The Asia Cause Lawyers Network (ACLN) is a network of cause lawyers across Asia dedicated to the use of law for respecting, promoting, protecting and upholding the equal rights of women and effecting social change towards that end. The network was set up to provide a forum to cause lawyers across Asia to exchange experiences, strategies and best practices from different countries. The Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative (LCWRI) - supported by the Ford Foundation, is the Secretariat of ACLN. The LCWRI is also driven by the philosophy that law as a significant social institution could be effectively mobilized to empower women. Our litigation and law reform campaigns are the direct fallouts of this belief.

The LCWRI is a group of lawyers committed to the cause of human rights of women. The mission of the LCWRI is the empowerment of women through law. Based on the belief that law is an instrument of social change, the LCWRI since its inception, has been actively engaged with the entire legal regime of addressing the rights of women in law. Our objective has always been to assess the efficacy and relevance of legislation and legal systems and recommend its better use and to initiate and spearhead law reform processes, whenever required. The LCWRI actively uses the law as a tool to address critical issues of women such as domestic violence, sexual harassment at the workplace, matrimonial and family related matters, crimes against women particularly sexual assault and reproductive rights.

The LCWRI has undertaken extensive research and advocacy efforts aimed at effecting law reform. In our initiative to build an environment which is violence free for women, we have adopted a four-pronged approach of conducting research, training, advocacy and providing free legal services to women facing Domestic Violence.

This web portal – Disability Rights South Asia – is part of a project on disability rights, undertaken by the LCWRI with active support from the Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College, Massachusetts and the Ford Foundation, China. The project intended to integrate the emerging discourse on disability rights with our ongoing engagement with international human rights, women’s rights and activist litigation practices. The objective was also to appraise the prospects and promises held by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), for focusing attention on the rights of women with disabilities in the Asian region. And finally, the aim was to appraise the efficacy of using the law for securing the rights of the persons with disabilities including the women with disabilities, in the South Asian region.