Part of a mural of bloody handprints, with the names of some of the women victims of femicide, during a demonstration in the Argentine capital held under the slogan #NiUnaMenos (Not One Woman Less). In Latin American societies, awareness of gender-based murders is growing, while new measures are being promoted to curb them. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Apr 4 2019 (IPS)

Several initiatives are seeking to strengthen the fight against femicides in Latin America, a region which, despite growing popular mobilisation and pioneering legislation against gender-based murders, still has the world’s worst rates in what has been described as a “silent genocide,” says U.N. Women.

“The normalisation of violence against women and girls, the lack of comprehensive and quality services that identify patterns of violence that could end in femicide, the lack of data and research without a gender perspective are common to all countries,” U.N. Women Regional Director Luiza Carvalho said, summing up the situation in Latin America, in an exclusive interview with IPS.

“Ending impunity is critical. There are countries in the region where up to 95 percent of all cases go unpunished,” Carvalho said from U.N. Women’s regional headquarters in Panama City."We must also place great emphasis on prevention because, even if we put all aggressors in jail, if we don't change the structural causes, attitudes and perceptions that give rise to violence against women, we will never put an end to the phenomenon." --Luiza Carvalho

One of the new strategies is the Spotlight Initiative, launched by the European Union and the United Nations for the elimination of femicide. Of an initial investment of 500 million euros (562 million dollars), 55 million euros will go to Latin America.

Spotlight addresses the phenomenon of gender-based killings holistically through six pillars: gender equality legislation, the strengthening of the institutional framework, primary prevention, quality services, data collection and the strengthening of the women’s movement.

The campaign launched in Argentina on Mar. 21 also includes El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, which was the first country where it was launched worldwide.

The selection of these countries, Carvalho explained, was based on factors such as the prevalence rate of femicide, the commitment of the authorities to implement national laws and policies to improve the situation of victims, and the strength of the country’s civil society movements.

In the case of Argentina, “the #NiUnaMenos (Not One Woman Less) movement drew attention to this phenomenon as an unacceptable situation, demonstrating that it has much to teach the region and the world,” noted the senior Brazilian official regarding the mass demonstrations against femicide that have spread to other countries in the region.

Since 1994, the region has had the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, adopted in the Brazilian city of Belém do Pará, Brazil, which formalised the definition of violence against women as a violation of their human rights.

This international instrument, signed by 32 countries, provided for the first time for the development of mechanisms to protect and defend women in the fight to eliminate violence against their physical, sexual and psychological integrity, in both the public and private spheres.

In 2013, it incorporated the crime of femicide.

According to Carvalho, the Convention made the region “a global pioneer in legislation on violence against women.”

Femicide has been incorporated into the criminal code in 12 countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Uruguay). Six others typify it in laws outside these codes (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela).

Luiza Carvalho, U.N. Women Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. Credit: UN Women

In addition, the 32 countries participating in the Convention have laws that protect the rights of women and girls who experience domestic or intra-family violence.

To advance these achievements, on Mar. 15, in Washington, DC, U.N. Women, the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the Committee of Experts of the Follow-up Mechanism of the Belem do Pará Convention (Mesecvi) officially launched an Inter-American Model Law on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of the Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls.

They also presented an Analysis of Legislation on Femicide in Latin America and the Caribbean and Inputs for a Model Law on this type of sexist or “machista” homicide.

The model law “seeks to serve as a basis for creating or updating legislation on the violent death of women in the region, as well as strengthening actions for prevention, protection, care, investigation, prosecution, sanction and integral reparation,” explained Carvalho.

A study by Small Arms Survey shows that Latin America has 14 of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world per 100,000 women, in a list headed by El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Carvalho attributed this to the lack of comprehensive measures, “which creates a gap between formal rights and women’s effective access to justice.”

“The Pará Convention was clear in pointing out that an integral view of violence against women is needed, that is to say, in addition to penalising it, States must develop actions for prevention, protection, investigation and reparation, both for the families of the victims and for the survivors,” she said.

But, she criticised, “the States do not have figures for reparations, for missing women, for genetic data that would enable the location of victims, or other mechanisms to make it possible to guarantee their rights.”

“We need comparative statistics to analyse and compare between countries what works and what doesn’t to eradicate femicide. When we have better statistics we can see the patterns and severity of the situation and formulate well-founded policies,” she said.

Mobilisations against male violence have taken to the streets of Latin America on the most diverse occasions, including the popular carnival parades in Brazil. In this comparsa of “Las carmelitas de Santa Teresa,” a traditional neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, a group represented this year’s femicides. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

In addition, according to the regional director of U.N. Women, the penal codes of the region continue to be “androcentric”, which translates into “an adverse normative context for the adequate classification of crimes involving specific forms of violence against women.”

This problem is aggravated, she said, by “a criminal doctrine that has not integrated a gender perspective and resists doing so.”

“When women are murdered, these cases should be investigated immediately under the presumption that the case is a femicide, as is the case in Mexico. Cases should be properly investigated without gender stereotypes and prejudices, and reparations should be made,” Carvalho urged.

According to Mesecvi, States Parties spend less than one percent of their total budgets on actions to combat gender-based violence.

“Comprehensive laws need budgets in order to be implemented,” Carvalho said.

“We must also place great emphasis on prevention because, even if we put all aggressors in jail, if we don’t change the structural causes, attitudes and perceptions that give rise to violence against women, we will never put an end to the phenomenon,” she added.

For Carvalho, “despite some promising changes, led by the region’s youth, social tolerance of violence against women and girls continues, and a shift in social norms is needed to address harmful masculine mentalities.”

The expert cited the example of Colombia, which in 2015 passed a law involving the educational system in prevention activities.

“Understanding that femicide is the ultimate act in a chain of violence against women means understanding that the health sector, social services, the police and the judicial system must work together,” she said.

In that respect, she mentioned “successful” projects such as one in Uruguay that brought together the courts, the police and the National Women’s Institute.

In a situation where a woman is at risk, a judge can order the abuser to wear an electronic ankle bracelet connected to a device that the at-risk woman carries with her. If the abuser approaches her, the ankle monitor automatically alerts the police. During the programme, both parties receive psychological support as well.

“So far, none of the women who form part of the programme have been murdered,” Carvalho said, with hope.

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the developing world. Recent legislation there that gives victims of domestic violence 10 days of paid leave, without having to present any documentation in support, has been praised across the globe.

The Domestic Violence – Victims’ Protection Bill was passed at the end of July with 63 to 57 votes and was launched by Green member of parliament Jan Logie.

“We were very happy to hear about the passage of legislation in New Zealand affording victims of domestic violence 10 days of paid leave and scheduled flexibility from their employment to leave their partners, find new homes and protect themselves and their children,” Kristine Lizdas, legal policy director at Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP), shared with IPS.

According to United Nations Women, 30 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner, and in some countries that number goes up to 70 percent.

“Such policy can contribute to and facilitate the exercise of the right of women who experience domestic violence in New Zealand to support, services and protection for themselves and for their children,” Juncal Plazaola, an expert on ending gender violence at U.N. Women, told IPS.

Back in 2004, the Philippines also passed the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004, which provided the same 10 days of paid leave to victims of domestic violence.

Civil society and law experts have analysed the benefits of this new policy, given that women who suffer from domestic violence underperform at work. In the United States, victims of domestic violence lose around 10 days of paid work every year, and they work 10 percent of hours less than those who do not suffer from abuse at home.

Plazaola, from U.N. Women, explained: “Women can be constantly harassed at work, delayed getting to work or prevented from going to work. This can lead to either quitting their job or being terminated.” Seeing these types of occurrences, it is vital to promote a corporate environment that takes this reality into account.

“Women who experience domestic violence have high rates of absenteeism at work and such a measure can support them keep their employment. This policy can therefore contribute to more job security, economic opportunities and independence and greater chances for abused women to abandon an abusive relationship,” Plazaola added.

Employment and labour attorney Mark I. Shickman, from Freeland Cooper & Foreman LLP, also expressed his agreement with the New Zealand policy: “Employers can allow time off to do what is necessary legally or medically without fear of adverse work consequence or lack of confidentiality.”

However, he did not idealise it.

“Employment accommodations won’t solve every problem, but they are a big help. Vulnerable survivors do not want to risk the work situation which is often their most secure environment, so knowing that they cannot be retaliated against or fired for the time they need to speak to law enforcement, or to counsellors, or to children/family agencies, etc., is a huge help,” Schickman said.

Regarding the risks of the policy—as it does not require the victim to justify in any way that she/he is being abused—all experts seemed optimistic. The risk of the company being subject to fraud by its employees are low.

“The benefits of the law far outweigh the risks involved. The prevalence of false reporting is historically hyperbolised in many contexts. Very few individuals will fraudulently assert that they are victims of domestic violence for the sole purpose of receiving paid leave days,” Lizdas, from BWJP, said.

Plazaola agreed with her by saying that this policy “will most probably contribute to more empowered and satisfied staff with higher productivity.” The issue, she claimed, is not fraud, as most cases are not reported; less than 40 percent of women who have been abused look for help.

“Reasons for this often include shame, as well as blame, from one-self and from others. Therefore, it is not expected that this type of measures will lead to an over- or mis-use of it,” she concluded.

For Lizdas, this kind of policy was a good way to avoid victims’ isolation: “If awareness of intimate partner violence pervades the private/corporate sectors, as well as employers more generally, and if employers are incentivised to identify and provide assistance to employees suspected of being victims of IPV, this should have the effect of reducing victims’ isolation.”

Isolation, an abusive relationship, and a lack of external help increase the risk of domestic violence; at least half of the women victims of homicide every year have been killed by their intimate partners. But homicide is the last step of a violent relationship.

“An abusive relationship doesn’t start with murder, but the abuse escalates and without timely intervention and support, the women may end up murdered,” Plazaola said.

Asked how to avoid this fatal ending, Plazaola was adamant: “We need  legislation and policies on femicide, as well as the tools to properly investigate and punish all forms of violence against women, including femicide. Ending impunity is critical.”

Lizdas agreed: “Reducing intimate partner homicide requires a commitment from a wide variety of social sectors – legal, medical, public health, education, social service, military, etc.”

However, in the U.S, there is another factor that plays into the numbers of female homicide—the easy access to guns. In 2015, 55 percent of the intimate partner homicides in the U.S. were by gun. Shickman warned IPS: “The first issue is getting guns out of the house.”

“Abused women are five times more likely to be killed if the abuser has a gun,” he added.

For Plazaola, the solution to end, or at least reduce, the number of fatal victims on the hands of an intimate partner lies within the whole society.

“Understanding that femicide is the ultimate act in a chain of acts of violence against women, means understanding that health sector, social services, the police and the justice sectors must work together,” she said.

“Having policies that recognise the rights of abused women to protection as well as to other measures that will help them deal with the consequences and harm of this violence, can help us all have a better understanding of their realities, and can contribute to questioning the blaming and shaming too often associated with it.”

Kaillana de Oliveira Donato, 14, plays basketball in the Olympic Villa in Mangueira, a poor neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro, and participates in U.N. Women’s “One Win Leads to Another” programme. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 12 2016 (IPS)

At the age of 14, Kaillana de Oliveira of Brazil knows she won’t be as tall as most professional basketball players, because of family genetics. But she is not letting that get in the way of her dream of standing out in the sport.

“I’m point guard, and you don’t have to be so tall for that position,” Oliveira, a student at the Olympic Villa – a multi-purpose sports complex – in the poor Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood of Mangueira, told IPS.

That public sports facility produced three of the players on Brazil’s women’s national basketball team, which is competing in the Aug. 5-22 Rio 2016 Olympics.

Oliveira trains at least four days a week, “for three hours, sometimes more.” She gets up at 5 AM to attend a school in a distant neighbourhood, which offered her a scholarship as a promising young athlete. She is disciplined and is in bed by 9 PM.

Oliveira has participated in many tournaments for girls. “Basketball is a fast, dynamic contact sport,” she said. That’s why she chose it five years ago, from the various sports she tried in a complex near the Mangueira “favela” or shantytown, where she lives.

Her family supported her choice, but she faces prejudice among her classmates. “They say it’s for lesbians,” she said.

“I want to be a good player; if I don’t make it, I’ll be a lawyer,” Oliveira told IPS in a conversation on the basketball court where she trains.

She participates in the programme “One Win Leads to Another”, an initiative of U.N. Women and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) aimed at empowering girls through sports, as a legacy of the first Olympic Games to be held in South America.

The programme, based on the Dutch NGO Women Win, includes weekly workshops on issues like self-esteem, leadership, sexual rights, violence and financial planning, as well as sports activities.

It began in Rio de Janeiro and until 2017 will function as a pilot project, with the goal of boosting the autonomy and self-confidence of 2,500 girls between the ages of 10 and 18, as well as 300 adolescent mothers who have dropped out of school.

The activities are held in 16 multi-sports complexes called Olympic Villas that the city government has set up in poor neighbourhoods.

The programme will later be adapted to local conditions and expanded to other cities around Brazil and Latin America.

Kaillana de Oliveira Donato, Marcelly de Mendonça and Adrielle da Silva are active in the U.N. Women’s and International Olympic Committee’s “One Win Leads to Another” programme, standing next to Juliana Azevedo, a vice president in Procter & Gamble, another partner in the initiative, during the presentation of the programme in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Women Win, a U.N. Women partner, developed the original programme, which has already been implemented in 25 countries.

A survey found that of 217,000 participants, the proportion of girls who saw themselves as leaders increased from 46 to 89 percent, and the proportion of those who know how to avoid getting pregnant or catching a sexually transmitted disease rose threefold, to 79 and 77 percent, respectively.

The initiative also seeks to expand access among teenage girls to the benefits of sports. Around the world, 49 percent of girls quit practicing sports when they hit puberty – six times the proportion for boys, which aggravates gender inequality, according to U.N. Women.

“The power of sport should never be underestimated. It can change lives, through increasing girls’ and young women’s beliefs in their own abilities, encouraging them to take initiative and aim high,” U.N. Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said at the Aug. 6 presentation of “One Win Leads to Another” in Rio de Janeiro.

One of the big challenges the programme has taken on “is leveling the playing field for men and women,” the representative of U.N. Women in Brazil, Nadine Gasman, told IPS. “In the Rio Olympic games, women make up 46 percent of the competitors, and there are no sports that do not include women, but the difference in resources is appalling.”

“Ten national Olympic committees include no women, and very few are on the International Olympic Committee,” which means they have less of an influence on sports, she said. “Women are also less visible on TV sports channels, where the broadcasting of men’s sports wins 10 to one, with the exception of the Olympics.”

The history of the Olympic Games reflects women’s struggle for inclusion. Women were absent from the first modern-era edition, in 1896 in Athens. In the next Games, in Paris in 1900, the only women’s sports were tennis and golf, and women made up just 2.2 percent of the total number of participants – 22 out of 997.

The proportion only climbed above 10 percent after 1952, growing to 44.2 percent in 2012, after women’s boxing was finally accepted as an Olympic sport.

But inequality persists. The funds earmarked by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) for the national teams that participated in the men’s 2014 World Cup, also hosted by Brazil, were 40 times greater than the amount that went to the 2015 Women’s World Cup, Gasman pointed out.

Teenage basketball players training in an Olympic Villa, one of the sports complexes created by the Rio de Janeiro city government, in the “favela” or shantytown of Mangueira, close to the installations where the Olympic Games are being held. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The women’s winning team’s prize was smaller than the amount that went to the team that came in last in the FIFA World Cup, reflecting the discrimination still suffered by women athletes, she added.

But in the Olympics, the imbalance is being reduced more quickly. In 1995 the Women in Sport Commission was created in the IOC, to advise the executive board and president on how to expand women’s participation in decision-making and how to develop and implement the IOC women and sports policy.

Since 2004, women have served as vice president of the IOC, and since March this year, at least one-third of the members of the IOC working groups are women.

But cultural and social prejudice continues to hinder progress towards gender equality in the practice and administration of sports.

Adolescence is a critical period of physical changes and peer pressure. That is why it is essential to intervene at that time, as “One Win Leads to Another” does, “to keep girls in sports, which helps them prepare for life at the same time,” said Gasman.

In Brazil, the rate at which girls drop out of sports at puberty is lower than the international average reported by U.N. Women and the IOC, but it is still worrisome.

A survey carried out by the Ministry of Sports in 2013 found that 34.8 percent of girls quit sports before the age of 15, compared to 19.3 percent of boys.

But this is not true in Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Villa sports complexes. “We have more girls than boys, and they stay throughout adolescence. But they prefer ballet, jazz or rhythmic gymnastics,” said Norma Marinho, a social assistant at the Miécimo da Silva Sports Centre in Campo Grande, a huge working class neighborhood west of Rio de Janeiro.

The idea that certain sports are for boys keeps girls away from track and field and many other disciplines. “They crowd into ballet classes, even if the teacher is a man,” said Marilda Veloso, who teaches handball at the sports complex, where 13,000 students and other people are active in 28 different sports.

Factors that lead girls to drop out are “embarrassment about their bodies, household chores, and prejudices,” although fewer are quitting these days, Veloso, who has worked at the sports centre for 30 years, told IPS.

The first day of the “Women and Social Inclusion: From Beijing to Post-2015” global conference, Wednesday May 6, in the Palacio San Martín, the seat of Argentina’s Foreign Ministry. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, May 8 2015 (IPS)

Although they do not specifically target women, social policies like family allowances and pensions have improved the lives of women in Latin America, the region that has made the biggest strides so far this century in terms of gender equality, although there is still a long way to go.

Luiza Carvalho of Brazil, U.N. Women’s regional director for the Americas and the Caribbean, said that can be seen in each report by her agency.

“It’s interesting to note that of all of the world’s regions, Latin America has in fact shown the greatest progress,” Carvalho said in an interview with IPS during the global conference “Women and Social Inclusion: From Beijing to Post-2015”, held in the Argentine capital from Wednesday May 6 to Friday May 8.

The advances made in Latin America, Carvalho said, “were not so much a result of economic policies; on the contrary, they were the result of social policies, which although not necessarily specifically aimed at women, ended up benefiting them a great deal, directly and indirectly.”“Women depend on a web of social and economic policies…All policies, on the various levels, influence women and can improve or aggravate gender inequality. -- Luiza Carvalho

Latin America’s successful cash transfer programmes include Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, Argentina’s Universal Child Allowance, Ecuador’s Human Development Bonus and Mexico’s Prospera.

Other measures that have had a positive impact were the improvement of the minimum wage, which did not include a gender perspective but benefited women, who are disproportionately paid low wages. That bolstered their purchasing power and as a result their decision-making capacity and “their control over some domestic matters,” Carvalho said.

The same was true of initiatives aimed at protecting informal sector workers, and the creation of non-contributory pensions, among which Carvalho mentioned those of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico.

As a result of the various cash transfer programmes, “there is no doubt that extreme poverty was reduced throughout Latin America,” she said. “With improved buying power, a higher minimum wage, and the expansion of non-contributory pensions there was also a significant modification in gender inequality.”

But she argued that these programmes have a handicap: they put an emphasis on the responsibility of women as mothers.

“The conditions set are for women,” she said. “Women have to help children stay in school, women have to get their children vaccinated. And those conditions do not reinforce a more responsible role for men in child-rearing.”

“If we want to go beyond these achievements, policies should be focalised,” said Jessica Faieta, the U.N. Development Programme’s regional director, referring to what she called “second-generation social policies.”

“These should be policies directly targeting the inclusion of women in development gains, which have not reached everyone,” Faieta told IPS.

She said women – especially rural, indigenous and black women – stood out among the “excluded groups”.

Faieta stressed that inclusion of women has a positive impact on poverty eradication.

For her part, Carvalho described it as a “virtuous circle” of development.

Faieta said: “It has been proven that including women brings broader returns. Employing more women and paying them more equal wages has benefits that go beyond women, to their families.”

“Latin America understands that clearly. So much that we are seeing the expansion of these programmes in Africa and their introduction in Asia, which are replicating Latin America’s positive experiences,” said Carvalho. To shore up that process, the UNDP and Brazil’s Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) are currently working on systematising the regional initiatives.

“There is a very significant possibility of South-South cooperation,” Faieta said.

Prominent participants at the opening day of the global conference in Buenos Aires included U.N. Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka of South Africa and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark of New Zealand.

The meeting organised by the UNDP, U.N. Women and the Argentine government drew delegates from different regions, to reflect on persistent and new challenges facing girls and women living in poverty around the world, 20 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

Among the challenges seen at a regional level, Carvalho mentioned the still-high maternal mortality rates, violence against women, and its most serious expression: femicide or misogynist or gender-related murders.

“Of the 28 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world, 14 are in our region,” she pointed out.

She attributed that phenomenon to “the failure of governments to respond with prevention measures, an entrenched ‘machista’ culture, a view of women as property or as part of a man’s private collection, and legal questions that block women’s access to land or credit.”

“Economic empowerment of women” is another pending challenge in Latin America, Faieta said. Despite the advances made in the region, “women still suffer the most from unemployment. And women are still paid less for the same work,” she pointed out.

Nevertheless, the report “Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights”, launched Apr. 27 by U.N. Women, reflects the progress made, stating that between 1990 and 2013, the biggest increase in women’s participation in the labour market occurred in Latin America.

During that period, their participation rose from 40 to 54 percent – although it remained far below men’s participation, which stood at 80 percent.

With respect to the persistent gender pay gap: the report adds that while women earn on average 24 percent less than men globally, in Latin America and the Caribbean the figure is 19 percent.

And in all Latin American countries that carry out time use surveys, women dedicate two to five times as much time as men to unremunerated work.

Other achievements were the political inclusion of women, in the region with the largest number of female heads of state and government.

Eleven countries passed laws establishing quotas for women’s political participation; 26.4 percent of lawmakers are women; and on average 22.4 percent of government ministers are women – the highest proportion of all regions, although still not high enough for an inclusive democracy, Faieta said.

“It is clear that conditional cash transfers won’t fix everything,” Carvalho clarified. “For that reason other policies must also be implemented.”

That includes specific gender policies as well as macroeconomic, fiscal and monetary policies.

Carvalho criticised cuts in social programmes “that affect society as a whole but especially women because they undermine education and health policies, and others that increase their domestic burden.”

“Women depend on a web of social and economic policies…All policies, on the various levels, influence women and can improve or aggravate gender inequality,” she said.

“There can be no gender equality without justice, inclusion, growth and social development,” said Argentina’s minister of social development, Alicia Kirchner, during the conference opening ceremony.

Clark, the UNDP chief, said that in the global Post-2015 development agenda, to be defined in December, it is essential to guarantee that all policies contain a gender perspective.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

British actor and U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson (left) speaking at the United Nations in September 2014. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 2015 (IPS)

Two hundred million fewer women have access to the internet than men, according to a report released Monday.

The report published by No Ceilings also said an estimated 300 million fewer women than men own a mobile phone, with these gaps primarily concentrated in developing countries.

Women’s participation and safety online was a popular topic on the first day of the 59th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations.

The 2015 CSW also coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing+20), the historic agenda for women’s empowerment. Women’s participation in media and new communication technologies is covered under Section J of the Platform.

Discussions at the CSW covered both the positive and negative impact of information communication technology on progress towards gender equality.

Jan Moolman, Senior Coordinator of the Association for Progressive Communications spoke about how women have achieved empowerment by using the internet.

She said new media helped individuals to construct and represent themselves online. She also said new media offered women “opportunities for movement building” and the “opportunity to leap over many kinds of barriers.”

Moolman added that threats against women online needed to be treated as a freedom of information issue, because they were used to try to silence women when they spoke up on gender equality.

“If we have 52% of the population unable to express themselves freely that is a freedom of expression issue,” Moolman said.

U.N. Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) are also increasingly using new media with their campaigns. For example through social media campaigns such as HeForShe, infographics and a new monitor of countries which have committed to step-it-up for gender equality.

Speaking about the HeForShe campaign at Facebook Headquarters in London yesterday, U.N. Women Global Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson spoke about how she herself had received threats after speaking out on gender equality.

“The minute I stepped up and talked about women’s rights I was immediately threatened, I mean, within less than 12 hours I was receiving threats.”

A website was set up with a countdown threatening to release nude photographs of the British actor. Watson said that she knew the website was a hoax, but that the experience helped her friends and family see the need for progress on gender equality.

“I think it was just a wake up call that this is a real thing that’s really happening now, women are receiving threats in all sorts of different forms,” she said.

Watson also said that the threats helped convince her of the importance of campaigning for gender equality.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet during the closing ceremony of the international meeting “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”. On the podium, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Credit: Government of Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Mar 3 2015 (IPS)

Women leaders from every continent, brought together by U.N. Women and the Chilean government, demanded that gender equality be a cross-cutting target in the post-2015 development agenda. Only that way, they say, can the enormous inequality gap that still affects women and children around the world be closed.

“We celebrate that there has been progress in these last twenty years (since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing) in this area…and the evidence is all the people around who came, shared their experiences, the good, the bad, the struggle ahead, the challenges ahead,” U.N. Women Deputy Executive Director Lakshmi Puri told IPS.

And while “some countries have made no progress at all, some countries, some progress, and some countries better progress, no country has reached what we should need to reach,” she added.“At the current pace of change, it will take 81 years to achieve gender parity in the workplace, more than 75 years to reach equal remuneration between men and women for work of equal value, and more than 30 years to reach gender balance in decision-making.” – Santiago Call to Action

“If you’re talking about poverty, you need voice, participation and leadership for women, if you’re talking about economy, you need voice and participation, if you’re talking education, you need women – both education for voice, participation and leadership, capacity-building, and you need them to be leaders in education,” she said.

“Similarly health: you want women leaders in the health sector. Just as they need to have a voice in the design of the health sector and services,” said Puri, from India. “Women in the media is another critical area – you need voice, participation and leadership for women in the media, otherwise you will never get past the inequality and the negative stereotyping of women and their role in the media.”

The high-level event, “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”, held Feb.27-28 in the Chilean capital, assessed the advances made towards gender equality in the last 20 years and what still needs to be done.

One example raised at the meeting was the failure to reach the goal on gender balance in leadership positions.

The participants also discussed the route forward, towards the Sustainable Development Goals, for the period 2015-2030, designed to close gaps, build more resilient societies, and move towards sustainable prosperity for all.

The SDGs will replace the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set out the international community’s collective development and anti-poverty targets for the 2000-2015 period.

The women leaders meeting in Santiago demanded that gender equality be mainstreamed into the 17 projected SDGs to prevent the progress from being slow and uneven, as it has been in the last 20 years in the case of the Beijing Platform for Action agreed at the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995.

U.N. Women Deputy Executive Director Lakshmi Puri at the high-level international event “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”, held Feb. 27-28 in Santiago, Chile. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

“At the current pace of change, it will take 81 years to achieve gender parity in the workplace, more than 75 years to reach equal remuneration between men and women for work of equal value, and more than 30 years to reach gender balance in decision-making,” reads the Call to Action document produced by the conference in Santiago, part of the activities marking the 20 years since Beijing.

Puri pointed out that in the future SDGs, number five will promote “gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.”

But she said it is equally important for “the other SDGS to have gender-sensitive targets and indicators that capture on one hand the impacts and needs of women, and that also capture the agency of women,” she said.

“How can you get health for all without health for women and by women and for women; similarly how can you get education for all, and sustainable energy for all. So all of those SDGs are intimately related to this, to the realisation and achievement of the gender equality goal.”

“I was looking at an IPS article about the gender goal which said it is not a wish-list but a to-do list, so then I used it for the call to action (in Santiago),” she said.

The Santiago call to action calls for a renewed political commitment to close remaining gaps and to guarantee full implementation of the 12 critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action by 2020.

This includes balanced representation of women and men in all international decision-making processes, including the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the SDGs, financing for development and climate change processes.

It also includes the empowerment of women, the realisation of human rights of women and girls, and an end to gender inequality by 2030 and to the funding gap on gender equality, as well as the matching of commitments with means of implementation.

The executive director of Oxfam International, Winnie Byanyima of Uganda, told IPS that in the post-2015 agenda, “gender equality should be measured in all the goals, in other words, each goal must be measured for how it is achieved for men and for women, in different ethnic groups, in cities, in rural areas….so that we will know that each sustainable development goal has been achieved not only for men but also for women, not only for boys but also for girls, rather than averages.”

She stressed that “the technical groups working within…the United Nations must make sure that they select standards and indicators that are going to be measurable in a gender disaggregated way so that all countries are able to collect gender disaggregated data to enable monitoring progress for men and women.”

In the conference’s closing event, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said that “for those of us who have taken part in this gathering, it is not possible to think of a successful development agenda that does not have at its heart the central aim of achieving equality between boys and girls, and men and women.”

“We need the banner of equality to wave soon in all nations, and we must be optimistic, because we have a real possibility to make every place on earth more humane, more just, more dignified, for each person who lives there,” she said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Group photo at the high-level international meeting on Women in Power held Feb. 27-28 in Santiago, Chile, which analysed the human rights of women, as part of the major events held worldwide 20 years after the World Conference on Women in Beijing. Credit: Ximena Castro/Government of Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Mar 2 2015 (IPS)

Women’s participation in decision-making is highly beneficial and their role in designing and applying public policies has a positive impact on people’s lives, women leaders and experts from around the world stressed at a high-level meeting in the capital of Chile.

“It is not about men against women, but there is evidence to show through research that when you have more women in public decision-making, you get policies that benefit women, children and families in general,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, told IPS.

“So women tend, when they’re in parliament, for example, to promote women’s rights legislation. When women are in sufficient numbers in parliaments they also promote children’s rights and they tend to speak up more for the interests of communities, local communities, because of their close involvement in community life,” she added.

Byanyima, from Uganda, is one of the more than 60 women leaders and government officials who met Friday Feb. 27 and Saturday Feb. 28 at the meeting “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”, organised by U.N. Women and the Chilean government in Santiago.“There is already enough evidence in the world to show the positive impact of women's leadership. Women have successfully built and run countries and cities, economies and formidable institutions.” -- Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The conference was led by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who was the first executive director of U.N. Women (2010-2013), and her successor, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka of South Africa. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also took part in the inauguration of the event.

The meeting kicked off the activities marking the 20th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in September 1995 in the Chinese capital, where 189 governments signed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which contained a package of measures to bolster gender equity and women’s empowerment.

Two decades later, defenders of the human rights of women recognise that progress has been made, although they say it has been slower and more limited than what was promised in the action plan.

In terms of women’s access to decision-making, representation remains low.

In 1995, women accounted for 11.3 percent of the world’s legislators, and only the parliaments of Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden had more than 30 percent women. And only three women were heads of state and seven were heads of government.

Today, women represent 21.9 percent of parliamentarians globally, and 39 lower houses of Congress around the world are made up of at least 30 percent women. In addition, 10 women are heads of state and 15 are heads of government.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, one of every four legislators is a woman, and in the last 23 years, six women were elected president of their countries, four of them in the last decade. And three of them were reelected.

In March 2014 Bachelet took office for a second time, after her first term of president of Chile in 2006-2010. In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff began her second consecutive term on Jan. 1. And in Argentina, Cristina Fernández has been president since 2007, and was reelected in 2011.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, during her participation in the high-level event “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”,in Santiago, Chile. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

“Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world” was attended by a number of high-level women leaders, such as Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaité, First Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia Vesna Pusic, several vice presidents, and ministers from around the world.

Speakers mentioned achievements as well as multiple political, cultural, social and economic barriers that continue to stand in the way of women’s access to positions of power.

There are still countries that have not made progress, said Byanyima, of Oxfam, one of the world’s leading humanitarian organisations.

Tarcila Rivera, a Peruvian journalist and activist for the rights of indigenous women, told IPS that when assessing the progress made in the last two decades, “it should be made clear that we have advanced but have only closed some gaps.”

Rivera, the founder of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Cultures of Peru, said the progress made has been uneven for native and non-native women, while there are continuing gaps in education, participation, violence and economic empowerment.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), one of every two women in the region is outside the labour market, and one of every three does not have her own income, while only one of every 10 men is in that position.

Another study by the United Nations regional body concluded that if women had the same access to employment as men, poverty would shrink between one and 14 percentage points in the countries of Latin America.

“There is already enough evidence in the world to show the positive impact of women’s leadership,” said Mlambo-Ngcuka, who prior to heading U.N. Women served as South Africa’s first female vice president (2005-2008).

“Women have successfully built and run countries and cities, economies and formidable institutions,” she added.

But she said “We know that this is not happening enough, and we know that there can be both overt and subtle resistance to women’s leadership. We also know the devastating impact of leaving things as they are. We know that for women’s leadership to thrive, and for change to happen, all of us need greater courage and decisiveness.

“According to available data, it will be some 50 years before gender parity is reached in politics. Unless political parties take bolder steps,” she said.

Mlambo-Ngcuka recounted that during a Thursday Feb. 26 meeting with Chilean civil society representatives she called on a pregnant woman set to give birth in six weeks.

“I reminded everyone that her unborn daughter will be 50 before her world offers equal political opportunity. And that baby will be 80 before she has equal economic opportunity.”

According to the female leaders and experts meeting in Santiago, change cannot continue to be the sole responsibility of civil society groups that defend the rights of women, but requires action by the authorities and those in power – both men and women.

“The heirs of Beijing are the heirs of voices that call on us and urge us to put equality on the political agenda,” said Alicia Bárcena of Mexico, the executive secretary of ECLAC.

“Twenty years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, women know what is needed to reach gender equality. Now it is time to act,” she said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Panelists at the Gender and Climate Change workshop held Nov. 12 at the COP19 in Warsaw. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

By Silvia Giannelli
WARSAW, Nov 18 2013 (IPS)

Tuesday was Gender Day at the COP19 climate summit in Warsaw, and many of the events that took place in the National Stadium focused on the topic of gender and its relation with climate change, and tried to shed a light on problems that require action from policy-makers.

The day opened with the launch of the Environmental Gender Index (EGI), a project of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Lorena Aguilar, IUCN senior gender adviser, explained it to IPS.

“The EGI is the first index of its kind, bringing together measurements of gender and environmental governance; 72 countries have been rated for six different variables, with each one of its indicators,” Aguilar said at the COP19 United Nations Climate Change Conference running Nov. 11-22 in the Polish capital.

The 72 countries were ranked according to their performance in livelihood, gender rights and participation, governance, gender education and assets, ecosystem and country-reported activities. Each of the variables contains a set of indicators to better define their scope.

For example, the ‘gender rights and participation’ variable looks at whether women enjoy equal legal rights, property rights and balanced representation in the decision-making processes.

The first outcome of this extensive research that should be stressed is that in many cases the highest-income group of countries – the 34-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – recorded rather poor performances in reporting about gender, environment and sustainable development.

This might be due to the “perception that gender equality has already been achieved throughout all spheres in the country, including the environmental sector,” but also to a lack of political will, the report observes.

The top three performers in country-reporting to the Rio Conventions on biodiversity, climate change and desertification and the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) are India, Kenya and Ghana, while “at the lower end of the scores, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Italy do not address gender in any of their latest three Rio Convention reports,” the IUCN study says.

Yet, poverty still goes hand in hand with gender inequality, when it comes to environmental issues as well. This translates into an index that sees the first positions all occupied by OECD countries, with Iceland, Netherlands and Norway in the top three, and Italy closing the list in the 16th position.

Latin American and Caribbean countries appear in the middle of the ranking, with the exception of Panama being among the strongest performers, right after Italy and followed by South Africa. Eurasian countries are also all ranked as moderate performers, with the best being Romania in the 22nd position and the last Uzbekistan in the 39th.

The list of weakest performers is occupied mainly by MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries, with Yemen second to last in the overall ranking; Asian countries, among which India ranks 46th and Pakistan last of the continent in 67th position; and African countries, which account for most of the weakest performers, closing the table with the Democratic Republic of Congo as the worst performer of the sample.

Gender advocates here at the COP also seem to confirm what the ranking shows. It is in the poorest countries that climate change effects have the most different impacts on men and women.

“Because of the socially constructed roles, women in Uganda are culturally required to provide food, cultivate food, prepare it and serve it to their families,” explains Gertrude Kenyangi from Support for Women in Agriculture and Environment (SWAGEN) in Uganda.

“Food, energy and water are interconnected, and if you don’t have these three things, which are made even scarcer by climate change, then you won’t be able to fulfil your role, and that alone will create problems between you and your husband, it will probably make your children destitute, and it will affect your entire livelihood.”

Kenyangi escaped that same fate thanks to an educational programme.

“I myself come from a forest-dependent community, but I broke out of that cycle. I happened to be connected with some religious organisations that sponsored my education.” And this is how, after her studies, she founded SWAGEN, a network of grassroots women community-based organisations.

Grassroots movements are paramount to connecting vulnerable people to the governance level, “but you need to make a deliberate effort to reach out to them,” Kenyangi told IPS.

“For instance, Women in Europe for a Common Future (WESC) is a platform that brought me into the debate, so I can bring in the grassroots dimension. Without their support I wouldn’t have the money to come on my own, I couldn’t afford the ticket, the accommodation, not even the registration to this event.

“That’s what changes the vicious cycle – if somebody intervenes from the outside, appreciating that we are all living on this planet and have just one planet,” she said.

Despite the name, WECF’s reach goes way beyond Europe, connecting more than 150 organisations and communities all over the world with the aim of influencing gender-sensitive environmental policies at the international level.

What they want to remind policy-makers of is that climate change is caused by life’s day-to-day decisions and has an impact on everybody’s daily life. But because women and men often have different lifestyles, their activities have a different impact on the environment.

While from a Western point of view it might be hard to imagine how climate change effects can have a different impact on men and women, in many parts of the world, such as areas where subsistence farming is carried out by women, the relationship becomes clearer.

Maira Zahur is part of the GenderCC delegation here at the COP, but back home she works on the policy level with the Pakistani government as an expert on disaster risk reduction.

“In simple terms, I advise them on how to use certain policies on the ground, how they can benefit women, how they should be revised, edited or extended, and how they can be taken to the grassroots level, explaining to people what things are there for their benefit,” she told IPS.

Recently, U.N. Women carried out a study on flood early warning systems in Pakistan, looking at different aspects, such as the social composition in the different areas, whether men are based in such areas or are working outside, how women make decisions if there are no men in the home, whether they are able to make their own choices in case of a flood warning or are dependent on males in the home or in the streets.

The study reported that “hesitation about taking women and girls out of the protected environment of homes” was one of the reasons for people not to leave their houses even when they had been warned in advance.

The report further analysed several gender-related issues arising inside relief camps for flood victims, from food access to hygiene implications and security problems faced by women.

“That’s why when you make policies such as early warnings, you need to take into account gender issues,” Zahur underlined.

Women’s involvement at all decision-making levels seems to be, if not a solution, at least a first essential step to addressing these policy gaps.

The attention towards gender-related issues within the climate change debate is growing, as shown by the decision adopted at last year’s climate summit in Doha to promote gender balance and participation by women in the UNFCCC negotiations, as well as by the big turnout at the Workshop on Gender and Climate Change held here on Tuesday Nov. 12.

Yet Zahur seems sceptical about possible advances during the conference. “We are all so involved in plenaries, contact groups, side events, that the basic purpose for which we are here is kind of lost. We need to find solutions that can help people at the grassroots level. That should be the major motivation. But here a lot of blah blah blah is happening, this is so tedious,” she sadly concluded.

Michelle Bachelet: "This is not about two similar women standing for the presidency." Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Aug 20 2013 (IPS)

“There’s something sexist about saying that the candidates are two women. Has anyone ever remarked on it when the candidates are two men?” former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet complained about comparisons between herself and her main rival in the presidential elections, rightwing candidate Evelyn Matthei.

The Nov. 17 elections are the first electoral race in Latin America in which the two main presidential candidates are women.

Chile does not have a quota law to facilitate women’s access to elected posts. During the Bachelet administration (2006-2010) the political parties rejected a bill she sponsored that would have not only created quotas for women, but economic benefits for female candidates as well.

The race between two women for the country’s presidency appears to be a “definite” advance on the road to gender equality, Maricel Sauterel, head of projects for Comunidad Mujer, an organisation that advocates women’s participation in the workplace and politics, told IPS.

It also “shows that Chile is evolving. Twenty years ago, it would have been impossible to have even a single woman candidate,” she said.

Bachelet, a 61-year-old socialist paediatrician who headed the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (U.N. Women) until March, is the candidate of the Nueva Mayoría (New Majority) coalition.

The centre-left coalition brings together the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Socialist Party, Christian Democracy Party, Party for Democracy and Social Democrat Radical Party) and the Communist Party, Citizen Left, Broad Social Movement and independent parties.

The former president, the front-runner in the polls, was elected as her coalition’s candidate with 73 percent of the vote in the Jun. 30 primaries.

Her rival Matthei is a 59-year-old economist belonging to the rightwing Independent Democratic Union (UDI). Until July she was labour minister in the government of conservative President Sebastián Piñera.

“When the candidates are men, important issues are discussed rather than circumstantial details,” Bachelet said in response to a question from IPS at a press conference for foreign journalists. “I am delighted that women are participating in politics and I will continue to promote this, but make no mistake, this campaign is about two very different visions of this country.”

Chilean women were not able to vote in presidential elections until 1952, three years after they won the right to vote.

It took a further 50 years for the first female president to be elected, although women make up 53 percent of voters and 43 percent of the workforce in this country of 17.5 million people.

But women hold only 12.7 percent of the seats in the lower house of Congress and just five percent in the Senate.

According to a report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in 2005 women’s representation in the lower house of the Chilean legislature was 14.2 percent, compared to a regional average of 22.4 percent.

According to economist Gloria Maira, deputy editor of the feminist online newspaper La MansaGuman, while the women’s candidacies “are a milestone showing we can reach these positions in politics, at the same time they do not imply major transformations for women’s needs and concerns.”

The present contest has other facets beyond the demand for gender equality, involving the candidates’ personal lives: Bachelet and Matthei were childhood playmates when their fathers were both air force generals and close friends, until they were torn apart by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

The coup that overthrew the government of socialist president Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973 left an indelible mark on both families.

General Fernando Matthei became a member of the military junta that acted as the country’s legislature, while Alberto Bachelet, who cooperated with food distribution during the Allende government, was arrested by his comrades-in-arms for “treason,” and was tortured to death.

Michelle Bachelet has told how she watched from the roof of the medical school where she was a student as air force planes bombed the government palace, with Allende inside, where he met his death during the coup.

At the time, Evelyn Matthei was in the United Kingdom, studying to become a concert pianist.

Matthei helped the Chilean military government’s embassy in London with translations, while Bachelet joined the resistance in Chile and helped hide dissidents until she too was arrested, in 1975. With her mother, Angela Jeria, she was held in an illegal detention centre and they were both tortured.

“This is not about two similar women standing for the Chilean presidency,” Bachelet said on Aug. 13.

“There is one vision of the country that wants to continue with what the present government has been doing, and there is another, which I represent, that wants structural changes to mount a decisive challenge against inequality,” she said.

“And I want this to be an element of a more harmonious, comprehensive development project appropriate for the entire country,” she said.

Maira, of La MansaGuman, said it was significant that one of the candidates is Bachelet, “a woman who broke with tradition by becoming Chile’s first woman president and the first head of U.N. Women, and who supports women’s participation in politics.”

She added that “Matthei, although she has a good track record and has worked hard in politics, is not a person who supports women’s rights; she never has.”

As a senator, Matthei had “a more or less liberal attitude on therapeutic abortion,” Maira said, even presenting a bill to decriminalise abortion under certain circumstances. However, when she became a candidate, her position changed radically, she added.

“It’s a complex issue and I am not going to propose it because the majority of my political sector do not support it,” Matthei said recently.

Chile’s abortion laws are extremely restrictive, with abortion regarded as a crime even when the mother’s life is at risk or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

In Maira’s view, this shows that Matthei “is willing to keep silent on issues that are of prime importance to women.”

Comunidad Mujer’s Sauterel said that in spite of the progress represented by the campaign, it is vital not to forget the pending debts to women.

“People often say, ‘What more do they want, if they have a woman president?’ We have to be careful about this,” she concluded.

By Silvia Romanelli
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2013 (IPS)

Women around the world are exposed to domestic violence, sexual and economic exploitation, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and child marriage. For indigenous women and girls, however, the risk of being victims of such issues is especially high.

In light of this fact, the Philippines-based Tebtebba Foundation advocates for indigenous peoples’ rights, working to ensure that the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is properly implemented.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, executive director of the Tebtebba Foundation for indigenous rights. Photo credit of Victoria Taul-Corpuz.

In an interview with IPS, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, executive director of the Tebtebba Foundation and chair of the Asia Indigenous Women’s Network, discussed how indigenous women and girls can confront discriminatory practises and how the international community can support them in doing so.

Tauli-Corpuz also worked as lead consultant on the report “Breaking the Silence on Violence Against Indigenous Girls, Adolescents and Young Women“, a joint effort of different U.N. agencies aiming at addressing “the ‘statistical silence’ around violence against indigenous girls and women”.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: In some cultures, women’s submission to men and acts of violence against women and girls are seen as part of the cultural tradition. How can this idea be addressed?

A: Violence against women and girls is a violation of human rights and should not be tolerated in any way, even through qualifying it as “part of local tradition” or as something “cultural”.

Violence is experienced by individual women, although there are situations which make women that belong to a particular group, such as an indigenous people, who are at higher risk of suffering from violence because of historical and current situations of colonisation, domination, racism and discrimination.

If there are cultural practises that promote violence against indigenous women and girls, these should be severely criticised and changed."If there are cultural practises that promote violence against indigenous women and girls, these should be severely criticised and changed."
-- Victoria Tauli-Corpuz

Q: How can effective measures against violence be implemented in indigenous groups in which the internal hierarchy of family and social obligations are particularly important?

A: Measures to address violence against indigenous women and girls can be effectively implemented if state agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) take certain steps.

They can help strengthen indigenous women’s organisations to address this issue, document and monitor this phenomenon, and help local governments to implement gender and culturally sensitive ways of handling this issue and to develop programs with budgets.

They can also help raise awareness among indigenous peoples (traditional authorities, indigenous organisations, including women’s organisations) of women and children’s rights and of violence against women and girls.

Q: Colonialism has led some indigenous peoples to internalise racism and indigenous women to accept violence. Could you discuss the relationship between colonialism and violence against indigenous women?

A: Colonialism, which is linked with patriarchy, has deprived indigenous women of their basic human rights to own and control their own lands, territories and resources. It has perpetuated racism and discrimination against indigenous women to the point where some of them deny their indigenous identities and try to emulate the colonisers’ ways.

This is just one way women internalise their oppression, which makes them highly vulnerable to trafficking and prostitution.

Alcoholism and drug dependence have also been used by colonisers to dehumanise indigenous men, and colonial patriarchy has reinforced or promoted machismo among the men. These are factors that lead to violence against indigenous women and girls.

Colonisers’ efforts to extract minerals, oil and gas from indigenous territories also led them to build enclaves where male workers live and prostituted women are brought in.

Q: Sometimes the state exacerbates factors that lead to violence against women and girls and can even perpetrate some forms of violence itself, such as with discriminatory policies or culturally insensitive education and health services. In these cases, what can bodies of the United Nations do?

A: The United Nations can help facilitate possibilities and opportunities for indigenous women to use U.N. treaty bodies, like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) or the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), or the Human Rights Committee, to file complaints against discriminatory policies and programmes of states.

The special representative of the secretary-general on violence against women and children can also visit countries where cases of violence against indigenous women and girls are reported.

U.N. agencies and funds like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), U.N. Women and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), should allot more technical and financial assistance to address this issue at the country, regional and global levels.

Q: The U.N. report “Breaking the Silence” is based on the assumption that violence against indigenous girls and women should be addressed as a specific problem, within but distinct from the phenomenon of violence against women in general. Does this approach risk putting a label on these women? How can it help tackle the problem?

A: Asking that violence against indigenous women and girls be addressed as a specific problem is just stating the fact that if there are few services to address this issue for women and girls in general, this is even more so for indigenous women and girls. It does not risk labelling them. It is just naming the problem so that this can be addressed more appropriately, adequately and effectively.

It is also to clarify that indigenous women generally do not agree that culture or tradition should be used to justify the violence they suffer from and to highlight that the people who are most effective in dealing with this issue are indigenous women and girls who are empowered to assert their rights as women and as indigenous persons.

Excerpt:

Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, the general secretary of the global rights network World YWCA, said that further economic and social empowerment was needed to change the lives of women in Africa. Credit: Ravi Kanth Devarakonda/IPS

By Ravi Kanth Devarakonda
GENEVA, May 7 2013 (IPS)

Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, a human rights lawyer and the general secretary of the global rights network World YWCA, knows what it is like to struggle against poverty and violence: she herself comes from a poor family in Magaya village in Murewa district, which lies northeast of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare.

But Gumbonzvanda has travelled a long way from her home. And she has spent much of her life trying to change the lives of women who were not as fortunate as she was.

And now she is a candidate for the executive director position at United Nations Women – a post formerly held by Chile’s ex-president Michelle Bachelet, who resigned in March.

In an interview with IPS at her offices in Geneva, Switzerland, Gumbonzvanda said that economic growth and development have to address “opportunities for creating wealth at household level, but also structural issues such as the violence and inequality that women continue to experience almost on a daily basis.”

She applauded development on the African continent, while stressing that further economic and social empowerment was needed to change the lives of women.

“I see women going forward in various areas and sectors in all African countries, who are able to shape a new narrative. We need economic and social empowerment – it is not enough to have political empowerment,” she said.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: Let us start with the growing rates of rape and domestic violence against women. How grave is this problem and is it universal?

A:  I think this is one of the biggest issues facing women and girls in the world today. I see the violence against women as a manifestation of inequalities, disempowerment and exclusion…

Social disempowerment, the fact that women are seen as second-class citizens who do not often have a voice or rights about their own bodies; the painful realities of poverty and violence against women; and child trafficking for sexual exploitative work are all burning issues that need to be addressed.

What is important is that we work on preventing violence against women, including domestic violence, violence in conflict (situations) and sexual abuse. The prevention part is critical, (and it should be) followed by robust policies in different social sectors within countries and at the international level.

Q: Over the last 30 years there have been tremendous changes in the global economy and culture – largely due to the internet and globalisation. What impact has this had on women?

A:  I think there are a couple of things that happened in the last 30 years. I was in Beijing (in 1995) for the (World) Conference on Women and I would argue that there has been real international work on the international norms to do with women and human rights that is progressively good.

We now have conventions and treaties at an international level, and even at regional level, like the Maputo Plan of Action for Women (on reproductive and sexual health rights).

Even at the normative level, we see quite a lot of work and some good progress. However, whether an economic model can address the structural issues that contribute to violence against women still needs to be resolved.

Q: Are governments doing enough to address these challenges?

A:  They are not sufficient. I think governments need to get (their) priorities right and do more when they formulate their budgets. The greatest security of any nation is when its mothers and children are secure, when there is food on the table and water nearby, when there is a functioning school and, ultimately, the possibility of getting a job. That is the most secure nation.

I would urge our governments to rethink the relationship between military expenditure and expenditure on social and basic services. Just by buying one military helicopter less, governments can build 10 schools. That is the paramount challenge for governments all over the world.

Q: While there has been renewed conflict on the African continent, there are also great successes and progress with regards to development and empowering women. What do you think still needs to be done for women on this continent?

A: This year, the African Union is celebrating its 50th anniversary and African women were quite involved in the decolonisation process. They were in the trenches looking for a new Africa – and it has happened.

We are celebrating Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who is the first African woman to lead the African Union, and that’s good for Africa.

We see countries like Rwanda and others having (significant) number of women in decision-making (positions). And yet we have to address the issue of conflict. As long as countries remain in conflict situations, and as long as there is violence, it continues to hold us back.

The continent, from the Cape to Cairo, is a rich one and we need to look within Africa (and see) where women can be more involved in the big sectors like mining, transport, and agriculture.

Q: We see technology playing a role in developing the continent with SMSs being used to inform mothers of vaccinations for children etc. What role does it have to play in bettering the lives of Africans?

A: We see a lot of potential in Africa in mobile telephony and we see it being used in Tanzania around services for family planning or for the immunisation of kids. We have also seen the introduction of mobile (phone) banking services in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and these are powerful ways to enable and empower communities.

There is a lot of potential that can be harnessed from technology and what is critical is the infrastructure and regulatory framework, which needs to be enabled.

Q: What, in your opinion, are some of the greatest successes of African women? And what can we learn from them?

A: I think I always reached out to the women leaders from my continent.  You have to remain grounded in your identity … You (have to) embrace the totality of what is good about your own context. And that is your contribution as a global citizen … My identity is informed by the collective identity.

By Mathieu Vaas
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2013 (IPS)

As the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals approaches, different United Nations agencies are beginning to discuss what the post-2015 Development Agenda will encompass.

The United Nations (U.N.) entity for women, U.N. Women, has been tasked along with the United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) to lead consultations on the topic of inequalities, which can be based on anything from gender and sexual orientation to race or socioeconomic status. Written submissions, e-discussions and an advisory group helped inform these discussions.

Saraswathi Menon, a senior manager at U.N. Women. Photo courtesy of U.N. Women.

The consultations discussed gender equality and gender-based violence, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI), persons with disabilities, economic inequalities, indigenous peoples, young people, urban inequalities and minorities.

IPS correspondent Mathieu Vaas spoke with Saraswathi Menon, a senior manager at U.N. Women, about the post-2015 Development Agenda and what possibilities it may offer to fight inequality around the world.

Q: How will the post-2015 Development Agenda differ from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

A: The success of the MDGs was in the way they captured the imagination of people around the world. We saw women’s organisations, civil society, media and academics using the MDGs to rate the performances of their leaders and the international community and in many cases hold them accountable.

Governments also rapidly absorbed the MDGs into their policies and priorities. Any new agenda must therefore respond to what people and governments have seen as the strengths and weaknesses of the previous framework.

In every country, rising inequalities and the impact of different crises – food, fuel, financial, economic employment – are concerns, and so is the violence against women that occurs in every country, in every income bracket, in homes and public spaces. The fragile lives of people in situations of conflict or in countries prone to natural disasters or vulnerable to climate change are also concerns.

These are only some of the issues that were not addressed in the MDGs and that need to be addressed in any new framework. Because we have seen the track record of the MDGs – with uneven progress on many, the worst case being maternal mortality – attention must be paid not just to the way the goals and targets are crafted but also in terms of how they have been translated into public action and made a difference in people’s lives.

The new framework will be different – it will respond to aspirations of people and lessons learnt by governments and their partners, and it will need to address challenges that have been aggravated or emerged in the years since the Millennium Declaration was adopted.

Q: U.N. Women has been tasked along with UNICEF to lead the consultations on inequalities. How will you reach out to women and youth?

A: The Inequalities Consultation has just ended, and it was wide-ranging, inclusive and open. Much of the discussion took place online in moderated discussions on 10 themes ranging from disabilities to indigenous peoples. Each discussion was jointly moderated by a U.N. agency and a civil society organisation.

We also put out a call for papers and received close to 200 papers. Through social media and by picking themes that resonated with people, we generated enormous interest. Over 4,600 people have registered and 34,500 individuals have visited the inequalities space since its launch.

The majority of those who participated were from civil society and developing countries. The majority of comments related to gender equality and women’s empowerment. So we are confident that we have received a wide cross section of views and that youth and that women have participated actively, since their concerns were specifically included.

Q: With some countries in the General Assembly refusing to discuss LGBTI rights, will those rights be part of the post-2015 agenda on inequalities?

A: In the inequalities consultation, one of our e-discussions was specifically on inequalities and LGBTI people. Key recommendations that emerged were to repeal all discriminatory laws and policies; enact comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation; include a commitment to address such discrimination in the post-2015 agenda; and to establish a U.N. human rights mechanism to monitor report on violence and discrimination against LGBTI people.

So the expectations are clear. Of course the final post-2015 framework will be determined through negotiations among governments. But expressing expectations is important and we hope that will influence the outcome.

Q: LGBTI youth are at special risk for homelessness, drugs, HIV/AIDS and other problems. Will these issues be dealt with?

A: The discussions around the post-2015 framework are looking specifically at poverty, urbanisation, including slums, health and HIV/AIDS in all their dimensions.  The vulnerability of specific groups and the overlapping discriminations that they face applies very specifically to LGBTI people.

In the inequalities consultation, we found that when different forms of inequality intersect, they reinforce each other and create unique forms of discrimination and exclusion. We also recommend that different inequalities cannot be dealt with in a piecemeal fashion, and so all those issues – homelessness, drugs, HIV/AIDS – need to be tackled coherently.

Q: How do these kinds of international consultations help change the reality on the ground?

A: Setting global standards and goals is not only an inspiration but also a call for accountability. Goals are often aspirational but behind them lie the recognition that if mindsets change, if policies are improved, if people are empowered, there can be transformational change.

That is why we feel it is so important that the next round of goals and targets not only focus on averages like the MDGs, but actually reflect inequalities so that the measure of success is improvement in the lives of all and not just of a few.

The consultations told us that inequality affects not only the poorest or most deprived but diminishes communities, societies and the economy as a whole. So international consultations are important to express what the world prioritises, what people can use to hold leaders accountable, and to move us all, women and men, girls and boys, towards a better world.

Excerpt:

In 2007, Angeline Mwarusena, who lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was repeatedly raped by soldiers from Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

At a high-level event at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, U.N. Women, the United Nations body for female empowerment and gender equality, called for stronger action from world leaders to prevent and punish sexual violence in conflict.

“The fact remains that women’s bodies remain a battleground, and impunity remains the norm rather than the exception,” said Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile and the current executive director of U.N. Women. “The experience of women during and after conflict continues to be one of violence and insecurity.”

According to Bachelet, an individual’s access to justice after a conflict is highly dependent upon that person’s gender. Compared to male victims, female victims of war crimes are less likely to see their cases taken to court and are less likely to receive reparations.

Bachelet suggested three strategies that could help begin to tackle the problem.

The first, expanding women’s participation in post-conflict recovery, “provides an opportunity for women to ensure that peace agreements, new laws and new constitutions do not reinforce the pre-existing status quo and that they advance equality and justice”, Bachelet said.

Underscoring her point is the fact that according to U.N. Women, in recent peace negotiations, women have represented less than eight percent of participants. Less than three percent of signatories to peace agreements have been women, and no woman has ever been appointed chief or lead mediator in U.N.-sponsored peace talks.

Bachelet also said that women’s organisations must be supported by the world’s governments in order to take on and address gender inequalities that “make women more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based crimes during and after conflicts”.

Finally, Bachelet said, the international community, national governments, civil society and individual actors must cooperate to secure accountability for conflict-related, gender-based crimes.

As part of an effort to tackle the issue of and reduce gender-based crimes in times of conflict, U.N. Women and the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations together have initiated “the first ever scenario-based training for military peacekeepers” to prevent sexual violence, Bachelet announced at the meeting.

“We are currently testing this training in major troop contributing countries,” Bachelet said. “Earlier this month, a first training took place in The Hague on investigating cases of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.”

Zainab Bangura, recently appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, added at the meeting that “for too long, conflict-related sexual violence has been largely cost-free for those who rape women, children and men, whereas the costs have been borne by the victims”.

“Even as we ensure that survivors receive the care and services they require, we must insist that sexual violence in conflict is not inevitable, but that the consequences for the perpetrators are,” Bangura stated.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague elaborated on what victims endure in bearing the costs of the crime, emphasising that the silence surrounding sexual assault often is even harder to break when it comes to crimes committed against men and children.

“We must break the silence if we are to achieve sustainable peace and prosperity,” Hague said. “The UK stands ready to put its full weight this agenda, as a catalyst for others to take action.”

Renowned American peace activist and feminist Jody Williams, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work on banning antipersonnel landmines, agreed with Hague.

“Survivors of sexual violence are brutalised twice – first by the perpetrators of the crimes against them, and the second time by governments that fail to apply the rule of law and ensure justice for survivors,” Williams concluded.

The side event to the 67th U.N. General Assembly was arranged by U.N. Women in cooperation with the UK Foreign Secretary, the Office of the Special-Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, and the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict.