WUNRN
http://www.duediligenceproject.org/
The Due Diligence
Project has developed the Due Diligence Framework on State Accountability to
eliminate Violence against Women. The Framework is supported by guiding
principles. The Framework and Guidelines are critical to facilitate information
analyses and increase accountability. They measure progress and achievements;
improve decision-making for the management of ongoing programmes; achieve
consistency between activities, outputs, outcomes and impacts; and identify the
need for corrective or remedial action.
Launch of the Due Diligence Project Reports
http://www.duediligenceproject.org/Resources.html
Phase II Expert Group Meeting:
Applying and Instrumentalising the
Due Diligence Framework in
the Age of Digital Media
Florence, Italy
10-13 November 2014
DDP Phase II (2014-2017) is a natural outgrowth of Phase
I of the Due Diligence Project, and builds upon its successes, outcomes and
networks. Phase II seeks to instrumentalise the Due Diligence Framework at the
national and sub-national level in six pilot countries across the world. It
also seeks to respond to select requests for technical assistance from other
countries/stakeholders, on how to integrate this Due Diligence Framework into
particular themes and existing initiatives to combat violence against
women.
The Due Diligence Project and The Robert F Kennedy Center
for Justice and Human Rights co-convened a four day workshop to discuss
instrumentalization and application of the Due Diligence Framework to end
violence against women. The Expert Group Meeting gathered experts and partners
who would be working on implementing the Due Diligence Framework in Phase II of
the Due Diligence Project (DDP Phase II) in select countries and contexts
around the world attended by representatives from key Project partners from
Bangladesh, Chad, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, USA and Zimbabwe. A
representative from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and two
participants working on violence against women on internet platforms also
attended.
The experts participating at the meeting are drawn from
civil society, the academia and critical stakeholders while implementing
partners consist of those who are committed to working on implementing the
Framework in their respective countries/areas of influence.
The Project Directors worked with participants to:
1. Understand the Due Diligence Framework as a tool to
assess and discharge State obligation to end violence against women;
2. Integrate this Framework into new and existing
strategies to eliminate violence against women by various stakeholders in their
specific contexts on the ground;
3. Work with a variety of national level stakeholders
committed to ending violence against women and help facilitate, foster, and
strengthen cooperation among them;
4. Understand and implement all of the above in the
context of the current digital age and digital security.
Outcomes
1. Enhanced understanding of the due diligence principle
and the Due Diligence Framework for State accountability to end violence
against women in the areas of prevention, protection, prosecution, punishment,
and provision of redress;
2. Formulation of a strategy for applying and
instrumentalising the Due Diligence Framework in participants’ particular
context/country including outlines of tools and modules, tentative schedules
over the next three years, identification of priorities, namely critical areas
of concern in each of the target countries;
3.Renewed commitment of programme partners toward
implementing DDP Phase II; and
4.Increased networking and collaboration among
participants at the meeting and in their advocacy and work moving forward.
Participants were enthusiastic over the potential of the
Due Diligence Framework. In evaluating the meeting, one participant said,
“This was a really really useful and energising meeting.
I appreciated the active engagement of almost all of the partners and the DD
team and was really struck by the level of the discussions and analysis (that
were sustained till the very last day!). It felt like I was seeing light bulbs go
off in everyone’s heads - mine included! I was exhausted when I got [to the
end], but leave quite energised and excited about our future plans.”
In response to the question, “What would be most helpful
to you in terms of collaboration with the Due Diligence Project?” one
participant asked for more “[c]onceptual guidance in terms of integrating the
Framework into organisational activities,” and another participant suggested, “A
medium term research collaboration for the purpose of offering the government data
and evidence to engage with and to later promote due diligence observation by
the government.”
Expert Group Meeting:
Due Diligence and the Role of the State:
Discrimination against Women
in Family and Cultural Life
Florence, Italy
1-3 December 2014
Cultural rights are essential to the recognition and
respect of human dignity and must include non-discrimination and equality
principles. The State has a role to play in mediating these competing and, at
times complementary, interests. For example, article 5 of the Convention on All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) declares that States have an
obligation to “take all appropriate measures to modify the social and cultural
patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination
of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea
of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped
roles for men and women”.
The Due Diligence Project convened a small expert group
meeting to further critically explore, analyse, and formulate strategies on
human rights and its intersections with culture, religion with particular
attention to their impact on the family, generally as well as the growing
conservatism challenging women’s human rights and State obligation in
addressing these challenges. Experts from 17 countries, working on diverse
issues, from different approaches and across disciplines including civil
society advocates, academics, inter-governmental organisations and UN mandate
holders participated in this Expert Group Meeting.
Specifically the Expert Group Meeting was convened for
the purpose of providing a platform for experts and representatives from key UN
bodies and CSOs to come together to brainstorm and strategize on the issues
described above, develop the way forward for civil society strategies on Due
Diligence and Role of the State to Eliminate Discrimination against Women in
Family and Cultural Life and provide input and recommendations on Due Diligence
and the Role of the State to Eliminate Discrimination against Women in Cultural
and Family Life to the United Nations Working Group on Discrimination against
Women.
The meeting –
• Discussed the applicability of the due diligence
principle and the Due Diligence Framework for State Accountability in the
context of discrimination against women in family and cultural life;
•Critically examined the relationship between culture
power and privilege and how cultural and religious discourses are created,
reproduced and instrumentalised to challenge women’s human rights;
• Interrogated in whose interest culture is narrated or
religious norms interpreted and enforced and the authorities that sanction
specific cultural and religious narratives;
• Identified and challenged some of the current claims in
favour of traditionalism, which reject the primacy of women’s individual human
right to equality, in society and in the family, hence condoning discrimination
against women;
• Examined the role of the State, whether by act or
omission, in the elimination and/or the perpetuation of the above
discrimination;
•Identified and shared opportunities and good practices
in eliminating such discrimination.
Participants found the Due Diligence Framework to be
invaluable. One participant said that it brought the “various ideas and threads
from diverse contexts into one space”. Another participant found the Due
Diligence Framework pre-empts excuses and justifications for discrimination and
provides better protection for women’s rights.