WHAT IS THE CEDAW ASSESSMENT TOOL?

The CEDAW Assessment Tool is designed to measure the status of women
through the lens of the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which has been ratified by 168
countries. The CEDAW Assessment Tool takes a hard look at a nation's
laws and measures the degree to which these laws promote and protect
the rights of women, as mandated by CEDAW.

At least as important, the CEDAW Assessment Tool separately measures the
degree to which women, in practice, are accorded the rights and status
guaranteed to them under CEDAW. Thus, a major focus of this assessment
tool will be on "real life" impediments to equality, many of which are
not necessarily a product of poor or non-existent legislation. These
impediments may, for example, be rooted in deep-seated cultural or
religious traditions. The CEDAW Assessment Tool is designed to uncover
these and other obstacles that frustrate the achievement of greater
gender equality.

WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN THE CEDAW ASSESSMENT TOOL?

It is expected that many entities will be interested in the CEDAW
Assessment Tool. For example, technical assistance providers and donor
organizations with a proven commitment to elevating the status of women
- - such as the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International
Development (the latter of which funded the tool's development) - - will
likely find the results of a CEDAW-based assessment of great value in
deciding which countries (and which particular problems) are in greatest
need of an intervention.

The CEDAW Assessment Tool will also be of great interest to
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) committed to promoting women's
rights. In fact, this assessment tool could be used by the NGO
community to draft unofficial "shadow" reports to the United Nations
CEDAW Committee, countering the predictably rosier picture of the status
of women painted by governments in their official country reports.

Moreover, the very act of implementing the CEDAW Assessment Tool
provides a unique capacity building opportunity, as local actors with
disparate interests (e.g., health, politics, economics, legal rights)
can be united to focus on a project that produces concrete data about
compliance with a convention that their country has willingly opted to
ratify and by which it is bound. It is expected that the CEDAW
Assessment Tool, once completed, can provide a springboard for a number
of initiatives, such as a grassroots lobbying campaign by women's NGOs
for improved governmental compliance with CEDAW. Naturally, the local
actors involved in implementing the CEDAW Assessment Tool might be the
individuals and organizations in the best position to launch important
new initiatives based on the findings of the tool.

The CEDAW Assessment Tool is available at
http://www.rightsconsortium.org/resources/asessment/gender.cfm

Before you print the CEDAW Assessment Tool is 198 pages.

A complete list of state parties to CEDAW is available at
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/states.htm

For more information about the CEDAW Assessment Tool, please contact
Michael Maya ([email protected]) or Jennifer Denton
([email protected]).

[http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/apcwomen-meet
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