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Summary of 2nd Workshop of Regional Womens Network In Promoting Womens Political Representation in Southeast Asia Bandung, 9-10 June

2012 Saturday/ June 9, 2012


The first day of 2nd Workshop of Regional Womens Network in Promoting Womens Political Representation in Southeast Asia is started from 09.00 am to 05.56 pm. There are four sessions for this first day workshop, which are Lesson Learnt of Successful Advocacy in Southeast Asia and Other Regions, Network Supports in 5 Countries for Women Political Empowerment, Update on Country Specific and Possible Regional Issues, and Strategic Planning for Women Regional Network. A. Session 1 : Lesson Learnt of Successful Advocacy in Southeast Asia and Other Regions Three speakers of this session are Rena Herdiyani (Executive Director of Kalyanamitra and Indonesian Focal Point Womens Caucus on ASEAN), Devin OShaughnessy (Deputy Country Director for NDI in Indonesia), and Crystal Rosario (Asia Pacific Regional Coordinator of iKNOW Politics). This session is started from 09.27 am to 10.45 am. Presentation of Rena Herdiyani She explained about Southeast Asia Womens Caucus on ASEAN as a regional network in 11 countries (10 ASEAN members + Timor Leste) that focus to advocate ASEAN to advance womens human rights. Members of womens caucus on ASEAN are 60 organizations from 11 countries. There is one focal point in one country to disseminate information and the result of women caucus activities in the regional level and focal point for Indonesia is Kalyanamitra. Before 2008, women movement in Southeast Asia doesnt care about this because ASEAN focus only on economic agreement on intergovernmental relation, but since the establishment of AICHR and ACWC, people see it as a progress on human rights issue on ASEAN. Strategies of ASEAN women caucus to achieve womens human rights principles and standards integrated in ASEAN processes, policies, outputs and mechanisms are capacity building and advocacy. ACWC is an intergovernmental and consultative body on women and children in ASEAN to support, promote, protect, and fulfill on womens and childrens rights in ASEAN countries. AICHR status is also intergovernmental and consultative body on human rights in ASEAN with Development of ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) as its main agenda. AHRD is important for ASEAN, so that women activist and caucus monitor the progress and try to put women perspective on AHRD. But there are at least 7 problems of the draft of AHRD: (1) the drafting process is very closed and not involve CSOs, (2) womens perspective not integrated in all of rights in AHRD, (3) CSOs participation to support the human rights enforcement is not clear, (4) ambiguity between human rights as universal values and ASEAN values, (5) limitation of womens rights in the AHRD because should consider moral values or public morals, (6) not accommodate the protection of marginalized groups, and (7) no guarantee of freedom of expression of women (self-determination) in the AHRD. In advocacy strategy on AHRD drafting, womens caucus on ASEAN put submission on AHRD from womens rights perspective based on international human rights standards, socialization of womens caucus submission at the national level in 11 countries and translates it to local language, lobby General Secretary of ASEAN, make press conference and build regional networking on advocacy ASEAN. 1 1.

Womens caucus on ASEAN also has best practices from their work: (1) make Coordinating Group to make decision on the internal problems, program and advocacy strategy, (2) bringing up the common womens issues at the Southeast Asia countries to be prioritized by ACWC, and (3) lobbying ACWC and AICHR representatives to be more open to have a dialogue with CSOs. People also could take lesson learnt from what womens caucus has done so far: (1) need solidarity, (2) need to endorse human rights mechanism, (3) need to monitor the progress of the works of AICHR, ACWC, and ASEAN sectoral bodies and integrate womens human rights perspective, and (4) need to work with media to raise public awareness about ASEAN. In the end of her presentation, she talked about challenges in advocacy ASEAN: (1) Womens human rights framework is not understanding and accepted as common values and consensus by 10 ASEAN member states countries, (2) womens issues had been seen as soft issues and therefore given a lower priority within ASEAN structural hierarchies, (3) cultural relativism and the ASEAN/Asian values whereby patriarchal cultural stereotypes of women, (4) the principle of non-interference to respect state sovereignty, (5) to prioritise the issues from a womens national perspective in advocacy to ASEAN and test the responsiveness from the ASEAN and human rights mechanisms to these issues, and (6) to make sure ASEAN Human Rights Declaration will incorporate international human rights principles and standards. Presentation of Devin OShaughnessy His presentation is focus on comparative experience of advocacy and lobbying on womens political representation. Around the world in every region, women participation in politics has made significant progress in the last 100 years. About 100 years ago, no women has right to vote at all. To look at that time, in 1945 no country has 10 percent of their representative is women and now 60 percent countries of 10 percent of womens political representation. This is happening globally and part of the reason is the effectiveness of the lobbying at the international level, regional level, and at the national level. In order to create an effective lobbying to make such that social change, all three levels must work together. Regional lobbying usually has three directions, which are national actor that can advocate regional body, national actor that can use the existing original mechanism and conventions to make changes, and intraregional, which is group of several countries working together up the regional or one specific country in solidarity to lobby ASEAN or specific country. Regional lobbying depends on the context so its hard to make a very specific best practice of effective lobbying. ASEAN is very different from any other organizational bodies. In order to effectively advocate the ASEAN level, researches and experiences on how the mechanisms are needed. The factor of homogeneity in the region is also the important factor. Every region also has different treaties and declaration that impact sort of mechanism in order to make a change. For example is in formal lobbying, people can make direct appeal to the body mechanism on EU so there is no need to approach each country, but on ASEAN every decision is made by consensus and each country should be approached individually. Success stories around the world are various. For example is the success of Africa boycott and economic sanction South Africa in many regional institutions over apartheid and its success because of effective regional lobbying. Another example is blood diamond issue and group of NGOs and governments that oppose on that worked together to ban export and import of blood diamond out the region. Various groups are successfully advocated and it happened in a whole different ways. It can be government working together, CSOs forming network, political parties that come together, group of 2 2.

business like private sector and small business to advocate changes on their mutual interest to lobbying regional body. There are a few similar best practices that come out from all of these stories. First, benefit from international donor and technical support plays important role. Second, regional lobbying also benefit to having lead organization that will bring everybody together. Third, its incredibly important to speak with one strong united voice. Fourth, it is also important to get inside the decision making entity champion that will back your efforts. Presentation of Crystal Rosario While Ibu Rena talked about advocacy strategy on womens caucus on ASEAN, and Mr. Devin talked about different approach and mechanism of lobbying, Ms. Rosario talked about iKNOW Politics as a tool that can be used for advocacy strategy. iKNOW Politics is a strategic partnership project that supported by 5 organizations, which are International IDEA, UNDP, NDI, UN Women, and InterParliamentary Union. There are three advantages of using iKNOW Politics: (1) online space to keep in touch with each other and meet each other to make conversation about the progress and make that record to keeping it and see the progress, (2) share the update to know your country progress in comparison to other in a group, and (3) share your work to get feedback, share ideas, and learn from each other. She explained about iKNOW Politics by showing the website (www.iknowpolitics.org) to participants. She showed them the homepage and one example of the discussion in women caucus for sustainable development through conferences Turkey in November that consists of 16 countries in Central Europe and Asia and sharing their thoughts and ideas on how caucus strategy to lobby the government. People who have signed-in on the website can directly upload the document and material, share the experiences, resources, document and link for some information. iKNOW Politics could be a discussion forum on promoting gender equality by sharing efforts and strategies from everybody that have story about it and to show people how they done and tackled the issue. To use the website is as simple as signup as the member, log in, and you can join the discussion. Last and the most important step is start sharing. If you have very much knowledge to share with each other, then sharing information will really enhance our knowledge and experience. As a group with cross country members, iKNOW Politics is a nice platform to share the information and we can be more effective if we can share information and working together in one page. Question and Answer Session During Q&A session, there are four questions came from participants: (1) Cambodia is facing problem on women in prison because of land grabbing issue and she asked whether womens caucus on ASEAN could support to release them, (2) ASEAN community, reality or just on in the air?, (3) SOGI on ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights and the effectiveness of sharing experience, and (4) membership on womens caucus on ASEAN. Here are the answers from Ibu Rena: (1) Women caucus is very empathy because they dont have enough facility and they lived in prison. Women caucus has sent letter to AICHR, ACWC, and embassy of Cambodia in 10 countries. We can change the strategy if soft diplomacy couldnt work, maybe we can make demonstration in each Cambodian embassy. We also will keep in touch with SILAKA in Cambodia and discuss what can be done on 15 women in prison. We need solidarity and to pressure Cambodia government through ASEAN. CSOs have taken role to pressure Cambodia government and we still can 3 4. 3.

discuss it in womens caucus. (2) ASEAN is still in the air and very slow, but we believe that in 10-15 years there will be an improvement in human rights. Now, we have AICHR but dont have mechanism and we cant complain if there is a violation on human rights. ASEAN dont have independent expert or special reporter, so we endorse AICHR to have independent researcher or expert to make an independent report. (3) For SOGI, we have Yogyakarta principle and one of our strategies is to include gender identity rights include into the declaration. We put it in the political rights as a determination value. Sometimes we dont put it directly and have to choose the language to be accepted in ASEAN. (4) The membership of caucus only consists of NGOS but we can network with the government, parliament, and political parties. If it consists of many stakeholders, it will be hard to find the same perspective on women issue. Here are the answers from Mr. Devin: Having a NGOs network is crucial. However it is an opportunity that missed in some regions which is bringing together parties that want similar ideology and have them way in specific policy. It is also an opportunity to build solidarity with people from other countries. That is one mechanism that IKAT engaged and that could be looking into. (2) In terms of ASEAN community, regional solidarity is the key to regional institution being a strong one. Its really attempt to have agreement between democracy and non-democracy government on human rights issue and it will become a challenge because it will really quickly moves into political rights. But we shouldnt give up on increasing women participation and agreement on human rights or general democracy even it is more challenging in non-democratic countries. Session 2 : Network Supports in 5 Countries for Women Political Empowerment In the beginning of session 2, each country did group discussion and then each country presented about introduction of their organization briefly, main focus, strategy, progress update, and challenges. This session is started from 11.01 am to 01.10 pm. 1. Malaysia Group Organization Empower, an NGO that established after Aceh tsunami because group of volunteer see the resources is very imbalance and known as human rights organization. Main Focus Women political participation Strategy 1. Meeting with stakeholders 2. Mapping of potential candidates 3. Public campaign materials 4. Developing manuals (on progress) 5. Provision of training of consultants (on progress) Progress Update 1. Meeting with stakeholders 2. Mapping of potential candidates 3. Public campaign materials 4. Developing manuals (on progress) 5. Provision of training of consultants (on progress) Challenges 1. Different political ideology 2. Different target group 3. Multi-ethnics 4. Hard to deal with policy makers 5. Perception towards Empower 4 B.

Additional Information

Two problems that we are facing are resources and human power.

2. Philippines Group Organization Center for Popular Empowerment (CPE), an NGO working for poor and marginalized people for their empowerment and protection of their political, economic, social, and cultural rights through 4 approaches: 1. Womens program 2. Participatory development planning for good governance, including grassroot participation in the development of the community 3. Capacity building, coalition, and networking 4. Research and data analysis For the specific program on women in politics and governance is building partnership with lady mayors, rural women, and HOR for the GBB. Main Focus Women participation in politics and governance and participatory democratic governance. In the national level, focus on policies. In local level is building partnership with lady mayors, and also building capacities at the grassroots level. Strategy 1. Bibingka approach ensuring that all areas are covered engaging all entities and areas, our partnership and complementation between partners. 2. Direct engagement with strategic offices for political reforms: OPA, NAPC, and PCW 3. Political party reforms to include/adopt gender quota (30%) in party structure and mechanism 4. Engagement with local government bodies 5. Political mapping of executive and legislative bodies to find allies and of their opposition to the issue 6. Provide technical assistance for campaigns and elections 7. Gender Balance Bill Progress Update 1. GBB is shelved. Committee of Women and Gender Equality, the status of GBB is no longer under consideration because has been addressed by Section 11 of Magna Charta of Women 2. Reproductive health is the considered priority bill by the palace, women advocates and parliamentarians. 3. Continue political mapping research and research on history of GBB for policy report to support argument for gender balance bill later 4. Consultation with local womens groups with the caucus because women caucus push gender balance bill 5. Integration of LMMAP with about sixty lady mayors Challenges 1. Parliamentarians who supported Magna Charta of Women and are against the Reproductive Health Bill may also against the GBB. 2. How to implement localization of GBB through local ordinances. Difficult in national level and also pushing local municipalities. Diversity and many issues from different organizations. 5

Additional Information

3. Aside from the reproductive health bill, equality bill like the divorce bill and the anti-discrimination bill is sidetracking the GBB. CPE has held two meetings with the ruling political party and oriented them in gender balance bill. CPE is not strong in term of knowledge and experience on ASEAN level.

3. Timor Leste Group Organization Caucus Parliamentary Main Focus 1. Legislation 2. Focalization 3. Political Decision Strategy 1. Workshop 2. Lobby 3. Observation 4. Dissemination 5. Socialization Progress Update 1. Domestic Violence Law 2. GRB Resolution 3. Electoral Law Challenges 1. Insufficient allocate Budget, Human Resource 2. Political Parties are not Gender Sensitive Organization Main Focus Strategy Progress Update CAUCUS Women in Political 1. Capacity Building for Potential women from Political Parties 2. Advocacy 1. Lobby, approach to Parties Leaders and each of Parties Leaders 2. Maintains good relation with Political Party 1. Capacity building to media, womens Candidates was joint program event with IKAT-US POWER, EMPOWER, CPE, KPI, KEMITRAAN, NDI 2. Work with STAE to make Publication as the Campaign Strategies 1. Time 2. Lack of Participation

Challenges

Additional Information from Q&A session: The Caucus Women in Politics and Caucus Parliamentarian are together to staring communities (National Parliamentarian, Government and UN Agency, and Political Party, Civil Society) and resulting A National Action Plan about STRENGTHENING WOMEN LEADERS AND WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN ELECTION 2012. Caucus will work with all institutions and they report back to caucus. Unit Gender to create Steering Committee lead by Women Caucus on Parliamentarian and created Road Map to see whos doing what.

4. Indonesia Group Organization Indonesian Womens Coalition for Justice and Democracy (KPI) is a mass-based women organization that has about 35.000 members across Indonesia. Main Focus 1. Women human rights 2. Women political representation 3. Gender budget 4. Trafficking in person Strategy Policy advocacy, political education in grass-root level, strengthen the organization and membership, and networking with various stakeholder (parliament, government, judicative bodies, political party, media, CSOs, and CBOs). Progress Update 1. Increased numbers numbers of women activist in grass root and local level nominated as candidate in village and higher local election 2. Increased capacity of women cadre and women in parliament who were trained by KPI 3. Managed to endorse women cadre in decision making bodies both at local and national level 4. In this issue, facilitated women in promote and endorse the establishment of women in national parliament caucus. Province also municipality level of women caucus 5. Providing assistance for women parliamentarian caucus in integrating gender equality perspective in law making process Challenges 1. Cultural barrier in promoting women leadership in politic and other public sphere, whereas traditionally men are the leader. It is something that really strong in grass-root 2. The raised of fundamentalism that contra productive to the promotion of women leadership in politic 3. Weakness of commitment in implementation of affirmative action in the articles of political package laws. 4. Corruption and money politics 5. Inaccurate voter list 6. Abuse of power by electoral management Additional Best practices, achievement, and strategy on womens rights, gender budget, Information and trafficking in person: 1. Women human rights we integrate one chapter of human rights in our constitution, article 28A for people who need special treatment. We also promote constitutionalism for children protection law. We advocate for some law and ratification some international law. We also establish CEDAW working group initiative to monitor CEDAW and working together with INFID in UN economy and social issues. We working together with government to do that, like BAPPENAS in national planning budget, including national developing. 2. Gender budget after 10 years, government just adopts it with the name 7

planning of responsive gender budget. Regulation from budget technical should be followed by local government. 3. Trafficking in person we support ratification of law and doing training for law enforcement since 2005. We have gender analysis tool. We promote gender audit as a follow up of gender budget. In terms of approaching private sector, if we propose cooperation on issue like reducing maternal mortality or health or education then they will be very welcome, but if we are talking about political especially on women political representation, then they will step back. 5. Cambodia Group Organization Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), Women Prosperity, COMFREL, and SILAKA that working on human rights, gender, election, and women participation into politics. Main Focus Getting women elected 30% for national election, advocacy/lobbying, monitoring election, and quota legislations (election law). Strategy Training female candidates, Roundtable Discussion, radio talk show, dialogue with political parties and other stakeholders, invite women activist and political leader to do press conference before election. Progress Update The female candidate is increased 4% from 21.36% to 25.64% Challenges 1. Political parties still not committed to the promise of women participation, political parties do not put women on the top of the list. 2. Women still have limited capacity and potential, most of them from ruling party that have money 3. Government bureaucracy Additional NGOs try to engage with private sector but most of private sectors in Cambodia Information support ruling party and they are afraid working with civil society. In general, private sector is reluctant because they are also afraid that it will affect their product. We can use CSR to ask private sector to support our work. In the end of this session, facilitator made some important points and terms to be noted: Approaches (i.e. Bibingka, etc) Political mapping tool BERSIH Movement Parliamentarian mapping Action plan: on strengthening women leader Network capacity development Women political agenda to political parties Gender responsive budgeting tool Gender audit (3 analysis) Approach to private sector (Chamber of Commerce) 8

C. Session 3 : Update on Country Specific and Possible Regional Issues This session, which is started from 02.37 pm from 03.54 pm, focus on updating country specific and possible regional issues. Main objectives of this session are to have an update country specific issue, to re-identify possible regional issues based on the similarities across countries, and to produce an updated list of strategic issue. Three questions should be discussed in this session are (1) what are the women related main issues in your countries? (2) can they be considered regional issues? (3) how many of these issues are you addressing on and how are you contributing on addressing those issues?. In the beginning, participants discussed on their own country specific issues and then they find similarity from all those issues from all countries and make it as regional issues. These are issues based on country: Timor Leste Human trafficking, HIV/AIDS, sexual abuse, the minimum women representation in the government, the minimum opportunities for women being the decision maker position in party structure, drugs. Reproductive /maternal health, migration/trafficking/feminization of migration, poverty in informal sector, non/partial implementation of policies and law on women, 2013 election, women representation. Discrimination, job opportunity, stereotype, security sexual harassment, single mother, maternity leave, sexual violence, marriage law, sex worker, unwed mothers, women health issue, women participation in politics, domestic workers. Lack of women participation, land grabbing, migration, harassment/violence against women Trafficking, violence against women, women in politics, maternal mortality, child marriage, affirmative action, land grabbing, natural resource management, migrant worker, domestic worker, security sector reform, accessible basic services.

Philippines

Malaysia

Cambodia Indonesia

After presenting each country specific issues, participants discussed and agreed that those issues could be summarized into five regional issues, which are: 1. Women participation/representation through election 2. Trafficking, migration (migrant worker), and domestic worker 3. Womens health issue 4. Gender based violence/sexual harassment 5. Property rights, right to land (land grabbing) In order to answer question number three, how many of these issues their organization addressing on, this is their answer: Timor Leste : 5 out of 5 Philippines : 5 out of 5 Malaysia : 4/5 out of 5 Cambodia : 5 out of 5 (+ education) Indonesia : 5 out of 5 In the middle of discussion, participant from Malaysia put forward her thought about how unorganized the discussion process is when the facilitator would go to part two of the discussion about adding other issues to look another cooperation possibility. She said that better to only focus on womens participation in politics. Sharing experience and knowledge is important but reporting the progress of 9

what we have done is more important. Participant from Indonesia also added that it is better to only focus on womens political participation than having many list of issues and activities because combining women political and other issues will make lost their focus. D. Session 4 : Strategic Planning for Women Regional Network Strategic Planning for Women Regional Network is the last session of the first day workshop and it is started at 04.24 pm. The objective of this session is to seek possible collaboration in addressing country specific issue on women participation in politics. Topic of discussion of this session is what you can do to each other. Instead of discussing with their fellow country, on this session, one country group was paired with another country group (roundtable discussion) and each country did five times roundtable discussions. From this session, they are expected to share, get to know each other better to understand what you can do to each other, and then make a collaboration that will be part of action plan. On this day, there were two sub-sessions roundtable discussion, which are: 1. Cambodia Philippines, Indonesia Timor Leste, Malaysia Lead Partner 2. Cambodia Timor Leste, Malaysia Philippines, Indonesia Lead Partner This session is ended at 05.56 pm and also ended the first day workshop. Roundtable discussion session was continued on the second day that will be started at 08.30 am.

Sunday/ June 10, 2012


The second day of 2nd Workshop of Regional Womens Network in Promoting Womens Political Representation in Southeast Asia is started from 08.45 am to 11.59 am. There are two sessions for this second day workshop, which are continuing yesterday Roundtable Discussion and Formulating National Action Plan. A. Session 1 : Strategic Planning for Women Regional Network (Continue) The first session of this day is continuing yesterday roundtable discussion. On this day, there were three sub-sessions roundtable discussion, which are: 1. Cambodia Lead Partner, Indonesia Malaysia, Philippines Timor Leste 2. Cambodia Malaysia, Indonesia Philippines, Timor Leste Lead Partner 3. Cambodia Indonesia, Malaysia Timor Leste, Philippines Lead Partner This session started from 08.45 am to 10.40 am. Session 2 : Formulating National Action Plan The last session of this workshop is formulating national action plan. On this session, each country is expected to write down all of the results of the program that they have been done since October 2011 and also all of the plans that might occur during roundtable discussion with all countries and lead partner on the previous session. They were asked to describe the program, mention the stakeholders and all institutions involved, and tentative timeline (in quarter). This session was ended at 11.57 am and Ms. Merita Gidarjati, as the Project Manager IKAT-US 1, delivered a closing remark. B.

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