APPENDIX 12
Memorandum submitted by Change
CHANGE is an international women's human rights
organisation, with Consultative Status (Category II) with the
United Nations ECOSOC. CHANGE is a registered educational charitable
trust under English law. Formed in 1979, CHANGE is committed to
improving the human rights of women, and does so through the construction
of reports, advice-giving, conferences, building networks and
coalitions, lobbying, seminars, research, training and publications.
QUESTIONS FOR
THE COMMITTEE
1. The current government has made a commitment
to gender mainstreaming across policy departments, in addition
to the activities of the Women's Unit and Ministers for Women.
The Annual Report does record on the activities of the OSCE and
the ODIHR with respect to this, and CHANGE commends FCO minister
Tony Lloyd's call on all OSCE participating states to take into
account the interests and aspirations of women when designing
and implementing programmes. However, in what way is the FCO implementing
a policy for gender mainstreaming?
Of particular concern is how the FCO and DfID
are achieving this goal in areas not specified as "gender
issues", in light of research that finds no law or government
policy/programme is gender neutral, and needs to be assessed for
the manner in which it affects men and women differently. Examples
would be: Internationally—Rights and Conflict and, within
the UK—Northern Ireland, Freedom of Information and Asylum
Policy.
The Annual report also makes a commitment to
working with the United Nations, and gender mainstreaming across
government departments is a requirement of the Beijing Platform
for Action. In 1995 an Expert Group met to develop guidelines
for the integration of Women's Human Rights into all the activities
of the office of the High Commission for Human Rights. The FCO
could itself use these guidelines, or the expertise developed
by CHANGE over two decades to put in place effective and meaningful
gender mainstreaming.
2. Lobbying of the United States of America
on the death penalty shows a commendable willingness to lobby
even close allies on issues of central concern to the United Kingdom
government. The USA are currently one of only two United Nations
member states not signatories (Somalia being the other) to CEDAW,
a convention ratified in the UK and to which the Human Rights
Annual Report 1999 shows continual links too. This would be an
issue where great impact could be achieved by pressuring for a
specific outcome. As the report notes, human rights are "at
the heart of its foreign and development policy", are the
FCO and DfID prepared to pursue this issue of central importance
to recognising the human rights of women by pressuring the USA
to ratify CEDAW? and what action has it taken in the past on this
issue?
3. The report mentions the Optional Protocol
to CEDAW. Is the UK government planning to ratify the Optional
Protocol?
RECOMMENDATIONS
(i) The FCO should prepare gender based
analysis for all policy in future.
(ii) The FCO should use its position to
pressure the United States of America to ratify CEDAW.
(iii) The UK government makes plain its
further commitment to women's human rights by ratifying the Optional
Protocol to CEDAW immediately.
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