Capacity Building for the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) NGO Reporting in Myanmar
Myanmar is currently navigating a tenuous transition to a market economy, democracy and peace after decades of repressive military leadership and civil war. Struggling with high rates of poverty, low regional and international integration and trade and continued ethnic clashes, Myanmar is also considered one of the world’s worst human rights abusers. Repression of women and minority groups, state-sanctioned torture, rape and other sexual and gender-based violence (GBV) are widespread.
It is against this backdrop that NGO Gender Group (NGO GG), a Yangon-based NGO dedicated to promoting gender equality within Myanmar society, sought technical and legal capacity building assistance creating and establishing an effective alternative reporting methodology on GBV under the international Convention to End all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Using a mixed methodology of comparative literature reviews, desk research and expert practitioner interviews, the Capstone group researched and evaluated best practices for writing CEDAW shadow reports for impact, and designed a series of customized trainings and training aids to express the findings to NGO Gender Group. At the client’s request, significant emphasis was placed on fostering reporting credibility via instruction on safe, effective and ethical gender-based violence data collection. It is hoped that as a result of this Capstone collaboration, NGO Gender Group will be more familiar with and better able to avail themselves of the CEDAW reporting process, and better able to advocate on behalf of survivors of GBV.