ASIL Programs > Career Development > Arthur C. Helton Fellowship > Helton Fellowship Profiles and Reflections > 2010 ASIL Helton Fellows > ASIL Helton Fellowship Reflections

MAP Foundation,
Jennifer S. Hainsfurther — Chiang Mai, Thailand

This summer, I had the opportunity to work with the MAP Foundation in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I helped draft a report to be submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) regarding the situation of Burmese migrant women in Thailand. State Parties to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) must periodically report to the CEDAW Committee describing how the State is guaranteeing and implementing the rights contained in the treaty. The CEDAW Committee issues comments for each State describing its concerns and setting forth recommendations for the State to implement. Non-governmental organizations can submit “shadow reports” to the CEDAW Committee to supplement and challenge the information provided by State Parties in their periodic reports.

MAP Foundation, a non-governmental organization working with Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, decided for the first time to submit its own shadow report to the CEDAW Committee addressing migrant issues. Although I had worked with CEDAW throughout law school, I had not yet contributed to a shadow report and was eager to have the opportunity to put my knowledge to practical use. I first became immersed in CEDAW four summers ago when I worked for IWRAW Asia Pacific, an international women’s rights organization that trains local non-governmental organizations on various aspects of CEDAW and the shadow report process. After my internship, I wrote an article discussing CEDAW’s applicability to migrant workers and its utility for migrant worker advocacy. MAP’s shadow report was for me a unique opportunity to apply the knowledge I developed at IWRAW-AP and in my academic work to a particular situation and to create a report with the potential to impact the lives of migrant women in Thailand.

I faced several challenges in my work. First, although I have worked with and studied CEDAW for several years, I had only cursory knowledge of the particular situation of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. In particular, I was unfamiliar with Thai law, and found that understanding relevant parts of domestic law is essential to writing a useful shadow report. Second, I had to constantly remind myself to remain cognizant of the limits of CEDAW. MAP Foundation has been working for more than a decade to address the needs of migrant workers, providing direct services and legal support, engaging in advocacy, and running empowerment programs. Given MAP’s expertise, it was natural to want to address in the report all of the numerous, related difficulties faced by Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. But CEDAW is a non-discrimination treaty concerning women’s equality. And while the CEDAW Committee has made clear that the treaty’s non-discrimination provisions are broad and are meant to address the intersectionality of discrimination faced by migrant women both as women and as migrants, CEDAW is not a panacea and not all problems faced by Burmese migrant workers fall within its purview.

The tension between the desire to push the law as far as it will go in order to help a client and carefully selecting strong arguments in order to maintain credibility is one that I have also faced as a litigator. When I do human rights work, I find this tension to be particularly difficult because of the compelling injustices that I would like to use the law to redress. Moreover, the human rights work I’ve done, such as this report, is typically meant for multiple audiences in a way that a legal brief submitted to a judge is not. The MAP shadow report is meant to be published and disseminated in Thailand, in addition to its submission to the CEDAW Committee. Writing a report for multiple audiences created additional challenges for me when I was selecting facts and arguments to include in the report. Connecting the many difficulties faced by Burmese migrant women in Thailand to Thailand’s responsibilities under CEDAW was an invaluable analytic experience that I hope to take back with me to my career as a litigator in Washington, DC and hopefully as a human rights lawyer in the future.