Training Workshop for Effective Implementation, Monitoring and Coordination of CEDAW

Accountability needs to be secured through placing gender equality outcomes at the centre of all state governance and planning and making all sectors and departments of the state equally responsible for its implementation and realization. Thus women’s machinery and justice sector institutions are vital actors in securing gender equality and access to justice for women as they are the key duty bearers who ideally propose initiatives for law reform/ drafting of new laws, collect and monitor data on implementation and results achievement, and provide public accountability and operational coherence to ensure all actions, plans, laws of the state are gender responsive and promote and protect women’s human rights.

As the face of the state’s gender policy, women’s machineries need to ensure that laws and policies that impact women need to be crafted through inclusive, participatory, transparent and accountable processes to ensure that social transformation towards gender equality. Women’s machinery also needs to take on more proactive role in socialization of universal women’s human rights norms (CEDAW). Thus, women’s machineries require technical capacity to analyze/review and then propose steps to address the concerns raised by gender advocates and by the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Observations as a matter of priority, to harmonize CEDAW norms generally into the domestic framework and culture, and to promote sharing, learning and greater accountability for the achievement of gender equality.

UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in collaboration with the Department of Women Affairs and Family Development (DWF), Ministry of Social Development and Human Security in Thailand and the International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW) through the support of the Government of Canada is co-organizing a 3-day Training Workshop for Effective Implementation, Monitoring and Coordination of CEDAW on 18-20 November 2015 in Bangkok, Thailand.

The Workshop is aimed to

1. Deepen understanding and awareness of staff members of women’s machinery concerning the principles of CEDAW in specific contexts to advance the rights and realities of specific groups of women and the obligations of the State Party in promoting and protecting women’s human rights in Thailand;
2. Examine roles, responsibilities, achievements and challenges of DWF in coordinating role in promoting the domestic implementation and enforcement of women’s human rights using the CEDAW framework and CEDAW Committee recommendations for Thailand; and discuss possible ways of improving the accountability mechanisms and indicators under the CEDAW framework to monitor implementation of the Convention.