APWLD has been conducting legal training using a feminist lens for more than a decade. Since then over 500 lawyers, judges, social activists, paralegals, administrative personnel and trainers have benefited from the training. FLTP combines training on feminist legal theories, women’s human rights and feminist litigation strategies.

Examples of how participants have used the FLTP training recently include:

• A participant wrote submissions for improvement in the Fiji Family Law Bill and reforms in the Penal Code on sexual assault.
• Several participants reproduced the training at a local level in their own language.
• A participant used the FLTP framework and materials in a book which she co-authored on the economic rights of rural women and in her projects on the rights of Muslim women and on children in detention.
• A participant successfully gathered women commune councillors in Cambodia to lobby the government to ratify CEDAW and its Optional Protocol.
• A participant integrated the training into paralegal training of court personnel.
• A participant introduced the topic, Gender, Law and Policy, in a public administration subject at the University of the Philippines.

Three Training the Trainer workshops have been held with more than 40 graduates. Currently there are 12 women consistently making up the pool of regional FLTP trainers. They come from six countries; India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Philippines, Fiji and Australia.

The latest gain in the FLTP is the publication of the Training Resource Manual and two Readers which will make it easy to echo the regional FLTP to the national women’s networks.

In this period APWLD will also support national FLTP training (National level training had been conducted by participants in the past but without financial resources from APWLD).

Instigating Campaigns

Participants and trainers of FLTP have expressed an interest in developing more campaigning content in the programme. In 2010 trainers will develop a new campaigning module to be incorporated into the training in 2011. The module will assist participants to identify a specific barrier to women’s legal equality in their region, country or local community and map out a strategy to change it.

Participants will also come up with a specific campaign that they will collectively direct and deliver in the next 12 months. Campaigns may be of an international nature (i.e. campaign to have an Asia Pacific government champion a specific position / proposal at the UN), regional (i.e. campaign to have ASEAN adopt a specific position), nationally or even locally (where participants feel that an advance in a national or local law would have impact for the region.

Campaign elements will vary according to the target but may include:

• Background research
• Litigation
• Drafting model laws / policies / plans
• Public education
• Public mobilisation
• Targeted mobilisation of key figures
• Media and communications strategy
• Local, national, regional international, advocacy