Pambansang Kongreso ng Kababaihan sa Kanayunan

The CEDAW Monitoring Study started in 2006 with PKKK's participation in the CEDAW Shadow Reporting to the United Nations; this was accompanied by secondary data gathering at the national level and by focus group discussions among nine (9) provincial networks. This endeavor was part of the over-all CEDAW advocacy of PKKK, which was further encouraged by the UN CEDAW recommendation, as cited above in the context.

PKKK aimed to deepen this understanding/appreciation of CEDAW by embarking on yet another CEDAW monitoring.  But this time focused primarily on the sectoral and local application of CEDAW, especially for the farmers, fishers and indigenous people sectors.

Generally, the project aims to develop models for implementing CEDAW in the sectors of farmers, fishers and indigenous peoples.  The project shall strive to adopt a process-oriented, participatory and culturally-sensitive approach that will result primarily to a Framework for CEDAW Implementation for Rural Women and Indigenous Women. The target results are as follows:

This refers to a Framework that can be used by the farmers, fishers and indigenous peoples in understanding CEDAW and its implication to their specific interests as sectors.  This Framework will help highlight the relevance of women’s rights to over-all sectoral agenda, as well as identify strategies for gender mainstreaming in community-based programs.  The Framework can also provide bases for future policy reforms, especially on national policies that provide development framework to the sectors, e.g. the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Program (AFMP), the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the Comprehensive National Fisheries Integrated Development Plan (CNFIDP), the Ancestral Domain Sustainable Development and Protection Plan (ADSDPP).

The write-up on the Status of Rural Women and Indigenous Women will primarily serve as input to drafting the Framework Paper.  This write-up, which will be composed of three major data sets – status of women farmers in Quezon, status of women fishers in Northern Samar, and status of Teduray Lambangian women – will illustrate that the rural women have heterogeneous situations and different levels of marginalization.  It must be noted that the indicators for the women’s situation were the ones identified and agreed upon by the sectoral representatives themselves – and indication of acceptability of CEDAW.

The capacity building seminars/workshops will ensure that core groups and target sectoral representatives are leveled-off in their orientation of the project and on CEDAW.  The core group members are composed of rural women leaders, while over-all training participants may be mixed (men or women) depending on the targeted sectoral representatives.  Again, the strategies for approaching each sector will depend on the core group members.  The capacity building component of this project shall address the orientation and skills required in recognizing and monitoring women’s rights (from CEDAW perspective and the women’s experiences) in each sector.

At the end of the project, after impressing the relationship of CEDAW and the sectoral agenda, the core groups will be challenged to develop their advocacy plan as response to the status of the women in their respective sectors.  The advocacy plan will aim to ensure claim-taking of women’s rights by influencing the 2008 Local Development Plans of their respective provincial government units.

By the end of 2007, the CEDAW Project had already covered the formation of core groups in the project areas, as well as the training sessions on CEDAW Monitoring.  The participants numbered to around 72 women participants (30 in Mindanao, 26 in Visayas, and 16 in Luzon).   By end of the year, the different core groups have embarked on the data gathering phase of the project. The presentation of the women sectoral situationers will be on 11 April 2008.

The CEDAW localization project is supported by UNIFEM.