Subject: [fem-women2000 81] Rights Based Approach Panel - note on government position
From: lalamaziwa <lalamaziwa@jca.apc.org>
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 23:42:48 +0900
Seq: 81

re: Rights based Approach Panel

Note on government postion 

by Rashidah Abdullah (ARROW)

Savitri Goonesekere, Vice Chancellor of Colombo University, Srilanka
(first speaker) recommended that RBA should be over arching framework
for implementation of BPFA. Particulary that CEDAW and conveniton on the
rights of the child be used as international legistrative
accounatability for states fo comply with.

There were about 10 governmenents that spoke and all of them except
china endorsed that the approach was important and gave example of their
attemts to use RBA in their approach. especially in CEDAW implementation
with regard to VAW. ONly two countries (China, Iran) expressed hesitence
to this approach. China felt that the state soverenety issue in relation
to law was more important than international conventions like CEDAW.
Iran asked for clarification to what was said in relation to islamic
principles and human rights principles. 

china "if you strengthen conventions, it may weaken the state
soverenity"

S responded to this soverenity question by saying "it is important to
have strong states to protect women in society but this state has to be
an accountable one. there is no contradiction to CEDAW and other
conventions having a strong state.

Islam and human rights principles, in her study of principle, there are
lots of commonality in islamic law and human rights principle that they are
not contradictory.

compared to the resistance we had 5 years ago when governments are not
knowledgeable about women's human rights. there are more better
understanding for this human rights approach. that there were not much
resistance.

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there were some recommendations that cedaw should be more strongly
promoted and popularized by governments and international institutions.

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tonga commented that the panel did not address inaliable rights to
self-determination that women
in colonies are not taken into account. IPR also need to be addressed
particulary indegenous people where women own the flora and fauna.


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there seem to be sense of accountability on the government side.
countries which had reservations on CEDAW (singapore, thailand) spoke of
the reason why it had taken them some time to lift those reservations.
Singapore is currently reviewing the reservations, Thailand is almost
finishing the process, and Bangladesh lifted their reservations.

there seems to be getneral agreement that eradicating violence against
women is an important priority.