UNDP, International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific, and the International Association of Women Judges co-organised a session “Advancing Women’s Access to Justice in Asia and Pacific: Balancing Parity and Empowerment” as a side session of Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+30 Review on 21^stNovember 2024. [Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+30 Review | ESCAP]

This session was designed to be a platform for the integration and visibility of women, especially women workers, access to justice in the region to provide insights.  By bringing together diverse speakers, the discussion fostered collaboration, provided opportunities for monitoring mechanisms and recommendations for more comprehensive and equitable legal outcomes with strong gender perspectives and ultimately contributed to advancing women's rights and greater women’s access to justice.

The session delivered interesting panel discussion moderated by Ms. Anindya Nastiti Restuviani, IWRAW Asia Pacific with 4 female speakers.

Ms. Shanti Uprety, Programme Manager from IWRAW Asia Pacific, emphasized the importance of grounding international processes in local realities and highlighted challenges for implementing including a lack of political will, technical gaps, and the perceived remoteness of these frameworks from everyday realities, mentioning civil society organizations play a crucial role in bridging these gaps and localizing the frameworks.

"When we are talking about women workers, our experience, basic declaration and platform for action are kind of remote to them. Not just in a geographical sense or in physicality, but it's hard for people to connect to these instruments."

"One of the biggest challenges is the lack of political will. And sometimes there is a gap in terms of technical capability to understand these frameworks and how to implement them."

"CSOs are very important actors in this process... to implement those at the national level, we need more restructuring or strengthening of the multilateral system."

Justice Dheebanaz Fahmy from Maldives shared her experience, as a female judge, tackling gender bias and systemic gaps in the judiciary. She mentioned her work to create gender-sensitive procedures for handling child witnesses and victims of domestic violence. These were institutionalized through training and written guidelines to improve justice access and sensitivity for marginalized groups.

"Every day is a challenge. Every day... there is some form of bias that we encounter in the judiciary. It comes either from the public, the staff... there's always something."

"What I did was write up a very short procedure... place it in a folder where everyone could see it, and I just went around talking about it. Now what they do is they use that as the framework when dealing with child witnesses and also women who come as witnesses."

"Most of the people who come to court find it as a place that’s stuffy, antagonistic, a place that you don’t want to go.  And you’re going there to relive possibly the worst experience of your life. How do we try to make that experience slightly better? With little things that don’t even cost much, but just a bit of thoughtfulness."

Ms. Chandy Eng, Director of Gender and Development for Cambodia, highlighted barriers to justice in Cambodia, particularly for women and marginalized communities. Despite efforts like legal aid centers and hotlines, challenges persist due to limited resources, geographic isolation, and reduced civil society involvement. Women workers and union leaders face systemic barriers, and international frameworks such as CEDAW (the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) are often ignored in practice.

"Access to justice is not available for everyone. And the term access to justice is different from one country to another country, even in the same regions." 

"Justice means so different for people in different marginalized groups like women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQI community, older, younger, or even indigenous people."

"Civil society in Cambodia plays a very important role to provide legal services to poor people, especially women, at the rural community and also workers."

"With shrinking funding for civil society legal services, it becomes difficult for other people, especially women, to successfully access services."

"When looking at cases of women workers filing complaints of sexual harassment, judges often do not use CEDAW or its general recommendations; they rely only on existing national laws."

Ms. Joslyn Eades-Tass, Chairperson and Civil Society Delegate from the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Alliance, discussed Barriers faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in Australia. These women often face overrepresentation in the justice system, systemic discrimination, and limited access to legal services due to geographic and cultural barriers. Family violence is prevalent, but cultural misunderstandings and historical distrust deter engagement with legal processes. Workplace discrimination and weak enforcement of protections exacerbate their struggles.

“Indigenous women are incarcerated at rates 21 times higher than non-Indigenous women, often due to socioeconomic disadvantage, systemic discrimination, and trauma.”

“Many are misidentified as perpetrators in family violence cases, exacerbating their victimization.”

“Indigenous women often face gendered and racial discrimination in undervalued jobs like cleaning, healthcare, and community services.”

“Workplace protections against unsafe conditions, wage theft, and harassment are weakly enforced.”

It is essential to continue bridging the gap between international frameworks and local realities by fostering stronger connections between global commitments and grassroots implementation. Initiatives such as CEDAW's upcoming focused technical cooperation in Fiji in 2025 exemplify how regional and localized approaches can enhance the accessibility and relevance of these instruments. Strengthening political will, building technical capacity, and involving civil society organizations will remain critical in advancing these efforts. By continuing to adapt multilateral systems to meet local needs, we can make significant strides toward achieving justice and equality for women and marginalized workers worldwide.

To keep the momentum to improve women’s access to justice, UNDP will hold the first regional workshop on women’s leadership in the judiciary will be held in early 2025. This workshop aims to support women judges across Southeast Asia in enhancing their leadership capacities, strengthening networks, and fostering peer-to-peer learning. This workshop is part of a broader initiative to increase women’s representation and leadership in the judiciary, aligned with global gender equality efforts (SDG 5) and the Beijing Platform for Action. Judiciaries across the region, including Indonesia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and the Philippines, are at various stages of promoting gender-sensitive reforms. This workshop will create a space for co-creation, collaborative problem-solving, and sharing best practices on gender-responsive leadership in the justice sector, while also providing targeted training and capacity-building sessions to empower participants with the skills and knowledge necessary for implementing these reforms effectively and achieving increased representation of women in leadership positions.