PAGE 38
THEN AND NOW: WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS IN ASIA PRIYANTHI FERNANDO Priyanthi Fernando is a feminist from Sri Lanka, passionate about issues of social justice and about fighting the structural inequalities that constrain the rights of marginalised communities and specifically women. She is currently the Executive Director of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific based in Kuala Lumpur.
The 1990s was a hopeful time for women’s rights. During this decade, the Vienna Conference on Human Rights (1993), the International Conference of Population and Development (1994) and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995) which culminated in the Beijing Platform for Action, brought gender equality to the forefront of global thinking. These global convenings managed to reconcile divergent views and articulate a new agenda for population and development, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender equality. Malaysian women’s rights activist, Shanthi Dairiam, attended all three of these landmark conferences. She says these events gave her conceptual clarity and firsthand understanding of how global politics influence debates on gender and human rights. Shanthi, driven by these experiences, went on to found the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific and to strategically guide its work using the principles of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW is the international bill of rights for women. It is based on the principles of substantive equality, nondiscrimination, and state obligation. It provides a framework to hold states accountable to recognise, protect and fulfil the rights of all women.
HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER | VOLUME 30: ISSUE 1 – AUGUST 2021
The intense mobilisation that Shanthi and the founding members of the International Women’s Rights Watch Asia Pacific carried out with national and local women’s groups in the global south built awareness among these groups of the importance of CEDAW, and laid the foundation for many positive developments in women’s human rights over the next three decades. Today, in most countries of the global south there are strong coalitions of women’s and feminist organisations working tirelessly to enshrine CEDAW principles in domestic laws and ensure compliance at the national and local levels. All countries in South and Southeast Asia have now ratified CEDAW.1 Several countries have also implemented legislation to protect women’s rights including laws criminalising domestic violence. In Nepal, women’s rights organisations successfully campaigned for changes to discriminatory inheritance laws and the inclusion of a non-discrimination clause in the country’s constitution.2 Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia have also implemented gender equality acts following the advocacy of women activists and organisers.3 In 2020, the women’s human rights movement celebrated several anniversaries of global commitments to women’s human rights including the 40th anniversary of the CEDAW Committee and the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. At the same time, it witnessed pushback on these past achievements.
