#57 

FiLiA meets Mandy Sanghera International law and CEDAW

The CEDAW Convention is built on three foundational principles: non-discrimination, state obligation and substantive equality. Non-discrimination is integral to the concept of equality.

FiLiA: Welcome to FiLiA podcasts. Today I'm super excited to be talking to Mandy Sanghera. She is an award winning philanthropist and she's a community consultant and a global campaigner. Mandy has a CV that I want, basically. She's an international human rights activist. She's travelled all over the world building strategic partnerships, promoting advocacy and programming in the areas of human rights, gender equality, accountability, and social justice globally. She's worked alongside some of the world's biggest organizations, so the UN Women International European Parliament, Amnesty, and the Prince Trust.

Later this month, she'll be heading back to the US House of Representatives for a third time, and she's just come back from Geneva where she was at the Beijing 2025 Regional meeting and we're going to talk a little bit about that later. 

Today we're going to talk about international women's rights law and especially about something called CEDAW which stands for the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women.

So we're going to talk about what CEDAW says, what it does, and how it can be used by women all over the world to advocate for their rights.

So Mandy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Can you just tell us a bit about what CEDAW is and why it’s so important?

Mandy: I mean, thank you for actually just explaining to everyone about what the name is actually, so it's a convention actually celebrates its 40th year in December.

The United General Assembly described is as an International Bill of Rights for Women. So that's basically what it is, and it's really important now that as we celebrate and we look at indicators, look at what things have been achieved in the last 40 years, and a lot of things have happened and especially around women's right.

So there are three principles for CEDAW.

Non-discrimination is a really important part, the concept is really important in the convention and it's about understanding non-discrimination that looks at tackling that women are not discriminated against just because of their gender. And that actually that women are actually defended.

The second part of it is the state obligation is a real important part of the framework. So it's like non-discrimination equality obligations of CEDAW are embedded in policy procedures, respect, protection and promotion, and you have a fulfilled life as a woman and you have the same basic rights as males as well, which is really important. 

Now, one of the things I think of people don't understand is that not all the countries have signed up for this. The United States never, ever signed up for CEDAW, I think there was about 24 countries that never signed up to CEDAW. Some of the countries on the continent have embedded it, making sure women's rights are protected. It's not just about countries signing up to this, what they have to do is, they have to prove that they have been making an improvement for the last 40 years.

So it'll be really interesting to see what they bring to the table in December and going forward. There's been a lot of exciting things happening. Just as you said earlier, I was in Geneva, literally about a week ago for which I'll talk about in a minute. 

I just wanted to finish up on the third principle. There are two main approaches to inequality which is sort of like the seamless approach and the difference approach. So actually you have a right to be treated the same regardless and actually looking at tackling hierarchy, the principles aim of equal treatment rather than equality, and it's looking at to recognise gender and it's about having a streamlined approach in our procedures and processes, and that's one of the things that's really important that we look at how we implement this.

Last week one of the things that kept coming up CEDAW and Beijing kind of intertwined.

 For those that don’t know, in 1995 there, there was a fourth World Conference on Women organized by the United Nations. The first one took place in Mexico City in 1975, in Copenhagen in 1980, Nairobi in 1985.

In 1995, the 89 UN Member States adopted the Beijing Declaration which they refer to sometimes as BPFA to improve the human rights of women and girls.

It’s got very strategic objectives to achieve gender equality for women. And there's 12 critical areas. And some of the things that are really important, first one, women and poverty, women have a right to education, women's health and wellbeing, tackling violence against women, women and armed conflict, women and the economy looking at laws in the workplace and some of those things, women leading into powering positions and making decisions. 

So in Beijing one of the main targets and objective is about looking at women and the power of decision making. And when we look at it now, we've only had two female prime ministers in the UK which is from the Conservative Party. When you look around some parts of the world, especially like the United States and places like that, women have not smashed that glass ceiling. So these things that we want to look at is making sure that women have those rights and then again, that women's human rights globally, and they're respected.

They're treated as people, and then again, looking at women in media, looking at how they see women, women and the environment and the impact of climate change. I was speaking parliament just a couple months ago. And it was just phenomenal to see so many young people. There were thousands of young people coming together across the globe who want climate justice.

I was in Germany earlier this year. It was fantastic. We said, what do we want? We want climate justice. When do we want it? Now. And we videoed all kids, it had such a ripple effect

Young people see the impact on women. Actually sometimes somebody say, what do you mean? How does it affect women? But actually it comes back to poverty and all those things.

In India where the rain has washed out your crop, or you haven't had rain and drought, you haven't got food. And we have seen that poverty is one of the main factors in Africa and countries around the world so it will have an impact on women. Women are the first victims of anything that doesn't work sometimes, so not just violence physically, but emotionally, economically, all of those things have a real role and affect women globally.

One of things is looking at harmful practices and including FGM and things, things that I've campaigned for 30 years nearly. We need to talk about all of those things and some policies and indicators and everything that we've got that we wanted trying to achieve. We need to look at working with young people. We need to work with women on the ground all over the world, and those women need to be given a place at the table.

 FiLiA: I wanted come back on points you made about CEDAW and Beijing, 

So I think if I understand it, one of the points of CEDAW is that it's about saying to states not only should you not persecute women, should you not have laws in place whereby, for example, women are not allowed to do certain things without the permission of men, or women are not allowed to have certain jobs, but you have an active responsibility to promote the wellbeing of women and to implement preventative measures where women look like they are going be disadvantaged or at disproportionate risk of harm or discrimination or anything like that. Is that right? 

Mandy: Yes.

One of the interesting panels that I spoke on was Saudi Arabia which was really interesting. I actually moderated that panel and they were really proud of some of their policies and rightly so.

They were really impressed that so many women that have gone to university and became doctors and they had degrees. So I then sort of said, well, how many of them are actually working? It's fine having a career and being educated, but actually how many of them are really working and they were talking about women being equal and if women are not paid the same as men they go to jail or they can do but again, how many women were really in those positions?

I had to call them out was, look, it's fantastic that you're leading the way that and you're doing that, but actually at the same time she can't drive or she can't do something without her husband’s say so, or her father’s say so, or her brothers say so.

So it was about tackling those, and when I work around the world, actually, I'm prepared to call out governments and talk to those real policy makers around the world. I'm just giving you an example of Saudi Arabia. But other countries as well. When I go around Europe as well, I mean, just recently again I was in Warsaw in Poland and it was a very interesting place for me. I met quite a lot of young people. It was interesting to meet young women, under 25 who had been conditioned and it was interesting to see how safe and things actually had an impact on them. It's quite a religious Catholic country and things like that.

And they were sort of talking about that a woman would shut up and pit up with abuse and violence because she's worried about being excluded from communities. I mean, I can relate to that because in the community that I belong to, the South Asian community, the concept of honour is really important.

I've work in the UK with travelling community again, where domestic violence is quite a real issue. But young girls have been told to stay in that marriage with that young man even if he's abusive because if you don't, you're going to get a bad name. 

And it was really interesting whenever you'd travel around the world, whether it's in the States or South America or in Asia or anywhere or even Europe, that whole concept of women being disempowered, not just by policies and laws in the country, but actually faith and community and the socio-economic factors all have a role. So if you’re dependent on that partner you’re not going to leave that abusive relationship, you're going to end up staying there. 

So we need to look at all those things and if we address some of the real key factors within Beijing 25 and CEDAW and all the other policies we have promoting equality and tracking inequality, they have to work in partnership. 

FiLiA: How do you go about that? It's very easy for a country, well, comparatively easy for a country to revoke any laws that say women should not do xxx. It's much more difficult for a country to change its culture so that women are not treated differently in thousands and thousands of little tiny ways.

How do you begin to address that challenge?

Mandy: Okay, so there's a few factors. So like for instance, in Africa you know, a lot of people are not educated. 25% of the population left school at form 4. Most of the people in parts of Africa are getting their education from their family, from their community, from their elders. So when it comes to practices of like FGM they think that's a rite of passage because mothers and grandmothers and aunties will tell you that's what it is.

Or when we look at young people in Africa, in some parts of Asia, in South America, they've start blaming people for being possessed and being witches and stuff, because that comes down to lack of education, people being socially conditioned. So when they’re a blank slate, a young person, their community, their families, their social media and everything around, all their peers everything has an impact on them and they've taught that it’s the only way.

When you become educated, you start questioning things and challenging things because like I've often spoken about FGM and people are horrified cause they don't even know what it is, they didn't even know that such a practice happened. But I know that in recent years that there has been journal who have covered the story over the years and stuff like that. 

But I remember that I was at a conference speaking and met a woman who had gone through that and she said, my mother did that because she didn't want me to get raped, so she did it. She's thinking from a good place. It's when I look at parents who force their child into a marriage, especially people with disabilities, they are often law abiding citizens, but they'll do it because they think they need a carer. They're not doing it from a, it's not even about honour sometimes it's about like, oh, well what are we going to do? We need keep to keep face in the community, our society. If our child is married and got a child, then the stigma might be less.

We need to start talking to people and communities, it's shocking that people still carry out harmful practices against the child, even in the UK. I know that there's a lot of organisations campaigning to try and say children should not be allowed to get married before 18. Under 18 you need parent consent to get married. If your parent and the perpetrator are forcing you to get married, they will give consent so often it doesn’t really work.

So they need to get that through Parliament and it becomes a law because actually, I was speaking in Canada about 18 months ago, and I did a global campaign called ‘Not Yet for the dress’ a campaign re child/forced marriage in Canada marriage with UN Women and my friend Femi Gibson's who is a real advocate for women’s rights in Canada and we did a global Conference and we talked about child marriage an issue in Canada because their immigration system was a big factor. It was a big motivator for people to force their children into marriages. 

The Winston Churchill Foundation, they were looking at some of the issues there. So whereas Britain's quite small in geography, we can share intelligence, but if you are in States or in Canada, Australia, you have to fly to get to the other side of the country so how are you going to share intelligence?

How are you going to work, they have different States and difference provinces? So it doesn’t work. In the UK it is a bit easier to and deal with those issues. 

FiLiA: We’ve talked about the problems associated with implementing these principles within countries. I wanted to ask you about what happens when countries actually aren't interested in these principles, or at least in some of the principles of gender equality.

So we've talked about, for example, the US which refused to sign up to CEDAW for 40 years. There's also something called a reservation whereby countries can basically, they take out a reservation to a certain part of CEDAW and they say, I accept the principle of this convention. I accept most of the points, but I'm going to disagree with this one and I'm going to disagree with this one. I found a statistic that said that CEDAW has the honour of being the most reserved international human rights treaty out of all of the human rights treaties. 

Why do counties submit reservations?

Mandy: Actually, one of the big factors, there's not many women in leadership who actually advocate for other women and actually when we're distributing resources and finances to implement certain things, women on the agenda and their rights are not a priority in countries where women's rights are not respected and they're just offering lip service. So in some parts of the Asian subcontinent and Africa say we believe in women's rights with promises that women should be in leadership, but actually we're not creating those opportunities. We're not giving them the support to get there. 

And one of the things that I have found really sad is that when women have got to the top other women who have really got to the top will not support other women.

Last year when I was in China a young girl came running over to me and she's like, oh my God, you’re a woman from the sticky floor. And I found it really funny because one of my mantras and one of the quotes that people kind of traced me for is, I'm always saying it's really important that we empower the next generation, whether that's male or female or because men need to talk about respect, men have to be feminist and stick up for women's rights. We have to empower the next generation.

I'm always saying that I've smashed the glass ceiling and it’s become a floor for the next generation and now I have a duty and a responsibility to lift the next generation off the sticky floor. We can’t ask them to aim for the glass ceiling if they have so many social and economic challenges that they can't actually smash it. They can't get up there. And they can't get a seat at the table because actually somebody's got there, nobody else is going to do this. 

People say to me, why are you helping so many people, Mandy? And I'm thinking, you know what? I didn't have many role models. There were not many women of colour in positions of leadership 30 years ago. And so now I've been able to achieve a great deal in my lifetime, and I've been able to make an impact over the world. So what I'm doing is, wherever I'm traveling, I'm making sure that I'm mentoring, that I'm supporting the next generation, giving them a place at that table.

So sometimes when I approach to go speak at the UN or European Parliament or wherever, sometimes I can't be in two places at once, or sometimes I've just come back to from somewhere and it's about giving somebody else that opportunity. And I remember meeting with you, many years ago when we met at Google and we've looked at the amazing campaign that they do there, we give charities the resources and learn about using social media campaigning all those amazing things and if we gave a little of our time and our skills and our knowledge and our expertise, we can achieve a great deal. And then when we're doing that, government will start taking notice. 

FiLiA:  To go back to the Beijing Declaration and the Beijing 25 Conference, which you mentioned earlier on. Beijing was, not the first moment, but like the major moment that women from all over the world came together and government was there and NGOs were there and they said, this is what we want and this is the progress that we want to see and this is what it's going to look like. And that was in 1995, 25 years ago, the year I was born. I'm very excited because I'm going to be going to the UN the 25-year anniversary conference and it turns out Mandy is too.

So the ambitions that that they were talking about then, and there were loads of them. Which one do you think we've done well at? Where have we really managed to improve things for women and girls all over the world? 

Mandy: I mean, it was really interesting because we were looking at women in leadership and that's, we have turned a corner in some parts of the world, but actually women are still paid 23% less than men, maybe, of course less than men, in the same jobs. So we were talking about women's maternity in jobs and I'm looking at now as we're leading up to an election and it's really interesting to look at all the parties trying to get the female votes and they're looking at women of certain ages, like my age group, about at supporting women through the menopause and then there's things about maternity leave and we want move it to a year or whatever else, and it's fantastic if you’re going to do that, but are you really going to follow through with some of these pledges. That's thing isn't sometimes they talk about promises everyone makes but do they happen?

There has been real improvement around the child in the UK for instance, set up the FGM unit, and we have been leading but actually in some parts of the world in Africa and Asia they just have such a system of like women, second class citizen, and we need to change attitudes. 

One of the things also really interesting,

One of the things I raised in the UN a couple weeks ago was around, we were talking about getting women into leadership and we're talking about women with disabilities and all those things, but what about women that don’t know the language, isn't allowed to learn, been conditioned she must listen to her husband. We’re not breaking that cycle by empowering her. So how are we going to change attitudes and mind-sets? 

I think one of the things that I'm saying is that we have to say that actually if women are 50% of the population, they have to be leading the way. They have to have a seat at the table. They have to be respected. All those things have to be taken into consideration.

So one of the things is that we need to look at, women have a right to education. They learn their language, whether they come to Britain, they learn English, or whether they go to Germany they learn German, whichever country they’re in and we make it mandatory as a part of integration that you are an active member of society. 

And we then have to talk and call people out, listen, you've left those countries and just come to these countries. We have different values to you. Women are treated as equal. Women have the same right. It's really important that actually we care about protection and not political correctness.

It really frustrates me that people will not call people out because they're worried about being called racist. If people are carrying out harmful out of date rituals and practices, then we need to call people out for them. We have no place for that UK or in the west, or anywhere in the world or even in their own countries. We need to tell people that we need to educate.

These don’t have anything to do with religions, they’re always cultural. 

If somebody is branded a witch it's because somebody else is going to try and take money out of the family to try and make money for themselves. So we need to call people out on all of those things.

The institutional mechanisms that we have in place, women must have human rights, if you embed that, you’ll get there.

FiLiA: I wanted to ask you about that actually.

Because one of the criticisms of something like CEDAW for example, is that yes, it's this amazing law on women's rights and it's really comprehensive in the way that it sets out all of the kind of human rights that women should expect. But it's separate. It's kind of taken away from other legal documents that enshrine human rights and given a place of its own.

And some critics say that that means that it's not been given as much attention and that gender has not been mainstreamed, as they say, that is incorporated into common practice as other human rights are. 

Mandy: Yeah, and that's a really fair point because again, we're looking at the human rights as well. Like you have a right to an education, shelter and all of those things. And if we're not meeting those needs of women, cause we're not sending them, we're not giving them. If you look at a woman in the UK for instance, she's victim of domestic violence, she goes and asks for help. If there isn't a refuge or anyone else to help her, how are you going to address that?

Because actually you're not going to flee somewhere then are you? If there's nowhere else for you to go. And if we look at some of our policies and procedures, even in the UK, the first thing that goes is local funding for women refuges. 

FiLiA: Under CEDAW I guess that is technically the government's responsibility to provide that protection.

Mandy: Exactly. And that's the thing, they say and do, and we go to these global conferences and we're all showcasing every country around the world, look, this is what we're doing. But actually in reality, when you’re cutting things it’s having a negative impact. And that was one of the things that really came away.

And one of the things that was really interesting was, older women talking about their rights. Talking about like, you know, that they have been not having a place at the table, not having a say, really important that you are able to talk about those issues as well. 

FiLiA: I also wanted to talk to you about, the ultimate appeals mechanism, say when a woman feels that she has been failed by her government on the basis of her gender and she’s exhausted local forms of legal appeal, national forms of legal appeal, take it to CEDAW and say look, this is my government who are supposed to be signed up to all of these gender equality principles, but still I'm being treated like this.

 And for listeners in the UK and Ireland this optional protocol was used by three Irish women's charities to campaign against the abortion ban in that part of the world. And I thought Mandy, the committee did come back with strong recommendations to the UK government to legalise abortion especially in cases of rape and incest. Is that something that you've seen around the world in that sort of way?

Mandy: Yeah. I mean, Ireland really has been one of the countries where people refer to that as a good example, some women have tried to do that, when a woman was raped on a bus, and talked about protection public transport and women out in society and stuff like that. There was a big movement, but the problem is these things only happen occasionally and when they hit the headlines, if that makes sense. So like Northern Ireland, it was when that young Asian woman wanted an abortion, but ended up dying.

We need to look at those things, only when something horrific happens do we change our policies and procedures and it's a shame because actually in countries, especially women in conflicts now are trying to address these issues. They want to have a place at the table. They want to come together and talk about things that are happening. For instance, in some countries, in India I saw something about women being called Half Widow, they don’t know where their husband are, or if they've gone. They don’t know if they’ve really gone or if they're arrested and then they use the term half widow.

We’ve called India out on this and we’ve talked to them and other countries as well.

If you live in a country and you are married and then all of a sudden your husband's been arrested or he's been taken somewhere, it's those sort issues. How do we address them? And how can they be addressed? Well, we need to start empowering, talking about education and, and the problem is people start taking sides and we have to put religion and cultural sides aside for a moment and look at the basic human rights and look at those things. So those were the most important things. 

When we look at issues that are affecting women, economically, socially, all of those things have a real impact on them in a negative way. 

FiLiA: One of the things that I was wondering from your point of view, as someone who's campaigned with all these issues and has had involvement with, with the UN and UN women especially, FiLiA our charity, is a very small volunteer run charity and we're privileged to be able to talk to and to represent loads and loads of grassroots women who don't have an enormous amount of financial resources when it comes to being part of their charities and, um, I should I'm going to say that again because it that makes it sound like I was talking about the women when I'm talking about the charities. 

FiLiA has an amazing network of tiny charities who often don't have the financial resources to engage on a scale as massive as the UN. But we'd still like to be able to leverage CEDAW and use the Beijing Declaration. 

How do you think these tiny women's charities who might, for example, be just, supporting domestic abuse survivors in Manchester, how do these very small charities go about using the Beijing Declaration and CEDAW to our advantage?

Mandy: Okay, so the principal things, like I said, women in poverty, women in education, health, and especially violence against women. These are the areas, look at the ones that are important to you and how to implement it.

It’s about looking at working in partnership, and this is the one thing that I have found quite difficult over the years, and I mean, I’ve worked with people in the UK and I do this because I'm really passionate and I've been in a great position of privilege to be able to do what I do, but however I've seen charities with the same part of funding, but not working in partnership. 

And then they're into the same areas to raise awareness. It's about looking at our resources, working in a more effective way, working on campaigns the same as I said earlier working around the marriage to be 18. So I know that lots of different charity come together on that one cause to work.

And what I say to young people around the world is look globally and work locally.

I do a lot of work in the UK and still support charities in the UK and make sure to use their examples and support and look at working in partnership, and that’s the way we are going to make a long lasting difference, and having sustainability as well. 

It's about releasing capital. Looking at other NGOs and I think what you did a few weeks ago yourself, which was fantastic because I think you 800 people come together to celebrate diversity.

I’ve got to say, we need to be looking at all genders so LGBTI, disabled women, older women, women of colour, we need to celebrate diversity. We need to look at that and we need to work on those issues together. Violence doesn't discriminate and rape, all of those issues you can be any ethnicity, any age from anywhere in the world. And so we need to look at common thread that goes through all of that and pull that together.

Your organization: It's really leading the way and I think you need to be really proud of what you guys have achieved a few weeks ago, bringing people together.

But I think it's really important that it was affordable. Now you do not have the money to pay thousands of pounds to go to a conference or hundreds to attend a two day. And then it's always world leaders that we put on the platform, we need to start listening to the younger people and the women on the ground in those countries and give them a platform. That's the way that we can move forward and actually make a change. 

It’s all well good having Prime Ministers and other leaders speaking about the cause but we have to listen to the people on the ground. We need to listen to the NGOs. We need to listen to the organisations affected day in and day out, and actually listen to the survivors. Listen to the people who are using these services, the impact on them and share that story.

 People like me as, as amazing as my life and my career has been. And I'm incredibly grateful and blessed to be doing what I'm doing but you know what? When you listen to survivors and you hear their stories and they're telling you, you know, it's on a different level and that's why I'm so passionate about making sure NGOs, young people, women, different ethnicities and people with have different abilities and everyone else has given a place at the table and everyone is listened to, and they have a voice. Actually if you give somebody a voice they become empowered.

FiLiA: Last question, because I'm aware that I've taken up a lot of your time. So we're both heading to the UN in March. We're looking forward to it. What are the things that you want to see come out of this next discussion about women's rights and where you want to see women's rights in 5 or 10 years?

Mandy: We have the UN sustainability goals around gender equality, those are the goals that I'm really passionate about. So by 2030 we hope to achieve some of those.

People have given lip service and we have to make sure that actually that we now, when we meet the CSW before we listen to the NGOs because actually it's one of my favourite things going to the UN. There are often really fantastic organisations who are doing fantastic work around the world. It’s the only time that they're given that global platform to be able to showcase their work, talk about issues, partnership, share best practice, and that’s the only way we’re going to make a lasting change.

All the 12 areas around poverty, education, health, violence, and women in position of power, decision making, institutional mechanisms, women and the environment, all of those issues. And we talk about these issues.

An opportunity is the European Parliament come England and can be a part of conversation. So I'm really passionate about involving everyone and making sure everyone has a voice and gets involved in campaigns because campaigns on social media have real global impacts and it's really important.

You have to move with the times.

We need to get women are being empowered. They are being not just fast track into leadership, but actually they have the right skills, the right attributes. So we need to make sure that they’re being supported to get into leadership actually, that we smash that glass ceiling. 

We can achieve great deal.

FiLiA: Well, Mandy, thank you so, so much for talking to us it's been amazing, from my point of view to learn so much more about what you do. And thank you.