| Summary | The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is the only internationally binding treaty on preventing discrimination against women. This infonote by the Land Coalition (LC) on CEDAW aims to inform NGOs about their options if they want to engage with the CEDAW process. These options include: submitting reports or country specific information to the pre-session working group, attending pre-session or session working groups and providing information in the plenary. NGOs can submit alternative reports, in the form of 'shadow reports' which provide a critical evaluation of an official report submitted by a state party, or of 'independent reports', when a State party has not shared their report prior to the session. Alternative reporting allows civil society organisations to play a role in monitoring and holding their governments accountable. The document describes how the CEDAW Committee encourages national NGOs to coordinate their efforts to produce a single report, and recommens that alliances are built with other organisations to combine reports on specific issues into one country report. A separate document associated with this infonote presents a series questions and answers on issues related to participation in the review process, including practical information on accreditation. This document also explains how the general recommendations of the committee are usually divided in two parts: the first explores the relationship between the Convention's articles and specific themes/issues, and the second makes recommendations to State parties.
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http://www.landcoalition.org/?p=3321&lang=en&type=news
