The Intersections of the CEDAW and CRPD: Putting Women's Rights and Disability Rights into Action in Four Asian Countries

Wellesley Centers for Women. Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02841. Tel: 781-283-2510; Fax: 781-283-2504; Web site: http://www.wcwonline.org

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154

Open Society Institute

Foreign Countries; Civil Rights; Females; Children; Disabilities; Pilot Projects; Social Discrimination; Court Litigation; Civil Rights Legislation

Asia; Bangladesh; Cambodia; India; Nepal

This report examines a new model built on advancing an intersectional human rights platform of action. The four country project in the Asian region provided a powerful locus for an innovative human rights praxis which integrated a dialectical interaction between different social movements, analytical insights and concrete political strategies and practices. The praxis model of four pilot projects in the Asia region was built on a framework that put into action an intersectional analysis of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) so as to challenge multiple forms of human rights violations against women and children with disabilities. Discrimination is often compounded for women and children on the grounds of gender, age and minority status. A holistic approach to human rights advocacy promotes the understanding that the human rights framework is indivisible and interrelated. This report explores the programmatic ways in which this conceptual analysis was put into practice. This is a narrative of these groundbreaking projects that attempted to build bridges between and among human rights groups to address more effectively the way in which multiple grounds of discrimination often violate the rights of women and girls with disabilities. Four premier women's rights programs in Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia and India were the focal points for this program. They multiplied their strengths by forging with disability rights organizations to push the frontiers of the rights of women, children and all persons with disabilities. The intersections of the CEDAW and the CRPD provided a powerful framework for this new interaction. In the past year, three in-country pilot projects were put into motion in Bangladesh, Nepal and Cambodia. Eight months later these projects were scaled up to a regional program in Delhi, India. Appendices include: (1) Guidelines for Writing CEDAW Shadow Reports with a Focus on the Rights of Women with Disabilities; (2) Draft Chapter on Disability Rights in the Nepal Shadow Report to the CEDAW Committee (2009) and Draft Chapter on Disability Rights in the Cambodia Shadow Report to the CEDAW Committee (2009); and (3) Participants. (Contains 53 footnotes.) [This report is based on the pilot projects and research conducted by the Bangladesh National women Lawyers Association (BNWLA); The Forum for Women Law and Development in Nepal (FWLD); Mekea Srey (Cambodia) and the Asia Cause Lawyer Network (ACLN) in India.]

ERIC

2010

ED511408