As part of the “Strengthening the voice of Young Women as Gender Equality Advocates in Southeast Asia Project” a number of eager students converged on Thalath for a 4 day workshop from 25-28/2/2015.
The workshop is meant to continue the process of developing the skills of young women in drawing accountability for law and policy reform in their respective countries. A primary goal is for this young cohort to be part of the larger movement working on women’s human rights in their respective countries.
In this particular training, young women and men will be exposed to topics such as what is law, the history of women’s human rights and the role of law in the advancement of women’s human rights. As many of the young women are only now beginning to understand women’s human rights through the CEDAW lens, this training will also focus on practical actions such as how to write effective, broad based, research and monitoring oriented alternative or shadow report on CEDAW implementation in their national context. It is believed that by doing this, the young women can be part of the national strategy to initiate law and policy reform on specific thematic reform. Therefore, through this workshop young women will be introduced to substantive knowledge and analytical skills on CEDAW monitoring methods and techniques. They will learn on how to analyse discriminatory laws.
The outcomes were:
• The participants now have an understanding of law and its role in society, the history of women’s human rights
• The participants now have understanding of the monitoring and CEDAW Compliance Framework on how to perform gender analysis
– After the completion of the workshop, the national partner (GDA) with the assistance of IWRAW Asia Pacific will guide the young women
• in producing at least two in-depth analysis document on a specific law/policy that is of interest to the young women
• to be part of the larger coalition of NGOs producing the shadow report for Lao PDR
• to use the lessons from this training to strengthen their position paper
All the participants agreed the workshop was very worthwhile and their understanding had increased significantly.
Gallery of Law and Policy workshop
