NGO-CEDAW was founded in 1995 after several Cambodian women activists returned from the Beijing World Conference on Women.

NGO-CEDAW is Cambodia’s leading coalition dedicated to monitoring and promoting the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It has grown from 9 founding organizational members to a coalition of 32 active local member CSOs. Working with a wider network of 30 partner organizations, NGO-CEDAW gives voice to otherwise underrepresented groups of women and LGBTIQ+ communities.

NGO-CEDAW collaborates with its coalition members to produce the annual CEDAW Monitoring reports to hold the government to account on their implementation of the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Observations, facilitates members’ meetings and capacity development training and workshops, conducts and facilitates research to strengthen the evidence-base to support advocacy initiatives, skills and expertise sharing amongst youth, civil society and national and international NGOs and development partners, hosting annual university debates; and organizes campaigns, events and an annual art exhibition during the 16 Days Campaign to end Violence Against Women.

NGO-CEDAW has also established a good relationship with the government. Significant results of such collaboration include the adoption of many of its recommendations into the official CEDAW report and influencing the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in its decision to adopt the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Protection of Victims in 2005 as well as the anti-trafficking law of 2008. Responding to advocacy from NGO-CEDAW, the Ministry of Interior adopted a people-friendly civil registration system. With the prompting of NGO-CEDAW, the National Assembly finally ratified the Optional Protocol on CEDAW in 2010. Recently, NGO-CEDAW worked with the government to recommend amendments to the domestic violence law.