Feminist Legal Theory and Practice Trainings have been hugely learning and enriching space that we’ve created for each other. And we’re at a point where we’re expanding the resource pool of trainers for FLTP. I think FLTP created a space where different people working on legal and social change come together from very different political systems, from Pacific and from Asia. Different languages, different ways of expression, and we manage to share our examples and our contexts, and our obstacles and our successes. And we give this entire training a body of knowledge and a content that it would not have if it had emerged from textbooks. So, FLTP is really vibrant, and with each training you learn so much. Some of the countries are in transition; we are all in different stages. Sometimes we feel the law is not responding to us, other times we feel the legal system is the last resort, the bastion of support. So, we have actually a picture when we come together, of the different faces of law, of the different faces of state, and the different kinds of strategies and activism that operate in all these contexts. I think that’s useful for the participants, the trainers as well as for what APWLD draws institutionally from FLTP. As a result, the Digest on Case Law on Women’s Human Rights was developed. At the time it came out in 2003 it was unique in terms of documenting cases from every part of Asia and the Pacific for a regional and international audience, as well as being our own resource. We had to translate, to understand the systems and make available what we thought were valuable resources and symbols of our struggle. That was a project that allowed us to have deep discussions over a period of time. And it did take a long time, but we produced something that is unique. Today we have them for easy reference in any part of the world. So I think the period of working together through this network has many such little nuggets of wealth because we just hit upon it through working together. These are not projects we think of in abstraction, these are not projects we design just because we know we’re a regional network. It just evolves quite organically through our work, and that’s been knowledge we internalise and then are able to work with it. I think that’s qualitatively different. I’ve drawn a lot of strength from it, I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from it.

APWLD has structures that allow to bring in new people through its task forces, through the training programs, through the thematic conferences. So you don’t have to be part of the organisational structures to be involved in APWLD’s work. I think each time new people come in we gain in terms of diversity, in terms of freshness, in terms of expansion. And they take as much from APWLD in terms of getting a regional perspective. And a lot of the members they have very concrete work at their national levels: whether it’s in terms of mass based movements, community groups, urban resource centers, or as a legal advocacy. So the meetings actually allow for interaction and participation of a community worker together with a Supreme Court lawyer, or someone who is doing advocacy in an urban city. So you have different levels and you have, from what I’ve experienced, a great amount of participation. Having a network such as APWLD which has been around for twenty years, which draws in people from mass based movements on every issue that is important to the region, connects the local with the regional, being mindful of diversities as well as our commonalities, we have something that is amongst other movements within the region, of great value. We have a feminist perspective, we apply and we live that feminist perspective in very different contexts. Whether it’s migration, violence against women, political participation, advocacy on human rights or integration of human rights frameworks within these areas of activism, it’s very diverse and it is very dynamic to allow creation of new bodies and mechanisms to respond to emerging issues.

Regionally, Asia Pacific has several movements which make a valuable contribution. The value of APWLD is that it is able to look at the Asia Pacific context with a feminist lens, to look at regional issues from the point of women’s realities, to lead advocacy grounded in women’s experiences. So APWLD will always remain unique in terms of its contribution to the regional movements.

Anniversaries like 20 years of APWLD, although they are part of the process of working they give us a good reason to stop and reflect to take stock of where we are and to continue the work but with the recognition of what it means to have existed for 20 years, what it means to have had the founding members who started this organisation, and have the opportunity to interact with them because not always does one have such an opportunity; and feeling inspired both ourselves and to share that inspiration with others.

Enkhjargal Davaasuren
Mongolian National Centre against Violence
Our organisation became APWLD member in 2000. We have benefited from being part of APWLD in various ways. We gain a lot from sharings such as APWLD’s annual consultation with UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women. APWLD meetings give us the theoretical and conceptual framework on the issues and help us look at issues from a broader perspective. For example, we learned to see intersectional interlinkages when addressing violence against women and this has helped us in our advocacy work and in our collaboration with other NGOs in Mongolia. So based on our experience and knowledge of the intersectional approach we call on Mongolian NGOs to apply this approach in their activities so that our actions to address violence against women will be more comprehensive and therefore more successful.

We try to replicate what we learn from APWLD at the regional level into national and local level. In 2003, APWLD organised Asia Pacific NGO Consultation with the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing. With the knowledge and insights we have gained from the APWLD consultation we organised national consultation on women’s right to adequate housing and drew the public and the state attention to the issue. And now we are very happy to be hosting APWLD’s annual consultations with the UN Special Raporteur on violence against women on Interlinkages between Patriarchical System, Culture and Violence against Women followed by Mongolian National Consultation with the UN Special Rapporteur on VAW. And this is a great opportunity for Mongolia because it is the first consultation with a UN Special Rapporteur in Mongolia. We expect it will help us in our advocacy work.

Also, as part of APWLD’s Access to Justice Campaign, we have just completed a study on the child maintenance and allowance, focusing on the child maintenance problem faced by single mothers. We will use the findings of the study to lobby for the amendments to the family law.

Also, being part of the APWLD network contributed a lot to our successful lobbying for the Mongolian Domestic Violence Law. The initial idea of the law came from the Mongolian Women Lawyers Association after their visit to the USA in 1995 when they learned about the law on domestic violence. But since we spent ten years drafting and lobbying for this law. And it was the study tour of the Mongolian delegation to Malaysia which became the turning point in our lobbying efforts. The study tour was organised by a member of APWLD from Malaysia, Ivy Josiah of Women’s Aid Organisation. I have come to know Ivy through APWLD activities, and especially at APWLD’s consultation on domestic violence laws in 2001, in Cambodia where Ivy shared Malaysia’s experience in this area. So I requested Ivy to help us organise the study tour to look at how the domestic violence law works in Malaysia through visiting women’s organisations, hospitals, police stations and prosecutor’s office. The delegation included parliamentarians opposing the Domestic Violence Law, judges and NGOs. So the parliamentarians when they visited Malaysia and saw the practical application of the law, and good and bad practices, they came back with changed view on the law. One of them was the head of the parliamentarian review committee on domestic violence law. And he played an important role in pushing for the passage of the law. The Domestic Violence Law was passed later the same year, in 2004.

On its 20th anniversary I would like to wish further achievements and success to APWLD and to continue provide space for women activists to share their experiences, to learn from each other and to collaborate at the regional level. I am proud to be part of APWLD.

Manisha Gupte (1st on the left) in front of MASUM’s village community centre hosting APWLD VAW Task Force members during their exposure visit to Pune, India

Manisha Gupte
Masum, India
I joined APWLD three years ago as a member of Violence against Women (VAW) Task Force, and it’s quite interesting because I just jumped into the deep end of the pool. I joined the taskforce and became convener of the task force in the same meeting. Talking about the value of APWLD’s work, in spite of being a regional network, which really doesn’t work at national and at community levels like I do, there is a tremendous give and take for its members. One example is that when I was at my first APWLD meeting, I got to hear for the first time about the sexual slavery for the Japanese Army during the World War II: that they had sex slaves’ camps in thirteen countries and these women were euphemistically called “comfort women”. I took a film from the meeting about the tribunal related to this issue, given to me by Mira Watanabe and showed it in my home town Pune. Eighty people came for the meeting and they were totally aghast that the humanitarian law had not covered sexual slavery, that the war crimes had not included rape, that this was what women had to go through, and that they had to keep quiet for over forty years. Then, last year when we held the tenth International Women and Health Meeting (IWHM) in New Delhi, (held for the first time in South Asia), as part of the organising committee and as the coordinator of the meeting, I initiated inviting ‘comfort’ women survivors to the meeting. Adela Barroguillo from the Philippines, a woman in her eighties, who had been in one of the military camps, spoke (with Nelia Sancho translating for her) at the plenary, in front of one thousand delegates from seventy countries about sexual slavery for the Japanese military.

This kind of learning and sharing during APWLD meetings also gives us an opportunity in our trainings back home in India to raise issues related to civil, political and ESC rights for women and the mechanisms of the Special Rapporteur related to VAW.

A second example is on how APWLD members learn from each other and draw inspiration
from each others work through community visits. I first met Kamala Chandrakirana, APWLD member from Indonesia, at the APWLD meeting in Jakarta. Thereafter, Kamala and her group, Komnas Perempuan, organised a visit of 14 women survivors of the tsunami from Aceh to Pune and to MASUM. These women had gone through 30 years of armed conflict, then gone through the tsunami; many of them had lost their houses, family members and not surprisingly, they were in a tremendous state of trauma. And yet they were great survivors and community workers. They all came to Pune; saw our work and we also organised a meeting with city-based women’s groups, human rights groups and trade unions. Seventy people from Pune participated in a very painful, yet fruitful four hours of discussion. Everyone came of the meeting, tremendously appreciating the women from Aceh, not as victims but as agents of change; commenting on how women who had lost everything many times over, were not only reclaiming their own lives, but were also engaged in rebuilding the lives of other people. After that meeting, a number of people from my city said that the meeting with the Aceh women boosted their own morale to continue fighting for social justice.

Another example is when we had the VAW taskforce meeting in Mumbai this year to discuss the Access to Justice campaign. The entire group then came to look at MASUM’s work. It gave an opportunity for the MASUM women to understand what I do as an APWLD network member, and for the network to know what I do at the community level. It helped me to feel more connected with APWLD. I think a lot of responsibility also rests upon us as members of a regional network like the APWLD. A regional network obviously cannot work in my village, but when I come from my village to a regional meeting, I need to bring the grassroots perspective to the regional level and at the same time, take back what I learn at the regional level to share with my community. Most of us do a lot of good work nationally, but APWLD additionally requires us to have a regional perspective, and that is what we are learning through the VAW task force. We need to locate the work that we do in our communities and in our countries in a regional context. Similarly, we need to unpack regional issues and take them back to our nations. Also, since each one of us here is because we belong to a particular sub-region, the responsibility of representing that sub-region (and not just my country) lies on me. That’s the way the give and take happens in APWLD. I’ve found it to be a very enjoyable experience.

APWLD is great, because it allows us this opportunity to network but the responsibility of making these back-and forth connections finally lies with us. APWLD expects our task force to contribute to the process of developing and sustaining the issue of addressing VAW issues in the network. The organisation is built such that the task forces inform the work of the secretariat (quite harrowing for the latter, sometimes, especially when the task force members don’t take their responsibility seriously).

If APWLD stopped doing its work for some reason, I can see a very big gap being created in the Asia Pacific region in the area on women’s human rights. Just look at this room. Here are women from over twenty countries. All of us are taken so seriously, that the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women comes to our consultations every year and considers the discussions to be crucial in terms of raising regional concerns on VAW in her report to the UN Human Rights Council. Every group sitting in different corners of this room is discussing issues to inform the Special Rapporteur on violence against women in their countries. One group is talking of reformulation of our language related to violence against women and culture. Another group here is talking about women human rights defenders. There’s a third group that’s talking about why we should not just be forced into binary spaces and why we should claim ‘a third space’. We have lived in “borrowed” spaces all our lives; our mother’s home or our husband’s home. We’ve never had a space of our own, personally until now, and politically we are not going to be pushed into binary spaces of militarism and fundamentalism either. The UNSR-VAW, Dr. Yakin Erturk is going to carry these voices of the Asia Pacific to the UN Human Rights Council. For the past 12 years, during our annual consultations with the Special Rapporteur-VAW, not only do we raise issues and strategies for the SR’s current report, but along with her we also plan for the topic of our next year’s consultation based on emerging issues in the AP region and what the theme of her next annual report to the UN on violence against women around the world would be. Imagine, this is the activity of only one task force of APWLD; and there are five other task forces as well as a working group within APWLD! That is the combined energy of APWLD. Every meaningful organisation contributes creatively to the whole truth and APWLD has its own place - it has carved out a niche for itself. It adds tremendous value not only to our work back home, but also to the UN processes. It brings strong women from the AP region, whose combined energy and knowledge allows for interaction between different countries.

As for the twentieth anniversary of APWLD, I think the forthcoming year should be structured as a year of introspection; looking back at what we’ve achieved, looking ahead for the next ten years and planning strategies that can be achieved through through the various task forces. The next year should also celebrate the fact that we are here to stay in order to continue our work of promoting women’s rights.

The above articles are based on interviews taken during the Asia Pacific Consultation with the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women in Mongolia, September 2006 and transcribed by Laura Biehn, a volunteer from Canada.