Submitted to the Pre-sessional Working Group of CEDAW..... Introduction: "1. With this submission, the Global Justice Center (GJC) aims to provide guidance to the pre-session Working Group in its preparation of the list of issues to be examined during the Committee to Eliminate Discrimination against Women?s (?Committee”) review of Myanmar?s combined fourth and fifth periodic reports. It highlights several violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) by Myanmar and is based on a report by GJC and the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice (Fordham School of Law) comparing Myanmar?s national plan for the advancement of women against its CEDAW obligations (?Promises Not Progress: Burma?s National Plan for Women Falls Short of Gender Equality and CEDAW (attached hereto). II. Analytic Framework: 2. Since 2011, limited democratic reforms in Myanmar have not improved women?s rights or made any strides towards ensuring gender equality in general. This can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that the focus of the reforms has been on readying Myanmar?s economy for an influx of capital and encouraging foreign investment, rather than on ensuring human rights. Additionally, the way the Government characterizes reforms needs to be carefully considered. For example, in its 2015 periodic report to the CEDAW Committee (?Periodic Report”), the Government asserts that eight laws related to women?s rights have been amended or enacted. However, consideration of these laws reveals that they are laws which provide labor and economic protections generally, not laws seeking to ameliorate the situation of women in Myanmar. In fact, only one of the laws discussed, the Social Security Law, includes specific provisions related to women (maternity leave). 3. Threats to women?s equality in Myanmar exist against an unchanged landscape shaped by a deep history of patriarchy and decades of oppressive military dictatorship. Today, these legacies remain very much alive in the form of fundamental defects that impede genuine legal reform, including legal structures guaranteeing gender equality. 4. In particular, three underlying themes are critical to understanding the complexity of injustice against women in Myanmar and the need for structural reforms in order to effect genuine positive change: (1) ongoing supremacy of military power; (2) entrenchment of military power and gender inequality in the Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (?2008 Constitution”); and (3) lack of an independent judiciary. 5. In this submission, the GJC presents a condensed summary of the facts relating to the violations of the following articles of CEDAW: Articles 1 & 2 (definition and prohibition of discrimination, access to justice, violence against women); Article 3 (guarantee of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms); Article 7 (political participation); Article 10 (education); Article 11 (employment); Article 12 (health); Article 14 (rural women); Article 18 (precise and disaggregated data); General Recommendations 28 and 30 (conflict, post-conflict and conflict prevention). 6. At the end of each section, we suggest a list of issues, questions and clarifications for the Working Group?s consideration..."