In peacetime Sri Lanka, women still bear a heavy load in looking for jobs and tending to their families. Credit: Adithya Alles/IPS

By Ranjit Perera
COLOMBO, May 5 2015 (IPS)

When Rosy Senanayake, Sri Lanka’s minister of state for child affairs, addressed the U.N. Commission on Population and Development (CPD) in New York last month, she articulated both the successes and shortcomings of gender equality in a country which prided itself electing the world’s first female head of government: Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike in July 1960.

After surviving a 26-year-long separatist war, which ended in 2009, Sri Lanka has been registering relatively strong economic growth, and also claiming successes in its battle against poverty and hunger."Women also bear primary responsibility for care work – which creates multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that limits the opportunities for their full integration into the workforce.” -- Rosy Senanayake

As the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) move towards their targeted deadline in December 2015, Sri Lanka says it has reduced poverty from 26.1 percent in 1990-1991 to 6.7 percent in 2012-2013 – achieving the target of cutting back extreme poverty by 50 percent far ahead of end 2015.

Still, it still lags behind in gender equality – even as 51.8 percent of the country’s total population (of 21.8 million) are women, with only 34 percent comprising its labour force.

Pointing out that Sri Lanka has enjoyed significant progress in its social and economic indicators, Senanayake told IPS, it is also one of the few countries in Asia that has a sex ratio favourable to women.

But Sri Lanka’s advancement, in light of changing demographics, will ultimately depend on its ability to enable women and young people to be active participants in the country’s post-2015 development agenda and the U.N.’s proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“This requires an increase in sustained investment targeted at gender equality and social protection,” she added.

Addressing a meeting in Colombo last week, visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised the women of Sri Lanka for playing a critical role in helping the needy and the displaced.

“They’re encouraging people to build secure and prosperous neighbourhoods. They are supporting ex-combatants and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, and they’re providing counseling and other social services. And these efforts are absolutely vital and we should all support them,” he said.

“But we also have to do more than that,” he noted.

“Here, as in every country, it’s crystal clear that for any society to thrive, women have to be in full control – they have to be full participants in the economics and in the political life. There is no excuse in the 21st century for discrimination or violence against women. Not now, and not ever,” Kerry added.

The country’s positive development goals are many and varied: Sri Lanka has almost achieved universal primary education; the proportion of pupils starting grade 1, who reach grade 5, is nearly 100 percent; the unemployment rate has declined to less than four percent: the maternal mortality rate has declined from 92 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 33.3 in 2010; and the literacy rate of 15- to 25-year-olds increased from 92.7 percent in 1996 to 97.8 percent in 2012, according to official figures released by the government.

U.N. Resident Coordinator in Colombo Subinay Nandy says since the end of the separatist war, “Sri Lanka has graduated from lower to middle income status.”

Still, despite strong health and education results, Sri Lanka struggles to provide gender equality in employment and political representation.

Referring to the MDG country report produced by the government, Nandy says, Sri Lanka, overall, is in a strong position. The good performance noted in the report has been sustained and Sri Lanka has already achieved many of the MDGs and is mostly on track to achieve the others, he said.

But the negatives are also many and varied.

The proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament “remains very low”; the number of HIV/AIDS cases, despite low prevalence, is gradually increasing; tuberculosis remains a public health problem; there has been an increase in the incidence of dengue fever; and Sri Lanka’s debt-services-to-exports ratio remains relatively high compared to other developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

The eight MDGs spelled out by the United Nations include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowering women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combatting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.

The targeted date to achieve these goals is 2015.

Senanayake told the CPD unemployment amongst women is more than twice as high as unemployment amongst men, while women migrant workers and women in the plantation and export processing sectors bring in significant foreign exchange earnings to the country.

However, a majority of women who participate in the labour force do so in the informal sector.

“This leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse during their course of employment. Women also bear primary responsibility for care work – which creates multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that limits the opportunities for their full integration into the workforce,” she said.

Sri Lanka recognises that inclusive development rests on ensuring equality of opportunity in work.

“As such, we are firmly committed to making the necessary legal and structural investments to bolster a decent work agenda in marginalised sectors,” she noted.

These investments demand a broader discussion on the value of female participation in development.

This includes the availability and promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights; robust mechanisms to prevent violence against women and girls; and strengthening measures to bring perpetrators of violence to justice.

These, she said, are critical in ensuring Sri Lanka’s ‘demographic dividend’ can be leveraged.

Meanwhile, the introduction of family planning services by the Family Planning Association was well integrated into maternal and child health services and later expanded to reduce the stigma surrounding contraception.

This strategy accounted for more than 80 percent decline in fertility, according to Senanayake.

Additionally, the government of Sri Lanka, through her Ministry, has introduced a scheme that provides a monthly nutritional supplement to all pregnant women in the country to reduce rates of anaemia, low birth weight and malnutrition – which affects both mother and baby.

Still, Sri Lanka faces the problem of unsafe abortions, unintended and teenage pregnancies, which pose significant challenges to the health and well-being of women and adolescents.

In this respect, she said, strengthening comprehensive reproductive education through school curriculum can help young people access accurate information on gender, sexuality, sexually transmitted infections including HIV and increase their awareness on the effective use of contraception.

Currently over 23.4 percent households are headed by women.

To combat these demographic pressures, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has set up a National Committee on Female-Headed Households and a National Centre for Female Headed Households – enabling female heads of households to integrate into the workforce and access sustainable livelihoods.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The UN Human Rights Office in Geneva Wednesday launched a major public online database, http://juris.ohchr.org, that contains all case laws issued by UN human rights expert committees and Treaty Bodies, according to a statement released here.

“The database is designed to be a key reference tool for scholars, lawyers, civil society organisations, governments and civil servants, our UN partners and the general public,” said Ibrahim Salama, Director of the UN Human Rights Treaties Division.

“Just as importantly, we hope it may help individuals who are preparing to submit complaints to the committees by giving them access to the views and decisions taken by the expert members on specific human rights issues.”

The database was developed using data from the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) of Utrecht University School of Law.

Since the mid-1990s, the SIM had developed a comprehensive record on the jurisprudence stemming from the decisions by four Treaty Bodies on complaints brought by individuals.

Over 20 years, academics compiled and indexed Treaty Bodies’ case law, making the SIM database the most authoritative online resource on this.

Due to budget restrictions, the SIM stopped updating the database from 1 January 2014 and took it offline on 1 January 2015. However, the SIM offered its data free of charge to the UN Human Rights Office, according to the press release.

“This allowed us to build our own database, with an expanded remit and search capability, and we aim to continue developing it. It is an important part of our efforts to make the work of the Treaty Bodies more visible and accessible, and we hope it will benefit a range of users all over the world,” said Salama.

There are 10 Treaty Bodies that review and monitor how States that have ratified a particular treaty are implementing the rights contained in it.

The eight committees listed below can also consider complaints by individuals who believe their rights have been violated and who have exhausted all legal steps in their own country.

The site http://juris.ohchr.org contains case law indexed by various categories, including State, date, subject and keywords, which can all be used as search criteria. Users can submit their comments on the functioning of the database as part of ongoing efforts to improve it.

*The Committees that can receive and consider individual complaints are:
• Human Rights Committee (CCPR)
• Committee against Torture (CAT)
• Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
• Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
• Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
• Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED)
• Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)
• Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

A new study has found that world’s governments are failing to provide adequate coverage for nature.

In 2010, the world’s governments committed to conserving 17% of land and 10% of sea by 2020, particularly those places of particular importance for nature. With five years to go to achieve this target, new research by 40 authors from 26 institutions led by BirdLife International, shows that the current Protected Areas system is still failing to cover all key sites, species and ecosystems.

“We carried out the most comprehensive analysis to date of how well Protected Areas cover nature. We analysed nearly 12,000 important sites, over 1,000 terrestrial and marine ecological regions and over 25,000 species of animals and plants, including the first assessment for marine species”, says Dr Stuart Butchart, BirdLife International’s Head of Science and lead author of the paper.

“The analysis also revealed that only one-fifth of key sites for nature are completely covered by protected areas, with one third lacking any protection”.

Furthermore, less than half of mammals, amphibians, mangroves and various marine groups have a sufficient proportion of their distributions covered by the current Protected Area network to be adequately conserved. Threatened species in these groups, plus birds and corals, are even less well-covered.

Achieving adequate coverage of nature to meet globally adopted targets would require twice the area of land as found in the current global Protected Area network.

“Challengingly, the largest increases in land needing to be set aside for conservation are located in poorer countries of the world, which makes considerations of the benefits from conservation especially relevant”, added co-author Dr Neil Burgess, Head of Science at the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

“Achieving this level of growth in protected lands and seas will require greater recognition and increased establishment of indigenous and community-conserved areas, private reserves, land trusts, and sustainably managed areas that provide conservation outcomes”, said Dr Thomas Brooks, Head of Science and Knowledge at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

“This study should be a wake-up call to governments and other conservationists across the world. Meeting the target will require accelerated recognition and designation of effective conservation areas that are much better targeted towards important sites for nature”, concluded Butchart.