COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN CONSIDERS REPORT OF MALAWI
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has considered the sixth periodic report of Malawi on how that country implements the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Introducing the report, Olive Tindapeuli Chikankheni, Secretary for Gender, Children and Community Development of Malawi, said that the vision of the Government of Malawi was to move out of poverty into prosperity, and the Government was fully aware that prosperity could not be attained without gender equality and empowerment of women. Malawi had in place gender-related acts and bills, including a Constitution which provided for equality of individuals before the law and the enjoyment of civil and political rights without discrimination on the basis of gender; a Prevention of Domestic Violence Act; a Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Bill; an HIV and AIDS (prevention and management) Bill; a Trafficking in Persons Bill; and a Gender Equality Bill. Malawi had also designed policies and programmes to assist in putting the provisions of the Convention into practice, such as the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy; food security and nutrition policies; the National Gender Policy; the National Gender Programme; and the National Programme on Promotion of Women into Politics. Work was also being done to increase the number of girls' hostels and to improve women's empowerment through training them in business and credit management.
Questions and issues raised by Experts during the interactive discussion included what the legal status of the Convention was before the Courts, and whether it had been referred to in decisions; what measures were being taken to enable women to have access to justice when their civil and political rights were infringed or when they had been subjected to violence; what was being done to spread awareness of the Convention, given the large number of local languages and dialects; what was being done to speed implementation of the various gender-sensitive Bills; and whether the new National Gender Policy had been approved by Cabinet yet. Among further concerns were issues of polygamy; sexual abuse to which girls were frequently exposed at home and in schools; women imprisoned for witchcraft; negative stereotypes in education and the mass media; the existence of forced and early marriages; and trafficking in women for forced labour and sexual exploitation. Also mentioned were “depressingly low” figures for women in public life and the public sector; the lack of a law prohibiting sexual harassment; and the fact that the practice of inheritance dispossession was continuing, despite being made illegal in 1998.
In concluding remarks, Ms. Chikankheni noted a lot of lessons had been learned during the deliberations, and the delegation returned home more aware of what the world expected with regards to restoring rights and dignity to women and the girl-child. Malawi would not be a weakling in that global aspiration, she underscored.
Also in the Malawi delegation were representatives from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development; the Ministry of Health; the Ministry of Justice; the Malawi Law Commission; the NGO-Gender Coordinating Network; UNICEF Malawi; and UNFPA Malawi.
The next meeting of the Committee will be on Monday 25 January at 3 p.m., when it will hold an informal meeting with non-governmental organizations.
Report of Malawi
The sixth periodic report of Malawi (CEDAW/C/MWI/6), which covers the period from 2006 to 2008, notes that the 1995 Constitution provides for equality of individuals before the law and for the protection and enjoyment of civil and political rights without discrimination on grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, nationality, ethnic or social origin, disability, prosperity, birth or other status. Under the Constitution, every person enjoys State protection and recognition of the rights enshrined in the Constitution, international instruments and other statutes. The Constitution also provides for the enforcement, restrictions and limitations of rights and what forums may be approached for enforcement of rights. Institutionally, the Ministry of Women and Child Development is the national machinery that has the mandate to oversee the coordination and mainstreaming gender in all development initiatives, implementation of community development programmes and social welfare services in Malawi.
Gender mainstreaming has been carried out through various State institutions spearheaded by the Ministry responsible for Women and Child Development. Other governance institutions such as the Human Rights Commission, the Law Commission, the Office of the Ombudsman and non-State actors from civil society and international organizations have also taken an active role in implementing gender issues across society. Continued low literacy levels among women and men prevent effective human rights education in Malawi. Use of English as a medium of communication in the human rights arena has also hampered progress. While Malawi continues to make efforts to widely disseminate the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women throughout the country, there is only one officially translated version of the Convention despite many local languages and dialects. Since the discussion of the Combined Report in 2006, there have been various reforms in legislation aimed at domestication of the provisions of the Convention. The reforms have been initiated by both the public and non-public sectors.
Presentation of Report
OLIVE TINDAPEULI CHIKANKHENI, Secretary for Gender, Children and Community Development of Malawi, introducing the sixth periodic report, said Malawi was a democratic country, and almost half its population was female. Under the leadership of the President, the vision of the Government was to move out of poverty into prosperity, and the Government was fully aware that prosperity could not be attained without gender equality and empowerment of women. Malawi had in place gender-related acts and bills, including a Constitution which provided for equality of individuals before the law and the enjoyment of civil and political rights without discrimination on the basis of gender; a Prevention of Domestic Violence Act; a Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Bill; an HIV and AIDS (prevention and management) Bill; a Trafficking in Persons Bill; and a Gender Equality Bill.
Malawi had designed policies and programmes to assist in putting the provisions of the Convention into practice, such as the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy; food security and nutrition policies; the National Gender Policy; the National Gender Programme; and the National Programme on Promotion of Women into Politics. Work was also being done to increase the number of girls' hostels and to improve women's empowerment through training them in business and credit management.
There were various community mobilization activities and programmes aimed at reducing and eliminating harmful cultural practices, which targeted opinion leaders as well as the community at large. The National Response to Combat Gender Based Violence was a guiding and coordinating framework for all activities and programmes on gender-based violence. Currently, plans were under way to undertake a mapping exercise for gender-based violence in the country to help in determining required interventions. A study had also just been carried out to understand the plight of commercial sex workers, so that an appropriate programme to address their needs could be developed and implemented, Ms. Chikankheni added.
With a Government committed to gender equality and empowerment of women in position, the capacity of the gender machinery was being strengthened. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development was being led by a Minister and a Deputy Minister, in addition to the technical team that was headed by a Principal Secretary. With financial and technical support from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Malawi, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Malawi and the United States Government (through USAID), the human resource capacity of the Ministry was being enhanced. Other institutional arrangements were also available to enforce gender equality and empowerment of women, Ms. Chikankheni said, including the Malawi Law Commission, the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Human Rights Commission.
Highlighting some continuing challenges, Ms. Chikankheni noted that Malawi continued to face the issue of handling harmful cultural practices. Behaviour change among people was proving to be a slow process. Illiteracy levels among adults also remained high, limiting access and enjoyment of some human rights. Finally, there was limited access to resources by most women, and inadequate financing for gender equality and women's empowerment.
Questions by Experts
In a first round of questions, Committee Experts raised, among other questions and issues, whether there were any plans to adopt the Optional Protocol to the Convention; what the legal status of the Convention was before the Courts, and whether it had been referred to in decisions; the need to define discrimination; issues related to the "Madonna Decision" and its legal implications; whether there was a monist or dualist legal system; how the Convention was domesticated and what the roles of the Ministries of Gender and of Justice were in that context; and more information on the content of the Gender Equality Bill.
In further concerns, Experts asked whether there were different programmes and support provided by the United Nations agencies in the country with regard to implementation of the Convention; what measures were being taken to enable women to have access to justice when their civil and political rights had been infringed or when they had been subjected to violence, particularly in the context of the high levels of poverty and illiteracy among women; what was being done to spread awareness of the Convention, given the large number of local languages and dialects; what was being done to speed implementation of the various gender-sensitive Bills; and whether the new National Gender Policy had been approved by Cabinet yet.
Response by the Delegation
Responding to Experts’ questions, the delegation said that Malawi was a dualist country, which meant that international treaties did not become law until Parliament passed an Act saying that they were now binding on the Republic. The process of domesticating international agreements was not through a single act which transposed them into domestic law: there were a range of means. Domestication of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women became relevant in 1994 with the new Constitution, as in the latter the Bill of Rights stipulations on the status of women were based on the text of the Convention. On why there was a need for legislation, that was as Malawi's legal system was based on the English legal system. While the Constitution provided for discrimination and listed grounds under which it was prohibited, there was a need for an Act to “unpick” that. The new Gender Equality Act was a part of that unpicking.
Machinery was being created to entrench the Convention, and there was an examination of how to entrench it into the whole system and all current and future laws, the delegation noted. The Courts, being a separate branch, could look at what the Government had done and adopted, and knew what were obligations for Malawi in that regard, and the Madonna case was an example of this.
Owing to some problems, it had been very difficult for Malawi to pass legislation, particularly between 2004 and 2009, but actually, it was amazing that at this stage laws seemed to be going through Parliament at a good speed. But that would not necessarily take care of all the backlog, as there were laws which had been pending since 1998, the delegation cautioned. At this stage, Parliament seemed to prioritize the clearing of the backlog. Parliament was requesting the institution of the Law Commission to be briefed on the contents of laws which were to be submitted to Parliament between now and next June.
With regard to gender quotas, those were being introduced in politics, education, and employment, and were currently in a proposal form.
Regarding the Ombudsman, his jurisdiction did not fall into specific various sectors – he looked into providing remedies that were not justiciable by the Courts, either because they were administrative in nature, or fell outside of the time limits. The Ombudsman thus looked at administrative justice, opening up a door for some gender considerations, and could be made available to adjudicate on matters which the Courts could not cover. The Constitution merely provided that a person had the right to equality before the law, but did not state under which circumstances that could be invoked, how it could be limited, and what remedies were available for those whose rights had been violated. Those and other principles would be brought together under one Bill to be adopted by Parliament.
The Constitution provided for the Courts to declare invalid any Act of Parliament that was inconsistent with the Constitution, the delegation said. There was no law or Act of Parliament that said that pre-Constitutional laws could not be challenged – every law could be challenged, and none came above the Constitution. Most laws were pre-Constitutional, and were thus being adapted and reformed to be in conformity with the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. Every five years, elections brought new Parliamentarians into Parliament, and it was part of the role of the Ministry of Gender to sensitize those new members to the gender implications of the laws currently under consideration. That was an ongoing process.
Work was being done to support the social protection policy aiming to eradicate poverty, which was a great engine of inequality. In terms of gender mainstreaming, there were gender focal points in various Ministries and institutions, aiming to ensure that there was gender-disaggregated data. There was a national response to gender-based violence, and activities were carried out in that respect. The Government also worked with civil society organizations to ensure gender-sensitive programmes were carried out. Civil society had played an important role in disseminating the Convention in the local languages and dialects.
On how gender was being mainstreamed in policies, programmes and activities, the delegation said gender was considered an important part of the poverty eradication programme, which was carried out with the support of the United Nations agencies present in the country. At the same time, there was a capacity-building initiative to ensure that a gender perspective was mainstreamed in all other projects and programmes.
Questions by Experts
In a second round of questions and comments, Experts raised, among other things, issues of polygamy and the need to eliminate that phenomenon through education; what was being done to eliminate the sexual abuse to which girls were frequently exposed at home and in schools; issues related to corporal punishment in school, which was still allowed up to a certain extent; whether women imprisoned for witchcraft were provided legal aid and were prosecuted through the Courts; whether the Government was ready to begin to investigate the situation of women who were imprisoned for witchcraft; what was being done to combat negative stereotypes in education and the mass media; measures to combat forced and early marriages; and the fact that women were poorer and had worse living conditions than men.
On sexual exploitation and trafficking issues, an Expert wondered if there had been a joint study on human trafficking and on commercial sexual exploitation undertaken? Other questions in this area included whether sex work was legal or illegal; whether a coordinating machinery could be set up between the Government and NGOs to combat trafficking in persons; and what was being done bilaterally or multilaterally to assist and repatriate victims of forced trafficking, financially and psychosocially.
Response by the Delegation
Responding, the delegation said, with regard to prostitution and trafficking, that there was collaboration between the Government, NGOs and the donor community, and there was even a forum for handling issues of human trafficking, which was chaired by the Office for Home Affairs, Internal Security, and Police. Victims of sexual exploitation or trafficking were covered by the Government's duty on social welfare, and the police played a role in the apprehension of perpetrators of human trafficking. The Ministry for Gender, Women, and Community Development had shelters where the victims of trafficking or sexual exploitation could be temporarily housed while they received psychosocial treatment, and the Government identified means for providing them with economic support, linking them to microcredit institutions and finding them means of employment.
Specific offences had been created that dealt with trafficking in persons, such as aggravated trafficking, when the person died, or, for example, when the person trafficked was a child, the delegation continued. Malawi was also creating a mechanism to establish a body to deal with trafficking in persons, which would be spearheaded by the Government but would also receive funding from other institutions, in order to arrest that phenomenon.
With regard to prostitution, the delegation said the legal position was that prostitution was not prohibited. Most of the reports of persons being arrested were not arrested for prostitution, but for other specific violations of the Penal Code, such as being rogues or vagabonds, idle or disorderly. Women who were found loitering at night could be arrested if they could not explain why there were in a specific area, but that was not the same as being arrested for prostitution. The Government was looking at both the supply and demand side of the phenomenon, as well as at clients and sellers. Professional prosecutors, who were trained lawyers, and lay prosecutors, who were trained policemen, dealt with these issues.
On issues related to HIV/AIDS, the delegation said there was a lot of HIV/AIDS in Malawi, and it needed to be controlled. The draft HIV/AIDS Bill did not discriminate against women. But the issue did not stand alone; it was linked to issues of prostitution, among others. There were four groups who were subject to forced testing under the bill, and some of those categories applied to men, such as sex offenders. Sex workers, pregnant women and their partners, sex offenders, and people intending to enter into polygamous unions were the four categories, and this had been established in the law after broad consultation, and after representatives of the groups had been consulted.
With regard to polygamy, the Law Commission was making a recommendation towards outlawing that phenomenon, but it was not a settled issue, the delegation noted. The issue had been tested four times under four different programmes, including the review of the marriage laws, the review of the Constitution, and when developing the law on HIV/AIDS. Public opinion tilted back and forth on the issue. Maybe when Parliament finally overcame its backlog, then the Government could look at a progressive testing of the position on polygamy and whether society would respond positively or negatively to the banning of the phenomenon.
On corporal punishment, the delegation was not aware of any law that prescribed corporal punishment in the home or the school. The new Constitution of 2004 outlawed that practice in its entirety. Corporal punishment was more like a common practice, and there was no law limiting it to five strokes in educational systems. There was a need, however, for laws to clarify the situation with regards to sexual harassment against girls in homes or in schools.
In Malawi, the law on witchcraft did not recognize witchcraft, although there were cases of it before the Courts. The law came from two perspectives – a child rights perspective, and a women's rights perspective. Pretending to be a witch or accusing another of witchcraft were crimes. That was currently under review, in particular from the perspective of the rights of elderly women. The Judiciary also had lay magistrates, who were not lawyers, but were trained to deal with certain matters, and it was the latter who were mainly those who had found persons guilty of witchcraft. Training was ongoing to teach these people that they should not find anybody guilty of this offence, but the problem was that people felt that that was an imposition of a foreign law and concept.
In response to brief follow-up questions, the delegation said lay magistrates operating outside the law could perhaps be a bit too "lay", but they were being trained to operate under the law, and not to be influenced by popular opinion, which was, at the moment, that there was concern for witchcraft, and it needed to be controlled. The police were very much trusted, specifically with respect to supporting the gender-based violence victim. The police was very much a reformed police. The most important factor to be considered was the fact that the community itself worked with the victim support units.
With regard to the significance of the Madonna (adoption) case on the Convention, the delegation said that they would be very slow to consider the impact of that case on international law. The issue was that the case had gained international attention. The importance of the case was the issue of the question of residence in Malawi, and the Courts had arrived at their decision within the context of the best interests of the child, and had managed to do this through the use of local legislation.
The Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Bill proposed that the age for all marriages should be 18 years, no matter the type of marriage, and the delegation hoped that issue would be settled soon. Legal aid capacity was improving in the country, but was not yet “there”, the delegation acknowledged.
Questions by Experts
In a further round of questions and comments, Experts raised, among other things, that despite a national programme to increase the number of women in public life and the public sector, those figures remained depressingly low. An Expert asked whether there were programmes to train women in skills required for such posts. It was noted that women's participation did not just depend on economic resources, but also on political will. Other comments included that the Government needed to make reforms in the prison system so that women trusted the justice system to a greater extent; that measures needed to be taken to reduce the rate of girls dropping out of school; that the Citizenship Act remained discriminatory with regard to the children of a Malawian woman married to a foreign man, despite Committee recommendations; and what were the new features of the migration policy and legislation of the country to be finalized soon.
Response by the Delegation
Responding to the issues just raised, the delegation said the reason there were so few women in public positions was due to the girl-child training of the past, and the Government was working to make changes to the public sector. There was a need to train middle class women to increase their presence. It was Government policy to send 50 per cent men and 50 per cent women for scholarships for training and education.
The Citizenship Act and the Immigration Act were listed for review, the delegation said. The Government was waiting for the Ministry of Education to ensure that the girl child received appropriate education, through various initiatives, to deal with situations such as forced or early marriages, through life-skills education and other programmes. There was also a child-friendly approach taken, aimed at improving school attendance.
Questions by Experts
In further questions, Committee Experts raised, among other questions and issues, the obstacles to girls' education, and what steps were being taken to ensure their equal access to education at all levels, as many of the problems raised during the 2006 Review still existed, in particular poor sanitary facilities and sexual harassment by teachers and fellow students. They also requested more information on the problem of forced early marriages and its impact on schooling, as well as that of child labour. There was an urgent need for specific initiatives to arrest the problems of girls' participation in primary schools. Had there had been an education campaign to inform teachers about sexual harassment, for example?
With regard to the labour sphere, Experts asked how the Government was addressing discrimination on the basis of pregnancy; why there was no law to prohibit sexual harassment; whether the Government had work-based policies against gender discrimination in the labour market in general; and how the Government was addressing the legal and social protection of the large number of women working in the informal sector. Experts further wondered about measures to reduce maternal mortality and improve access to maternal healthcare, and what monitoring mechanism was in place to review the effectiveness of the multiplicity of programmes aimed at improving the situation of women.
Response by the Delegation
Responding to these questions and issues, the delegation said the Government had a Ministry responsible for trade, and under that Ministry there was a whole section that worked on small and medium enterprises, providing credit through the microfinance institutions. Those institutions in Malawi had grown with time, and it was now a large sector. The institutions were regulated by the Ministry of Finance to ensure that interest rates were in line with the macroeconomic situation which the Government was driving, and that they did not depart too much from the commercial banking system. The accessibility of credit to women should increase as the interest rates of microfinancing institutions were checked. In terms of collateral, the Government was addressing that by grouping poor ladies, using the group dynamics to improve the collateral situation from the banks' point of view.
Rural women benefited from social protection through a Government programme, the delegation said, and there was a draft policy on that before the Cabinet. This was a direct cash-transfer system, or in-kind or material direct transfer system. The elderly could also benefit from that system.
With regard to the issue of the drop-out rate of schoolchildren due to early or forced marriages, the delegation said there were programmes to cover that issue, including social campaigns, and there were also initiatives where mothers were involved in their children's education, which were being supported by different stakeholders. There was also provision of special scholarships to girls to enable them to attend school and full-time education.
In terms of issues of sexual harassment of girls in schools, through programmes by various NGOs, girls were being empowered to speak out publicly about gender-based violence, and teachers had voted a voluntary commitment against the phenomenon. With regard to harassment in the workplace, that was an issue which impacted the rights of women vis-à-vis employment, and a study had been conducted on the extent of that phenomenon. The findings of the study had been subsequently been disseminated, with the outcome that many companies had been encouraged to put in place workplace agreements.
The high rate of maternal mortality was a matter for concern for Malawi as well as the Committee, the delegation said. As highlighted, some of the causes for that high maternal mortality rate were direct and some indirect, but for the direct ones, the main focus was on unsafe abortion. That was one of the contributing factors to the high figures. There were guidelines in place, and the Government was trying to treat the situation with regard to abortion. There were also efforts to address the maternal mortality rate through Christian health institutions. The only obstacle to accessing those institutions had been the need to pay; however, the Government, through the Ministry of Health, had organized a means of free access for women, paid for by the Government. At the moment, the coverage of anti-natal care was 93 per cent. Through assessment, it had been determined that most maternal deaths were occurring through traditional birth practices, and those challenges were being addressed through redefining the roles of traditional birth attendants, one of the roles of which was now not to conduct deliveries, but to encourage pregnant women to go and deliver at a safe medical facility. That had been quite a challenge, as these traditional attendants used to charge for the delivery, but they now charged for other services.
Malawi was considering amending its laws on abortion for the last 12 years. If the question of abortion was dealt with under the Gender Equality Act, then there was a feeling that it would just be tacked on, so the idea was to create a separate Act to deal with abortion. The law did allow currently for termination of pregnancy if the life of the mother was in danger, and that allowed for medical abortion where there was a danger to life.
Health workers had been trained to deal with women victims of violence, as had the police, and women could freely access justice in that regard, the delegation said.
The delegation also highlighted the "Surviving Cancer Programme". Cancer was an important issue for women and the Government was sensitising women to go for screening for cervical cancer. With regard to family planning, Malawi felt it was moving in a positive direction, as the current usage rate for contraception had increased to 41 per cent. The Government was not stopping there, and was moving towards community-based family planning, training people in the villages to supply contraceptives to the community as a whole, and to administer injectible contraceptives such as Depro-Provera. Access to family planning would thus be easier than it had been to date.
On other matters, such as land ownership, the Government was seeking to move to a system of title holding, allowing individuals to own land and negotiate loans. That would aid women to own land and dispose of it as they wished.
Regarding how traditional practices affected gender rights, that issue kept on coming up, the delegation said, as the process of reform was one of human rights auditing, and there had been an ongoing debate as to whether practices should be reformed or just regulated. And some practices, whether religious, traditional or customary, had already been outlawed.
Questions by Experts
In a final round of questions, Experts raised, among other questions and issues, what the Government was going to do to assist women to claim their rights; the practice of inheritance dispossession, which continued despite being made illegal in 1998; and what provisions were made for women’s maintenance following divorce.
Response by the Delegation
Answering, the delegation said with regard to custody and the system of marriage, the proposed Family Code proposed a unified definition of marriage that would cover all Constitutional aspects, and would not have regard for how the marriage was entered into. With regard to property ownership and the issue of joint ownership, that could not be inferred from the simple fact of marriage. Marriage was not the only form of acquiring property. When looking at joint ownership with the husband, the consequence was that when one of the parties died, then the surviving partner took everything, and that was not a matter of fair disposition. Where there was joint ownership and the parties separated, then the division was made fairly. Women had the right to full and equal protection by the law, and had the right not to be discriminated against due to marriage, and that included the fair division of property on the dissolution of that marriage. The situation of women in a patrilineal set-up was mirrored by that of men in a matrilineal set-up. By trying to introduce a new regime of law, that issue of usage was being dealt with.
The Constitution did provide for joint land ownership, but the Courts had differing opinions and issued different judgements. The history behind this was that there was a ruling given that a women did not have to just make financial contributions to the family – other matters could be considered a contribution to the family – but that decision was reversed by an Act of Parliament, and the latter could be reviewed and repealed.
One of the challenges to providing legal aid was lawyer dissatisfaction, the delegation said, but the Government was working on the issue and was indeed making progress. There had been a campaign to increase awareness of women's awareness of their rights, but the reality was that there were still many women who still had no access to legal aid, and not every woman could claim to be represented by a lawyer every time they needed access to justice.
On the issue of maintenance and custody, once more, the Unified Code of Family Relations was what was going to guide these issues in the future. Maintenance was extended to pregnant women outside marriage, but the decision for married women depended on the decision of the Courts on the divorce. On custody, the interest of the parties involved would be paramount, and the Courts would consider the best interests of the children and not tradition.
The right to free movement was guaranteed under the Constitution and the Gender Equality Statute in which the rights of women would be entrenched. There would be education on what the rights of women were and what restrictions could be imposed in the marital setting.
Concluding Remarks
OLIVE TINDAPEULI CHINKANKHENI, Secretary for Gender, Children and Community Development, in concluding remarks, reiterated that the invitation to present the report had been appreciated, particularly as it came just a year after its submission. A lot of lessons had been learned during the deliberations, and the delegation returned home more aware of what the world expected with regards to restoring rights and dignity to women and the girl-child. Malawi would not be a weakling in that global aspiration.
SILVIA PIMENTEL, Committee Member serving as Chairperson, thanked the delegation for the constructive dialogue with the Committee. She wished to especially thank the delegation for the efforts that they had made, which were enormous, in terms of coping with economic, financial and political problems in the country. The Committee, which believed in the importance of an effective dialogue, was very pleased to have ascertained that Malawi had firmly agreed to engage in this dialogue.
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CEDAW10/007E