Priiti Darooka and Gurinder Kaur, Programme for Women's Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Delhi)

Equalinrights hosted an exchange with the Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWESCR) on civil society coalitions developing and using parallel reports to United Nations Treaty monitoring bodies. The exchange was held in The Hague (The Netherlands) on Wednesday, 14 May. Priiti and Gurinder shared their experiences, having just returned from presenting a report to the International Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, developed in a coalition with over 150 other organisations, on the situation of ESC rights in India.

It was a vibrant and lively presentation and discussion with just under 20 participants. Priiti and Gurinder really highlighted how rich a process like this can be. It was an intense period of developing the report and coordinating with such a group, but a very rewarding process, particularly when so many of their concerns were reflected in the final Concluding Observations of the Committee. On what was so critical to this process as a collective, Priiti commented, "What we did through this process was to bring human rights to the ground. Normally it is the elites only who participate in these things. We broke it down and really worked with people on it." Also, she felt it was the approach and space created. “As an organisation we had no agenda. We had created a space for people to be part of. The openness and transparency created ownership for people to take it up. They felt they were part of the whole process. Who goes, who speaks was decided by collective. Also this will be followed up in a national consultation.” This was reinforced back in the follow up meeting held on 2 June 2008, which Emma Sydenham, equalinrights Coordinator, had the opportunity to attend in Delhi, where around 15 of the people involved in the collective sat to discuss the process and the way forward. The commitment, drive and passion of all those involved was clear. Their journey ahead now to use the Concluding Observations to engage people in ESC rights issues and increase pressure on the Government to redress the concerns of the Committee will be a long term process!

See Report of the exchange meeting   

See excerpt video on Priiti Darooka's take on engaging the Indian government on the parallel report of the People's Collective.

See the full People's Collective Report

Visit www.pwescr.org for more on PWESCR's work!