Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin
UNITED NATIONS, May 20 2015 (IPS)

Seventy years ago, with the founding of the United Nations, all nations reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.

The commitment to fundamental human rights that was enshrined in the United Nations Charter and later in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights lives on today in many other treaties and agreements, including the Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development.There is a wealth of indisputable evidence that when sexual and reproductive health is integrated into broader economic and social development initiatives, it can have a positive multiplier effect on sustainable development and the well-being of entire nations.

The Programme of Action (PoA) , endorsed by 179 governments, articulated a bold new vision about the relationships between population, development and individual well-being.

And it was remarkable in its recognition that reproductive health and rights, as well as women’s empowerment and gender equality, are the foundation for economic and social development.

The PoA is also rooted in principles of human rights and respect for national sovereignty and various religious and cultural backgrounds. It is also based on the human right of individuals and couples to freely determine the number of their children and to have the information and means to do so.

Since it began operations 46 years ago, and guided by the PoA since 1994, the United Nations Population Fund has promoted dignity and individual rights, including reproductive rights.

Reproductive rights encompass freedoms and entitlements involving civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

The right to decide the number and spacing of children is integral to reproductive rights and to other basic human rights, including the right to health, particularly sexual and reproductive health, the right to privacy, the right to equality and non-discrimination and the right to liberty and the security of person.

Reproductive rights rest not only on the recognition of the right of couples and individuals to plan their families, but also on the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health.

The impact of the PoA has been nothing short of revolutionary for the hundreds of millions of women who have over the past 21 years gained the power and the means to avoid or delay a pregnancy.

The results of the rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health, including voluntary family planning, have been extraordinary. Millions more women have become empowered to have fewer children and to start their families later in life, giving them the opportunity to complete their schooling, earn a better living and rise out of poverty.

And now there is a wealth of indisputable evidence that when sexual and reproductive health is integrated into broader economic and social development initiatives, it can have a positive multiplier effect on sustainable development and the well-being of entire nations.

Recent research shows that investments in the human capital of young people, partly by ensuring their right to health, including sexual and reproductive health, can help nations with large youth populations realize a demographic dividend.

The dividend can help lift millions of people out of poverty and bolster economic growth and national development. If sub-Saharan Africa realized a demographic dividend on a scale realized by East Asia in the 1980s and 1990s, the region could experience an economic miracle of its own.

The principles of equality, inalienable rights, and dignity embodied in the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Programme of Action are relevant today, as the international community prepares to launch a 15-year global sustainable development initiative that builds on and advances the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals, which come to a close later this year.

The new Post-2015 Global Sustainable Development Agenda is founded on principles of equality, rights and dignity.

Upholding these principles and achieving each of the proposed 17 new Sustainable Development Goals require upholding reproductive rights and the right to health, including sexual and reproductive health.

Achieving the proposed goal to ensure healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages, for example, depends in part on whether individuals have the power and the means to prevent unintended pregnancy or a sexually transmitted infection, including HIV.

Human rights have guided the United Nations along the path to sustainability since the Organisation’s inception in 1945. Rights, including reproductive rights, have guided UNFPA along that same path for decades.

As we observe the 70th anniversary of the United Nations and look forward to the post-2015 development agenda, we must prioritise the promotion and protection of human rights and dignity for every person, for current and future generations, to create the future we want.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Fatema,15, sits on the bed at her home in Khulna, Bangladesh, in April 2014. Fatema was saved from being married a few weeks earlier. Local child protection committee members stopped the marriage with the help of law enforcement agencies. Credit: UNICEF

By A. D. McKenzie
LONDON, Jul 23 2014 (IPS)

Heightening their campaign to eradicate violence against women and girls, United Nations agencies and civil groups have called for increased action to end child marriage and female genital mutilation.

At the first Girl Summit in London Wednesday, hosted by the U.K. government and UNICEF, delegates said they wanted to send a strong message that there should be “zero tolerance” for these practices.

“Millions of young girls around the world are in danger of female genital mutilation and child marriage – and of losing their childhoods forever to these harmful practices,” Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection, told IPS.“Millions of young girls around the world are in danger of female genital mutilation and child marriage – and of losing their childhoods forever to these harmful practices” – Susan Bissell, UNICEF's Chief of Child Protection

“FGM is an excruciatingly painful and terrifying ordeal for young girls. The physical effects can last a lifetime, resulting in horrific infections, difficulty passing urine, infertility and even death.”

Bissell said that when a young girl is married “it tends to mark the end of her education and she’s more likely to have children when she’s still a child herself – with a much higher risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth”.

“Without firm and accelerated action now, hundreds of millions more girls will suffer permanent damage,” she added in an e-mail interview.

At the summit, the United Kingdom announced an FGM prevention programme, launched by the government’s Department of Health and the National Health Service (NHS) England. Backed by 1.4 million pounds, the programme is designed to improve the way in which the NHS tackles female genital mutilation and “clarify the role of health professionals which is to ‘care, protect, prevent’,” the government said.

According to British Prime Minister David Cameron, some 130,000 people are affected by FGM in the United Kingdom, with “60,000 girls under the age of 15 potentially at risk”, even though the practice is outlawed in the country.

The prevention programme will now make it mandatory for all “acute hospitals” to report the number of patients with FGM to the Department of Health on a monthly basis, as of September of this year.

U.N. officials said that the Girl Summit was a significant development because it marked the importance of the issues addressed.

“International leaders came together in one place and said enough is enough,” Bissell said.

While it is difficult to measure the impact of intensified campaigns on the reductions in child marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting over the past few years, the United Nations and other organisations have noted that the numbers of girls affected are in fact decreasing.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the percentage of women married before age 18 has dropped by about half, from 34 percent to 18 percent over the last three decades, UNICEF says.

In South Asia, the decline has been especially marked for marriages involving girls under age 15, dropping from 32 percent to 17 percent.

“The marriage of girls under age 18, however, is still commonplace,” Bissell told IPS.

“In Indonesia and Morocco, the risk of marrying before age 18 is less than half of what it was three decades ago. In Ethiopia, women aged 20 to 24 are marrying about three years later than their counterparts three decades ago,” she added.

Regarding female genital mutilation/cutting, Kenya and Tanzania have seen rates drop to one-third of their levels three decades ago through a combination of community activism and legislation, while in the Central African Republic, Iraq, Liberia and Nigeria, prevalence of FGM has dropped by as much as half, Bissell said.

However, officials stressed that with population growth, it is possible that progress in reducing child marriage will remain flat unless the commitments made at the Girl Summit are acted upon. Flat progress “isn’t good enough”, Bissell told IPS.

Recently released U.N. figures show that, despite the declines, child marriage is widespread, with more than 700 million women alive today who were married as children. UNICEF says that some 250 million women were married before the age of 15.

The highest percentage of these women can be found in South Asia, followed by East Asia and the Pacific which is home to 25 percent of girls and women married before the age of 18, UNICEF says.

Statistics also indicate that girls who marry before they turn 18 are less likely to remain in school and more likely to experience domestic violence. In addition, teenage mothers are more at risk from complications in pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s; some 70,000 adolescent girls die every year because of such complications, according to the United Nations.

The statistics on female genital mutilation are also cause for international concern, with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) saying that about 125 million girls and women have been subjected to the practice, which can lead to haemorrhage, infection, physical dysfunction, obstructed labour and death.

According to UNFPA, female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage are human rights violations that both help to perpetuate girls’ low status by impairing their health and long-term development.

UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin told IPS that a number of states have adopted legislation against female genital mutilation/cutting but that some perpetrators are still operating with “impunity”.

Participating in the London summit, Osotimehin said that certain governments were facing challenges within their own countries because of long-held cultural beliefs, but like Bissell, he said that the picture is not completely bleak, because civil society and grassroots organisations are amplifying their campaigns.

“Our message for girls who are affected by these practices is that they have support – moral, psychological, physical and emotional support,” he told IPS. “We also want to send a message that those who are affected should advocate to try and stop these practices.”

Meanwhile, U.N. officials said it was significant that the summit saw commitment from the African Union and the deputy prime Minister of Ethiopia, as well as from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.K. Department for International Development (DfID). The Government of Canada and several other financial supporters also made commitments.

For the executive director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the pledges show support for the message of “zero tolerance” of child marriage and FGM that her organisation wishes to send. They are also a strong signal that the practices can be ended in a generation, she told IPS.

Former child soliders in the DRC. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Babatunde Osotimehin and Zainab Bangura
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 2013 (IPS)

Imagine an orphanage where over 300 children born out of rape have been abandoned because of the shame and stigma associated with sexual violence. Imagine a town where, in the last year, 11 infants between the ages of six months and one year, and 59 small children from one to three years old, have been raped.

What does the future of these children hold? The story of sexual violence in conflict is as old as war itself. It knows no boundaries – location, ethnicity, religion, or age. We must be loud and clear: it will be prosecuted. It will be punished.

The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) know all too well the pain and suffering that comes with sexual violence.  According to a recent report by the Ministry of Gender, in 2012 alone there were 15,654 reported cases of sexual violence – a 52 percent increase from 2011.

Of these, 98 percent were perpetrated against females. In conflict-affected contexts in DRC, the average age of survivors is less than 21, with a third of all survivors falling between 12 and 17 years of age. In 2012, 82 percent of all survivors had not completed primary school.

These are not just abstract numbers; these are children born of rape who are abandoned, women and girls who struggle with the debilitating physical and emotional repercussions day in and day out, and men and boys who suffer in silence because of the shame and stigma associated with this crime. All survivors must access lifesaving services and all partners must come together not only to prevent future attacks, but also  to enable survivors to rebuild their lives.

But this conflict did not create the scourge of sexual violence we face in DRC today. The roots of such widespread and rampant violence – specifically women’s inequality and the abuse of power – have been there for centuries. In the DRC and worldwide, gender-based violence is the most pervasive, yet least reported, human rights abuse. Conflict brings violence, insecurity and an environment of impunity, which in turn exacerbates the prevalence of sexual violence.

To effectively eradicate conflict-related sexual violence we must redouble our efforts to promote women’s rights as human rights and create viable systems that will end impunity for perpetrators and send a strong message that this most extreme and pervasive abuse of power will not be tolerated. We must be loud and clear: it will be prosecuted. It will be punished.

Sexual violence in conflict settings, particularly in Eastern DRC, presents unique challenges,  According to the latest secretary-general’s report on sexual violence in conflict, there are more than 44 armed groups operating in Eastern DRC alone, some of which are from neighbouring countries.

Nearly all of these groups have been implicated in committing sexual violence crimes. Elements of the armed forces and police have also been accused of such crimes. In this context, engaging a wide variety of state and non-state actors and ensuring that sexual violence is not used as a tactic of war for military advantage or political gain, is particularly complex.

The economic and human costs of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence on communities and countries are tremendous. Its impact is devastating, including the loss of lives and livelihoods, rejection by families and communities, and serious, often life-threatening reproductive and mental health consequences. However, sexual violence is not inevitable.

The government of DRC has recognised the devastating consequences of this scourge and taken steps to change the narrative of sexual violence in the country.  In 2006, it passed a law broadening the definition of sexual violence and promoting stronger penalties for perpetrators, one of the most far-reaching laws of its type.

In 2009, the country developed the National Strategy on Gender-Based Violence, and in March 2013 the Government and the United Nations signed a Joint Communique, outlining concrete actions the government would take to eradicate these offences.

These are all steps in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. Laws need to be enforced and aggressors must be prosecuted and convicted. Building the rule of law in an immense territory where customary laws are, in many locations, the only recognised authority represents an enormous challenge for the legal organisations and stakeholders engaged in fighting the impunity of perpetrators of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence.

The country is not alone in this fight, however.  The United Nations system, including peacekeeping forces, also has a direct responsibility to support and enable national initiatives.

We undertook this joint mission to the DRC to deepen political commitment by enhancing the participation of democratic institutions, political leaders and civil society.

Together, our goal is to make sure that the commitments that have been made and the work that has been done by the government and the U.N. make a difference in the lives of the women, girls, boys and men who live in fear every day.

We commit ourselves, our teams and our organisations to work towards the elimination of sexual violence in the DRC. To make significant progress, we need the support of the international community, of the entire U.N. system and of the government. We also advocate for greater donor attention to support basic services for survivors of sexual violence, including education, accessible health care and commodities, safe shelter, livelihood and other psychosocial interventions.

The story of sexual violence in the DRC is far from over, but working together we can end what has long been called history’s greatest silence and write the final chapter on this dehumanising and degrading violation. Eliminating gender-based violence and empowering women and girls is at the heart of this country’s path to peace and development.

Babatunde Osotimehin is a United Nations Under-Secretary-General and the Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Zainab Bangura is a United Nations Under-Secretary-General and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

By Joan Erakit
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2013 (IPS)

On Thursday, the international community recognises World Population Day, a time of assessment, discussion and projections for the future that necessarily gives great weight to the rights of women and girls and particularly their sexual and reproductive health.

Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin. Credit: UNFPA

This past week, the Netherlands has been host to the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) where equality and the rights of every person have been highlighted.

“Women’s rights are human rights,” the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, told IPS. “I would hate an institution where we are now discriminating in terms of which rights are now for women and which rights are for men.”

According to Population Action International, a non-profit organisation geared towards making contraceptives accessible to all women all over the world, some 215 million women currently lack access to family planning.

This leads to unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, medical complications during birth and even death, not to mention the economic setbacks and educational detours that may accompany the raising of a child.

As the framework for the post-2015 development agenda is being prepared, it has become clear that human rights and sexual reproductive health are intertwined with economic growth and sustainable development.

IPS correspondent Joan Erakit spoke with Dr. Osotimehin about the challenges and opportunities facing women and girls when it comes to voluntary family planning, and protecting human rights in order to sustain the post-2015 Development Agenda.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: What is the relationship between sexual and reproductive health and human rights?

A: The best way to capture it is to come back to the ability of girls and women to exercise their basic human right of choice, and freedom to access education, to access services, to access opportunity. It also ensures that they can develop their full potential, and finally to make choices about how many children they want to have – if they want to have them – what’s the gap between the children they would like have, and do so without coercion from anybody.

Q: What happens to a woman when she is given the opportunity to decide when she wants to have kids?

A: What tends to happen from the experience and the research we have is that they tend to have as many children as they can afford to look after. And they also tend to have the children, given the interval, so that they can be healthy. And that has implications for contraception; so they must be able to access contraception to enable them to exercise that right to its fullest.

Q: Because economic growth and development are greatly connected to voluntary family planning, how do we show this kind of information to local communities and governments so that they can invest in family planning?

A: There are two approaches to it. The first approach is a short-term approach, which is to actually demonstrate that, from a service perspective, when you invest in family planning there is always a return on investment. For every dollar that you invest, there’s a minimum of three to six dollars return on the investment.

The long term is that the woman or the girl would be able to freely develop herself, access quality education, access skill development, be able to get a job, or start a business. Do something for herself that makes her economically viable and contribute to community in terms of development.

When a woman has access to contraception and she is able to develop her potential and she is able to have the number of children she can afford to have, the children tend to do better than the women who don’t have that access. We know for a fact that when you look at the metrics of it, girls who don’t go to school, when they have kids, the kids don’t do well. So, there is a cycle of poverty.

Once they go to school and they are older than 18, their children do better. What you are doing is ensuring that you have generations that are actually having access to several things, and in that sense building human capacity that drives economic growth.

Q: What are you looking to add to the post-2015 development framework in regards to the rights of women and girls?

A: The post-2015 development framework is one where we must assert the issues of reproductive human rights, and the fact that women and girls must be the centre of human development. If you don’t have human development and human capital development, it’s going to be difficult for you to have sustainable development.

Excerpt:

Every three years since 2007, a global advocacy organisation called Women Deliver has convened an international conference to talk about issues relating to the health and well-being of girls and women.

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, has been privileged to participate in these conferences, and looks forward to joining multilateral organisations, NGOs and global leaders for the third Women Deliver conference in Kuala Lumpur this weekend.

Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin. Credit: UNFPA

Our focus this year will be on two issues that affect not just women and girls, but development in general, because research shows that voluntary family planning and maternal health are two key vectors for lifting developing nations out of poverty.

We will unveil new initiatives for each and seek to galvanise the world community for both programmatic and financial support. UNFPA has promoted voluntary family planning since it began operations in 1969, and if we have learned anything in the decades since, it is that the ability of women to plan when and at what intervals they will have children is essential to national progress in everything from education to health to economic prosperity.

Equally important, we have learned that family planning is about more than just condoms and other family planning commodities. It’s about human rights, information and education.

At the Women Deliver conference, UNFPA will launch a new partnership with the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) to increase access to family planning in some of the world’s most hard-to-reach areas. In cooperation with IPPF, we will seek to galvanise political commitments from 13 nations with statistically low contraceptive prevalence rates in order to increase support for programmes to educate women and men about the benefits of family planning.

UNFPA’s second major initiative will actually take place in the days leading up to Women Deliver, when we will co-host a symposium on the crucial, frontline role midwives play in lowering maternal deaths, reducing disabilities related to childbirth, and improving overall national health indicators.

More than 230 midwives will be joined by leading U.N. agencies, civil society representatives, policy makers and officials from donor nations to discuss ways to increase the numbers and improve the skills of midwives in developing countries.

At the symposium, UNFPA, alongside its partners from Intel, the World Health Organization and Jhpiego, the NGO affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, will roll out a new online training module for frontline maternal health workers to help train them to deal with issues such as pre-eclampsia, excessive post-birth bleeding and prolonged and obstructed labour. These medical complications can be matters of life and death for women giving birth in the developing world, so this is a critically important initiative.

But it is clear that these family planning and maternal health initiatives will succeed only if they are embraced by government leaders in a position to fund and support them. And there are often obstacles to that embrace.

The first obstacle, of course, is money. Governments struggling to meet the basic needs of their citizens face severe competition for scarce resources. But family planning and maternal health are so critically important to long-term development that they should be among the top spending priorities for developing nations’ governments.

And because helping underdeveloped nations rise out of poverty is so vital to international security and the global economy, voluntary family planning and maternal health should be investment priorities for developed nations as well.

The second obstacle standing in the way of family planning initiatives, in particular, are some cultural practices. The sad fact is that some societies still deny the human rights of half of their populations in the name of cultural traditions that do physical, social and psychological damage to women and girls.

As UNFPA sees it, the time has long passed when men can or should be allowed to dictate the reproductive rights of women. Young girls should not be forced into marriage. Sex should always be un-coerced. And every woman should have the means to enjoy her human right and freedom to choose if or when she will have children, and how many she will have.

We will be raising these issues at Women Deliver in Kuala Lumpur, and I hope all who attend will come away from the conference with a re-energised commitment to the central role these issues play in humanity’s future and to address the challenges of family planning and maternal health forthrightly.

*Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin is a United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.

Today is International Women’s Day, and the issue of gender-based violence is topic A. Sadly, it has been a newsworthy topic in the global media, as well.

Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

However short the news cycle in this social media age, the world has certainly not forgotten the case of the 23-year-old physiotherapist who was brutally raped and murdered three months ago on a bus in Delhi, India. Although her name has been kept private, the horrible details of her victimisation have scalded the public consciousness and sparked outrage among people everywhere.

As the wheels of justice turn in Delhi, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, convening this week in New York, has listed violence against women as the lead topic at its annual conference. This issue has not been addressed as the main theme by the Commission for 13 years and is unlikely to be addressed again for another decade or more, so the timing, at least with regard to the tragic incident in India, is apt.

But the sad fact is that the issue of violence against women would be an appropriate topic at any time, in any year, because the problem has, to a large extent, been swept under the carpet in the nations of both the developed and the developing world.

In part, this is because women still do not enjoy full political and human rights in many societies, and in part it’s because we have too often allowed cultural norms and customs to serve as an excuse for violence against women.

The United Nations, as the world’s collective voice on these matters, must tackle the issue of gender-based violence head on. The time has long passed when men can or should be allowed to dictate the rights of women. Young girls should not be forced into marriage. And every woman should have the right to choose when and how many children she will have.

Finally, the U.N. must reaffirm that no cultural argument can ever justify violence against women.

The good news is that momentum is building for a strong statement by the Commission on the Status of Women. The challenge, then, will be to get the nations of the world to endorse the statement, and commit to the concrete actions it mandates.

Inevitably, there will be pushback from representatives of some of the United Nations Member States, who may argue that majority position on this critical issue does not accord with the religious or cultural values of their societies. But where violence against women is concerned, there can be no compromise. These women are our very wives, sisters, daughters and grand-daughters.

At UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, we have long advocated the human rights of women and girls, based on global conventions that these rights are fundamental and universal. To that end, we have supported programmes that seek to eliminate forced marriages, discourage adolescent pregnancy, put an end to harmful practices, such as female genital mutilation/cutting, and combat the scourge of violence against women.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, UNFPA is committed to strengthening and expanding its efforts to do everything it can to bring an end to gender-based violence. Gender-based violence remains a major health and human rights concern and no human development can be achieved fully as long as women and girls continue to suffer from violence or live in fear of it.

We will, therefore, support a strong statement from the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women, and we will urge its adoption by the Member States. The horrific rape and murder in Delhi should remind us that the women of the world cannot wait another decade for the international community to address this issue. The time to act is now.

*Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.

Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Marzieh Goudarzi
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7 2013 (IPS)

The fight against female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) continues to gain traction around the world.

On Wednesday, the United Nations observed the annual Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM/C, an act that is shocking and inhumane to much of the world but remains a tradition among a significant minority.

This year’s observance is particularly momentous after the General Assembly’s December 2012 unanimous adoption of the resolution on “Intensifying Global Efforts for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilations”, which U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin says “speaks volumes to the world’s commitment” and is “the greatest testimony to the work we do”.

An estimated 140 million women and girls in the world – 120 million concentrated in 29 African and Middle Eastern countries – are living with FGM/C, which, in addition to being excruciatingly painful, can result in infection, cysts, infertility, childbirth complications, and the need for corrective surgery.

IPS correspondent Marzieh Goudarzi spoke with Dr. Osotimehin on UNFPA’s role in the global fight against FMG/C. Excerpts follow.

Q: According to data from the World Health Organisation, FGM/C-affected communities exist in northern, northeastern, and western Africa and in some Middle Eastern and Asian countries. FGM/C is also practiced in immigrant communities from these countries living in other parts of the world. Are there common elements among these communities that allow FGM/C to continue?

A: It is difficult to find a common thread, but I would like to suggest that it is more cultural than anything else. I do not think it is religion. What UNFPA has done with our partner, UNICEF, is to engage communities across those regions that you mentioned and persuade them that FGM/C has no medical benefits at all and that, for a fact, it causes damage to women and girls physically, psychologically, and emotionally.

Q: Can you discuss some specific mechanisms employed by UNFPA and UNICEF to bring about change?

A: On the ground, community dialogue, making sure we connect directly to the community, and making sure we educate them about the harmful effects of FGM/C, are all crucial. We do this with community leaders, religious leaders, and the women, especially the elderly women, as well as the practitioners themselves, who are engaged in this practice. For some, it has been like this for generations so you have to try and shift them away from that sort of harmful tradition.

We are also encouraging them to abandon FGM/C and we see great success in that area. In fact, last year alone, a total of 1,775 communities across Africa publicly declared their commitment to end female genital mutilation and cutting. That was very gratifying. We have also worked in countries to put in place a legal system and laws to penalise the practice. Thirty-four African countries that have done this.

Q: To what extent does the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme for the Acceleration of the Abandonment of FGM/C work directly with local implementers on the ground in FGM/C-affected countries? Who are the key local implementers?

A: The truth of the matter is that we at UNFPA and UNICEF work in countries to provide assistance, support, and advocacy to governments and to civil society. So we see that “tripartite” as an essential to what we do. We don’t do it all by ourselves because of sustainability issues.

You have to build a whole army of stakeholders on the ground, particularly when you do community work, which will consist of local leaders and civil society, to be able to sustain the advocacy and to ensure that communities go forth from where they are now and are able to maintain that pattern.

Q: What is UNFPA/UNICEF’s strategy in approaching a sensitive issue like FGM/C, which communities see as rooted in cultural or religious tradition, and how do you engage communities and community leaders who hold these beliefs while actively working to abolish the practice of FGM/C?

A: We go into communities, first of all, to understand communities. UNFPA initiates community dialogue with interlocutors that have integrity within the community, with mutual respect from both sides, to understand why they do the things they do. We then explain to them that these are things we believe we have to let go because of their consequences, and demonstrate quite clearly to them why that is so.

It takes some time for them to change what has been a part of their culture for years and years. However, this can be done with persistent and continuous engagement, honesty of purpose, and the ability to generate “champions” on the ground who will impact their communities. This is the basis of our success on the ground.

Q: Recent data shows that since the establishment of the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme in 2008, nearly 10,000 communities in 15 countries, representing about eight million people, have renounced FGM/C. UNICEF data from 2012 shows that younger women and girls have lower rates of FGM/C than their older counterparts. Looking ahead, what has worked for the countries that are making progress and how will UNFPA and UNICEF continue their work on this issue?

A: Going forth, we want to continue to ensure that we build capacity on the ground, and also ensure that we identify real “champions” who will work on the ground. Sustainability of (the programme) is in community ownership… and in making sure we have data which is reliable, that enables us to track the progress we make and give us a better on handle on what we see.

We have trained about 88,000 health providers and established 15 medical and paramedical schools just to make sure that this is not something which is going to regress.

If the present trend continues, there will still be as many as 30 million girls below the age of 15 that will still be at risk. We need to continue to give visibility to the issue to ensure that we can avoid the unfortunate extent of girls being cut.

Excerpt:

"Sweet 16" marriages are a cause of controversy in Malawi. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 2012 (IPS)

The United Nations has launched a global campaign to abolish an anachronistic social practice still prevalent in some communities around the world: child marriages.

“International conventions declare that child marriage is a violation of human rights because it denies girls the right to decide when and with whom to marry,” says a new report released Thursday by the U.N.Population Fund (UNFPA).

The launch also marked the first International Day of the Girl Child – Oct. 11 – as designated by the 193-member General Assembly last year in order “to recognize girls’ rights and highlight the unique challenges girls face around the world”.

Over 67 million women, 20 to 24 years old in 2010, had been married as girls. Half were in Asia, one-fifth in Africa, the study said. And in the next decade, 14.2 million girls under 18 will be married every year.

If present trends continue, this will rise to an average of 15.1 million girls a year, starting in 2021 until 2030, according to the study titled “Marrying too Young: End Child Marriage”.

UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, who is highly critical of the practice, says he is determined to help abolish child marriages worldwide.

“No social, cultural or religious rationale for child marriage can possibly justify the damage these marriages do to young girls and their potential,” he said. “A girl should have the right to choose whom she marries and when. Since many parents and communities also want the very best for their daughters, we must work together to end child marriage”.

“It is the only course by which we can avert what otherwise is the human tragedy of child marriage,” he said.

Dr. Osotimehin also said that child marriage is an appalling violation of human rights and robs girls of their education, health and long-term prospects.

“Marriage for girls can lead to complications of pregnancy and childbirth – the main causes of death among 15-19-year-old girls in developing countries,” he added.

Dr. Osotimehin also expressed concern over the 14-year-old Pakistani school girl who was shot Wednesday for being an education rights campaigner in her home country.
The campaign to abolish child marriages has strong support from several U.N. agencies, including UN Women, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, and international human rights organisations such as Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage and Human Rights Watch.

Michelle Bachelet, executive director of UN Women, told IPS that UN Women welcomes the UNFPA report on child marriage.

“The report should be a wake-up call to all of us that we need to take strong action to end child marriage,” she said.

She said no girl should be robbed of her childhood, her education and health, and her aspirations.

“Yet today more than 14 million girls are denied their rights each year when they are married as child brides. UN Women calls on all governments and all people to stop child marriage and protect the rights of girls,” said Bachelet.

Anju Malhotra, of the Gender and Rights Section at UNICEF, said the International Day of the Girl Child readily reflects the need to put girls’ rights at the centre of development.

“The U.N. and partners are coming together to show the incredible progress made and to highlight the ongoing challenges,” she said.

In a statement released Thursday, UNICEF said in India, one of the countries in the world with the largest number of girls being married before their 18th birthday, child marriage has declined nationally and in nearly all states from 54 percent in 1992-1993 to 43 percent in 2007-2008, but the pace of change is slow.

Experiences in contexts as diverse as Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Ethiopia, India, Niger, Senegal and Somalia show how combining legal measures with support to communities, providing viable alternatives – especially schooling – and enabling communities to discuss and reach the explicit, collective decision to end child marriage yield positive results, UNICEF said.

In a report released Thursday, Human Rights Watch said it has documented human rights violations against married girls and boys in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iraq, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, South Sudan, and Yemen.

The testimonies of the children interviewed illustrate the profoundly detrimental impact of child marriage on their physical and mental well-being, education, and children’s ability to live free of violence.

The consequences of child marriage do not end when child brides reach adulthood, but often follow them throughout their lives as they struggle with the health effects of getting pregnant too young and too often, their lack of education and economic independence, domestic violence, and marital rape.

Asked it was fair – or unfair – to say that most child marriages take place in Muslim countries, Liesl Gerntholtz, director of the women’s right’s division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS, “It is very unfair to say this, as child marriage happens in many different communities, including Christian ones.”

To give a few examples, she said, in Burkino Faso, 48 percent of girls now between the ages of 20 and 24 were married before they reached 18; in Cameroon, the figure is 36 percent; in the Central African Republic it is 61 percent; and in the Democratic Republic of Congo is 39 percent.

“These are UNICEF figures, so they are as reliable as it is possible for them to be,” she said.

Meanwhile, the UNFPA announced it will invest an additional 20 million dollars over the next five years to reach “the most marginalized adolescent girls in 12 countries with high rates of child marriage”. The countries include Guatemala, India, Niger and Zambia.

“This investment will allow UNFPA to deliver more systematic and integrated programmes at scale to support married and unmarried girls aged 10-18 years that are at risk of dropping out of school, child marriage, and adolescent pregnancy,” said Dr. Osotimehin, UNFPA’s executive director.

The New York-based Ford Foundation also pitched in with a 25-million-dollar commitment to help end child marriages worldwide.