The APWLD has published a blueprint for governments and NGOs with a series of specific guidelines. It recommends language to be used in the draft on which governments will sign off during the week-long conference and outlines lobbying strategies to get the message home as effectively as possible. Somswasdi said the forum had spent many months, not only preparing the package, but also going through the draft declarations produced by the UN preparatory sessions to check every line.

"We are, after all, the biggest region in the world, when it comes to the issues with which we are dealing at this conference: religious issues, rape, exploitation and trafficking of women and girls, HIV/AIDS, the impact of armed conflict on women, and of globalisation," she said. "Governments, whether they are democratic or military regimes, are similar when it comes to women's issues." In its introduction to the blueprint, the APWLD said governments had to acknowledge the fact that racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance could not be dealt with effectively unless they dealt with the impact on women and men from a gendered perspective. This required that the conference adopt "a gendered and intersectional approach" to the declaration and plan of action, identifying the "intersectionality" of gender and race and other forms of discrimination in specific sections of the final document according to the APWLD.

"The World Conference against Racism, perhaps more than any other previous United Nations World Conference, has the mandate given by its objectives and its very title, to rigorously pursue an intersectional analysis and approach to human rights," the APWLD blueprint said.

One of the biggest lobbying groups within the forum is the Dalit group representing lowest castes in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. It has recommended for example that a paragraph in the draft declaration refer specifically to the terms caste and sexual orientation, so that it would read: "Acknowledging that victims can also suffer multiple or aggravated discrimination when they are discriminated against on the grounds of race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin combined with discrimination based on other grounds that can include, inter alia, sex/gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, case, social origin, property, birth or other status, disability, age, HIV/AIDS or other health conditions, sexual orientation, culture, social and economic status."

Somswasdi, a 30-year veteran of the struggle for women's rights in Thailand and Southeast Asia, said that governments often insisted women did not face discrimination in their countries, and thus paid little attention to some of the burning issues. "There are some which boast about constitutional protection, while in practice it is another story. We are not here to say which countries in the Asia-Pacific region are better or worse, because there are problems throughout the region. Women are often treated badly. Why, for example, give more attention to child trafficking than the trafficking and enslavement of women?"

The forum has found that violence against women is particularly rampant in armed conflict. It cited an "alarming" increase in wars and conflict in the regions where women were often the primary victims. Among them were Palestine, Sri, Lanka, Afghanistan, Burma, Tibet, Bhutan, Indonesia, Aceh-Sumatra, West Papua, Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, Kashmir, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura and other states in India and Mindanao in the Philippines.

"Rape and other forms of sexual torture are now routinely used as strategies of war in order to shame and demoralize individuals, families and communities," the report said. "Racist 'othering' heightens the vulnerability of women to gender violence and sexual torture by their oppressors. At the same time, the sexist value placed on their 'honour' by their own communities makes them prime targets for rape, systematic rape and sexual torture for the purposes of shaming their men. This form of torture is extremely effective, to the point where women are sometimes killed and often rejected by their own communities because of the 'dishonour' they have brought to their husbands or families."

It said the economic impact of globalization in the Asia Pacific region had "severely and negatively" affected women and girls from ethnic, national and religious minorities. "Globalization relies heavily on the exploitation of cheap labor, which is generally the labor of women and girls, putting women and girls from disadvantaged groups to further economic disadvantage. Corporations and governments had a duty to reverse this situation."

"Our strategy in Durban during the next week is to have people at every caucus to try and convince those deliberating the draft to put our language into it," said Somswasdi.