Women’s right of access to justice is critical to the realization of women’s human rights and achieving gender equality. In order for access to justice to become a reality, laws have to be effective, institutions must be competent to resolve women’s human rights issues, and gender equality jurisprudence has to evolve both at national and international levels.
IWRAW AP aims to create an enabling legal environment for women’s access to justice through enhanced implementation of CEDAW. We work to enhance the technical capacity of women’s rights organisations to engage with the justice sector and advocate for increased compliance with the CEDAW framework. We also engage directly with justice sector and legal actors – judges, lawyers, legal organisations – to build their technical capacity to engage with the CEDAW framework. We work to create spaces in which women’s rights organisations and justice sector actors can come together to identify scalable solutions to key challenges concerning women’s human rights and access to justice.
IWRAW AP recognises that change must also occur beyond the legal sphere if women’s right of access to justice is to be effective. Our work on access to justice complements our other areas of work that with the aim of addressing and overcoming the structural barriers, whether social, economic, cultural or political, that prevent women from engaging effectively with the justice system.