Written Submission to the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on General Recommendation on Indigenous Women and Girls

We, welcome the Committee’s initiative to draft a General Recommendation on Indigenous Women and Girls. In response to the Committee’s call for contributions, this submission has been prepared on the basis of wider consultations with 15 organizations from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Mekong region.

The purpose of this submission is to highlight structural and historic discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in Asia as underlying factors that deny recognition of diverse experiences of human rights violations and impact of multiple oppressive systems among Indigenous Women and girls.

While we appreciate the extensive list of challenges highlighted in the Committee’s Concept Note, we remain concerned about the gaps in emphasis on status of legal recognition within national legislative frameworks and historical harms of structural discrimination that constitute key obstacles for realization of the rights for Indigenous Women girls within Asia. Furthermore, intersectional issues such as those of disability and sexual orientation and gender identity remain to be acknowledged and addressed. We wish to reiterate that intersectionality is the centering concept of Indigenous feminism and is crucial to identifying and addressing varying levels of oppression and marginalization experienced by Indigenous Women. 

We hope that the recommendations offered in this submission will be given due consideration by the Committee in its process of drafting the general recommendation.

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