Legal Problems Concerning Women’s Rights in ASEAN: Study on Cases of Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam

Abstract

          This research aims to reflect legal development and legal obstruction of women’s rights law in Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. On the one hand, although many progress in term of women rights and child rights protection have been improved by many domestic laws of ASEAN members for better protection of women’s rights and child rights, but on the other hand there are still existing many legal obstructions in term of law enforcement. Furthermore, this research finds that many laws of ASEAN members, in some particular cases, are not conform yet to the legal standards of CEDAW (1977) and its Additional Protocol (1999) due to the limits of their political regime, legal regime and social norms in each ASEAN members.

            In general, the main problems of legal compliance to CEDAW comes from the weakness of law enforcement due to lack of political will from the leaders of ASEAN members. In addition, the limits of law arising from political, economic, social and cultural factors in each ASEAN members are the major causes of inefficient protection of women rights and child rights in these countries.

            The evidences of human rights violations in each ASEAN member analyzing in this research shows that many domestic laws of these countries have some gaps of law, and law enforcements in many cases are not conform to the standards of CEDAW and Child rights convention (CRC) in many aspects.

            Therefore, the best solution of these problems is to raising standard of living and standard of human rights, women rights and child rights as much as possible in these countries. For the rest, it depends on the political will of ASEAN leaders including all stakeholders whether they will adopt international human rights standards and implement their domestic laws in line with the core international human rights treaties or not.