worse they often violate the rights of more disadvantaged social groups the process of translation of rights into policies and of policies into real changes in womens lives has been extremely uneven around the world how can human rights be used to create the kind of states that respect protect and fulfil human rights and womens rights in particular this creates the possibility for advocates to campaign for measures to support the realization of womens rights even in nondemocratic or weakly democratic political systems in the process by which states compile their national reports for the cedaw committee for example womens rights advocates have the opportunity to prepare their own shadow reports to comment on the official government report and to campaign for greater policy attention