Programme on Women's Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWESCR)

Introduction	Who are we
Goals	Governing Board
Principles	Advisory Board
Be a part of PWESCR	Our Staff

Introduction

Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWESCR) is an international initiative in the area of gender and economic, social and cultural rights. PWESCR works to promote women’s human rights, especially in the context of economic, social and cultural rights by bringing a gender framework to policy, law and practice at local, national, regional and international levels through ever-evolving strategies and activities in both conceptual and practical realms. PWESCR, in its initial phase will have a South Asia regional focus. However, as we get support from other regions, we plan to expand this initiative globally.

What is PWESCR?

PWESCR is an international advocacy and educational initiative in the area of women and their economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR). From its base in India, PWESCR, works to promote the human rights of women, addressing women’s poverty, health standards, and right to food, education, water and work. We do that by bringing a gender perspective to policy, law and practice at the local, national, regional and international levels.

PWESCR is currently particularly focused on South Asia. It is estimated that women form 70% of the world’s poor and two third of the world’s illiterates while they own only 1% of the world’s wealth. Women often work longer hours than men, but substantial part of their work remains unrecognized under-valued, and unappreciated. And the possibility of violence permeates their lives from birth to death. Women’s poverty is our focus and we seek to explore how international human rights framework can be used to address these issues.

PWESCR was started in 2005 out of a critical need to develop international human rights organizations in the Global South that are able to network, share expertise, strengthen human resources, and create tools to raise awareness around women’s ESCR. Our leadership development programme is aimed at addressing these needs from the local to the global.

One in every two women in South Asia faces violence in their daily life (Unifem, 2007). There are 50 million fewer women in South Asia than what a balanced demography demands. PWESCR’s work gives special attention to implementation and 3monitoring of women’s rights in South Asia by working with UN Treaty Bodies.

PWESCR seeks partnerships with other networks and continues to strengthen its relationships with key organizations working on an agenda similar to ours in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America.

What Does PWESCR Do?

PWESCR carries out its work for ESCR on a number of fronts. We conduct action-oriented research to provide deeper analysis of women’s economic, social and cultural issues and to facilitate new strategies for defending human rights.

PWESCR’s programme facilitates collaboration between various networks and organizations to work at all levels for the
actualization of women’s human rights. We are actively engaged in pushing for social security as a right for workers in the unorganized sector. The Social Security Now campaign is aimed at highlighting the survival needs of the poor, particularly women and the marginalized. While leading the campaign in two states of India, PWESCR has also trained others in monitoring skills.

We engage in advocacy, working to strengthen standards and full implementation of government’s commitments within the international human rights framework. In order to monitor women’s economic, social and cultural rights in India, PWESCR has initiated a collective action process. The short term goal for this peoples’ collective is to develop a shadow report to India’s Government report for the UN Committee on ESCR. India is scheduled to report in May 2008.

PWESCR also provides technical assistance and imparts human rights education to individuals and to women’s groups on monitoring and self-representation skills through leadership development programs. Towards this objective PWESCR also organizes its leadership development school each year. Grassroots women leaders from South Asia benefit from the trainings by acquiring knowledge and new leadership skills. These women leaders in turn train others.

PWESCR provides human rights education and training to enable participation of other social organizations in the monitoring of human rights bodies such as the Council for ESCR and CEDAW among others.

Goals

To establish links and foster collaborations in order to enhance learning, as well as develop shared strategies to advocate problem- solving alternatives at all levels in the context of gender.
To build leadership and capacity of groups, organizations, activities and other actors in the field of human rights and economic justice to promote women’s ESCR

Principles

All human rights are universal, indivisible, and interdependent. Civil and political rights are mutually interdependent on
economic, social and cultural rights.
Women’s economic and social empowerments are fundamental to full realization of women’s human rights.
Gender analysis is crucial to advance all ESCR.
Human rights mechanisms are on organizing, mobilizing and empowering tool in addition to an international legal framework.
An intersectional analysis ensures that women from marginalized communities are not left behind.

Be a part of PWESCR

We take this opportunity to invite you and your organization to join us in this endeavour — to develop shared vision and to strengthen partnerships to advance women’s human rights. Your input based on your experiences working in this area would be critical as we start conceptualising on women and ESCR priorities.

Do you work on women’s economic, social and cultural rights? What are the areas of your focus?
What has your experiences been both in terms of successes and challenges promoting women’s ESCR?
What priorities would you suggest PWESCR to consider?
What advice can you give us as we develop this new programme?
Would you like to receive information about PWESCR’s future activities?
Would you like to join our list serve?

Who we are: Board, Advisory Board and Staff

Governing Board

Priiti Darooka,
Managing Trustee, Executive Director

Priiti Darooka is the Founder and Executive Director of the new international Program on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWESCR) and has over 12 years of extensive experience in the field of social justice. Priiti has a Masters in Women’s Studies from Rutgers University, US. She was previously at the Ford Foundation, in New York Human Rights unit and has focused to promote Women and Economic empowerment. Prior to the Ford Foundation, she was at UNIFEM (United Nation’s Development Funds for Women) where she worked on violence against women indicators and assessment and coordinating UNIFEM’s work in Afghanistan. As a consultant to the Center for Women's Global Leadership, she organized a women's rights hearing at the UN conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa. She was the National Campaign Coordinator with UNITE for their Global Justice for Garment Workers Campaign. Priiti has also worked with Manavi, a South Asian women’s organization working with women and children who faced violence in their lives. At Urban Justice Center (UJC), she worked with the NYC Welfare Reform & Human Rights Documentation Project, where she developed policy brief on welfare reform and women, which were used as a media and advocacy tool by welfare advocates of New York City to expose human rights violations. She was also involved in the Stop FTAA (Free Trade Area of Americas) campaign and focused on different aspects of trade, and women’s lives, from a feminist and
human rights perspective.

Manisha Gupte
Trustee

Manisha Gupte (M.Sc, Microbiology) has been part of the women's movement in India since the mid-seventies. She has been actively associated with training, research and interventions in the area of health, violence, gender and sexuality. She has done training for a wide range of people (government officials, NGOs and grass root workers) at the national and international level. She has also coordinated a one year long state level training on Women and Health for middle level women from rural NGOs from 1999-2001. She initiated the formation of MASUM, a rural women's organisation while she lived in the drought-prone villages of Pune district for five years from 1987 to 1991. She is on the board of several pro-people organisations such as CEHAT, Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust, LOCOST Standard Therapeutics and CREA. She spent one year (1997-98) in the Department of International Health in the School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University as a visiting scholar. She is actively associated with various democratic and secular organisations in India.

Dr. B.B. Dutta
Governing Board Member

Dr. Dutta (M.A Ph.D in Economics) retired as Head of the Department of Economics, St.Anthony’s College, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong.. He was a member of State Planning Boards of the State of Meghalaya and the State of Assam during 80s and 90s. He was also a member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha- Upper House) from 93 – 99 as a Presidential Nominee. He served in Standing Committees of Defense, Human Resource Development and Rural Development and also as a member of the Consultative Committee of External Affairs.

Dr. Dutta is the Founder member of the NEICSSR (North East India council for Social Science Research; Founder Member and President of the Women’s College – Shillong and the Shillong Academy High School; Founder Chairman & Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Institute of Indian Culture, Shillong. He has published many articles, edited books on Economics, Social Science and Political Science.

Mr. Alok Khemka
Governing Board Member

He is an engineer by training with Masters in Business Administration. He is a successful entrepreneur in Delhi, heading
Epsilon Technology

Mr. Gagan Sethi
Governing Board Member

Mr. Gagan Sethi, Executive Secretary of Janvikas since 1987 and Managing Trustee since 1997, has been involved in initiating and co-ordinating Janvikas sponsored programmes. As an expert, he provides training, organisational development (OD), project planning and evaluation support towards institution building to various NGOs, government programs and funding agencies in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India. Mr. Sethi’s areas of specialization include Team Building, Conflict Resolution and turnaround OD Intervention and Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation for NGOs and development support organizations. In the course of his career, he has designed and conducted over 400 training programs for these client groups in the field of rural & urban development related to the following issues: Social Forestry Co-operatives, Ecology related grassroots programs, Organization of Schedule Castes and Tribes, Legal Awareness, Lobbying and Advocacy work, Youth & Women and Development and Training of Trainers for support organizations. Mr. Sethi has consulted for notable clients and projects, conducting Zopp Moderation, Planning, OD and Review Workshops for GTZ, Swiss Development Co-operation, Misereor, IGSSS and others. He has also consulted on Curriculum Development and Long Term Training Program in Gender for Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation and
Diploma in Human Rights for Centre for Social Justice.

Dr. Gita Sen
Trustee

Professor Gita Sen is professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India, and has been a visiting professor at the Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University and a Fellow of the Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum, India. She combines a distinguished academic career with policy advocacy and NGO activism. She is a pioneer in the field gender and development. Her academic and policy activism in this field has been an inspiration to a whole generation of researchers, policy-makers of South and North, and non-governmental activists. Her recent work includes reserach and policy advocacy on the gender implications of globalisation and economic liberalisation, the gender dimensions of population policies, and the links beteen population and the environment.

She is the author, co-author or co-editor of several books on these gender-related issues. She is a founding member of DAWN (Development Alternatives with Woman for a New Era); a network of Third World researchers, activists and policy-makers committed to alternative development and gender justice.

She is a trustee of Health Watch (Indi) and of the Institute of Social Studies Trust (India). She is on the Board of the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and on several other international organisations and advisory groups. Among many honours she received the Volvo Environment Prize in 1994, and an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia in the UK in 1998.

Advisory Board

Pramada Menon
Anuradha Rajan
Joy Deshmukh Ranadive
Yamini Mishra
Govinda Kelkar
Barbara Y. Phillips
Manuel F. Montes

Our Staff

Priiti Darooka, Executive Director

Priiti Darooka is the Founder and Executive Director of the new international Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWESCR). She was previously at the Ford Foundation New York, where she worked in the Human Rights unit to promote women’s economic, social and cultural rights. Prior to working at the Ford Foundation, she was at UNIFEM, where she worked on violence against women indicators, assessing and coordinating UNIFEM’s work in Afghanistan. As a consultant to the Center for Women's Global Leadership, she organized a women's human rights hearing at the U.N. World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa. In addition, she was the National Campaign Coordinator at UNITE for their Global Justice for Garment Workers Campaign.

Priiti has also worked with Manavi, a South Asian women’s organization working with women and children who face violence in their lives. At the Urban Justice Center (UJC), she worked with the NYC Welfare Reform & Human Rights Documentation Project, for which she developed a policy brief on welfare reform and women, which was used as a media and advocacy tool by welfare advocates in New York City to expose human rights violations. She was also involved in the Stop FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) campaign, focusing on different aspects of trade and women’s lives from a feminist and human rights perspective.

Anup Kumar Srivastava, Programme Officer - South Asia

Anup earned his M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics. He also holds an LLB degree, in addition to Diplomas in Natural Resource Management and Industrial Development and Personal Management. He is a dedicated and devout human rights activist; he has been working in the human rights, social development, and poverty reduction fields for the last 14 years. He is one of the founding members of both the national right to food campaign and the NREGA campaign. In addition, he has worked closely with various grassroots movements, including those focusing on the right to information, land and forest rights, farmers’ rights, gender and women’s rights, children’s rights and tribal and Dalit rights. Recently, he has focused his work on eliminating hunger in places where the nation has failed, as well as holding the government accountable for feeding its people.

Anup is dedicated to protecting the fundamental rights of the poor and to increasing access to justice for marginalized communities. He has authored three books, co-authored more than 19 books as well as written articles in the areas of food security, farmers’ rights, agriculture, employment, economic reforms, poverty, tribal rights, health and education, and water rights.

Sanjay Dhadwal, Office Manager

Sanjay holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He is an administration and finance professional with 17 years of experience in the field. A great believer in the NGO sector, he was the National Director (Admin) with the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) for seven years. With tremendous interpersonal and administrative skills, Sanjay has organized and implemented several staff benefit schemes. He has also initiated and activated systems and procedures in accounting, finance, and administration.

Kuldeep Sharma, Accounts & Finance Officer

Kuldeep received his M.Com degree in Business Administration from Jaipur University. He has over 23 years of work experience in finance and administration with national and international NGOs, including Cendit, Greenpeace India, and Oxfam India, as well as with media organizations. He has expertise in the areas of management, supervision, financial and human resource planning, and budgeting and monitoring of projects. He is also experienced at working with donor agencies’ reporting formats. Kuldeep has the capacity to establish and implement effective systems for financial reporting on grants.

Punita Shaw, Programme Associate

Punita has a postgraduate degree in Human Rights from the Indian Institute of Human Rights, New Delhi. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Social Work from IGNOU. Her expertise is in the areas of children and human rights, women and human rights, religion and human rights, and population and human rights. She started her career in human rights as a field worker with the Society for People's Awareness (SPAN), which is located in Kolkata, West Bengal. At SPAN, she worked on a project on the rights of children in urban slums. Punita also worked as a Research Assistant at the Centre for Education and Communication (CEC), based in New Delhi, where she focused on the Programme on Social Security for Unorganised Labour. She also worked as an educator at a Junior High School in West Bengal.

Sunil Kumar Kohli, Office Assistant

Sunil is currently pursuing his Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from IGNOU. He has a wide-ranging knowledge of software and technology, which makes him a valuable asset to the office. Sunil is a motivated and enthusiastic worker with a will-do attitude. A quick learner with the ability to grasp new technology, he is an energetic team player with the capacity to work under a hectic schedule.

Veda Bharadwaja, Programme Associate for South Asia

Veda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science (Honors) from Lady Sriram College for Women, New Delhi, as well as a Masters in Politics (specialization in International Relations) from JNU, New Delhi. Before joining PWESCR, she was a Programme Associate with Amnesty International India, where she was in charge of the Response Desk and the ESCR – Housing and Dignity campaign. Veda has also worked with International Market Assessment India Private Limited (IMA, India) in New Delhi and with NDTV 24/7 as a Research Intern. In addition, she has been a member of the National Social Service Scheme, and has volunteered with the Child Development Programme. She also organized and participated in a workshop on disability issues, which was hosted by CAN (Concerned Action Now) New Delhi in September 2003.

Nehal, Communication Officer

Nehal received her Master’s degree in Mass Communication from PU, Chandigarh. She also holds a Diploma in Public Relations and Advertising. Before joining PWESCR, she served as a Communication Associate at Rotary International’s India National PolioPlus Society, a global initiative to eradicate polio. She has also worked as an Assistant Editor with SAGE India, which is a quality publisher of topical debates in all areas of the social sciences and also publishes contemporary business books. At PWESCR, she develops, implements, and evaluates the organisation’s communication and advocacy strategy for effective impact, visibility, and dissemination of all aspects of its work. She is also responsible for developing and maintaining strong stakeholder relationships.

Harsh Vardhan, Administrative Officer

Harsh attained his B.Sc. degree in Psychology from Annamalai University. Currently, he is pursuing his Master’s degree in Social Work from IGNOU. He has five years of work experience in both administration and projects related to community development. Previously, he worked with Ideosync Media Combine, an organisation that works towards integrating innovative communication methodologies into development and social change initiatives and programmes. As the Administrative In-charge, Harsh worked on the administrative part of two radio series focused on safe migration and HIV/AIDS, which were aired on All India Radio and World Space. Prior to that, he worked with CASP-Plan as a Project Coordinator where he initiated the working children project.
Harsh also won the Adobe Youth Voices award in 2006 for making the best video and photo story.

Kaitlin Cordes, David W. Leebron Human Rights Fellow

Kaitlin holds a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Columbia Law School and a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from Northwestern University. As a lawyer and human rights advocate, she is dedicated to using human rights to protect and empower those most vulnerable. Her previous work has focused on the areas of economic, social and cultural rights; business and human rights; global labor; and economic justice. Prior to joining PWESCR as a fellow, she served as an adviser to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter. Kaitlin has worked on a wide variety of human rights projects, ranging from field research to litigation to advocacy. Her experience includes working with the Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School; working as a legal intern with both the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Brennan Center for Justice; serving as president of the Columbia Public Interest Law Foundation; and serving as an AmeriCorps Fellow with OASES. After graduating from law school, she clerked for Justice Virginia A. Long of the Supreme Court of New Jersey (USA). Kaitlin is from New York, USA.

Octavia Davidson, Intern

Octavia has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from York University, Canada and a Masters in Human Rights from the University of Sydney, Australia. She has previous international experience carrying out voluntary work with NGOs in Argentina, Australia, and Canada. Her most recent experiences include volunteering with CCVT (Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture) in Toronto, Canada; volunteering with ALIV (Australian League of Immigration Volunteers) on Christmas Island in Australia; and working as an intern/volunteer with AID/WATCH in Sydney, Australia. Octavia is from Toronto, Canada.

Sophie Hardefeldt, Intern

Sophie is currently completing her Master’s degree in International Development from RMIT University, Australia; she also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Development and Environmental Studies from Melbourne University. She has worked with a range of NGOs within Australia and India, and is particularly interested in issues related to women and development. As an intern at PWESCR, she is undertaking research on women’s right to livelihood and the universalisation of social security. Sophie is from Melbourne, Australia.