Burmese Women's Union

Organizational Achievement

• We stand as a founding member of the Women’s League of Burma
• We have graduated 50 young women from our internship programs since 2003
• We have trained 36 women through our Political Empowerment Program since 2006
• Young women who have graduated from our internship programs have participated in the following international forums:
• CEDAW Shadow report process and the CEDAW committee meeting in Geneva
• The UN Commission on the Status of Women held at the UN headquarters in New York
• The AWID Forum in South Africa
• Approximately 7,000 women migrant workers now utilize our Women’s Empowerment and Resource Centers in Thailand, India and China, and this figure continues to grow, as do the number of services we are able to provide.
• The success of our Women’s Empowerment and Resource Centers (and associated educational programs) is further demonstrated by the fact that many centre users have now become BWU representatives and or active in the pro-democracy movement, working in the fields of women’s rights and politics
• BWU can take credit to a certain degree for attitudinal changes within the migrant community towards sexual harassment and domestic violence as a result of our campaigns and training. Feedback from both resource centre users and our representatives in the community indicate that these are now issues that are being discussed and considered within the migrant community, while they were not before our campaigns.
• BWU representation and voice within the pro-democracy movement has achieved a high level of respect and recognition, as demonstrated by our role in the Federal Constitution Drafting and Coordinating Committee of Burma (FCDCC)