by Aileen Familara
Bangkok, Thailand – (19 November 2009) For such a diverse region, Asia Pacific also has a broad record of its successes and failures in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action for achieving gender equality. Many of the gains are not modest: the creation of national machineres to address women's issues, ratification of treaties against discrimination, campaigns and laws against Violence Against Women, transformation of national legislation to promote women's welfare. And yet, the regional review process revealed still wide gaps between the commitment and the reality, such as in areas of health care, vulnerability of women in situations of armed conflict, and economic participation and political participation.
An Outcomes Document charted the areas where the Member States of the Asia Pacific region would still need to do much work. These included:
- strengthening national machineries
- improving accountability mechanisms that promote gender responsiveness in national policy-making
- ensuring affordable and accessible health care services and provide the widest acheivable range of safe and effective family planning and contraceptive methods
- addressing ICT-related violence and exploitation of women
- mainstreaming gender perspective in environmental, disaster management and climate change adaptation programmes
- strengthening agricultural policies to incorporate a gender perspective and supporting rural women with education and training programmes, and
- for those countries who have yet to ratify the CEDAW, to ratify it and its Optional Protocol and withdraw reservations to the convention
ESCAP executive director Noeleen Heyzer then led the launching of a region-wide campaign to combat violence against women. This campaign has components addressing cultural and religious roots of violence against women as well as furthering the involvement of men and boys.
More information about this campaign can be had from the UNESCAP website.
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