21 May 2013

PNG women target government in fresh CEDAW push

1:47 pm on 21 May 2013

The organisers of last week's Haus Krai or House of Mourning in Papua New Guinea say they will be pushing the government to fulfil the commitments made in the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW.

The Haus Krai was an international protest against violence, sparked by the outcry after the murders of several women accused of sorcery.

It was deemed a great success with a petition presented to the prime minister, Peter O'Neill.

That included a demand that existing laws be properly applied but one of the organisers, Esther Igo, says that is just the start.

"We are also working on a long term strategic paper that we will be engaging the government with on addressing women's issues, and that strategic paper is based on the CEDAW document - the UN document that PNG has signed in 1995. So we are using that as the bennchmark to address all forms of discrimination against women."

Esther Igo says they plan to have the strategic document ready by October.