Ph Islands to Manhattan Island, New York City: Key Messages from the UN 57th Commission on the Status of Women’s (CSW) Meeting

Working with women from many nations is always inspiring. This thought kept me warm as I poised to bundle up for the end of winter at minus 3 degrees Centigrade in New York City. And as Alicia Keys says in her Empire State of Mind song, New York is a “concrete jungle where dreams are made of.”

The primary output of the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meeting is the agreed conclusions on priority themes set for each year. This year's theme is "The elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women" - which is a cross cutting theme towards gender equality, & which should be a post 2015 agenda. 

                                 Breakfast meeting at the Philippine Mission in New York
                                      with PCW Executive Director Emmeline L. Verzosa                                    

                               Plenary Opening of the UN 57th Commission Status of Women Meet

Representatives of 45 member states of CSW, UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from all regions of the world attend this annual session. The Ph official delegation was composed of 37 members from various government agencies & civil society organizations.  I was there as a delegate of the Coalition for Sexual & Bodily Rights & the International Women’s Health Coalition along with about 50 feminists from all over the world. Our role as a group of feminists from around the world is to lobby for a progressive language in the outcome document for action by Governments, intergovernmental bodies and other institutions, civil society actors and other relevant stakeholders, to be implemented at the international, national, regional and local level. Lobby work included early preparations with attention to the language map of the issues and many details, feminists’ morning meetings for two weeks during the session, press releases, and coordination with official country delegations.

The language that we lobbied for at the start of this year's UN CSW were sexual rights, intimate partner violence ( IPV), emergency contraception, actual or perceived sexual orientation & gender identity (SOGI), harmful traditional or customary practices ; that neither sovereignty nor culture nor tradition nor religion are used to avoid governments obligation to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of women or the commitments in this UN CSW outcome document, multiple forms of families, early and forced marriage, comprehensive sexuality education,  among others. Most of these were contentious issues, particularly the part on sovereignty, diverse families, sexual rights, etc. The opposition came mostly from the Holy See (Vatican), Iran, Syria, Russia, Qatar, Libya, and from a group of African nations, who were reportedly displeased with the outcome document.  

We got recognition as women human rights defenders and this became a part of the agreed conclusions.

A very important outcome for me, personally, is the inclusion of emergency contraception for victims of violence. This is a triumph for us, as emergency contraception is a long standing project of our center Pilipina Legal Resources Center, Inc. & the Asia Pacific Network of Emergency Contraception (APNEC) under the leadership of lawyer Emelina Quintillan.

The CSW addressed the issue of child, early and forced marriage, which is a violation of the bodily autonomy of women and girls. The outcome document also mentions comprehensive sexuality education thus defining and differentiating it from the limited sex education.  

                                        photo credit : Lana Finikin 

For now, our five year old advocacy to protect the rights of women facing multiple forms of discrimination including on the grounds of actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity is not yet part of the CSW Agreed Conclusions but hope springs eternal.

A ray of hope for me is the mentoring process that happened from the white haired older group of delegates to the successor generation of savvy young feminists.

The Philippines, particularly, Ms. Ana Marie Hernando, of the Philippine mission in the United Nations chaired the negotiations and was congratulated by many nations for her painstaking work to come out with the agreed conclusion, which though not yet perfect, is already good based on its potential to influence many programs in various countries and as compared to last year’s UN CSW which failed to come up with a consensus for an agreed document.

From the Philippine delegation, we got these inspiring words from Emmeline Verzosa, Executive Director of the Philippine Commission on Women who said, “We salute the leadership of the Chair (of the CSW57) and other members of bureau; we give thanks to UN Women and the secretariat for all their support; we also thank our own Ana Marie Hernando, who with her patience and stamina, guided us through the completion of the agreed conclusions which we fully support. With all the gains in the document, we fully support it. We thank the delegations for the rich discussions and we thank all those who commended us. Our delegation has been strengthened because of the inclusion of various civil society organizations (CSO) in our delegation.  And we are also grateful to all the CSOs outside who have been watching us, guiding us and reminding us of the realities of women's experiences on the ground.”  

DIVORCE LAW NOW

The Philippines is now almost the only nation in the world which has no absolute divorce, except for Vatican City. When I shared this lately in an international group, they said that maybe it is one of the reasons why a whole community wants to secede from the Philippines. Italy where the Vatican is has recognized divorce a long time ago. I said almost because we have divorce among our Muslim communities. As an available option, absolute divorce which once existed in this country and available in Muslim communities, is very long overdue and should also be available as a remedy for majority of Filipinos. The absence of a divorce law for the majority of women in the Philippines is particularly oppressive for women trapped in violent marriages. Forever etched in my mind is the celebrated case of Maria Teresa Carlson, reportedly trapped in a very violent marriage and she tragically jumped to her death.

Then, in our communities, we have a village justice system that for purposes of maintaining what is their false concept of peace and harmony at home would opt for an “amicable settlement” among couples who are forever fighting and who clearly cannot be together anymore.

For now, only those who can afford the costly annulment process have access to the effects of absolute divorce. Which is why, we say that annulment is for the rich. A mother of my student recently spent more than half a million pesos for her annulment to happen. A cousin of mine who now lives in Paris recently engaged the services of a lawyer and as well she got an annulment from a far away court in exchange for a large sum. But, I also know of many friends and neighbors who wish to be separated from their husbands but the costs of annulment are so prohibitive.

In the case of Muslims and in keeping with fundamental Quranic concepts of justice and equality, divorce is part of the Islamic complete code of life around the world. Among our Muslim sisters and brothers in the Philippines, they have one of the most sophisticated laws on divorce. A woman can divorce her husband through mutual agreement or by returning the dower or mahr. The mahr is nuptial gift or dowry given to the wife by the husband which is an essential requisite of a Muslim marriage contract. Or a Muslim woman can orally divorce her husband – if she has demanded this in her marriage contract – or by just placing the delegated right of divorce in the marriage contract. The challenge is to popularize this legal option as most Muslim women are not aware that she can opt for this delegated right of oral divorce in the marriage contract. Of course, all divorces should be registered so that when a woman remarries she will not be liable for adultery or zina.


That a community of nations in the whole world shares a remedy called divorce and that it is not yet available to the majority of Filipinos for the longest time now are very revealing and disturbing. Long ago, many Catholic majority countries – Spain, Brazil, Ireland , Mexico , Portugal and all of Latin America – have recognized divorce.

So, the passage of law on divorce will formalize an existing extra legal remedy of separation in fact. The divorce law will be a right and a remedy accessible to those who need to move on from a marital arrangement that is not working anymore.

KTV : The Demystification of the Crime of Rape

Where do we go to when our own judiciary and courts of justice of our own country discriminate against us? Karen Tayag Vertido (KTV) has the answer for us and for this she spent fourteen long years of her life fighting for her rights that now benefit all of women in this country and the world. Karen, then Executive Director of the Davao Chamber of Commerce & Industry, in her 2007 communication to the U.N Cedaw Committee said that in 1996, she was brought to a motel against her will and raped by a former political head of the same organization she was working for. The Davao community supported her and launched the “Justice for Karen Movement.” Then, after eight years of court trial, the judge acquitted the defendant.

The way to go for Karen, who was counseled by women leaders, particularly, Atty Evalyn Ursua, was to write the United Nations Cedaw Committee in 2007 as a victim of discrimination as defined in the CEDAW.

The law invoked is the Optional Protocol to Cedaw which is a separate treaty to which the Philippines is a signatory and it allows women who have been denied access to justice at the national level to have their claims reviewed at the international level.

The United Nations Cedaw Committee composed of international experts, in their decision or Views promulgated that our country violated the rights of Karen in the local court decision acquitting the defendant. The Cedaw Committee, in affirming the story of Karen in her communication to this U.N body, effectively sets new standards on how the world should view and address the crime of rape and as well, demystifies the following fallacies on rape :

Fallacy One : Victim must always try to escape the rapist during rape.
Truth : There is no standard victim reaction to rape.
Fallacy Two : Rape by intimidation cannot be committed against
women who are not timid.
Truth : The character of the victim is not an element of the crime of rape.
Fallacy Three : In rape by threat, there must be clear evidence of
direct threat.
Truth : The essential element of rape is lack of consent and not the
element of force.
Fallacy Four : If you are a friend of the victim, you cannot be raped ;
Or that if you are friends, the rape is consensual.
Truth : A relationship is not proof of the consent of the victim of rape.
Fallacy Five : There is a standard of “normal” or “natural”
behaviour on rape victims.
Truth : The court should not discriminate against those who do not
conform to these standards.
Fallacy Six : If rape has reached the moment of ejaculation, there was
no resistance.
Truth : Ejaculation is not an element of the crime of rape.
Fallacy Seven : A senior citizen is not capable of rape.
Truth : Sexual prowess is not an element of rape otherwise rape
committed by old men go unpunished.

This United Nations body found that Karen was discriminated against and recommends that the Philippines pay Karen a financial compensation for all the social harm that she suffered in the way our judicial system has handled her case. The Cedaw Committee recommends that the Philippines should develop a sexuality and violence education training program for judges and prosecutors in the Philippines. To Congress, the Cedaw Committee recommends that the laws against rape in our country be reviewed and that our country allocate enough funds for enforcement.

This Cedaw Committee view is now part of a human rights standard that the entire world can emulate and the Philippines is given within six months to turn in a written response and to provide the Committee with an update on its action taken and more importantly to publish this U.N. Cedaw View and translate it to our various local lingua francas.