Regional Expert Group Meeting on Access to Justice for Women in Plural Legal Systems in Southeast Asia

Bangkok, Thailand. Full details ▼

Event type: Conferences, meetings, symposiums

Start date: 27 January 2016 | Start time: 01:00 UTC +00:00

End date: 28 January 2016 | End time: 10:00 UTC +00:00

Location: Dusit Thani Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand

Event description

Photo: UN Women/Niels den Hollander

Women’s access to justice is necessary foundation for gender equality. A deeper understanding of the situation of women living in the context of plural legal systems and the challenges they face when confronting the justice sector is thus needed to strengthen capacities for implementing CEDAW and making women’s access to justice a reality. CEDAW speaks very carefully and repeatedly to ensure that law practices, administration practices ensure it’s consistent to non-discrimination. UN Women’s emphasis, not only looks at the formal state-led justice system but also at the state-led customary law, non-state justice system particularly in rural and other areas of justice. As part of CEDAW SEAP II, UN Women initiated a regional research project in 2013 with the aim of examining and evaluating women’s access to justice in the plural legal systems of eight countries in Southeast Asia towards developing strategies for enhancing women’s access to justice. The research was commissioned and conducted in eight SEAP programme countries (Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Timor Leste, Thailand, Viet Nam). The researches sought to address two main questions:

What does access to justice look like for women in the plural legal systems of Southeast Asia?;
How can an understanding of women’s access to justice in the plural legal systems of Southeast Asia be used to inform strategies for enhancing women’s access to justice?

The Regional Expert Group Meeting on Access to Justice for Women in Plural Legal Systems in Southeast Asia aims to

present findings and key recommendations from the national researches on access to justice in plural legal systems in the Southeast Asian region;
seek and consolidate constructive feedback, comments and inputs to further strengthen the regional research document; and
brainstorm programmatic interventions for advocacy, evidence building and social norm change amongst members of formal and informal justice systems.