BACKGROUND OF THE ACTIVITY Inside Stories: CHR National Situationer on Women in Detention This 2019, the Commission, through its Center for Gender Equality and Women’s Human Rights (CGEWHR) and its 16 regional offices will focus on women in detention. Two related programs will be undertaken: (a) Multi-Stakeholder Consultation on the Development of Bangkok Rules Monitoring Tool; and (b) the ‘Inside Stories: CHR National Situationer on Women in Detention.’ The first entails series of Focus Group Discussions and consultation with government, CSOs and CHR and the eventual conduct of a writeshop on the Bangkok Rules; the latter is national in scope and seeks to surface the situation of women in detention and the conduct of capacity building with detention facility officers on the Bangkok Rules. The Multi-Stakeholder consultations aim to hold series of consultations on the Bangkok Rules with various stakeholders. It aims to engaged civil society organizations, national government agencies, and CHR staff in developing a monitoring tool based on the Bangkok Rules. The project has already concluded the consultations and is now set for the workshop on the draft rules sometime in July of 2019. On the other hand, ‘Inside Stories: CHR National Situationer on Women in Detention,’ consists of two phases. The first part is the pilot phase which consisted of visits and FGDs in 3 facilities in the NCR. The GEWHRC together with the CHR-NCR completed the pilot phase last March 2019, completing FGDs and capacity building with women in detention in Pasig Female Dormitory, Makati Female Dormitory, and the Correctional Institute for Women. The completed conduct of the FGDs enabled the fine tuning of FGD tools and process for the next component of the project. In these three pilot areas, documentations were made highlighting the situation of women, elderly women, and LBTs and quilts were made with the sewen together of art work of women detainees Regional FGDs and Capacity Building For the conduct of the regional FGDs and capacity building, the following are the objectives: 1. Document human rights issues and lived experience of women in detention; 2. Provide space for women in detention to discuss their experiences on (a) their situation during detention; (b) their security and protection from all forms of violence; (c) access to health services, including reproductive health services; (d) needs for family contact, including children. 3. Monitor the government’s compliance with its obligation with respect women in detention and to draft corresponding recommendations to promote the rights and dignity of women in detention in accordance with international standards; 4. Surface gendered nature of detention through women’s lived experiences and to provide a space for women in detention to express their hopes and dreams through creative expression – quilt making 3