 Greetings, everyone. My name is Kayed McConnan. Today, we're virtually launching the UNA Global South and diaspora Action Committee. I am reaching out to you because I need your help. We need your help to end poverty, violence, and inequality. This is the beginning of our first campaign. We need to galvanize as many of you as possible to advocate for the most disfranchised in the world. Although this is a workshop, we don't just want to talk about the issues. We want to make sure to be changemakers. We need to make tangible change in the injustice taking place. I'm the chair of the Global South and diaspora Action Committee. We are the subsidiary of the United Nations Association United Kingdom section London Southeast region branch. Our aim is to use UN conventions as tools for social change. We are all there today because I call for this event. I have been part of the international movement for peace and human rights for over 43 years now. We felt the weight of impending doom in various forms, whether it was anti-nukes movement in the 1980s or the anti-genocide and anti-war movement in the 1990s and 2000s. Nothing seems to compare the desperation and fear that we are sitting with right now. Inequality is now worse than we've ever seen. There is no such thing as job security and in many places there are no jobs at all. Women and children are going hungry. There is no more water in the west. The rivers are polluted. The trees are disappearing. We can't breathe. Fires in Australia's cyclone in Mozambique droughts in the Sahar, infestation in Kenya, and even the bees are dying. The coronavirus is due to create an unrecognizable world. Inequality, the likes of which we've never known. In this period of late capitalism, the standardizing and systematizing of global extractive system has made it easier and easier to take from people, especially those people who've never been beggars before. Deep in the village of Africa, Asia, Latin America, there were no beggars. There were hard-working farmers. There were people who worked on the land and worked with the land to meet their needs. But this is no longer possible because of capitalist greed and climate change. I have called you all here today because we have a fight of epic proportions ahead of us. We need to arm ourselves with knowledge of this brutal economic and governing system. And if anyone is going to win this war, it will be us women. We make life. We need to give birth to a powerful movement. We need to stop the injustice. The convention of the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women is our tool. And today, we are in a boot camp. We need to take this opportunity to learn as much as possible about this weapon. And then we need to wield it mightily. I am also here to introduce my community of global South women and community organizers, as well as the diaspora communities in the global north and my fellow women activists from all backgrounds to learn about the convention of the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. As community organization, I know this convention ought to be a tool we use to demand our rights to our bodies, ourselves, to support each other. And to have this planet, Mother Earth, we need to stand up today. We need to stand together to demand political rights. We need to learn together how to make those demands with the tools we have. We need to learn the tools and how to use them. We hope this is the first of many workshops towards that step. We hope that we can that we can use our rage at the state of the world to fuel a revolution towards freedom for all people. Before I pass the mic, I want to take this opportunity to thank the organizers of SOAS Festival of Ideas, Dr. Amina Yakin, Angelica Baskara, and Stephanie Gurian. They have created this platform for us to bring this workshop to all of you. A special thank you to Vivian Hayes of the Women's Resources Center for making this event happen. I encourage you all to take advantage of the WRC's services. I want to thank Catherine Plyer, representative of the United Nations Association Leather. Catherine and the other members of Leather have helped to sponsor this event and our vision for the UNA Global South and diaspora action committee. Without their support, we could not have done, we could not have made this workshop happen. Catherine saw my potential, uplifted my vision, and has helped me make my dreams for this group come true. Now we are working together to bridge the communication gap between the haves and the have not. We are bringing the tools to activists in the global south and the global north. The UNA Global South and diaspora action committee aims to address the issues concerning rural people, women and children, and all of the disenfranchised and marginalised people of the world. We want to do this by using this platform and allowing all of us to be participants in these discussions and to determine our own destiny. A great big welcome to Catherine Plyer. My name is Catherine Plyer. Welcome to this event on Sedor, hosted by WNC and as just explained by UNA Global South Action Group Committee, which we at UNA Trust are absolutely delighted to support. I'm a member of UNA, United Nations Association. We are a group of people from all walks of life. We work to support the UN. We are not the UN. We support them. We do this in many ways, information meetings, hustings, mongers for schools, fundraising, lobbying MPs campaigns, but probably one job we do, which is important. We challenge our government to fulfill its obligations on the Security Council. It is the penholder at the moment and we put pressure on the government to properly engage with the UN by example. As a committee member of UNA London and Southeast Region, I help look after the branches of the interests of 23 branches and this week we are recognizing and presenting a week-long workshop started last Sunday on major UN themes to mark United Nations 75th anniversary, which is a global event. I'm also chair of UNA Trust. Our job is to fund projects compatible with the ideals of the UN. We have just launched a fund for refugees affected by COVID and if anybody wants to know any more about that, if you email me after the event or if you get in touch with Kayat and she will then pass it through to me. I thought I'd give a bit of background to said all very general. The Charter of the United Nations was signed on the 26th of June 1945, San Francisco, came into force on the 24th of October that year, originally signed by 50 countries, 51 later in that year when Poland signed up, but now we have 193 countries on our members. The opening words are legendary. We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind. The second statement ties in with tonight. We the peoples of the United Nations determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small. I mentioned this second statement of the Charter, reaffirming human rights just now, as this obviously ties up quite strongly with today's topic. Said all the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women is also called the Bill of International Rights for Women. Over the years, a huge amount of legislation has been produced by the UN on the subject of human rights in general. And for women in particular, UN recognizing that women bear children less mobile than men, more often than not find themselves head of family, sole breadwinner, denied their basic human rights for many reasons, and because of the situation in which they find themselves. It has been recognized by the UN that these women, all of us need extra legislation to protect us. To mention some examples of major legislation instigated by the UN, which some of you will be familiar with, 1995, the Beijing Declaration, 2000 UNSCR, United Nations Security Council Resolution, 1325 Women, Peace and Security, 2008 UNSCR, 1820, Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict, which was one of about four or five resolutions, following 1325 honing it down. Everybody will have heard of the Millennium Goals, which came into being 2000. Number three, Millennium Goal Number Three, Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women. The Millennium Goals were rehashed and they were replaced in 2015 by the Sustainable Development Goals, 17 of those. Goal Number Five is Gender Equality and the Sustainable Goals are up for review 2030. CEDOR, a Human Rights Treaty came into force in 1981. It is one of the most important examples of legislation for women we have. It was drafted by CSW Commission for the Status of Women, which was actually set up quite shortly after the setting up of the UN. It was set up partially by Enola Roosevelt in 1946. The CSW meets government and the development community to look at government performance on women's issues every year in New York in March International Women's Day. That's a weekly event. It also hosts a major world conference on women every five years of the Beijing meeting in 1995, which led to the Beijing Declaration. It became a blueprint for future meetings with its 12-point plan for the advancement of women. Finally, the UN created GEAR. UN Women in 2010 are dedicated and funded departments to look at the advancement of every aspect of women's lives, economic development, education, health, sexual violence, so on and so forth. Finally, just something which we're going to be discussing in detail. CEDOR is a document. It has no teeth until a government has signed up to it, but even if the government signs up to it, any government, we then have to come in and ensure that the document to which the government has signed is properly implemented. So the government actually does what it says it's agreed to do. I think that's enough from me. I'm absolutely delighted to hand you over to Vivian Hayes, CEO of Women's Resource Centre. Thank you. Thank you so much, Catherine, and good morning everybody and good morning women. Thank you also to Kayette and to the women who've arranged this particularly to Stephanie for helping me with the tech stuff because I'm not very techie, but I'm glad lots of women are. We need to be in that space women. Yes, so good morning and welcome again. I'm very pleased to be here to talk about CEDOR or the long title, the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or as Catherine said, we call it the International Bill of Rights for Women because that's a bit more accessible language. So I'm going to tell you a bit about myself, a bit about the organisation I lead, the Women's Resource Centre, and then I'm going to hopefully bring CEDOR to life because the UN language and website is really inaccessible. And as I often say, CEDOR is one of the best kept secrets and today I hope that we're going to make some inroads into changing that because as we know, knowledge is power and things that are kept secret usually are because they're very useful to us, the change makers. Okay, so as Catherine said, I'm Vivian Hayes, the Chief Executive of the Women's Resource Centre, and I have been involved in the UK women sector by that. I mean, the women's not-for-profit sector that has worked for probably in this country for about 50 years on addressing the structural inequality of women and pressing for change and also providing services to women in dire need because of structural inequality. And so myself, I've worked in the sector for over 30 years. I'm absolutely passionate about women and children's rights. I think a blueprint for the achievement of all women's rights, not just some, but all, is actually the way that we get a blueprint for everybody's rights. Women are across all communities, they're everywhere, we are everywhere. If you talk about race, women are there. If you talk about disability, women are there. We are everywhere. So if we get it right for all women, we are well on the road to creating the kind of society that Kayette referred to. And we are in the worst situation in my living memory. Our rights are being rolled back. So CEDAW is a very important tool for us to grasp onto and force change. Because as you all know, our rights have never been handed down to us ever. We've only improved our rights because of our collective action together to push for them. So if we want a better world, we have to do something about it. That could be one little thing. Anyway, so the work of WRC, the Women's Resource Centre is a national UK organisation. Our job primarily is to support what we think are 20,000 women's organisations across the country, mostly nobody's ever heard of them. They're working away in communities supporting women across a whole range of issues that are a direct result of structural inequality. So that could be around violence against women. It could be around health. It could be around employment opportunities and financial independence. It could be on specific issues to specific communities such as migrant women, black and minoritised women and disabled women. The list goes on because, as I'm sure you know, women all over the country and the world are very busy keeping their families and communities together. So some of the work we do is to, it basically goes into two parts. One is to try and improve the external environment so get the government to make better policy decisions that lead to better outcomes for women. At the same time, we're working very hard to make sure those organisations still keep their doors open because the women's sector is run on a shoestring budget and it's full of women like you and I who do it because we are passionate about social change. It's not a job, it's a vocation and a way of life. Some of our work involves trying to attract additional money into the sector and over the last 16 years I've been at WRC, our work has seen millions of extra pounds come into our sector so that often life-saving services remain open for women so that they have somewhere to go and that they don't have to die because that is the reality, women are dying. We also run training programmes, we've got a fantastic feminist leadership programme that has been targeted at women younger than me because we do need to pass the baton on women. So for those on the event today who are middle aged or older, we need to think about what we're passing on to the next generation and so that there is a continuum of learning and action because what seems to me is that every 20 years her story gets rubbed out and people feel they have to start from scratch again. Another thing that we're doing we've just, my colleague has just launched our network for Black women leaders because we were asked by some of our members to do this. Over a year ago actually it was at our seed or event over a year ago, it might be two years ago now with this lockdown, it's very hard to keep track of time. We were approached to start that network because obviously we absolutely recognise that knowledge, the structural inequality that Black and minoritised women face in not just in this country but everywhere but our work is focused here and of course Black Lives Matter has highlighted that in case anybody was in any doubt, I don't think there were, I just think the white population chooses to ignore it. Don't get me started on issues of power because that's not quite what I'm here to speak about. So that's another one of our projects. We also try to bring funders, trusts and foundations who make grants to our sector on board with the needs of our sector. So at the moment we're having a lot of conversations with funders about if you believe in change and you actually want to address structural inequality then we know you need to fund those organisations in local communities led by the people that they work with. That is critical for change. We also know from numerous reports and research that the biggest change is elicited not by having more women parliamentarians actually because we could just have a hundred Mrs Thatcher's in Westminster. I don't think that would help us very much but the change in women's rights is predominantly brought about and it's a critical factor is the independent collective action of women. So never being any doubt women that it's us that makes the change, not the politicians, we push them there, we force them to do that and that's what we have to continue to do together, together being the key word here. So I'm really really excited about the collaboration today with Catherine and Kayet because I have met Kayet before but Catherine I haven't and I'm already realising that we've been missing a link there between the work of WRC on CEDAW and the work that Catherine and Kayet are involved in. So that's a great learning for me and I will take that away. So if I ask the wonderful tech support to put on our screen the first page because what I'm going to do is just go through the process of CEDAW and what it is because it is really inaccessible so we produce this guide so that it brings it to life in plain English and hopefully that more women can engage with it because the language that's used from the UN is quite inaccessible. So as my colleague Catherine said, CEDAW is the UN convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women or the International Bill of Rights for women and there you have the dates of when it was adopted, when it became an international treaty and when the United Kingdom ratified it which was 1986. The countries that have ratified are called state parties but that just means the country and it is very much focused on what we call substantive equality for women and that is really important because what we've had in the past in this country is talk of equal opportunity. Equal opportunity does not achieve outcomes. We can see that when we look around us. Change has not occurred in terms of structural inequality for women and so CEDAW is about substantive equality which means actually realizing change not just saying hey we've got a nice job here anybody can apply for it and so people apply and we know from research that if you've got an Asian or African sounding name up to 80% of those people's applications will go in the bin so equality of opportunity doesn't work. We've got to have institutional shift and there's a lovely example of what substantive equality means in a visual which I'm sorry I haven't gone but you've probably seen it already and it shows three people wanting to watch a football match over a fence and they're all different heights so somebody comes along and they've got a box to stand on which are all the same heights so what that does is raises them all by a foot but it means that the smallest person still can't see over the fence so in order to achieve equality and women's rights we have to address the specific needs of women and within that the specific needs of women from different communities so that would mean the boxes would have to be different heights so that everybody could see equally over the fence so that's what for me substantive equality means is addressing the need and acknowledging the lack of rights and how they apply to different groups of women and tackling that directly treating people the same will never ever achieve equality. So the thing the other thing that I love about CEDOR it's not about comparing men with women it's about comparing the performance of the state to date with what it said it will do so it's only focused on women which is great because we don't get much that's for ourselves and I've got a bit of an issue with the language that's used I talk about women's human rights not gender equality because that can get a little bit into a gray area where men go well gender equality what about my rights no we're talking about women's human rights if men want to address issues they feel they may have then that is for them to do it not for women we've got enough to do thank you very much and also men do not experience structural inequality because of their sex they might experience it because of racism or because of homophobia or class but not because of their sex alone okay so if I look at what I've shown you all because I think the other thing that I want to just go back to is what Katherine said about the legal standing of CEDOR and lots of people say that CEDOR has no teeth that's often a phrase that you heard that you hear and it is not legally binding in our country and I think sometimes for that reason people think it's of no use that is not true it's a great use it does have what's called and you can see on your screen is the optional protocol which is the nearest thing to holding the government to account in a very formal way the optional protocol is not a simple process and it can take several years but we know that different women's human right defenders around the globe have used the optional protocol for change in particular in the context of the UK very recently and I'm sure many of you know about is the changes to access to abortion in Northern Ireland those changes are a direct result of women's human rights defenders in Northern Ireland using the CEDOR and optional protocol to bring about that change I think it's taken them several years and at one of our last CEDOR kind of live event where we were there together we had women from Northern Ireland come over to talk about their experience and it was really fabulous because they said they'd been to one of our conferences many years ago about CEDOR and afterwards they got together and they were reflecting and talking about their experience and they thought well you know shall we give it a go shall we take a case under the optional protocol about abortion and they just decided to do it and get on with it and here we are today because of their first steps and then garnering support from various other places and a fabulous campaign they've actually realised that change that's a great example of how CEDOR can be used and but of course as Catherine says CEDOR is only as useful as we make it because it's a document it's statements and recommendations unless we push the government on those they generally do nothing that's about substantive equality the other thing that I love about CEDOR is the fact and it says under the substantive equality box this thing about temporary special measures now temporary special measures are a gift to us because what it means is is that our government can go okay there's just been no progress on and well it's been kind of used in terms of women women MPs and you may know that for a while they were all women shortlist that is a temporary special measure it's taking a specific positive action to bring about change that is not happening so it's really useful for us to say in our efforts to decision-making because well you know you can use temporary special measures to address this because sometimes you know people will say oh it's a long road change takes a long time you've got to be patient we're doing our best and we're sitting here going actually this is not good enough why do we have to wait so long how long were we meant to wait and so temporary special measures can be fully and legally implemented to speed up that change so remember that one I think it's a really easy thing to talk about and it's easy for people to understand um tech support could I have the next page please okay so the seed or process the convention is overseen and monitored by a UN committee of 23 experts on women's rights from around the world often uh many of those experts are actually legally trained um legal experts state parties are obliged to report to committee or examine the measures implemented by the country and this happens approximately every four years so every four years all the countries that have signed up to seed or including the uk and I think there's about 170 something I'm not sure um they are asked to provide a report on their progress since the last examination four years ago um and then they are examined so if you look at this lovely circle with the women's symbol in the middle you can see year one the state party the country submits their report to the committee which outlines their progress to upholding the articles the articles that like the areas that are focused on there at the side of the frame you can see that um now in our experience in WRC has been uh leading on writing what is called the shadow report so when the government writes their report um civil society NGOs the women's sector we are able to submit a parallel report um which gather which we have led on for I don't know before I joined WRC they used to be um the women's national commission in this country and they um they produced quite a large report a shadow report against the government's report but we as an organization were always asked to supplement that um because there were certain areas that they avoided that were seen as too contentious and so we we began when the the WRC was abolished um when the Lib Dem government got in and since then we've been doing a much bigger report um but that process is critical because what we find is that the government's report to CEDAW does not tell the truth to put it bluntly and so we because we're the umbrella body and we've got a network of over 600 we have access across the country to local small women's organizations across the whole communities of women and so we consult with them either through actual events or through them sending us written evidence that speak to the articles that you can see on your screen so um we might um one of the things that's not on there but it's in the general recommendation is the one on violence against women and girls because initially as you can see there wasn't an article relating to it but again because of representations made by women's organizations violence against women and girls became a general recommendation and so we might have organizations working like rape crisis England and Wales or Incarn who who might submit evidence around violence against women and girls and that will go in our reports um so it's a lot of work and it requires um a great collaboration between many women's organizations and individual women um to get this report robust um evidence based and really shining a light on what the government hasn't been doing and sometimes what they have been doing that is detrimental to women so we know that austerity in this country has massively impacted women by over 80% and so the policies that they have brought out have actually discriminated against women and I would say that they have broken their own equality laws by some of the policymaking so we spend time gathering the information and then we submit our report then the committee looks at the government's report and our parallel report and in year two based upon those presents a list of issues that they will ask clarification on which the government will do and which we may update on ours as well but usually the list of issues because our reports are very thorough and tell the truth then we've normally already covered that off the next phase is um the examination of our country which has happened in person the last exam examination happened in Geneva they're either in Geneva or New York really uh usually um and the government have to go they send civil servants usually sometimes the minister for women inequalities might go and if we can afford it or if we're fortunate enough to get a grant we will go as well um now this is one of my bugbear's amounts either is that it's it's dominated in my view in terms of who can go to the hearing by women who can afford it and in that context what we often see is that it's white middle class women who get to go that's not okay at all because we know what without the diversity of women being able to attend that some issues will not be spoken about our job at WRC is to make sure the voices of the most marginalized women um and the women at the very sharp end of structural inequality that their issues are there that they get to speak and represent um so at the last hearing um the equality and human rights commission made some grants um for organizations to travel to Geneva and I smile because that was a challenge that was a great challenge so we had already in our report consulted with over a hundred women's organizations um but the grant system of the HRC for women to go was open to everyone and so there were some people that went who had hadn't been part of our process of evidence collecting so we had a group of I think about 30 or more and some of whom had been very involved in the shadow report process and some who haven't so we had a range of knowledge and understanding of what had been going on now the other thing um is that the UN committee in previous years and I just want to say that I'd never been before the last time they had criticized the UK delegation for not being organized and um you know this may be controversial to say but again because it has predominantly been women with the means and the resources which predominantly has been white middle class women as individuals going the the kind of coordinated approach to talk into the committee was lacking and the committee noted that now we all know that if we want to talk to people in power we need to make sure that we're prepared that we know what we're saying and that we're speaking with one voice because if we don't we um open ourselves up to being divided even further so um the the main opportunity at the examination is that the NGOs or as the women's sector are given 10 minutes to give oral evidence so we get a 10 minutes slot to speak to the committee um to highlight any specific things that we think are really important so that when they question our government they are armed with the correct information to ask pertinent questions it's critical otherwise the committee don't know what to say I mean if you think that they're they're doing this all the time and they've got a hundred and odd countries they cannot know in detail what's going on in every country so it is our job to make sure that they have that information so um before we left to go to Geneva um I ended up coordinating the people that were going and explaining the process because as I said some people going did not understand the process and they didn't understand the 10 minutes oral evidence and what we had was people very focused on their specific issues and the aim of the all the 10 minutes that we had to speak is to speak to the strategic overarching issues that would be the aim of this anyway so after much work blood sweat and tears I might say and my very best communication skills being needed and as a norther I can be blunt sometimes so that was a challenge for me um we coordinated the group we worked together I worked with the other four nations so Northern Ireland Scotland and Wales with the the organizations the umbrella organizations from there for us to work together and to bring everybody together and on board um so um we did that before we went through email and then when we got there we had like an atrium space very strange but we all got together and we divided into groups of themes of the overarching issues and those groups worked upon them um and then we agreed what the 10 minutes oral evidence was going to be and who was going to say it well it was really hard work it was very stressful some people felt that their issues weren't covered the usual thing when you're collaborating but the committee at the end of the session commended us on our excellent and coordinated approach that was a massive achievement for us because that means that we're now respected as a country rather than seen as a little bit shambolic very very important so that happened we were very pleased the hard work was worth it so then after the hearing the examination which we all heard our government's responses not allowed to speak in the chamber you can only observe but needless to say we didn't feel that the government answered our questions very well also the report that they sent initially I have to say is one of the poorest reports I've ever seen from our government and that is indicative of the fact that women's rights have fallen off the agenda they really have so after the examination then you have what is year three in your circle which are the concluding observations that's what they're called they are recommendations that's what they are but they're called concluding observation and usually there's a lot 60 or 70 recommendations that the committee made to our government for areas of improvement and this is a critical document for us as a lever of social change there's there's too many for the women's sector to work upon and I just might add that most of the work that WRC does on CEDAW is not funded it's it's a massive challenge for us to do this work and we rely on the goodwill and the free labour of loads of other women as well to contribute to the report and to share the evidence and to engage with the process so that again is part of this systemic invisibling of CEDAW and of women's rights because without resources it's really difficult to do this work because women you know the women who we want to engage with are usually the poorest usually got the most to do and the least time okay so then we get the recommendations and then what we do then is that we will identify with our members which are the ones that we can we can put our time into if we had more resources we could do so much more so some examples of how the concluding observations or recommendations have been used as very very strong levers to force our government to improve women's rights I mentioned the the one of Northern Ireland and the optional protocol and that's been a great success but again I think I don't know if it was Kaya or Catherine who said CEDAW is only as valuable as we make it so it's like an opportunity here you go here are the recommendations you can bet your life that the government will do absolutely nothing about them unless they are either forced embarrassed or shamed into doing something so that's critical the Northern Ireland example which took many years and the labour of many women the other example which was England based because obviously Northern Ireland happened in Northern Ireland even though we supported it is the work around no recourse to public funds and in case anybody doesn't know no recourse to public funds what that is is that in our case women with insecure immigration status cannot access any public money so they can't claim benefits, legal aid and also that means if they are in a violent relationship they cannot leave because they can't pay to live somewhere else because they have no access to funds so in refuges this is a particular problem and for decades we know that the black and minoritised organisations who run refuges have been footing the bill to make sure those women can come into the into the refuges and escape violence but of course that again is a challenge for those organisations to do it because there's been no funding and pleased to say because of the recommendations made by CEDAW around no recourse to public funds and the hard work of many organisations of a coalition led by South or Black sisters which my organisation WRC performed the secretariat of and a lot of work those some of those laws have been changed so now there is the domestic violence concession whereby with evidence and jumping through some hoops women can access refuge spaces with some money available so that's a massive change and obviously means that numerous women's lives have saved because without being able to leave an abuser of course you may end up dead and goodness knows your children too because children are massively affected living in a violent household so that's just a couple of examples of where CEDAW recommendations or conclusion observations have been directly used to bring about an improvement of women's rights it is hard work and it is about the dedication of women's human rights defenders pushing this and pushing it and pushing it but it works it's a great tool the other thing we know is that our government does not like to be embarrassed on the world stage the UK government hold themselves up as a great defender of human rights of course that is not the case we only have to look at what's going on at the moment to know that but they don't like the international stage to think oh maybe they're not quite as good as they said they were you know so that's another way to encourage them or drag them to to give change for women so um years three to eight on your screen years three to eight is when the recommendations from the conclusion observations can be worked upon again with our push um the thing that's happening right now oh I haven't gone through the articles have I um I think they're all listed there and hopefully this this leaflet um will be available for you all to look at and there's also a page on WRC's website about CEDAW our reports should be there and any other information um is there another page for me to look at tech support please ah yeah okay so this in a way is is is the page that I want you to focus on in a way because really without as many women as possible engaging and organising together we don't get where we need to be and as Kayette said we were we are now in the worst possible times um and we also know that regardless of of of the leaders of change often being visible as men we know that it's women doing the work and behind that saying behind every great man is a great woman well there's probably about 20 great women but there you go um now at the last examination um and from the concluding observations the committee have asked our government to report early because normally the cycle is every four years approximately but the committee if they feel that something is of significance concerned to them then they will ask our government to report to report within one or two years on those issues and that happened at the last examination um the four areas that they've been asked to report on which I think it's February next year possibly it is next year ah the incorporation of CEDAW into domestic law throughout all territories under its jurisdiction now this is a big one because our government has consistently refused to incorporate CEDAW into our own legal frameworks um they give some quite hilarious excuses which if you look at their reports you can see one of the ones that made me laugh the most um was that they say well we can't do that we'd be giving more rights to women than we would to anybody else which of course is ridiculous um so they've been asked to report again on that undertake number two a thorough impact assessment of its withdrawal from the european union on the rights of women because obviously brexit um is here and with us and all the um all the investigations and reports around brexit that have been conducted um with a lens on women have shown that women's rights are definitely going to well back with brexit because although our own equality law um requires that attention is paid to what are called um protected characteristics basically they're the groups in the law that are identified as suffering um specific discrimination and equality and one of those is based upon sex so women um the government fails over and over again in its policymaking to do what we call equality impact assessments that's another thing that i suggest that you find out about if you don't know about because equality impact assessments are really useful tools and there is provision for those made in the equality act the government doesn't do them or does them really badly because basically if you're bringing in a new policy so um for example what could we have um benefits for single parents for example um the government should have a look oh is this going to impact men and women differently um and as you probably know over 90 percent of single parents in this country are women so if they looked at that they'd see that the impact of any policy around that would impact women more than men which means they would need to um either to make adjustments or a very good excuse for not for not addressing it often they just make excuses but again the more that we talk about these things the more pressure we put on them to do them um number three to include the provision of the european convention on human rights and the accumulated legislation legal acts and court decision in european units is national legislation and include human rights and the empowerment of the central rights approaches to tackling the current challenges so this is related to the concerns that brexit will allow our government to withdraw um from the european convention on human rights and other european directives and treaties that have quite significantly benefited women we we are concerned that the government will use brexit as an opportunity to really dismantle some of some of the human rights gains that we have and you may know that indeed the government has at various points talked about revising our own human rights legislation and we should all be alarmed about that and we should make sure that we know what's going on um because they could kind of do it through the back door with hardly anybody realizing what's happening number four to consider establishing a national oversight mechanism to coordinate and monitor the implementation of the convention with the effective participation of its national human rights institutions and women's organizations this is another one that we think is um an overarching and of strategic importance what it means is is that the government through signing up to cedal is meant to have what's called gender architecture so they're meant to have a process and system of implementing cedal and engaging um with women's organizations to um assess where we're at and also improve now as i said at the beginning we used to have what was called the women's national commission which was a quango so it was kind of semi independent of government but it was funded by government and sponsored by government and i was one of the group of the last commissioners before it was abolished and you know i had a lot of criticisms of the women's national commission particularly in relation to um its lack of diversity however now that it's gone i realize that we have nothing left you know um we don't have a voicing to government as a collective at all what we have is the people with the means and who are have the the resources um and also perhaps the connections to lobby the government but those of us outside of that so working class women black women disabled women women in the north who don't have those means they have no opportunity um to make representations and the government also does not have to deal with a committee of women who are challenging them um so that will be very interesting to see what the government says to number four indeed it will okay so we've got this question here does it seem overwhelming and difficult to know what to do from here because i have to say you know 12 years ago i could not get my head around cedal it just seemed like a foreign language to me and it also seemed um unreachable in many ways but now i'm a fan of cedal and i i i think it's a great tool i think we've just got to demystify it a bit and put it into plain english because cedal is for us it's for all women it's especially useful for the women with the least and who are the most oppressed so what we've got underneath is engage with cedal some some suggestions of how you might get engaged with cedal and i hope that you'll want to um and you can also contact us women's resource center i'm sure um one of the very tech women will put the link to our website somewhere for you to access and i just want to thank the women who are doing this because i'm just terrible at it so one of the things you could do um is find out which recommendation and you will see the concluding observations support on our website with the list of recommendations go have a look through those and see which one speaks to you the most or the things that you're passionate about or the women that you work with which one speaks to you the most and then start to save them when you're in conversations with decision makers funders whoever the powerful is talk about that recommendation and you can say did you know number 25 recommendation in the concluding observations of cedal says we want to know what are you doing about that what do you think about that do you know that that's what our work is here to address blah blah blah blah you can contact your mp or the counselors in your local authority and you can ask them what are they doing about the cedal recommendations or if they are producing a policy that you think is in direct opposition to that recommendation you can say did you know that this is going against the cedal recommendation it's great for opening a conversation and the other thing that we find is that a lot of those mps or counselors will never heard of cedal so what it does as well it empowers you you know because often in these relationships with the people who have or the people that we want to affect change with we're we're always kind of the poor relation if you like we're the ones growing almost begging them for change no with cedal you're not begging them for change you're saying do you know this is your responsibility but you're also showing them that you know more than them and sometimes that's really useful so what's the next suggestion you cedal and its language so substantive equality temporary special measures in your policy consultation so I don't know if you're engaged in this work but we do responses when government say oh we want to bring out this new policy we're having a consultation we'd like to hear your views you can use the language of cedal to remind them of the obligations that they've signed up to and there's a recommendation here what are you doing about it we can help you offer solutions and raise awareness about cedal with your services so if you're a woman's or or if you're not just with anybody who's interested in women's rights um because we know um that some of our members working with uh with women you cedal they tell the women about cedal so that they know what their rights are because that again empowers them in whatever situation they're in to say actually under cedal I think this process is not correct and actually it goes again cedal so again it's a powerful powerful thing to mention um although cedal is not legally binding in this country I know that some um women's human rights defenders who are solicitors have used it in their cases because it adds weight to their argument that and also not only do we think this is in breach of the UK's equality law we think it's actually in breach of cedal so it adds weight to your argument all the time the other thing you can do is get involved in the shadow reporting process so that's the report we do the england wide one then we work with our sister orgs in northern island wells in scotland to produce the four nations report so you if you have got evidence um around the articles that were on the other page and you want to submit evidence to our report you can do that as well um and again you can find out about what we're doing on cedal on our website your campaigns if you're campaigning on anything to do with women's human rights use cedal critical because it's a lever again it's not just you saying oh actually this this is not fair this is not right actually it's in contravention of cedal actually it's in contravention of our own equality laws very useful yeah and then it says use cedal with the human rights act the equality act and another area of law which is useful useful to us is public law so that's governing what institutions should and should not be doing and public institutions have specific responsibilities under the equality act as well where the equality impact assessments are important so public bodies so that would be a local authority it would be social services they are supposed to adhere to the equality act and they should be carrying out equality impact assessments on their decisions and equality impact assessments are based on protected characteristics so you could raise issues around race sex disability etc as listed and you can of course sign up to our mailing list to find out more about what we're doing so what we are currently doing we're just about to begin our process of gathering evidence for our shadow report on those four areas that the government has to report back on next year because obviously if we don't gather and submit the shadow report the government can get away with saying they're doing a lot of things that they're actually not and so we're just about to start that process and the first step of that will be going back to the organizations that presented evidence to our last report and finding out where they're at but after doing that we hope to widen that out to other women not just women's organizations but for us we know that women's organizations generally have the evidence because they work with thousands and thousands of women so they're seeing every day what are the key issues coming up for the women they work within their communities and localities okay now one thing I forgot to say is that if you've got any questions and we do want questions because it's really important that we have a conversation not just Catherine myself and Kayette speaking at you because what we want to do is grow the movement and the collaboration that will use CEDAW to hold this government for account it's a key way to do that and we need as many women engaged in the process as possible so there is this both a chat function and a Q&A function and the Q&A function works much better than the chat so that we can all see what the questions are because on the chat it kind of disappears up the screen so if you'd like to ask a question or an observation or anything please use the Q&A function and we'll be really happy to take your questions I'm not sure if there's anything on there at the moment let me just have a look there isn't is there no there isn't okay so I would like to welcome back Catherine and Kayette onto the screen so that we are here to take your questions oh great thank you women and anybody else what do you think is the significance of UN women so Yasmin thank you for that question what do I think the significance of UN women is okay that's quite a difficult question for me because if I'm really honest I don't know how radical the UN women group is um but I'm not engaged in it so it's difficult for me to know um I don't know if Catherine might know more about UN women than I do Catherine or Kayette can you unmute yourselves please sisters unmute your thank you Kayette can you unmute yourself please while we're waiting for Kayette Catherine do you know much about UN women I would say the fact that um I think the fact that they the very existence um is quite important the fact that um it was actually recognised that this was actually needed is a good start in the right direction and it's a funded body and I think that's my answer I'm not currently working with UN women okay um Kayette uh I haven't got very much information about the UN women I'm so sorry okay I mean one thing I would say and and you may disagree with me is that I know there are men on UN women and I don't agree with that I think women only space is critical and all the work that we've done and loads of other people shows that women only space and activism is critical and if you think about the relationships of power then that would be obvious really because men are used to being in a relative position of power to women and sometimes they just can't help themselves but to take over and lead and sometimes women can't help ourselves but to facilitate that so it's critical I think UN women should be women uh I don't why do they need men in there I don't know there was uh in 2014 at the UN uh New York summits there was this campaign where uh you know um in fact Emma Watson had this famous speech where she mentioned you know we need to involve men you know you know to support us and also to see also where their vulnerability is you know they may show this strength and you know this superior power base but at the same time also you know they unless they recognize you know what women's issue are you know they seem to be always um left out of women's issue even as basic as within the family setup you know where men are always out of the house and they don't participate in so many decision making processes at work is the same but even within some of the women organizations I have been with and I'm involved in you know we there is this idea where we should allow men also to see our side of the arguments uh that may be a long way because when you think of in the global south um you know work that we're trying to do in the global south uh men have got an almost an absolute power where women are stifled you know to not to be able to function in any manner or in any uh kind of um even approaching even requesting their basic need through political you know power or religious institution or cultural institution so women are quite um still in that victim position where we need to take some steps ahead of us before we can say we can comfortably say yes we need to involve men because there are good women that go good men you know who can accommodate but the majority has shown to be you know very much women are uh alien to their um part of the thinking or even placing them in the right place uh to be participants so I still believe you know women we really need you know the funding and the support of organizations like UN like other organizations even UN itself is dominated by the uh you know um powerful and men's decision so we need to really uh make the efforts with the tools we're going to uh access in order really to demand these rights and to demand even the rights we need funding we need also the right people to be um involved in how we can achieve uh that position to me it's um it is quite sad because I have been um following up a lot of these COVID uh meetings you know through zoom because we've had the luxury of following up through zoom but the majority of those people who need the help are not anywhere in that picture even as we're speaking now with all the meetings with all the discussions it seems we between intellectuals between professionals but never knowing where where the money is going or where the effort they're trying to do has uh involved the ordinary people in the global south which is our main issues and um now these opportunities on our uh platform uh which is given to us by UNA and uh and Catherine's vision and we really want to very very hard with your organization you know to empower us uh to see where we can go where we can even start asking the question that's where we we're at you know we're not anywhere near uh being part of the asking the question so the struggle just doesn't happen you know from um a well informed well organized uh community yes yeah I I absolutely agree Kaya that um women need that support I mean that's why I do the job I do because we support those organizations on the grounding communities and we know without them women's rights would be even worse than they are now so I absolutely agree with you that the the women um in the global south you're speaking you know those organizations should be the ones that are invested in I mean this drives me mad about um uh DFID and the international NGOs they get all the money massive organizations in this country and then they go trying across to wherever um to address problems like they know how to address it when we have women doing that work already with nothing that money should not be going to those organizations it should be invested in the work that the women are leading within the communities yeah I think we're also at the moment some colleagues and I we haven't got very far on it but we're actually sort of very concerned on on the subject of aid in general the uh we're just beginning to look at it um at the moment with bonds we've been teeming up with them but you know the the you talk about the impact and the um the 0.07 campaign which is confusing for everybody including me I mean I used to think it meant seven seven percent of GDP 0.07 is less than one percent but of course if if the government says yes we're we're sticking to that aren't we wonderful you know we're we're not breaking any rules here but then of course in a situation like this at the moment when you when you have you know our sort of economic output is decimated by COVID but then the government can absolutely clobber aid which is what they've done and say well actually we're sticking to the 0.7 you know with so that's another another problem you talk about impacts and women the aid that does get through that does go in the right directions is is now being cut by billions of pounds I mean you've only got to look at the Yemen situation and things like that and uh world food program and and so on so forth that can't even deliver some essential aid at the moment because of the cutbacks so it's quite it's quite a it's a very complicated problem actually I mean a lot of NGOs you talk about the the smaller NGOs well the larger ones because I've obviously been in touch with them a lot particularly recently because of this new working group I've set up are in a mess you know I mean but but the smaller ones are just going to the wall about one in 10 NGOs will be going to the wall and that will be the kind of NGOs I would imagine that you would probably support moving thank you thank you we've got another question women which says do you seriously think there is genuine threat to UK remaining signatory to European convention on human rights as it was the UK lawyers primarily who drafted it and if so how do you suggest we campaign against it so I think that I raised that in my presentation I think we should be very wary of what may happen I don't think anything is off the table for this government in terms of human rights and so I think we need to keep our eye on it my answer to how do you suggest we campaign well I think there'll be a whole raft of human rights lawyers who would be up in arms about that and I think that we should if there is a campaign I think they would probably lead it and we should support them because I'm not an expert on law and so I would support those those human rights defenders we've just got to keep an eye on it I think and Catherine okay it would you like to respond to that yeah I'm not an expert either but I have to say I'm like most people I spend many hours trying to wrestle with the sophistication if you like a covid that is destroyed so many things that we hold value value and one of the things it's done is stopped dissent in parliament and so things can weave now I've certainly noticed and we've all noticed you know that things can be slipped through at tremendous speed so I think that it's a subject it might for those that are concerned about it like the un a I don't think it's a subject you should you shouldn't wait until it's happened you should sort of keep an eye because things can move extremely quickly yeah at the moment because of the fact that dissent has been sort of you know dissented is from the bedroom so to speak it's from from person's house because of the covid rules of assembly and so on so that's all I've got to say on it actually at the moment sorry um there's a great I don't know can everybody tech woman can everybody see the q and a's or is it just us panellists because somebody has written a paragraph about a suggestion of what we should be saying about this which I think is really informative so I don't know if that question about brexit and the convention on human rights can be shared with everyone on on the meeting because it's really good information and thank you for that whoever you are um I had a question to change the subject is that all right for vifia is that okay or not I want to do whatever you like my darling I want to ask her about um these is it 24 but the people that make the the the committee have said all yeah did you did I miss did you say who are these people and are they elected or is it like the human rights council there's a sort of revolving door how do you how does it work so they um they do change um I don't know how often um they are from different countries and as I said a lot of them are from the legal profession um and I think that um I could be mistaken but I think countries can nominate people um or people can nominate themselves I don't know how they get elected I apologize I don't really know I wanted a little bit like the human rights council you know where they have I mean you get all sorts of situations in the human rights council when you might get Saudi Arabia sort of you know judging UK because they they have a certain amount of countries each year and it just revolves through that that was all but it does change definitely it's changed I'm just going to go back in the chat to see if there's any more questions um I can't see any others would um Kaya would you like to add anything yes I would like to ask where is the next UN meeting of CEDAW yes of CEDAW for well you may well so for the UK it's every approximately every four years every country is examined every four years so it depends which country um you're in you want to know about um but for the UK um we've got the follow-up as I said of the four questions for next year but the full examination won't be for another three years because we just had one last year what I am worried about though um I forgot to mention is that one of there's several well there's lots of conventions on human rights um and I think there's the one that's being um in process at the moment might be um around torture and we have heard from orgs who would normally do a shadow report on that that the government is saying because of Brexit they can't do a proper report so we're quite concerned that the government are going to use sorry not Brexit are going to use the virus as an excuse for not doing a full report or indeed as an excuse for not improving um or enacting the recommendations but of course the coronavirus started after the recommendations were made so there was a period of time before the virus from the recommendations of seed or where the government could have done something I mean coronavirus doesn't stop them doing stuff either I would say um so we are a little bit concerned that they're going to do an evil lighter touch than they did last time um in their report we're very mindful of that do you have someone who is representing the african countries the african countries well um because we focus only on our government's report we don't actually work on any other countries seed or work we just work on what our government's doing um but I think that's an important question Kaya because you know when we started today and you were speaking about how do we get the global south and north better to work together I think there is something in okay seed or is about individual countries but us as women's defenders what do we need to follow that siloing if the country is the way that they do it or is this something that we could do cross country that would actually strengthen each other I mean I'm I always think everything's easy and I know it isn't but you know imagine if we had every country signed up to seed or all the women in those countries who engage with that process if we all got together and said right what are we doing what are we saying are we saying the same thing are the areas that we all need to be amplifying so that the committee hears one one to three key messages over and over and over and over and over again you know should we be doing that I don't know but I really think after today it has made me think about what are the opportunities because as you said Kaya we are in we're in really bad yeah we are and when when we're in those places we need to be able to imagine and vision together and start to work in a way that's better for us rather than fitting into the silos and the ways of doing that are placed upon us and so I would be really happy to have those conversations about what that looks like what's possible I mean even just for us to start the conversation would be something because within the global south committee members there are a lot of young people you know from different parts of the global south okay they're very much interested in working you know networking and we are pushing for that and we are trying to make awareness of the you know the globally and this has been in you know we know this is part of the UN also initiatives you know where they've got so many young people working in different parts of countries and regions and I would be very much interested to coordinate a meeting to start preparing something towards you know networking with us all of us yeah and I think because of now we're doing everything on zoom the opportunity to break down those borders has become more apparent to us hasn't it yes exactly exactly I mean it's less costly also you know yeah and we've got really talented young people who are very much interested in that okay well let's let's us um let's speak afterwards about what we should do as a starter on that I'd be very interested to do that okay and thank you thank you um are there any other questions to our lovely attendees who I'm so sad that we cannot see you all it is because it's always lovely to see I'm assuming you're all women you may not be um oh we've got a message here saying so as Nigerian alumni society is interested in further discussions please um I don't know if um Stephanie or anybody else has a link to um that society um but can we can we make sure that we involve them please and we invite them or somebody from there is that possible Stephanie for you to have the name or the email or it's Olifunke if you could oh have you got an email Olifunke that you can let Stephanie have to share with us so we can catch up with you um and you've also written could you share the link is that what's that link that you want to know sorry if I'm not catching the drift Stephanie is that possible do you know this ah thank you Funke I'm going to write that down on my piece of paper and I will get in touch with you thank you so much brilliant okay so if there are no further questions people women um then we're going to um close this session um it's been really great for me because I've met Kaya and Katharine and also um Olifunke as well who's interested um but we might now start to have some exciting conversations um about how moving our work forward in a more wider collaboration which is fantastic um I just want to say personally um not only thanks to um my sister speakers but also um to the women who have put this on um to Kaya and Stephanie to coming to see me months and months ago about this before lockdown um and to the people that made it possible through the resourcing oh I've got another message from Jaeger sorry if I've spent you spell uh said your name wrong Jaeger we would love to have you involved you can either put your email up or you can um email wrc about c door with this heart the heading c door yeah thank you so much um and really just hope you all have a good weekend because it is the weekend as well thank you for joining us um the next session um of the SOAS festival ideas what a brilliant title um starts at one o'clock and it is um the south asian multilingual performance kabeer by vaipal ricky and bengal koal by arman fakir uh so I hope you enjoy that um somebody just said about the alarming increase in domestic violence what can be done um we in the women's sector and the violence against women and girls sector are working on that there's fortnightly meetings held nationally um and it is a big issue absolutely um if you are interested again contact wrc if we don't do it we definitely know somebody who does so feel free um thank you so much women and um thank you for having me uh and also for the questions thank you very much vivian you're fantastic thank you vivian yes thank you kathryn thank you very much for making it possible for us to pleasure start a new life a new fight of course you'll be sending the billion quite soon I love so okay thank you