an email from a UNIFEM supervisor who asked me to clarify why the caption for the project included the phrase “gender-responsive and rights-based.” I wrote back explaining that while theoretically and policy-wise, gender should indeed be part of HRBA, the practice of disseminating HRBA does not adequately explain the gender framework and dimensions of human rights issues. Hence, we need to catch-up the accent on the “gender-responsive” and to expound on the substantive equality approach that is unique to CEDAW and which is not quite clear in the usual HRBA. The “usual” HRBA as tackled in most workshops was to outline the seven major human rights treaties, including CEDAW, then describe the generic principles of universality, inalienability, indivisibility and interdependence as well as the core state obligations of respect, protect and fulfill. It also emphasized the shift from needs-based to human rights-based approach hence the roles of duty-bearers among state organs and officials and of claim-holders among the citizens. While it points to affirmative action for vulnerable groups, it does not analyze how gender issues came to be such that women end up among the vulnerable groups. It did not dwell on how to address gender issues and on how to achieve gender equality and partnership. Inevitably, CEDAW SEAP had to take on HRBA by linking CEDAW, the BPFA and the MDGs. A series of 13 forums were conducted from March to December 2005 mostly in key cities around the country with a total of 1,400 participants comprising of local government officials and staff, region-based national government agencies, women’s NGOs, teachers and students. For majority of them, it was the first time they heard of CEDAW. Only less than half of them had orientation on gender and development and on BPFA and MDGs however, they did not understand the connection of these policies. The discussions enhanced their awareness on the links of CEDAW as a basis for Beijing and MDGs. Someone compared the MDG goals to a rainbow with eight bright colors. It cannot be a real rainbow if any one of the hues will be missing. In a similar way, poverty reduction might be the overarching goal, but poverty will not be eradicated if any of the other goals will not be achieved. Poverty often has a woman’s face hence it is a gender issue. Gender equality and women’s empowerment is not only limited in MDG 3 but should be in all of the eight MDG goals. 155
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Page 3 and 4: Section 3 Introduction Partnership
Page 5 and 6: Chapter 1 Discovering CEDAW Among t
Page 7 and 8: Programme for Multi-stakeholder Con
Page 9 and 10: The proposed strategies and interve
Page 11 and 12: While using CEDAW as a major instru
Page 13 and 14: NCRFW, for its part, had brought CE
Page 15 and 16: Chapter 2 Teaching CEDAW It’s bee
Page 17 and 18: Why review and revise In each of th
Page 19 and 20: Reyes, former head of the Center fo
Page 21 and 22: of respondents who agreed that “R
Page 23 and 24: In this respect, there is a recomme
Page 25 and 26: Steps Integration of topics in the
Page 27 and 28: Week Main Text Major Themes/Issues
Page 29 and 30: Chapter 3 Putting the “pop” in
Page 31 and 32: Other than the reel feminist experi
Page 33 and 34: however, was not supported by the C
Page 35 and 36: Each CEDAW story has a paragraph ab
Page 37 and 38: To have or not to have sex educatio
Page 39 and 40: CEDAW primers The primer was taken
Page 41 and 42: to come right in and partake in the
Page 43 and 44: pre-opening with a motorcade. 15 ve
Page 45 and 46: “Say NO to violence against women
Page 47 and 48: Chapter 4 Doing CEDAW with the UN G
Page 49 and 50: These mechanisms have created strat
Page 51: • Coordination with concerned uni
Page 55 and 56: The UN-GMC members facilitated thei
Page 57 and 58: Peer learning on applying CEDAW The
Page 59 and 60: Gender Integration Framework Excerp
Page 61 and 62: CEDAW going local with indigenous,
Page 63 and 64: • A matrix mapping Muslim women i

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