CEDAW2023

Accountability and action: Harnessing legislation to improve women’s health

Universally ratified in 1979, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has been celebrated as one of the most powerful mechanisms for encouraging state action to eliminate violence against women and reduce gender inequities globally.

Countries that have ratified the Convention, considered an international bill of rights for women, commit to changing their laws to uphold women’s rights, including health-related rights, through reviews and recommendations provided by the UN CEDAW Committee every four years. Civil society organisations provide ‘shadow’ reports, which offer essential context that is often missing from government reports, as well as insights into how these laws, programs and policies are ‘living’ in society.

Launched in 2021 by The George Institute for Global Health and the UNSW Australian Human Rights Institute, The CEDAW Implementation Map on Women’s Health is a unique tool that collates all health-related recommendations and determines the nature, scope and extent of their implementation, tracking the effectiveness of the review system in motivating government action.

Initially focussing on 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, its new report was launched on February 16 in Geneva. Redressing the Balance: Using human rights law to improve health for women everywhere draws on case studies and data from 117 countries, assessing how well each has implemented laws to address key issues such as sexual health and domestic violence, in alignment with their international legal obligations under CEDAW.  

Lead author and Senior Research Fellow at The George Institute Janani Shanthosh says the report aims to make this kind of legal information more accessible to a broader audience, particularly for those working towards gender equality.

“This report provides insight into why the law matters to women's health and how it works in different parts of the world, as well as where it is failing to protect women,” Janani explains. “I hope it helps break down the legal jargon and provides civil society organisations and researchers with the information they need in an accessible form to advocate for better women’s health laws in their respective countries.”

Despite the powerful role law can play in improving women’s health, laws can be inequitable and ineffective if they are poorly designed or implemented. Governments may introduce poorly designed laws because they lack clarity on how to translate their commitments under international human rights law into national laws, and on the kinds of legal frameworks that facilitate better health outcomes for women.   

“The report tries to identify best practices and legislation that can be adopted in other jurisdictions and adapted for that context,” Janani explains. “Where have laws been introduced that have successfully reduced or prevented gender-based violence? How can we better provide access to healthcare for vulnerable groups of women such as refugees, migrants or asylum seekers? How do these laws need to be supported by other programs to be effective and acceptable?”.

The report also explores the ways different aspects of women’s lives can expose them to intersecting forms of discrimination and marginalisation, and ultimately, a disproportionate burden of poor health and social outcomes.

Leading international women’s rights experts provide insight regarding key issues facing women in vulnerable situations, while civil society organisations share their concerns regarding reforms introduced by governments and how these laws have impacted women’s health-related human rights. The report’s recommendations aim to inform the future agenda for action by governments, the UN and civil society.

“The global pandemic has eroded hard-fought gains in gender equality, and the space for women’s rights groups to hold the line is closing in many contexts,” says Janani. “Ultimately, the report’s aim is to help facilitate constructive dialogue among governments, human rights advocates, global health researchers and the many other actors working to advance women’s health, as well as improve the efficiency and effectiveness of UN agencies involved in strengthening women’s rights.

“Countries that reform and fully implement gender equality laws have every opportunity to produce better health outcomes for women. We join the thousands of other organisations working towards gender equality and hope these findings contribute to urgent legal reform.”

Access the report here.

The George Institute for Global Health announces new collaboration with CUHK to transform health in China

Media release

The George Institute for Global Health has announced a new collaboration with The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) focusing on the health impact agenda in the Guangdong – Hong Kong – Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA), China and around the world.

Event

Redressing the Balance: CEDAW Report Launch

Redressing the Balance: CEDAW Report Launch

Are you working to improve health outcomes for women and their families? Interested in how human rights law can support better health for women experiencing vulnerability, whether as a result of gender-based violence, poverty, migration status, or gender or sexual identity? Keen to understand how the UN’s women’s rights body makes recommendations to governments globally, and how they respond?

The George Institute for Global Health and the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW Sydney invite you to the report launch of 'Redressing the balance: Using human rights law to improve health for women everywhere' on Wednesday 15 February 2023 at 6:30pm (Central European Time).

The launch will be a hybrid event held in-person in Geneva and virtually on Zoom.

'Redressing the balance' provides an in-depth look at how the UN CEDAW Committee influences the introduction and reform of laws for women experiencing intersectional discrimination, presenting key lessons about what has worked and providing a critical resource for those demanding gender equality.

We will hear from the report's author, Dr. Janani Shanthosh, who is a Research Fellow at The George Institute and the Academic Lead of the Health and Human Rights Program at the Australian Human Rights Institute.

Dr. Shanthosh will be joined by an expert panel: 

  • Prof. Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Member-elect of the UN CEDAW Committee
  • Dr. Jeni Klugman, Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution
  • Priyanthi Fernando, Executive Director of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch – Asia Pacific

Register here to join in-person

Speakers

  • Dr. Janani Shanthosh

    Dr. Janani Shanthosh is a Research Fellow at The George Institute and the Academic Lead of the Health and Human Rights Program at the Australian Human Rights Institute. At The George Institute, she leads two research streams within their Centre for Health Systems Science: realizing women’s health rights, and NCDs and the law. This work aims to develop empirical research tools that policy makers and researchers can use to evaluate law and inform legislative reform. Janani’s research interests include monitoring state responses to rights violations in women and girls, and co-producing model public health laws alongside governments and communities to create healthier societies. At the Australian Human Rights Institute, Janani works toward the progressive realization of human rights at a national, regional and global level by improving the generation and translation of evidence about the linkages between human rights and health outcomes.

    Janani Shanthosh
  • Prof. Rangita de Silva de Alwis

    Prof. Rangita de Silva de Alwis is member-elect to the expert committee on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) for the term 2023-2026. She is faculty at University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is also the Hillary Rodham Clinton Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She recieved her S.J.D. from Harvard Law School.

    priyanthi
  • Dr. Jeni Klugman

    Dr. Jeni Klugman is a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. She has over 30 years of experience in international development, and a record of successful innovation and strategic leadership of major initiatives. She was previously the managing director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security; Director of Gender and Development with the World Bank Group; fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School; an adviser on women’s economic empowerment with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and a Co-leading Thinker for the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation in Australia. Jeni has a Doctorate in Economics from the Australian National University and a Master of Science in Development Economics and a Bachelor of Civil Law (Honours) from University of Oxford where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

    Jeni Klugman
  • Priyanthi Fernando

    Priyanthi Fernando is the Executive Director of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch – Asia Pacific. She has a Masters Degree in Mass Communications from the University of Leicester and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka. A social development and communications professional with over 30 years of experience both in Sri Lanka and overseas, she has worked in the areas of technology, infrastructure and poverty. She has worked in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Yemen, the UK and Australia and has led several organisations: the Centre for Poverty Analysis, an independent Sri Lankan think tank; the International Forum for Rural Transport and Development, a specialist global network and the Sri Lanka country programme of Intermediate Technology Development Group (now called Practical Action), the Sri Lankan arm of an international NGO. Priyanthi has long been passionate about issues of justice and about fighting structural inequalities relating to gender, access to technology, poverty and livelihoods.

    priyanthi fernando
  • Emma Feeny: Moderator

    Emma Feeny is Global Director of Impact & Engagement at The George Institute for Global Health, where she leads a programme of activities including advocacy, policy engagement and thought leadership to help increase the impact of the institute’s health and medical research.

    Emma is a Senior Visiting Fellow at United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH), and co-chairs the NCD Lab on Women and Girls with the World Health Organization. She also co-chairs the NCD Alliance Supporters’ Group, and is a former co-chair of the Taskforce on Women and NCDs.

    Before joining The George Institute in 2017, Emma worked as a global policy and advocacy advisor at Oxfam, and held policy and communications roles at the University of Oxford, the World Food Programme and elsewhere. A former journalist, she has an MA in the Social Anthropology of Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Event

Coffee with Latin America - The challenges of providers: training and specialists

Challenges of providers: training and specialists

Join us to discuss ‘The challenges of providers: training and specialists’ on Wednesday, 15 February 2023 at 10:30 am AEDT in the next session of our 'Coffee with Latin America' series.

Caring for chronic conditions and multimorbidity has many challenges at many levels of the health systems, from looking after individual patients to how health professionals are trained, from guaranteeing chronic care in rural areas to addressing multiple conditions. Many of these encounters are exacerbated by additional peculiarities of health systems across the world, the ecosystem where health systems operate. The spirit of this series of ‘Coffee with Latin America’ is to learn and find inspiration from each other. Ideas and collaborations will follow.

About this event

Coffee with Latin America series will bring together voices around primary health care, multimorbidity and the continuum of care for chronic conditions.

The overarching goal of this event is to focus on learning health systems -more specifically the continuity of care for chronic conditions- through the exploration of multiple challenges across actors, settings, and systems.

Building on the momentum of past events, this next series will go a step further. As well as swapping stories of success from different regions to see what might be adopted elsewhere, this series will ask speakers and audiences to consider ‘what can we do together?’

Speakers

  • Belinda Ford

    PhD, MPH, MHM, Research Fellow Health Systems Science - George Institute for Global Health, Conjoint Lecturer Faculty of Medicine and Health, UNSW Sydney

    Belinda is a postdoctoral research fellow at the George Institute for Global health. She holds a Masters in Public Health and Health Management and completed her PhD through the George Institute and UNSW in 2021. Her PhD research adopted a health systems approach to evaluate health care services and access for patients with chronic eye disease. Belinda played a key role in the design, implementation and evaluation of the Western Sydney Community Eye Care (C-EYE-C) integrated model of care as both a project manager, and through her PhD studies.

    Her current research explores value based health care and evaluation of new models of care in Australia. It explores the integration of primary and tertiary care services and has a particular focus on improving patient access, outcomes and experiences within the health system. She works on projects in partnership with government health departments, not for profit agencies, hospitals, and primary care and allied health services.

    Belinda Ford
  • Jacqueline Seiglie

    MD MSc, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Endocrinologist, Massachusetts General Hospital Global Health Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital

    Dr. Seiglie is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a practicing endocrinologist and diabetologist, and a Global Health Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of type 2 diabetes in Latin America and on the development of scalable interventions that can improve diabetes self-care among Latino adults. Born and raised in Santiago, Chile, she has had a long-standing interest in working to improve diabetes care for Latino adults through clinical care and research. Dr. Seiglie received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and her Master’s in Community Health and Welfare from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. She completed both her Internal Medicine residency and fellowship training in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital.

    Jacqueline Seiglie
  • María Sofía Cuba Fuentes

    Directora del Centro de Investigación en Atención Primaria de Salud, Médica de Familia y Comunidad, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia

    Dr Cuba Fuentes is a Associate Professor at the School of Medicine at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH) and the founding Director of the Center for Primary Health Care Research at UPCH. Her clinical and postgraduate training on Family and Community Medicine is underscored by her passion to advance primary care in Peru and Latin America, which she has accomplished through the training of health professionals and my leadership roles the field of public health policy. Dr Cuba Fuentes has served on major strategic senior positions at two of the largest healthcare providers in the country, Peru’s Ministry of Health and the Peruvian social insurance (EsSalud). Dr Cuba Fuentes is also the founder and the first-ever President of the Society of Family and Community Medicine in Peru. Dr Cuba Fuentes has more than 20 years of experience working on primary care services with a unique in-depth knowledge of the Peruvian public health system, its functioning and barriers across multiple providers, and how this could be affecting patients with multiple chronic conditions.

    María Sofía Cuba Fuentes
  • Maoyi Tian

    Professor at School of Public Health, Harbin Medical University in China

    Maoyi Tian is a Professor at School of Public Health from Harbin Medical University in China. He is also an Honorary Senior Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health from University of New South Wales.

    He received his Bachelor of Electronic Engineering from University of York, UK and his MSc of Biomedical Engineering from University of Oxford, UK. He graduated with his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and was awarded the MPhil degree in Public Health from The University of Sydney. Prior to his current appointment, he was leading the primary health care research program and digital health research program at The George Institute China office.

    His main research focus is around the prevention and management of non-communicable diseases and injury at the population level, specifically including dietary intervention, primary health system strengthening, digital health and healthy ageing program. He was selected as the “Emerging Leader” by World Heart Federation in 2018 and awarded as the Fogarty Global Health Fellow by Fogarty International Center of NIH in the US.

    Maoyi Tian
  • Host: Jaime Miranda

    Visiting Professorial Fellow, The George Institute for Global Health; and Research Professor, Department of Medicine and Director, CRONICAS Centre of Excellence in Chronic Diseases, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru

    Jaime Miranda headshot