NGOs influence review of women's human rights at UN

Over the course of five hours yesterday, the CEDAW Committee and the Australian Government engaged in what is known as the Constructive Dialogue - a process by which the Committee experts pose a series of questions to the governments which are then answered by the Delegation Members.

Led by Helen Hambling, Group Manager in the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the six member delegation faced a broad range of questions from the Committee Members.

A detailed overview of the questions will follow, but the members of the NGO delegation were pleased by the extent to which Committee Members picked up on the issues identified by women who attended our consultations. A number of the priorities we identified, from the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in policy advocacy, to strong mechanisms to reduce violence against women, to reducing the gender pay gap, improving health outcomes, securing the rights of mothers with disability, and improving service delivery for women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, to strengthening the human rights, non-discrimination and equality mechanisms in Australia, were all identified in questions from the Committee to the Government.

NGOs presented a lunchtime briefing for the CEDAW Committee on Monday - attended by 15 Committee Members. We were also joined by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick. We raised a number of our "priority" issues and took questions from the Committee. In the afternoon we presented our NGO Statement - presented by Michelle Deshong (National Rural Women's Coalition), Christina Ryan (Women With Disabilities Australia) and Edwina MacDonald (Women's Legal Services Australia/NSW, and a project coordinator on the CEDAW project). NGOs from Albania, Turkey, PNG and India also presented their statements on Monday afternoon.

An UN-produced overview of the questions asked is available at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2010/wom1813.doc.htm

We will post a review early next week on our observations of the questions asked. For now, the team is dispersing after a week in which we worked hard to honour the experiences and knowledge of the women who attended the CEDAW consultations around the country. YWCA Australia has been honoured to lead this project. We'd like to acknowledge the project team behind it: Emily Chew, Edwina MacDonald, Annie Pettitt, Alison Laird, Gemma McKinnon and Heather Walker. Leanne Miller and Megan Davies led the first stage of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander report. Many women have volunteered their time on the NGO Advisory Group and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's NGO Advisory Group. Our thanks go to all of them.