Madame Boutsady Khounnouvong, GDA Executive Director attended the recent UN Women conference  “Regional Consultation to Share Findings of Evaluation of Regional Mechanisms to Protect the Human Rights of Women and Girls in Southeast Asia” held in Jakarta on 7-8th July.

Madame Boutsady was one of four Lao representatives at the conference which sought input into the strategies to be used in the next phase of the program from 2015-18.

Discussions mainly centred around mainstreaming womens human rights in ASEAN countries.

Mainstreaming woman’s human rights may means to address the gaps and implication on equality, participation and states’ obligations on woman’s human rights  that have been established during the process of the building, implementation and articulation of ASEAN Community: a)action plans in the three pillars: economic, social-cultural and political-security, and b) human rights mechanisms.

ASEAN is now in the transition period of launching the ASEAN Community 2015 and the drafting of the new blueprint for 2016-2030.

In 2011, ASEAN has set the direction that the new phase of community building would look at “ASEAN Community in Global Community of Nations”.

In 2012 – ASEAN Post-2015 Vision: People-centered, Economic cohesive, rule-based community.

In 2013 – Malaysia as the incoming chair (2015) of ASEAN has started to voice some themes for the new blueprints.

The standards and principles:

• Uphold the principle that all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated.
• Based on the premise of equality among human rights bodies regardless of the nature of their mandates being general or specific to particular rights or groups.
• Complementarity and mutuality
• Participation or representation, particularly with regard to vulnerable and marginalized groups, as a key ingredient for effective cooperation in any human rights system