Good Practices in Promoting Women's Human Rights Compliant Justice Delivery

This workshop follows a 2013 Southeast Asia Regional Judicial Colloquium organized by UN Women, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Office of the Judiciary in Thailand, which facilitated an exchange on how to improve the situation of women’s human rights in the region through court decisions. Building on last year’s Colloquium, participants at this year’s workshop explored in more detail the principles and application of CEDAW to court practices in the area of violence against women and women’s economic, social and cultural rights. Additionally, as a follow-up to requests by last year’s participants to provide more resources and guidance on interpreting and applying the CEDAW, UN Women, along with ICJ, has been developing a manual on how gender stereotyping has affected judicial decision-making, and a research document on citing CEDAW in judicial decisions, to be used in national judicial training curriculums, and to further strengthen the ASEAN legal institutions in their protection of women’s rights and women’s access to justice. This workshop aimed to seek input on preliminary drafts of these documents, and exchange best practices and challenges in ensuring gender equality in the courtroom. This report is a summary of those proceedings.