Saada Juma (L) works with fellow seaweed farmers at Jambiani coast in Zanzibar. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
JAMBIANI, Zanzibar, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

At dawn on the white-sand shores of Jambiani, 45-year-old Saada Juma braces herself against the pull of the tide, wrangling ropes laced with seaweed. Her hands, hardened by decades of labor, move instinctively as she secures her aquatic crop.

“I’ve been farming seaweed since I was a teenager,” she tells IPS, squinting against the morning sun. “This ocean is our life. But for us women, it’s always been a fight to be seen, to be heard.”

Juma is one of thousands of Zanzibari women who sustain the island’s marine economy through seaweed farming, artisanal fishing, ecotourism, and conservation. While their labor underpins Zanzibar’s blue economy—a model that leverages marine resources for sustainable development—many women say the system still disproportionately favors men.

Changing Seas, Unchanged Inequities

Seaweed farming became a prominent source of income in Zanzibar in the 1990s, especially for women. Yet climate change is altering the dynamics of this once-reliable livelihood.

“I started farming seaweed because my mother did it. Now my daughters do it too,” says 52-year-old Mwantumu Suleiman, a seaweed farmer in Jambiani village. “But we’re stuck in the same place. The sea has changed, and we have not been helped to change with it.”

Warming waters and strong tides are making shallow-water cultivation increasingly unviable. But venturing further offshore poses serious risks.

“Most of us don’t know how to swim and even if we did, we don’t have diving gear,” Suleyman says. “So, we pay young men to go for us—if we have the money. Otherwise, we just lose out.”

Tools, Training, and the Gender Gap

On the coast of Jambiani, Juma wades ankle-deep through the surf, examining a torn seaweed rope. She is exasperated.

“These tools are not made for us,” she says, showing a frayed line. “They’re cheap, break easily, and we have nowhere to store or dry the harvest properly. We need better equipment.”

For women like Juma, the work goes beyond survival—it is a path to independence. Yet limited access to financial services, poor infrastructure, and insufficient training have prevented women from reaping the full benefits.

“Seaweed farmers earn the least in the chain, even though we do the hardest work,” she says. “We want to do more—make creams, soaps, drinks—but no one trains us.”

A Blueprint for Gender-Inclusive Growth

To address these imbalances, Zanzibar’s government—supported by UN Women and Norway—launched the Blue Economy Gender Strategy and Action Plan in 2022. The initiative is the first in the region aimed at embedding gender equity in marine policy.

“Women are not just participants; they are leaders in these sectors,” says Asha Ali, a gender advisor who helped draft the strategy. “But leadership requires opportunity, training, and recognition—all of which have been scarce.”

The plan outlines targeted reforms, including skills training, access to credit, and the allocation of designated sea plots to women.

From Tides to Tables of Power

Some women are already pushing for reform from within. Amina Salim, 40, leads a women’s seaweed farming cooperative in Zanzibar and has become a vocal advocate for women’s rights in marine economies.

“I’ve sat in dusty classrooms and government offices to tell our story,” she says. “It’s not just about seaweed. It’s about survival. We are feeding our families, educating our children—and we deserve a better deal.”

Under her leadership, women have petitioned local authorities, secured training opportunities, and begun engaging in policy-making processes.

“We’ve come a long way,” Salim adds. “Five years ago, we had no voice. Today, the government is listening. They’ve promised designated farming zones and better tools. Now, we want action.”

A Sector Under Pressure

Zanzibar’s blue economy accounts for nearly 30 percent of the islands’ GDP and provides employment to one-third of its population. Yet experts warn that the sector’s sustainability is threatened by gender disparities and environmental degradation.

“Women have been sidelined in marine industries for decades,” says Dr. Nasra Bakari, a marine economist at the State University of Zanzibar. “If we empower them—through training, equipment, access to markets—the entire economy benefits.”

Bakari notes that community-driven conservation projects led by women, such as coral reef restoration and ecotourism, hold great promise for sustainable development.

“Let’s not forget—women know the ocean. They’ve worked these shores longer than most. We just need to meet them halfway.”

Charting a Climate-Resilient Path

At the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, Tanzania used the global platform to push for aquatic foods as a solution to hunger, climate resilience, and sustainable growth.

“Our survival is intimately tied to the ocean. It feeds us, it employs our people, and it holds the promise to lift millions out of poverty,” said Zanzibar’s Minister for Blue Economy and Fisheries, Shaaban Ali Othman, during a high-level panel discussion.

Highlighting the urgent need to manage marine resources responsibly, Othman detailed how Zanzibar’s blue economy policy has prioritized gender equity and climate adaptation.

“Communities in Zanzibar and along the Tanzanian coastline have fished for generations, but now we must ensure those practices are not just traditional but also sustainable and inclusive,” he said.

Othman also emphasized the importance of value addition and cold-chain infrastructure, noting post-harvest losses remain a major challenge.

“We are piloting aquatic food training centers aimed at supporting youth to acquire and apply climate-smart aquaculture skills, including sustainable pond farming and low-carbon feed techniques,” he said. “This is how we move from potential to prosperity.”

Expanding the Blue Horizon

In parallel, Zanzibar’s Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) initiative—supported by Norway—is mapping marine zones for tourism, shipping, conservation, and fishing. This aims to prevent resource conflicts and ensure environmental protection.

“It’s like a marine land use plan,” says Omar Abdalla, MSP coordinator. “We want to avoid conflicts and protect sensitive areas before they are damaged.”

Still, building trust remains a challenge.

“These maps are made by computers in offices,” says Salim Juma, a sea cucumber diver. “They should come underwater with us. See what’s really happening.”

Omar acknowledges the tension. “We are trying to combine science and traditional knowledge. It’s not easy. But we’re learning.”

Seaweed Innovation and Investment Opportunities

Zulekha Khamis, a 42-year-old farmer in Paje, is among 300 women testing new seaweed farming techniques using floating rafts suited for deeper waters.

“Before, we didn’t know what to do. But now we attend training. We know about climate change,” says Mariam Hamad, leader of the cooperative. “We are not just farmers. We are scientists in the water.”

The group also produces seaweed-based soaps and cosmetics, boosting income and self-reliance.

“We earn more now,” Hamad says. “Some of us can send children to school or build better houses.”

Yet the risk of donor dependency looms large. “If the support goes away, we will go back to struggling,” she cautions.

To address financing gaps, Zanzibar plans to launch a Blue Economy Investment Forum and a Blue Economy Incubator to connect entrepreneurs with ethical investors. But barriers remain.

“Banks don’t understand blue startups,” says Imani Kombo, a 29-year-old ecotourism entrepreneur. “We need patient capital that sees beyond profit.”

A Call for Inclusive Sustainability

Back in Jambiani, Juma ties her final line of seaweed to dry, her eyes on the sea.

“We’ve been patient with promises,” she says. “Now we need results.”

She dreams of building a small factory to process seaweed into cosmetics and health products. “We want to control the full value chain—from the sea to the shelf,” she adds.

As Zanzibar advances its blue economy agenda, the call from women is crystal clear: the sea may sustain life, but without equity and inclusion, the promise of prosperity will remain out of reach.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Women protesting against gender-based violence on International Women’s Day in Liberia. Credit: UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein

By Juliana White
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 2025 (IPS)

In 2023, approximately 612 million women and girls lived within 50 kilometers of a conflict zone, more than 50 percent higher than a decade ago. During war, they disproportionately suffer from gender-based and sexual violence.

It is estimated that over 120 countries are currently involved in armed conflict, displacing around 117.3 million people. Women and girls account for nearly half of the forcibly displaced population and represent a large majority of the world’s refugees.

UN Women found that the number of women killed in armed conflicts doubled from 2022 to 2023, making up 40 percent of all deaths in war.

During conflict women and girls experience horrific abuse, including torture, rape, sexual slavery, trafficking, torture, malnutrition, and a lack of access to vital care. Such violence is rampant in countries like Sudan, Nigeria, Palestine, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Report of the United Nations Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence documented 3,688 verified cases in 2023. Women and girls account for 95 percent of reports, a striking 50 percent increase compared to findings from the previous year.

Even after surviving brutal sexual attacks, warring countries provide limited care options. Hospitals are one of the few places sanctioned as safe havens during conflict. However, many are destroyed or badly damaged during attacks, forcing them to shut down.

The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) says that the disruption of sexual and reproductive health services puts women and girls at risk. They are more likely to experience unplanned pregnancy, maternal mortality, severe sexual and reproductive injuries, and contract infections.

UN Women also found that around 500 women and girls die daily from pregnancy and childbirth complications in countries affected by conflict.

Hospitals are not the only supposed haven sites impacted by war. Many schools in warring countries have had to close due to military takeover or destruction.

The Education under Attack 2024 report, released by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), said that there were about 6,000 attacks on education between 2022 and 2023.

Attacks on schools included death, injuries, rape, abduction and significant damage to buildings. The GCPEA also reported that girls affected by these attacks had a harder time resuming learning activities.

“Education is an absolute necessity, not just for the children themselves but also for global peace, stability and prosperity for all. Schools should be treated as sanctuaries, and it is our common responsibility to ensure that every child has access to an education, even at times of conflict,” said Ms. Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, during the Arria Formula Meeting on the issue of attacks on schools in 2017.

Despite rampant oppressive inequality by men during conflict, women are the solution for peace. Studies show that when women are involved in peace negotiations, there is a higher rate of implementation. Agreements also last significantly longer than those made only by men.

Last year, Oct. 15, 2024, marked eight years of the implementation of Colombia’s Peace Agreement, which included women in the creation process. While Colombia’s peace process set new standards for the inclusion of women in peace processes, they are still significantly underrepresented.

Between 2020 and 2023, 8 in 10 peace talks and 7 in 10 mediation efforts had no women involved. Despite proven impact, women remain shut out of peace processes.

To improve the representation of women in peace operations, human rights organizations like the UN actively advocate for women’s rights. They hold countries accountable for creating an inclusive environment.

However, more parties to conflict, negotiators and other actors must uphold global commitments to fulfill equal and meaningful participation of women in processes. But a lack of funding and military and political powers dominated by men still create significant setbacks.

“Women continue to pay the price of the wars of men,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous. “This is happening in the context of a larger war on women. The deliberate targeting of women’s rights is not unique to conflict-affected countries but is even more lethal in those settings. We are witnessing the weaponization of gender equality on many fronts; if we do not stand up and demand change, the consequences will be felt for decades, and peace will remain elusive.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Gender discrimination is still embedded in societies and institutions, beginning in governance, a new UN Women report finds. Credit: UN Women/James Ochweri.

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2025 (IPS)

Girls and women worldwide are facing growing threats to their security and rights, from threats to their education access to severe poverty and multiple forms of violence. In 2024, nearly one in four governments worldwide reported a backlash to women’s rights, as a new report from UN Women reveals.

The report, Women’s Rights in Review 30 Years After Beijing, acknowledges that serious efforts have been made toward gender equality and women’s empowerment.

In the past five years, 88 percent of countries have passed laws to eliminate violence against women and girls. 44 percent are working towards improving the quality of education and training. More girls are now attending secondary and tertiary education compared to boys.

The report reviews the state of women’s rights since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995. Since its conception, the Beijing Platform for Action remains one of the most comprehensive roadmaps on women’s rights for countries to follow. Thirty years later, it is critical to take stock of the progress toward parity and where significant work is needed. The report highlights where these gaps persist.

Gender discrimination is still embedded in societies and institutions, beginning in governance. While women’s political participation in parliaments has vastly increased since 1995, they still only account for one in four elected parliamentarians. Only 87 countries have ever had a woman leader. Men still occupy a majority of leadership and decision-making positions.

Shrinking civic spaces are also affecting women’s participation and advocacy. This should be of concern when governments make decisions that undercut participation in civil society, such as through underfunding.

Without robust and gender-responsive social protections, vulnerable people can fall through the cracks. Women and girls are more likely to be at risk for poverty or to experience it, as evidenced in 2023, where 2 billion women and girls had no social protection coverage. In 2024, 393 million women and girls were living in extreme poverty.

When it comes to digital technology, the number of women using the internet increased from 50 percent in 2019 to 65 percent in 2024. Yet, 277 million more men had access to the internet than women. Even with this disparity, women are more likely to be targets of online harassment and violence, the nature of which is much more targeted and gendered. Legal frameworks still fall behind in addressing the prevalence of online violence, especially in the face of emerging technologies and their misuse.

Countries dealing with major crises or conflicts also see a regression in gender equality. It is rare for women to play a direct role in the peace process as mediators, even after the Beijing Platform for Action clarified that they were integral in the promotion of peace and security. As of 2023, women only made up 10 percent of negotiators and 14 percent of mediators.

Back-to-back protracted issues such as ongoing conflicts, the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic have only exacerbated inequalities for women and girls. In democratic institutions, anti-rights groups have loudly and publicly rallied together to undermine key women’s issues, including reproductive health rights.

While there is still time, countries and communities must prioritize gender equality in their national strategies. To that end, the report also presents the Beijing+30 Action Agenda, which is comprised of six key actions that countries should take to make faster strides towards the commitments. The Action Agenda outlines the following actions:

A digital revolution for all women and girls: Ensuring that women and girls not only have equal access to technology but also have the skills to navigate it and online spaces securely.

• Freedom from poverty: Investing in comprehensive social protection, universal health coverage, education, and care services is needed for women and girls to thrive and can create millions of decent jobs.
• Zero violence: Achieving this through the implementation and funding of legislation to end violence against women and girls in all forms, with strong plans and resources available through community-led organizations to extend the reach of services.
• Full and equal decision-making power: Increasing and ensuring women’s decision-making power in public and private sectors through temporary special measures like gender quotas.
• Peace and security: Gender-responsive humanitarian aid and national plans that center on women, peace, and security. This must also include sustained funding for frontline women’s organizations to help build lasting peace.
• Climate justice: Countries need to prioritize women’s and girls’ rights in their climate adaptation plans. Including those from rural and indigenous communities should serve to center their leadership and knowledge and gain access to new ‘green jobs,’ productive assets, and land rights.

While countries may signal their commitments to gender equality through adopting gender-responsive and inclusive policies, without follow-through and proper funding, they may have little impact in the long term.

Along with the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, this year will also mark the UN’s 50th anniversary of International Women’s Day on March 8. The upcoming Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) will also be a critical opportunity for governments, civil society, the private sector, and other stakeholders to make strong commitments in enshrining the Action Agenda, along with the principles that are the foundation of the original Beijing Platform for Action.

“UN Women is committed to ensuring that ALL women and girls, everywhere, can fully enjoy their rights and freedoms,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous. “Complex challenges stand in the way of gender equality and women’s empowerment, but we remain steadfast, pushing forward with ambition and resolve. Women and girls are demanding change—and they deserve nothing less.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Nilab, a student-turned-tailor from Kabul: “I was in the 12th grade when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. With the Taliban takeover, everyone’s dreams in Afghanistan were crushed. I remember the night I heard the news of Herat’s fall, and I cried until morning. Suddenly, fear, terror and despair took hold of my life. I knew I could no longer attend school, all the preparations I had made for my education vanished into thin air. I realized I couldn’t serve my country as a working woman. While girls in other countries go to school every day without any obstacles, for me, this has become nothing more than a dream.” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

By Jen Ross
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 2024 (IPS)

In line with the 2024 International Day of the Girl theme, ‘Girls’ vision for the future’, a dozen Afghan girls speak up to express their hardships and resilience. They also share their visions for the future.

Negina, a 15-year-old student-turned teacher from Bamyan

“I went through a period of severe depression, but with the help of my family, I managed to regain my spirit and start reading some books again. And for the past six months, I’ve been teaching 12 neighbourhood children who, due to poverty or other reasons, couldn’t go to school. We hold daily one-hour classes in one of the rooms in our house. I’ve been teaching them subjects like math and Dari, and fortunately, they can now read and write. Despite my concerns about my own future, when I see my students, who are able to learn and have a desire for education with my help, it rejuvenates me. Sometimes my worries weigh me down, but I raise my head high and promise myself that I will achieve my dreams. We are girls who have lived with human rights and freedom, and we are still fighting for what rightfully belongs to us, which is freedom and equality.” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

Sadaf, an 18-year-old writer from Kapisa

“My journey into the world of writing began when I was nearly 15 years old. I was motivated to use the power of words to address the challenges faced by women. I wanted to write about the Taliban and raise the voice of women and what they are experiencing in Afghanistan, but my father never let me do that and he beat me. I remember burning my stories several times [so he wouldn’t find them]. I encountered difficulties, including financial constraints that made buying a computer impossible. I’ve faced a lot of difficulties because of the Taliban. They’ve brainwashed my father with false ideas about Islam and women’s duties. Now my father doesn’t treat me well because I want to raise my voice for my rights. I’m not someone who gives up when things get tough. Instead, I see these challenges as opportunities to grow and become stronger.” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

“Despite all my efforts, sleepless nights studying and working hard to get good grades and learn new things to have my dreams come true, I was forced into marriage [at the age of 17]. From a young age, I have been through a lot. Unfortunately, now I am living through the pain of seeing my future as dark as my son’s ashes. We are walking towards an unknown future with no education, no work, and poverty and violence are at their peak.” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

“I thought the best years of my life would be my teenage years. But after the events of 15 August 2021, when I attempted suicide for the second time as an 18-year-old girl and spent the hardest days of my life, I realized that adolescence is not pleasant and wonderful. I was in my last year of high school when education for girls was banned, and my dream of wearing a white coat and becoming a doctor vanished. I faced very difficult conditions, and every night I had nightmares and tremendous fear for the Taliban. When the Taliban first entered the city, I couldn’t leave the house for a month. I witnessed girls being whipped by the Taliban just because they didn’t wear the desired hijab. I look forward to a day when women and men will stand side-by-side again, experiencing equal rights.” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

Mahnaz, a forced bride and former university student from Farah

“My hopes were shattered, and I was forced to accept a marriage that would lead my future into darkness. My family, especially my father and brothers, insisted on this marriage. They argued, ‘What else can you do? There are no opportunities for women; all doors to education are closed. We can no longer afford to support your living expenses. It’s better for you to get married and begin your own life.’ Even if the Taliban allows universities to reopen, my family will likely not permit me to attend, and I have lost the motivation to start from scratch. Moreover, it’s unclear what the curriculum will entail under the Taliban regime. Will it emphasize human rights and humanity, or violence and killing?” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

Nazmina, a former journalism student from Kapisa

“In the early days of the Republic’s collapse, I endured challenging times, spending months in severe depression. I lost my job and, soon after, the university gates were closed to me. I felt like my dreams, aspirations and identity had been reduced to nothing. It is essential to support those who have been pushed into oblivion under these dreadful and inhumane conditions, facing numerous challenges in their lives. I have sought to provide educational opportunities for girls who survived the disruption of schooling. Today, even if the doors of schools and universities are closed to us women, we have transformed our homes into schools and universities. Women in Afghanistan must receive support from the people and the international community in every possible way. I am certain that the sole path to fighting the Taliban and gender discrimination in Afghanistan is to support women and girls.”

Rabia, a former basketball athlete from Herat

“Before the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, I was a member of the national basketball team. But after the events of 15 August, all my dreams were shattered overnight. Right now, things in the country are very unpredictable. It’s like going to sleep at night, and when you wake up in the morning, you find out that they’ve added new rules for women. The hardest part for me was when they said girls can’t play sports anymore. I had put in so much effort and overcome so many challenges to make it to the National Basketball Team, and suddenly, they took away my job, my freedom and the sport I loved. Now, I train about 50 girls below the sixth grade in one of the orphanages in Herat. I train them in sports like volleyball, soccer and basketball. I also secretly teach some of the older girls.” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

Mahbuba, a midwifery student from Sarpol

“After 15 August 2021, the situation took a grim turn. The arrival of the Taliban darkened our lives. They imposed their strict rules and regulations on us, confining us to our homes, effectively taking away our freedoms and rights. … Our lives have become a constant battle between our aspirations and the harsh reality imposed by the Taliban. With every obstacle we face, we are reminded that the fundamental rights and freedoms we once took for granted have slipped away, and our journey through a rapidly changing Afghanistan is fraught with uncertainty and danger. Why is it that just because one is born a girl in this country, they have to pay a lifelong price?” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

Motahara, a baker and former nursing student from Logar

“After a few months of wallowing in such despair, I realized that I have to be strong for my children, so I started baking some cakes and cookies at home that my husband could sell at the market. I also have two other women who help me. I hope to one day be able to grow my business so that I can provide more jobs for other women. We must rise, united as one voice, and demonstrate that we can achieve our fundamental rights to work, an education and freedom.” Credit: Sayed Habib Bidell

Note: These profiles and others can be found at After August, the women’s stories were shared with IPS’ readers courtesy of UN Women, Limbo and Zan Times, where Afghan women and girls tell their stories in their own words (with anonymized photos and names and locations changed to protect their identity).

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Women's demonstrations to demand respect for their rights are held in Latin American cities on Mar. 8, International Women's Day, calling on governments in the region to invest in promoting gender equality. The photo shows a march in Lima on Mar. 8, 2023. CREDIT: Walter Hupiú / IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Mar 7 2024 (IPS)

Time is running out to achieve gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2030. The autonomy of women and girls in the region is threatened by hunger, poverty and violence, and countries must urgently step on the gas.

For Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, United Nations agencies have focused on progress made towards the gender targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda approved in 2015."In the context of low and volatile economic growth in the region, it is necessary to invest in women, because there is a historical debt to their rights and because this kind of spending has the potential to accelerate sustainable development." -- Ana Güezmes

“In our region, only 25 percent of the targets for which information is available in the SDG monitoring indicators allow us to foresee their fulfillment by 2030,” said Ana Güezmes, chief of the Division for Gender Affairs of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

From ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile she told IPS that 48 percent of the goals have seen progress, albeit insufficient, in the right direction, while there has been backsliding on 27 percent.

The slogan set by the United Nations for this Mar. 8 is “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”, calling for greater spending by governments to achieve SDG 5, which has a global deficit of 360 billion dollars per year.

In the region, there are both progress and concerns regarding SDG 5, which refers to achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls.

Güezmes said the region is moving ahead in terms of strengthening policies and laws, but that the challenge is to accelerate the implementation and enforcement of government measures in order to increase the rate of progress towards substantive equality.

Ana Güezmes, chief of the Gender Affairs Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), stressed to IPS the need to ensure investment in women to achieve gender equality. CREDIT: ECLAC

She said improvement has been slow towards other SDG 5 targets, such as the elimination of violence against women and girls, the eradication of child marriage, and the recognition and valuation of unpaid domestic and care work. And she added that the region continues to lag behind in technology for the empowerment of women.

Güezmes, a physician by profession, and an advocate for women’s human rights, a care society and gender equality, has held senior positions in the region at UN Women, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) over the past 30 years.

Greater inequality among poor, indigenous and rural populations

Latin America and the Caribbean, which in 2022 was home to 334.627 million girls and women, 50.8 percent of the regional population according to the World Bank, are facing several crises.

The region was one of the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and for the last 10 years has averaged a meager 0.8 percent annual economic growth rate, affecting its population, which is suffering from poverty, food insecurity and lack of employment, all of which hit girls and women harder.

In Latin America, only 27 percent of the targets of Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which promotes gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, have been met. In this context, rural women – like this Quechua mother from the Peruvian Andes – are part of the most unequal female population in the region, affected by poverty, food insecurity and violence. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

On Feb. 28, ECLAC, in partnership with UN Women, presented a study on the state of progress towards gender equality in the region, which highlighted the gaps that hinder the rights of women, girls and adolescents.

Three out of 10 girls and women live in poverty and one out of 10 in extreme poverty, with higher rates among indigenous, black and rural women. Likewise, four out of 10 women suffer some level of food insecurity and hunger.

Of those over 15 years of age, 25 percent have no income of their own, a proportion that rises to 40 percent among those in the lowest socioeconomic quintile.

Nayda Quispe, from the Peruvian department of Cuzco, is one of the 3.4 million rural women in the Andean country. She has dedicated her life to agriculture and, at 62 years of age, is well aware of the harsh reality of rural life for women.

“We constantly experience inequality here. Women work all day, but are not paid or recognized for their efforts, continue to be pushed to the back burner, and because of economic dependence stay in violent relationships,” she told IPS during a meeting ahead of Mar. 8 in Cuzco, the capital of the southern Andean department.

Nayda Quispe, a Peruvian farmer from the department of Cuzco, pointed out the state of the soil as a result of the 2023 drought. She regretted that the authorities do not invest in the development of rural women who need access to education and technical training to be able to work and generate their own income. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Quispe is one of the few women in her rural environment who managed to continue her studies, graduating as a biologist and working for a few years in her profession without losing her link with agroecology, to which she is now fully dedicated.

She criticized governments for building cement works instead of investing in education and training for women that would allow them to have decent jobs and earn their own money. “As long as this does not change, we will continue to be the forgotten ones as always,” she complained.

The ECLAC study shows that in Guatemala and Honduras, more than 50 percent and 43 percent of women, respectively, have no income of their own – among the highest levels in the region.

Güezmes stressed the impact this has on women’s economic independence, a necessary condition for physical autonomy and a life free of violence.

“Gender-based violence against women and girls occurs systematically and persistently in the region, in both the domestic and public spheres,” she said.

She highlighted the problem of early and forced child marriages and unions, which affect one out of every five girls in the region. Suriname, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, the Dominican Republic and Guyana lead with percentages above 30 percent. Only four countries have percentages below 20 percent: Costa Rica, Argentina, Peru and Jamaica.

In addition, the ECLAC study reports that in this region, considered to have the highest levels of gender-based violence, an average of 338 women per month and 11 per day are victims of gender-based homicide, or femicide. In 2022 at least 4050 women fell victim to this crime, 70 percent of whom were of reproductive age between 15 and 44 years.

María Eugenia Sarrias, head of Lxs Safinas, a lesbian feminist organization in Argentina, complained about the setbacks in the rights of women and minorities under the administration of far-right President Javier Milei. CREDIT: Lxs Safinas

Achievements at risk

The weakening of democracies in the region has had a direct impact on women’s rights. Achievements in gender institutionality in Argentina, for example, are in marked decline, including the right to abortion, under the government of far-right President Javier Milei, thus affecting progress towards the SDGs.

“Under Milei, women and minorities are heavily harassed. The era of rights is over; the right wing has arrived to cut back on the advances we had made in sexual and reproductive rights, gender equality and LGTBIQ+ rights,” María Eugenia Sarrias, president of Lxs Safinas, a lesbian feminist organization based in the Argentine city of Rosario, told IPS.

She added from that city that the setbacks in social policies have caused shortages in soup kitchens and school lunches. “They’re trying to pay the debt with the hunger of the people. The freedom they talk about is only for those who hold power and have money. We, women and minorities, are facing a very big risk,” she warned.

In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele announced this month, as his first measure after his landslide reelection, the elimination of all vestiges of the gender perspective in public education, shortly after participating in a gathering of far-right leaders with former U.S. president and candidate Donald Trump.

There is also great concern in Ecuador, where emergency measures are in place to deal with organized crime.

“There are many more women who are impoverished, migrants and victims of violence not only from their partners but also from groups linked to crime,” Clara Merino, coordinator of the Luna Creciente National Movement of Women from Popular Sectors, told IPS.

She argued from Quito that if things continue the way they are going, it will not be possible to achieve gender equality by 2030. “The budget for education, health, human rights and women has been cut. It is impossible for government action to reach the territories where indigenous and black women live, where hunger, child malnutrition and migration of young people are on the rise,” she stressed.

The decriminalization of abortion is one of the demands of Latin American women. In the picture, a sign warns about the danger of clandestine abortions, at a demonstration during a meeting of the Organization of American States in the Dominican Republic, which criminalizes abortion in all circumstances, despite having the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the region. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Investing in care

Güezmes said that “in the context of low and volatile economic growth in the region, it is necessary to invest in women, because there is a historical debt to their rights and because this kind of spending has the potential to accelerate sustainable development.”

She gave as an example investment in the care system to break the vicious circle of exclusion and transform it into a virtuous one with multiple positive social and economic effects such as generating employment, higher income and well-being.

“We are the only region in the last 45 years that has promoted an ambitious and comprehensive Regional Gender Agenda that, through the Buenos Aires Commitment, says care should be seen as a right, a need and a job. Addressing it in these three dimensions is essential to achieve the profound change that our societies need,” she underlined.

Excerpt:

Women march for their rights on Mar. 8, 2023, in Brasília. Every International Women's Day, Brazilian women take to the streets in towns and cities to protest against sexism, racism and other factors of gender inequality. CREDIT: Lula Marques / Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 6 2024 (IPS)

Brazil is beginning to test the effectiveness of a gender pay equality law passed in July 2023, a new attempt to reduce inequality for women in the world of work.

This Friday, Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, is the deadline for companies with more than 100 employees to publish their first half-yearly salary transparency reports, with comparative data on remuneration and the distribution of hierarchical functions between men and women, and between different ethnic groups, nationalities and ages."If you are a black woman, your chances of suffering inequality increase. Restrictions pile up for women who are black and poor from the outlying urban neighborhoods, who are over 40 years old and have had little to no education." -- Marilane Teixeira

To break down the inertia of gender inequality, the United Nations agency that promotes women’s rights, UN Women, decided that this year’s theme for International Women’s Day would be “‘Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”, which the global community has pledged to achieve by 2030.

The wage equality law “is a measure that just remains on paper, not a practical one,” said Hildete Pereira de Melo, an economist who has been studying gender inequality for more than 40 years and doubts the effectiveness of the new legislation.

Equal pay has been legally established in Brazil since 1943, when the Consolidation of Labor Laws was approved, but it is not enforced, she argued. Even in the courts, women accept any agreement as “the weaker party,” she told IPS in an interview in Rio de Janeiro.

Wage inequality is now punished

But now it is different: a penalty will be imposed on companies that do not publish their semi-annual report, a fine of up to 100 minimum wages, totaling 141,200 reais this year (28,500 dollars), argued Marilane Teixeira, a researcher at the Center for Trade Union and Labor Economics Studies (Cesit) of the University of Campinas.

With the reports from the companies and the data it obtains through other means, the Ministry of Labor and Employment will be able to publish the first results, with an overview of how the more than 50,000 large companies in Brazil deal with the issue of gender- and race-neutral wages.

Previously a company was subject to penalties in the case of “inequalities motivated by segregation,” identified through inspection by the authorities. But now there is a new requirement of a public report, Teixeira told IPS from Brasilia.

The new exposure of companies triggered widespread complaints and arguments that improper data would be revealed, but the report does not include “any stealth data, just averages and percentages of women employees and their positions” in the corporate hierarchy, she explained.

Reactions from businesspersons and repercussions in the media reflect “the impact of the measure” and the changes it will foment, said the economist, who helped the government draft the new law.

“It is a step forward and we hope that it sticks” and is effective, unlike many laws that remain only on paper, said Isabel Freitas, a social worker and technical advisor of the Feminist Center for Studies and Advice (Cfemea).

In a Jul. 30, 2023 demonstration, black women in Rio de Janeiro protest against racism, violence and inequalities of which they are the main victims. CREDIT: Tania Rêgo / Agência Brasil

Legislative advances

Her positive assessment is based on the “two novelties”: the requirement of the half-yearly report, which constitutes a “public transparency tool” and fosters equality, and the fine imposed on companies that do not comply, of three percent of the total wages and salaries paid by the company.

But the law has limits. It only applies to companies with more than one hundred employees, which means its effect does not reach the small and micro businesses that provide 70 percent of formal sector jobs nor the informal ones that account for about 40 percent of the total number of workers. And the fine cannot exceed the equivalent of 100 minimum wages.

It does not benefit, for example, domestic workers, who number six million in Brazil, mainly black women, who suffer the worst discrimination, Freitas lamented.

But the law is “one more step” that could help in the fight against “the basket of inequalities” affecting Brazilian society, especially women, she told IPS by telephone from Brasilia.

“If you are a black woman, your chances of suffering inequality increase. Restrictions pile up for women who are black and poor from the outlying urban neighborhoods, who are over 40 years old and have had little to no education,” she said.

Inequality suffered by women is not just a matter of wages. They are concentrated in lower paid activities, such as domestic work, basic education and the poorest paid parts of the health care system.

The scarce representation of women at all levels of power is a major obstacle. There are only 91 women in a lower house of 513 deputies and 15 women senators out of a total of 81. In other words, they make up only 17.8 percent of the current Congress (2023-2026) dominated by conservative legislators.

One of the main causes of these inequalities is the sexual division of labor, which assigns to women practically all the work of social reproduction and care tasks, the three interviewees concurred.

A meeting of women ministers of the current Brazilian government with 42 female mayors of large towns and cities to discuss women’s participation in politics and the Brazilian economy. CREDIT: Ministry of Health

Cultural hurdles

Added to this is a cultural heritage that uses promotion evaluation criteria that favor male workers, said Teixeira.

When it comes to promotions, companies generally take into account activities “that exclude women, such as weekend courses, trips and dinners with clients,” which are unfeasible for those who have to take care of the house, the children and sick members of the family, she said.

“In Brazil 42 percent of women are solely homemakers, and the other half who are in the labor market are also homemakers,” said Pereira de Melo.

The basic solution to the tangle of factors leading to inequality against women are full-time basic education schools and day care centers providing care for 10 hours a day, with universal coverage for all children in order to neutralize disadvantages for women in the workplace, she said.

The ideal would be full-time school for adolescents as well, but it should be available at least in the first stage, until students are 14 or 15 years old and the absolute need for maternal care is reduced, she said.

In addition, a broad cultural transformation of society would be necessary, especially in relation to the role of women, but culture is something that changes very slowly, she acknowledged.

Initiatives on several fronts are underway in Brazil to drive these changes.

On Mar. 5 the   launched, for example, the campaign “Justice for all women”, to highlight women’s rights in general, including girls, adolescents, pregnant and disabled women, and to promote a gender perspective in all the country’s courts.

Violence against women, reflected in the increase in rape, domestic violence and femicides – gender-related murders of girls and women – is currently a priority of the campaign and the judicial system.

The Articulação das Mulheres Negras do Brasil (Network of Black Women of Brazil) is working to coordinate the action of 45 organizations distributed throughout the country that in the month of March this year are planning 140 demonstrations.

For November 2025, it is preparing a “March against racism, violence and for the good life”, a national mobilization that will culminate in Brasilia, repeating the first march of its kind that took place in 2015, with about 100,000 participants, to demand the rights of 49 million women, that is, a quarter of Brazil’s population of 203 million.

It is a global struggle. “The global economy is based on the systematic exploitation of women,” concludes a study by Oxfam, a confederation of 21 social organizations around the world.

According to its data, women earn only 51 percent of what men earn, as they are concentrated in precarious and poorly paid jobs.

Excerpt:

Catherine a nurse at Jinja referral hospital in Uganda. (file photo) During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, caseworkers — the majority of whom are women — attended work daily. The 65th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is currently being held. This year’s them is women's full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. Credit: Lyndal Rowlands/IPS.

By Nalisha Adams
BONN,Germany, Mar 18 2021 (IPS)

During the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, while many sought safety being at home, women in the healthcare, child care, aged care, teaching and services fields — who hold the majority of jobs in those occupations — went to work everyday. 

“The tragedy was those workers on whom we depend most, the fabric of society, are actually amongst the lowest paid,” said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. She was speaking during a side event to the 65th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that is currently taking place from Mar. 15 to 26.

The year’s commission theme is ‘Women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls’.

Yesterday’s side event titled ‘On the Path to Economic Justice and Rights: Working towards Women’s Economic Empowerment’ was organised by the government of Germany as well as the Action Coalition on Economic Justice and Rights. The coalition is one of six themed coalitions that exist within Generation Equality, a UN Women campaign that promotes gender equality.

The high-level side event aimed to discuss women’s participation and decision-making in economic life. Globally women present the majority of the working poor with less than half of women of working age in paid employment.

Germany’s Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Dr. Gerd Müller, said the quest for economic justice and equal rights was made even more difficult by COVID-19, which brought existing inequalities into sharp focus.

He said that women and girls in Africa, Asia and Latin America were particularly hard hit.

“Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, women and girls enjoyed fewer rights, had less access to education and resources and often lived and worked under appalling conditions. And now they are being hit by the fallout from the pandemic, the lockdown and the economic decline.

“Typically women were often the first to lose their jobs. Many girls will never return to school because they have to work in cottage industries in order to help support their impoverished families, or because they have an unplanned pregnancy or have been married off,” Müller said, adding that violence against women and girls had also increased worldwide. He called this a disaster and tragedy.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, acknowledged that violence against women, which she called ‘a shadow pandemic’ had increased.

“We also know that those who are experiencing violence and those who are experiencing job losses in large numbers are women in their 20s and 30s who have young children and still need to contribute to look after their families,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

“What are we going to do to assist women make a re-entry to the labour force as well as address the economic fall out that they will experience?” she asked.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said there was also a skills gap to address, as women were affected by the gender digital gap, they would not likely qualify for the new jobs that were likely to be created post-pandemic.

She also noted that women were carrying the burden of unpaid work at home, which required them to be at home and give up work.

She said a number of obstacles had emerged from the pandemic that affected the sustainability of women in the labour force.

Burrow said women were at “the forefront of every aspect of a labour market that is broken”.

“Are governments, are employers serious about rectifying the inequality of income, gender and race? If we are, then we need jobs, jobs and jobs because women have fallen out of the labour market and fallen into precarious work,” Burrow said.

She said because governments failed to regulate the labour market, 60 percent of workers worked in the informal market — the majority of whom were women.

A woman farmer selling her produce at a local market in Casamence, southern Senegal. (file photo) In sub-Saharan Africa, 90 percent of those in informal employment, which is typically low-skilled with poor working conditions, are women. A UN high-level side event aimed to discuss gender equality, women’s participation and decision-making in economic life. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

These women, she said, had no rights, no minimum wage and their work conditions were not subject to compliance.

“So [they are] absolutely at the forefront of survival everyday. And then you have 40 percent of workers in the formal economy, but a third of those are in precarious or in insecure work. Again, the majority are women,” Burrow said.

Women are also most likely to be in low-paying, insecure and informal work and earned on average, in developed economies, 20 percent less than men. In developing economies the gap is believed to greater. Women are also highly represented in the sectors that are hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Mlambo-Ngcuka noted that the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action still remained the most ambitious and far-reaching framework for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Beijing Declaration sets out common goals, definitions and values for countries that are UN Member States in achieving gender equality.

“Twenty-five years later we have still not been able to implement it fully but it is still important for us

to do your best to implement it,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

“As we have not achieved everything that we wanted to achieve in the Beijing Declaration. We are therefore at that stage where we have to review how far we have come and Generation Equality is borne out of a realisation that we have a long way to go.

“We have also realised that the implementation of the SDGs have not moved as far and as fast as we wanted it,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said that Generation Equality helped advance gender quality on the following three fronts by:

• advancing the Beijing Declaration
• advancing the the SDGs, and
• responding in a gender-responsive way to the pandemic.

She said the Action Coalition on Economic Justice and Rights was an action-orientated coalition that “with very concrete actions that we are going to take”.

“We are asking you to join us in this action coalition because these are the that issues we intend to address. We are hoping that in this action coalition we will look at the disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work that women are carrying.

“We will look at gender-based violence, including sexual violence in the workplace, and we are also going to be asking member states to ratify the ILO [International Labour Organisation] convention on sexual harassment and violence in the work place,” she said, adding they were looking at closing the gender pay gap as well as looking at the need for women to have protected and decent jobs.

She said in the event of another pandemic “we should not find ourselves in this situation again where there is a bloodbath of jobs that are occupied by women because they are unprotected and women have no benefits”. She said they also wanted to eliminate the $1.5 trillion credit gap that affects women.

Diane Ndarbawa, president of Manki Maroua, an association of girl-child mothers, from northern Cameroon, spoke about the constraints that women in rural areas face in accessing economic opportunities. 

She said that in Central Africa and Cameroon in particular, there were several constraints that resulted in the low rate of participation by women in economic decisions, often relegating them to them to second place when it came to economic decision-making. Some of these constraints included; a lack of information on laws, policies and programmes related to economic opportunities; a lack of control over the required documentation (particularly the drafting of project and activity reports); poor computer and digital technology skills, and the misinterpretation of traditions and religions; among others.

“As a young woman there are additional constraints. In my region where there is violence and insecurity linked to extremism and traditions, young women limit themselves to small craft businesses,” she said.

She said the establishment of Generation Equality Action Coalitions would improve the participation of young women in economic activities in sub-Saharan Africa’s rural areas, particularly in Cameroon’s extreme north. Far North Cameroon has been caught in the midst of a Boko Haram insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin.

“Our participation in this multi-stakeholder process gives young women and associations the strength to contribute and influence decision-making bodies at all levels,” she said.

“It would be important to advance the rights of young women and girls by involving, by raising awareness with the population, more specially, parents, religious leaders, local leaders,  showing them the importance of the empowerment of young women,” Ndarbawa said.

Meanwhile, Müller said Germany had stepped up support for action to empower women and girls and the work of the UN. He said Germany had allocated €38 million in additional funding to help promote gender equality during the current pandemic.

“If we are serious about our desire to recover better together, we will need women and girls who are empowered and therefore strong. Now more than ever,” Müller said.

Excerpt:

Women in the fisheries sector are largely concentrated in low-skilled, low-paid seasonal jobs without health, safety, and labor rights protections. Pictured here are Rita Francke and another fisherwoman at a jetty, in front of the old crayfish factory at Witsands, South Africa. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 7 2019 (IPS)

Our oceans play a major role in everyday life, but they are in grave danger. To protect the ocean, we must look to a crucial, largely overlooked component: gender.

For World Oceans Day this year, which occurs every year on Jun. 8, the United Nations and the international community is shining a spotlight on the intersections between the ocean and gender—an often underrepresented and unrecognised relationship.

“Gender equality and the health and conservation of our oceans are inextricably linked and we need to mainstream gender equality both in policies and programs and really in our DNA,” UN Women’s Policy Analyst Carla Kraft told IPS.

Founder of Women4Oceans Farah Obaidullah echoed similar sentiments to IPS to mark the occasion, stating: “It’s a great step that the UN is recognising the importance of addressing gender when it comes to achieving healthy oceans. You can’t achieve healthy oceans without achieving gender equality.”

Women make up approximately 47 percent of the world’s 120 million people, working in fisheries around the world, outnumbering men both in large-scale and small-scale fisheries.

However, women in the fisheries sector are largely concentrated in low-skilled, low-paid seasonal jobs without health, safety, and labour rights protections. In fact, women earn approximately 64 percent of men’s wages for the same work in aquaculture.

At the same time, women’s contributions both towards ocean-based livelihoods and conservation efforts remain invisible.

“There’s a disproportion valuation or recognition of women’s work and skills in marine and coastal development and ocean and marine resources,” Kraft said.

“Women’s economic empowerment is very much related to ocean activities and resources so it’s really about having gender equality as both a goal and a process through which we can conserve, preserve, and use the ocean in economic activity,” she added.

As ocean degradation and climate change deepens, women are left with even less access to economic resources, protection, and stable livelihoods, which thus exacerbates gender inequalities.

According to UN Women, women and children are 14 times more likely to die or get injured in natural disasters due to unequal access to resources.

While women’s political participation is increasing, Obaidullah noted that women are still left out of the table in decision-making and lack recognition around fisheries and ocean governance, telling IPS of her own experiences as an ocean advocate.

“It’s difficult—sometimes it’s because I’m a woman, sometimes it’s because of my ethnic background—to have my voice heard in certain settings. I’ll go to a conference and try to talk about serious topics with fellow delegates but [only to] be put down,” Obaidullah told IPS.

“I have seen how women have left the conservation movement and academia because of being in the minority in the fields that they work. And that has to change because we are losing out on all this capacity, intelligence, and training because of the inequality in this sector,” she added.

For instance, UN Women found that in Thailand men make 41 percent of decisions compared to 28 percent by women regarding fish farming. Such decisions are often related to establishing farms, business registration, feeding, and dealing with emergencies.

Obaidullah highlighted the need to empower  and support women across the globe to ensure sustainable ocean governance, including at the UN.

“Bringing in different voices from different backgrounds and from different genders is essential if we are going to set a healthier course for humanity…. we need to be making role models across geographies, across cultures if we are to get people motivated and inspired to take action for the ocean,” she said.

“There are a lot of women and people from different cultures and countries that are really on the ground fighting the fight for our ocean but they don’t get the spotlight.”

Women make up approximately 47 percent of the world’s 120 million people working in fisheries around the world, outnumbering men both in large-scale fisheries and small-scale fisheries. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS

Already, the work towards inclusive conservation has begun.

In Seychelles, numerous organisations have put women and youth at the centre of efforts. One such organisation is SOCOMEP, a woman-run fisheries quality and quantity control company.

In Kenya, women are promoting conservation education within the mangrove forests through the Mikoko Pamoja mangrove conservation and restoration project, helping contribute to ecotourism, better health care and education while generating an income.

Kraft pointed to the need for data as the intersections between gender and the ocean still remain unexplored.

“One of the biggest issues right now that we have is the lack of sex-disaggregated data so it makes it harder to make really adequate policy responses when we don’t know the exact status of where women are in the economic activities in ocean and marine-related fields,” she said.

At the end of the day, the international community must also recognise that gender is related to and should be mainstreamed through all sectors.

“We have gone too long without having a gender lens really used for all of these policymakers…gender equality will benefit sustainable ocean governance and sustainable ocean governance with a gender lens will contribute to gender equality and women’s economic empowerment,” Kraft said.

Susana Gómez, who was left blind by a beating from her then husband, says in a park in the city of La Plata, Argentina that she did not find support from the authorities to free herself from domestic violence, but a social organisation saved her from joining the list of femicides in Latin America - gender-based murders of women, which numbered 2,795 in 2017 in the region. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
LA PLATA, Argentina, Dec 1 2018 (IPS)

Left blind by a beating from her ex-husband, Susana Gómez barely managed to avoid joining the list of nearly 2,800 femicides committed annually in Latin America, but her case shows why public policies and laws are far from curtailing gender-based violence in the region.

“I filed many legal complaints (13 in criminal courts and five in civil courts) and the justice system never paid any attention to me,” Gómez told IPS in an interview in a square in her neighborhood in Lisandro Olmos, a suburb of La Plata, capital of the province of Buenos Aires.

Although they already existed in Argentina in 2011, when the brutal attack against her took place, the specialised women’s police stations were not enough to protect her from her attacker.

Her life was saved by La Casa María Pueblo, a non-governmental organisation that, like others in Latin America, uses its own resources to make up for the shortcomings of the state in order to protect and provide legal advice to the victims of domestic violence.

Gómez, her four children and her mother, who were also threatened by her ex-husband, were given shelter by the NGO.

“We had nothing. We went there with the clothes on our back and our identity documents and nothing else because we were going here and there and everyone closed the door on us: The police didn’t do anything, nor did the prosecutor’s office,” said Gómez, who is now 34 years old.

“Without organisations like this one I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale, the case wouldn’t have made it to trial. Without legal backing, a shelter where you can hide, psychological treatment, I couldn’t have faced this, because it’s not easy,” she said.

In April 2014, a court in La Plata sentenced her ex-husband, Carlos Goncharuk, to eight years in prison. Gómez is now suing the government of the province of Buenos Aires for reparations.

“No one is going to give me my eyesight back, but I want the justice system, the State to be more aware, to prevent a before and an after,” said Gómez, who once again is worried because her ex will be released next year.

Lawyer Darío Witt, the founder of the NGO, said Gómez was not left blind by an accident or illness but by the repeated beatings at the hands of her then-husband. The last time, he banged her head against the kitchen wall.

“The aim of the reparations is not simply economic. What we want to try to show in the case of Susana and other victims is that the State, that the authorities in general, whether provincial, municipal or national and in different countries, have a high level of responsibility in this. The state is not innocent in these questions,” Witt told IPS.

“When I went blind and realised that I would no longer see my children, I said ‘enough’,” Gómez said.

Alarming statistics

According to the Gender Equality Observatory (OIG) of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), at least 2,795 women were murdered in 2017 for gender-based reasons in 23 countries in the region, crimes classified in several countries as femicides.

The list of femicides released this month by OIG is led by Brazil (1,133 victims registered in 2017), in absolute figures, but in relative terms, the rate of gender crimes per 100,000 women, El Salvador reaches a level unparalleled in the region, with 10.2 femicides per 100,000 women.

Charts showing absolute numbers of femicides by country in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the rate of gender-based murders per 100,000 women. Credit: ECLAC Gender Equality Observatory

Honduras (in 2016) recorded 5.8 femicides per 100,000 women, and Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia also recorded high rates in 2017, equal to or greater than two cases per 100,000 women.

The OIG details that gender-based killings account for the majority of murders of women in the region, where femicides are mainly committed by partners or ex-partners of the victim, with the exception of El Salvador and Honduras.

“Femicides are the most extreme expression of violence against women. Neither the classification of the crime nor its statistical visibility have been sufficient to eradicate this scourge that alarms and horrifies us every day,” said ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena as she released the new OIG figures.

Ana Silvia Monzón, a Guatemalan sociologist with the Gender and Feminism Studies Programme at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso), pointed out that her country has had a Law against Femicide and other Forms of Violence against Women since 2008 and a year later a Law against Sexual Violence, Exploitation and Trafficking in Persons.

“Both are important instruments because they help make visible a serious problem in Guatemala, and they are a tool for victims to begin the path to justice,” she told IPS from Guatemala City.

However, despite these laws that provided for the creation of a model of comprehensive care for victims and specialised courts, “the necessary resources are not allocated to institutions, agencies and programmes that should promote such prevention, much less specialised care for victims who report the violence,” she said.

In addition, “prejudices and biased gender practices persist among those who enforce the law” and “little has been done to introduce educational content or programmes that contribute to changing the social imaginary that assumes violence against women as normal,” and especially against indigenous women, she said.

#NiUnaMenos, #NiUnaMás

In the region, “significant progress has been made, which is the expression of a women’s movement that has managed to draw attention to gender-based violence as a social problem, but not enough progress has been made,” Monzón said.

Five-year-old Olivia holds up a sign with the slogan against femicide, #NiUnaMenos (Not One Woman Less), which has spread throughout Latin America in mass mobilisations against gender violence. Olivia participated in a neighborhood activity in the Argentine city of La Plata on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, celebrated Nov. 25. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

According to U.N. Women, a total of 18 Latin American and Caribbean nations have modified their laws to punish sexist crimes against women such as femicide or gender-based aggravated homicide.

But as Gómez and other social activists in her neighborhood conclude, much more must be done.

The meeting with the victim took place on Nov. 25, during an informal social gathering in the Juan Manuel de Rosas square, organized by the group Nuevo Encuentro.

The activity was held on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which launched the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence. This year’s slogan is #HearMeToo, which calls for victims to be heard as part of the solution to what experts call a “silent genocide.”

María Eugenia Cruz, a neighborhood organiser for Nuevo Encuentro, said that despite the new legal frameworks and mass demonstrations and mobilisations such as #NiUnaMenos against machista violence and feminicide, which have spread throughout Argentina and other countries in the region, “there is still a need to talk about what is happening to women.”

“In more narrow-minded places like this neighbourhood, it seems like gender violence is something people are ashamed of talking about, the women feel guilty. Making the problem visible is part of thinking about what tools the State can provide,” she told IPS.

“Or to see what those tools are,” said Olivia, her five-year-old daughter who was playing nearby, and who proudly held a sign that read: “Ni Una Menos,” (Not One Woman Less) the slogan that has brought Latin American women together, as well as #NiUnaMás (Not One More Woman).

She exemplifies a new generation of Latin American girls who, thanks to massive mobilisations and growing social awareness, are beginning to speak out early and promote cultural change.

“Today women are becoming aware, starting during the dating stage, of the signs of a violent man. He doesn’t like your friends, he doesn’t like the way you dress. Now there’s more information available, and that’s important,” said Gómez, who is a volunteer on a hot-line for victims of violence.

“Now they call you, they ask you for advice, and that’s good. In the past, who could you call? Besides the fear, if they promise to conceal your identity, that prompts you to say: I’m going to file a complaint and I have a group of people who are going to help me,” said the survivor of domestic abuse.

Excerpt:

Mary Wanja, a farmer at Ngangarithi, Kenya, using water from a stream to water her produce. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicates that the face of farming is still very much female comprising at least 45 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries. In parts of Africa and Asia, women’s representation is much higher contributing at least 60 percent of the labour force. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 21 2018 (IPS)

The world’s most important meeting is underway in New York, providing yet another opportunity for world leaders to discuss a wide array of issues such as peace, security and sustainable development. And experts stress that the role women have to play in addressing these issues cannot be over-emphasised.

“Of the six United Nations organs, it is only at the General Assembly where member states have equal representation with each nation having one vote, so issues discussed at the forum tend to be very critical and central to global development,” explains Grace Gakii, an independent consultant on gender issues in East Africa.

The 73rd session of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) is being held in New York, United States, starting on Sept. 18th and running through to October.

“There are expectations that the high level meeting will also provide a platform to address issues of gender equality and women empowerment,”Gakii tells IPS.

The meeting comes amidst heighten efforts by the U.N. towards gender parity among its staff across all levels of its employment structure as well as through its work. A number of U.N. entities are already showing impressive progress towards a more gender balanced workforce in the period spanning 2007 to 2017.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO) has particularly been lauded for progress made towards gender parity within its workforce.

“We have no doubt that gender equality can have a transformative as well as multiplier effect on sustainable development, climate resilience, peace building, and drive economic growth,” Maria Helena Semedo, FAO deputy director general, Climate and Natural Resources, tells IPS.

Since the organisation’s director general Jose Graziano da Silva took office in 2011, it has not been business as usual as gender issues are taking centre stage.

“FAO works to support women as agents of change to help harness this untapped potential. We have been striving to recruit the best possible talent to help meet our gender parity objectives,” Semedo affirms.

A U.N. system wide action plan on gender parity within this organisation indicates that: “As of the close of 2017, 41 percent of all international posts were held by women, the organisation’s highest representation of women in 10 years.” Moreover, when it comes to junior positions within the organisation, FAO has achieved gender parity.

“These trends point to an organisation that is keen on pushing for gender equality, equity and essentially women empowerment in its structures. Such robust efforts to engender its workforce will without a doubt impact greatly on the work that FAO does with rural communities,” Gakii explains.

Against this backdrop, according to the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (U.N. Women), the entire U.N. system is not far behind.

One year into secretary-general António Guterres’ strategy to improve gender parity within its system, for the first time in the history of the U.N. there is now gender parity in top leadership.

“We will continue working to translate our success at having more women in senior staff positions. We also strive to have a friendly work environment for both male and female staff, with zero tolerance to sexual and power harassment in line with the secretary-general’s direction,” Semedo says.

Gender expert Wilfred Subbo says that in achieving gender parity, equality and equity within its own system, the U.N. is also able to set the standards for “rural communities and economies whose lives are impacted on a daily basis by policies and strategies set by the global humanitarian body.”

Subbo is an associate professor at the Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies, University of Nairobi.

Nonetheless, there are concerns that overall progress towards gender parity within FAO has been fairly slow. In the last decade, the representation of women has increased by only 12 percentage points.

That notwithstanding, experts are optimistic that as FAO continues its robust push for a more equitable society, this will have a more significant impact on food security, agriculture and rural development—particularly as climate change continues to impact on the world’s ability to feed its people.

FAO’s State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2018 report states that national agricultural and trade policies will need readjusting for the global market place to become a “pillar of food security and a tool for climate change adaptation.”

The report further details the extent to which climate change will impact on the ability of many world regions to produce food as well as influencing trends in international agricultural trade.

“Today, agriculture and food systems face an unprecedented array of challenges and our most recent numbers show that hunger is on the rise with the greatest vulnerability being amongst rural women and girls,” says Semedo.

Associate Professor Subbo is emphatic that without readjusting labour market structures for better representation of women, it will be impossible to comprehensively address the most pressing global needs.

He says that labour market structures are inherently skewed in favour of men, making it difficult for women to influence policy and decision-making processes.

“There is a need for a global momentum to speak to gender issues and especially the role, place and representation of women in the labour force because women are important pillars of the economy,” Subbo tells IPS.

He says that the fact there are now more women working in many sectors of the economy has served to mask an uncomfortable truth. “You will find these women at the bottom of the career ladder, they are the labourers in farms but absent in the boardroom,” he says.

Take for instance the agricultural sector, FAO indicates that the face of farming is still very much female comprising at least 45 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries.

In parts of Africa and Asia, women’s representation is much higher contributing at least 60 percent of the labour force.

The numbers are even higher in countries such as India where 79 percent of the female rural workforce is in agriculture.

“Even though a significant majority of the labour force in the agricultural sector is largely female constituted, women hold only 14 percent of the managerial positions,” Gakii expounds.

She says that as the world grapples with food insecurity, it is worrisome that women are also at the periphery of services that are crucial to the productivity and sustainability of rural economies. According to FAO, only an estimated five percent of women have access to agricultural extension services.

This is despite the significant role that the agricultural extension officers play in bringing advances in technology and better farming practices closer to farmers.

With fewer women in managerial and other such influential positions, compared to men, women receive fewer and smaller loans.

According to FAO, women in forestry, fishing and agriculture receive a paltry seven percent of the total agricultural investment.

Alice Wahome is an elected member of parliament in Kandara Constituency, Murang’a County, Kenya. She is the first woman to be elected to parliament in the county, and tells IPS that there is an urgent need to engender leadership across institutions and in key pillars of the economy.

“Promoting leadership that understands gender issues, the intricacies of gender and development does improve the participation of women at all levels of the workforce,” she observes. More importantly, “their participation accelerates development at all levels,” Wahome says.

Fanny Kaekat, indigenous leader of the Shuar Arutam people, has spent her life defending the territories of indigenous communities in southeastern Ecuador from the threat of mining. She poses at the 14th Latin American Feminist Meeting, in Montevideo, in front of a poster that reads: "my body, my territory", a slogan of women human rights defenders. Credit: Mariela Jara / IPS

By Mariela Jara
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 28 2017 (IPS)

Veiled and direct threats, defamation, criminalisation of activism, attacks on their private lives, destruction of property and assets needed to support their families, and even murder are some forms of gender violence that extend throughout Latin America against women defenders of rights.

“They want to throw us off our land, they do not leave us alone. The helicopters fly at midnight, there are rumours that they are going to attack us,” Fanny Kaekat, an indigenous leader of the Shuar Arutam people in Ecuador, who for decades have been resisting the harassment of mining companies interested in the gold in their territories in the southeast of the country, told IPS.

In 2016, the government of then President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) declared a state of emergency and the military entered to force the families out of their village. They focused their brutality on women, denounced Kaekat, at the 14th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Conference (Eflac), held in the Uruguayan capital."Women rights activists challenge many traditional and cultural roles, breaking with the stereotype of women dedicated to the home, and they mobilise for a double agenda, the sovereignty of their bodies and of their territories, the freedom to decide over them. The system’s response is to discipline them." -- Denisse Chávez

“Because of our culture, we have a number of children, five or six, we cannot move easily as men, who quickly climb into the mountains. When the soldiers came, they burned our huts and kicked over ourpots with food,” Kaekat said, describing the destruction of homes and household implements necessary for sustenance.

The violence against women rights activists was one of the main topics discussed at Eflac, which brought together some 2,000 feminists between Nov. 23 and 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which marks the start of 16 days of activism to eradicate a problem that is growing rather than declining in the region.

This is shown by the report “Commitment to Action: Public Policies to Eradicate Violence against Women in Latin America and the Caribbean”, launched on Nov. 22 by UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which stresses that the region has the highest rates of gender violence not perpetrated by a partner and the second highest committed by an intimate partner.

One case discussed at the Eflac was the 2016 murder of internationally renowned environmentalist Berta Cáceres, a leader of the Lenca people in Honduras and a feminist activist who was leading the defence of the right to water and the fight against the construction of a dam on the Zarca River.

Although no one has been charged with planning her murder, Cáceres’ family blames Desarrollos Energéticos SA, the company in charge of construction of the dam.

That year was especially cruel for those who defend their territories from the greed of companies that develop extractivist projects without respecting the right to prior and informed consultation of indigenous peoples, and without taking into account the irreparable damage to the environment and local communities.

The 2016 annual report of the non-governmental organisation Global Witness points out that 60 percent of the 200 murders of human rights defenders in the world occurred in Latin America.

For Denisse Chávez, from the Peruvian group Women and Climate Change, there is an escalation of violence against women in local communities, with a greater emphasis on activists, because of the role they play in strengthening community ties.

Yanet Caruajulca, a Peruvian activist for the right to water and a healthy environment, stands in front of a poster at the 14th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Conference, in the city of Montevideo, where one of the focal points was the analysis of gender-based attacks on women human rights defenders in the region. Credit: Mariela Jara / IPS

“This alliance of extractivist capitalism with patriarchy targets women and seeks to control and subdue both their bodies and their territories. Those who rebel, protest and defend their rights to be free and sovereign are repressed and subject to different forms of violence,” she told IPS.

Chávez recalled that the first Tribunal for Justice in Defence of the Rights of Pan-Amazonian and Andean Women, held within the VIII Pan-Amazonian Social Forum, in April in Peru’s central jungle, analysed emblematic cases from six countries, which showed that violence against women activists is due to their role in defending the territories and community life, along with specific gender biases.

“It is a role that also contributes to preserving nature and the cultures and worldviews that contribute to the sustainability of life,” said the activist, whose organisation, together with other groups, is carrying out a regional campaign for the rights of women defenders during the Eflac.

Nilde Sousa, of the Brazilian Women’s Articulation, denounced in the conference the plunder of territories in her country. One of the emblematic cases is that of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on the Xingu River, which began operating in 2016, in the Amazon state of Pará.

The construction of this megaproject, she said, entailed the displacement of families, the destruction of ecosystems and an increase in violence, especially the sexual exploitation of girls and adolescents.

“We have been fighting relentlessly, and we tell this encroachment by capitalism that our bodies should not be violated, our territories should not be violated, they should be respected,” Sousa declared.

In spite of everything, thanks to their struggles, women activists have gained a public space, participants in Montevideo concluded.

“Women rights activists challenge many traditional and cultural roles, breaking with the stereotype of women dedicated to the home, and they mobilise for a double agenda, the sovereignty of their bodies and of their territories, the freedom to decide over them. The system’s response is to discipline them,” said Chávez, alluding to the concept contributed by the Argentine feminist academic Rita Segato.

Yanet Caruajulca is one of the women who has shaken the traditional moulds and in the Andean highlands of Peru, in the region of Cajamarca, defends the right to water and demands the withdrawal of several mining companies.

She heads the Regional Federation of Rondas Campesinas (literally “peasant rounds”) and has taken to the streets numerous times to protest. She is currently on trial, for vandalism charges brought in 2013. “I am summoned on Dec. 12 to hear the sentence,” she told IPS, describing the judicial proceedings as tortuous.

“I had no defence counsel, the hearings are not in my district, Bambamarca, but in the capital city of Cajamarca, more than two and a half hours away by road. And I do not have the financial means for all those expenses,” she said.

The wrongful use of criminal law is precisely one of the methods reported by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), used to criminalise social protests and activism.

According to a 2015 report by the IACHR, the effects of criminalisation include damages to mental health, disruption of family life and implications for community life.

“For me it is a constant worry, I think about what will happen to my children if I am convicted, and also that if that happens, I would not be able to do anything. In addition, it would be a message to the population to not speak out, to not protest, to not claim their rights, because if they do, the same thing may happen to them,” said Carajualca.

As in her case or that of Berta Cáceres and other rights defenders, the institutions are weak to protect them.

The UN Special Rapporteurs on human rights and the IACHR have made successive appeals to countries in the region to comply with protecting and guaranteeing the rights of activists. There is even a UN resolution in this regard.

However, the dangers persist for women activists. But, as participants in the Eflac stressed, it is by joining efforts that women will find the support and the strength to continue, under the slogan of the meeting: “diverse but not dispersed”.

Excerpt:

Angela, 15, from Hyderabad, India. Her vision of a violence-free world would be to live like the mermaid in her painting - free and happy. Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
INDIA/CAMEROON, Nov 26 2017 (IPS)

Sally Mboumien remembers the day she pressed a steaming hot stone against her chest. In Bawock, the rural community of western Cameroon where she grew up, young girls often had their young, sprouting breasts flattened with a hot iron or a hammer or spatulas that had been heated over burning coals.

This was good for the girls because it would keep them safe from men, she had often heard her elders say. So one day, when her mother had gone to visit relatives, a 11-year-old Mboumien overheated a stone and tried to iron her own breasts.“The 16 Days come as we experience a global outcry over sexual harassment and violence. Now it is time for action to end violence against women." --Nanette Braun of UN Women

The stone burnt the delicate skin and tissue, leaving deep black scars over her breasts. Her waves of pain were overshadowed with fear. Terrified, the little girl hid her scars from everyone, including her mother.

“I did what everyone said was good. But I was only a victim of ignorance,” says Mboumien – now one of Cameroon’s most vocal advocates for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) for girls and young women.

According to the United Nations, breast ironing or breast flattening affects 3.8 million women around the world, including in Cameroon, Benin, Ivory Coast, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Togo, Zimbabwe and Guinea-Conakry. It is also one of the five most under-reported crimes relating to gender-based violence.

Although it is done in an attempt to delay puberty and safeguard the girl from unwanted sexual desire, breast ironing exposes girls to numerous health problems such as infections, cysts, permanent damage of the tissue, cancer and complete disappearance of one or both breasts. Besides which, it’s an utter violation of a girl’s sexual and physical rights and integrity.

Coinciding with UN Women’s Orange Campaign – an initiative that generates public awareness for 16 days of activities against gender-based violence from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10 – Mboumien, the Founder of Common Action for Gender Development, a SRHR Advocacy organization, is planning to hit the road. She will be seen doing what she does best: educating people in local communities on the sexual and reproductive rights of girls and women and why it is crucial for society to abandon any practices that violate these rights.

Breast ironing is embedded deep into the local culture which means people believe in their heart that this is good – and that is what makes it so hard to eradicate, Mboumien says. “The best way to fight this is that instead of focusing on one form of violence (breast ironing), we focus on educating people on SRHR in general.”

Denial of dignity amounts to violence

Thousands of miles away from Mboumien, Bharti Singh Chauhan, a girls’ rights activist in India’s Rajasthan state, is also participating in the Orange Campaign. Her plan: watch a movie.

In a state where almost 40 percent of all girls are married before 18 years of age and where it is still hard for girls, especially those from marginalized communities, to get an education, watching a film is both a symbolic and an actual move forward. At Praveenlatha Sansthan, a charity Chauhan founded, she is empowering over 100 teenage girls to fight the dual evil of child marriage and illiteracy.

All of the girls come from the most marginalized families in the city and witness violence in many forms: child marriage, physical and psychological abuse. The first casualty of this is their education, as the girls drop out of school voluntarily or their parents stop sending them. Chauhan, a fierce advocate for rights to dignity, helps the girls go back to school so that they don’t fall prey to the vicious cycle of illiteracy, poverty, abuse and child marriage.

Going out to watch a movie in a theatre is anything but a trivial matter to these girls. In fact, for them, this is a day of living free.

“It helps them get out of the four walls within which they live, it helps them feel freedom, forget the daily hardship they experience every day and it also helps them learn something from the movie, especially because we choose the movies that come with a strong social message. Finally, sitting there in the same hall with others help them feel what it is: that they are not lesser than anyone and that they have the same rights as anyone else has,” says Chauhan.

The movie the girls will watch this time is Secret Superstar, an Indian film that tells the story of a teenager from a Muslim family who strives to be a rock star but is forbidden by her father to do so. Defiant, the girl posts her own videos on Youtube, fulfilling a dream. The girls, feels Chauhan, will identify with the protagonist of the film as they have many things in common, especially the social, communal, economic and cultural struggles.

“We want the girls to believe in themselves and believe that they can have a dream and that they can realize this too, no matter what.”

GBV – a common global evil

Like Mboumien and Chauhan, thousands of other women – many of them survivors of gender-based violence – are joining the 16 Days of Orange Campaign across Africa, Asia, the Americas and elsewhere. From sexual assaults, beatings, violations of human rights, violation and denial of health rights, rights to privacy and rights to choose a partner to the right to say no to unwanted pregnancies, women activists are taking to the streets, village halls and city auditoriums to demand an end to gender-based violence.

Celine Osukwu, who champions the rights of disabled women in Abuja, Nigeria, shares her plan. “On 25 November I will be in Ibadan, Nigeria with a group of women and men. I will raise my voice on gender-based violence against women and girls with disabilities. You know December 3rd is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, so I will take this opportunity to direct my talk ‘to leave no one behind’ and tell people that we must make education safe for all.”

In Toronto, Canada, 68-year-old school teacher Tamarack Verall is also feeling excited about participating in the Orange Campaign. Her plan is to meet indigenous women and talk about their right to a violence-free world.

The fact that the campaign has been able to strike a chord with women across the world also proves that GBV is not an academic term, but an ugly reality that women experience globally, regardless of their race, religion, culture, age, language and educational or economic status.

Nanette Braun, Communications and Advocacy Chief at UN Women, agrees. “The 16 Days come as we experience a global outcry over sexual harassment and violence. Now it is time for action to end violence against women,” she says.

Education, not condemnation

However, activists like Mboumian and Chauhan say feel that these 16 days are not the only time to talk about gender violence. There should be a sustained effort to eradicate gender-based violence in all forms.

Chauhan says fighting violence is a 24-hour a day, 365-day a year job, and one must have empathy even while opposing a social evil. “If I only say child marriage must end, I am not doing the complete job. It will stop the girl from getting married early. But to end the cycle of violence, she must also be sent to a school, and provided the freedom she needs to pursue a goal and allowed the dignity she deserves to live a happy, normal life,” says the activist, who has been given an award for her work by the office of the President of India.

Mboumien adds that social campaigns launched by Western countries often fail to understand the local history of a violent practice and the ethos attached to it. This, she feels, limits the campaign’s impacts as men start viewing women who condemn violence as rebellious and acting superior to them. Violence, she says, needs to be understood in its local context. Men need to be involved. People need to be assured that a campaign is trying not to rob them of their tradition, but to save it from becoming a tool that destabilizes the entire society.

With her favorite slogan “Don’t condemn us, educate us” Mboumien tries to spread knowledge about how gender-based violence not only harms a specific gender but weakens the cultural fabric of the enite society and prevents it from becoming progressive.

“I don’t believe in condemnation. Condemning a community or a people for a cultural practice is not the right way to rid it. What we need is make people understand why it is bad, what harm it actually causes and seek their cooperation to end this harmful practice,” she says.

Her belief is shared by Nanette Braun: “Prevention of violence must be a priority, and it must start at a young age through education. We also need laws to protect women and services for survivors so they can overcome the trauma and restart their lives.”

Three generations of women from an Argentine family hold posters with the slogan "Ni Una Menos", which means "Not one [woman] less", in one of the demonstrations against femicides in Buenos Aires. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet / IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Nov 23 2017 (IPS)

A “conservative and fundamentalist onslaught” in Latin America against a supposed “gender ideology” is jeopardising advances in the fight against violence towards women, feminist activists complain.

Susana Chiarotti, an Argentine lawyer who is a member of the Advisory Council of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights (Cladem), described this as one of the issues “of concern”, while reflecting on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, celebrated on Nov. 25.

That day opens 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, until Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, led by the campaign “UNiTE”, in which different United Nations agencies participate, whose theme this year is “Leave No One Behind: Ending Violence against Women and Girls.”"There is something perverse in this way of categorising things. They are trying to limit women once again to their traditional place: in charge of all care-giving and household work, without complaining; for them to return home and leave the few remaining jobs to men; and to be obedient again to the male head of the family." -- Susana Chiarotti

“These anti-women’s rights campaigns are not isolated, scattered or erratic. They are well organised, financed and coordinated. Conservative sectors in all countries are connected with each other and share strategies and activities,” Chiarotti told IPS when explaining the scope of the conservative offensive.

Chiarotti, who is also director of the Institute of Gender, Development and Law, said the attack against the supposed “gender ideology”, “is reproduced in the same format” in countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru or Uruguay.

“In all of them, among other initiatives, they try to eliminate comprehensive sex education, or erase gender equality and non-discrimination based on sexual orientation from school curricula, and they oppose women’s autonomy over their bodies by preventing abortions, even legal ones,” she explained.

A report by UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), launched on Nov. 22, underscores that, although in the region the number of countries that have national policies to protect women increased from 24 in 2013 (74 percent) to 31 in 2016 (94 percent), the high rates of violence against women remain a serious challenge.

“In spite of the notable advances in national action plans, the region shows the highest rates of violence against women not perpetrated by an intimate partner and the second highest in intimate partner violence,” Chiarotti added.

The report, “From Commitment to Action: Policies to End Violence against Women in Latin America and the Caribbean“, warns that the number of femicides is increasing, and two out of five are the result of domestic violence.

In addition, the report by the UN agencies points out that about 30 percent of women have been victims of violence by an intimate partner, and 10.7 percent have suffered sexual violence not perpetrated by a partner.

For Chiarotti, the number of gender-based murders makes them “practically a genocide, which is also hidden.” If the same number of people were killed for ethnic, religious or other reasons, authorities and people in general would react differently, “but there is less sensibility since they are women, unfortunately,” she argued.

Images of victims gender violence, relatives of victims of femicide and crosses that symbolise women killed in gender-based murders form a collage of images in different countries of Latin America: A call to end violence against women, a goal that remains a long way off in the region. Credit: Juan Moseinco / IPS

“In Brazil they are trying to introduce mediation in the Maria da Penha Law on Domestic and Family Violence“, passed in 2006 and named after a bio-pharmacist who was left paraplegic after she was shot by her husband while she was sleeping, cited the expert, as an example of a setback in terms of gender violence in the region.

In that country, “they have also boycotted the possibility of legal abortion for women who get pregnant as a result of rape,” she said, even though that is one of the exceptions in which it is legal in Brazil to terminate a pregnancy.

“In my country, Argentina, this is being done through a campaign by some sectors, to install ‘probation’ in gender violence proceedings and to use mass conscientious objections to prevent legal abortions,” said Chiarotti.

In Paraguay, conservative groups have launched an offensive against some Education Ministry programmes, using this concept.

“By conceptualising it as an ideology, they take advantage of people’s refusal to be ‘ideologised’ or alienated in a line of thought. But gender is a category of analysis to study reality, not an ideology,” said Chiarotti.

“There is something perverse in this way of categorising things. They are trying to limit women once again to their traditional place: in charge of all care-giving and household work, without complaining; for them to return home and leave the few remaining jobs to men; and to be obedient again to the male head of the family,” she said.

With this offensive they also intend, she added, “to deny the existence of different kinds of families and install the idea that only one kind of family (heterosexual, nuclear) is natural, and that the only valid way to love is heterosexual, among other denials of reality.”

Karina Bidaseca, coordinator of the South-South Programme of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (Clacso), refers to this topic among others in the book she coordinated for that organisation together with the National University of San Martín: “Critical Genealogies of Colonialism in Latin America, Africa, the Orient” (2016).

“This reasoning reflects the scripts of what I define as ‘global colonial fundamentalisms’ (cultural, religious, political, economic and epistemic) and which are the foundations of the expanding fronts of those fundamentalist, conservative, moral and racist discourses such as the ones that refer to gender ideology,” she told IPS.

“It is an offensive that is anti-feminist and trans-homophobic and comes from an ultraconservative sector founded on evangelical Christian churches,” said Bidaseca, from Argentina, who holds a doctorate degree in Social Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, and teaches the course “Sociology and Postcolonial Studies. Gender, Ethnicity and Subordinate Actors” in two universities.

“In Colombia, ‘gender ideology’ is crucial to understanding, for example, the peace processes that were traversed by this debate,” she said.

“In many cities in Colombia there were massive demonstrations by people claiming that they were parents who defended the values of the traditional heterosexual family, against the ‘gender ideology’ that, according to them, is being imposed on schools through the Education Ministry,” she said, to illustrate.

“Feminazis is the term used by this discourse to describe those of us who defend the rights of sexual diversity, and of women against femicides,” she added, referring to a term coined by American radio commentator Rush Limbaugh in 1992, when talking about women who defended the right to abortion, which he described as a “holocaust”.

But other organisations attribute the large number of teen or preteen pregnancies in Latin America, among other causes, to the lack of sex education or legal abortions in cases of sexual violence.

“Due to the young age, these cases are presumed to be pregnancies that are the result of sexual abuse or coercion. They are forced maternities and their number is increasing in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, the only region in the world where they are growing,” more than 150 civil organisations said in a statement to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in an Oct. 24 session in Montevideo.

A year ago, also in the capital of Uruguay, a Forum of Feminist Organisations stated that the region “was facing democratic reversals as a result of setbacks that had undermined the citizens’ will,” and due to the coming into power of governments that, among other consequences, “had served to exclude women further.”

Bidaseca said “the fundamentalist onslaught that has tried to disseminate the idea of the so-called ‘gender ideology’ has sought to frustrate the feminist struggle for equality.”

“What we see is a global movement, which has crossed countries such as France, Germany, Spain and even Mexico and Panama, where demonstrations have been organised against that alleged ideology,” said Bidaseca.

Excerpt:

Credit: Curt Carnemark / World Bank. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 7 2017 (IPS)

When Bimla Chandrasekharan saw that women who gave birth to baby girls were being sent out of the house by their angry husbands and mothers-in-law she realised a basic biology lesson was needed.

“We start educating them on this XY chromosome,” Chandrasekharan who is Founder and Director of Indian women’s rights organisation EKTA told IPS. “(But) we don’t say XY chromosome, we do it with tomatoes and limes. ‘Tomato tomato’ it becomes a girl, ‘tomato lime’ it becomes a boy.”

It is just a start but this lesson helps to show fathers that they in fact determine the sex of their children.

According to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), there are now 117 million girls who are ‘missing’ worldwide because of sex selective abortion and infanticide.

The problem ballooned in India and China in the 1990s, partly due to increased access to ultrasounds. But according to the UNFPA the problem has also now spread to new regions including Eastern Europe and South-East Asia.

A new UNFPA program to address the problem in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Viet Nam, Bangladesh and Nepal will draw on the experiences of both India and China in addressing the problem.

“Son preference is a practice that affects many societies around the world,” Luis Mora, Chief of the UN Population Fund’s Gender, Human Rights & Culture Branch told IPS.

“What we have seen over the last three decades is that the practice that initially was considered a sort of exception in China and India … has moved to other countries.”

Yet while the increase in sex selection has coincided with access to technologies like ultrasound, both Mora and Chandrasekharan agree that banning ultrasounds alone won’t fix the problem.

“In a patriarchal society there is always a preference for a male child,” says Chandrasekharan.

This is why EKTA challenges patriarchy and teaches mothers and fathers why they should want to have daughters just as much as they want sons.

Some of the reasons why sons are preferred over daughters are economic. In India parents have to pay a dowry for daughters. In many countries only sons can inherit property, daughters cannot.

But there are other reasons too.

As Chandrasekharan points out, some mothers fear bringing daughters into a world where they are likely to experience sexual harassment and abuse, a lifetime of unpaid housework, and marriage as young as 12 or 13.

Chandrasekharan, is an active member of a national campaign called Girls Count, which aims to fight sex selection in India, and receives funding from both UNFPA and UN Women.

She says that within Girls Count there are “two streams.”

“One stream of people believe in strict enforcement of the law,” says Chandrasekharan, “The other stream is challenging patriarchy, I belong to that stream,” She adds that she also believes in the law, but doesn’t think that laws alone work.

As Chandrasekharan points out India’s Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Technique Act was introduced in 1994, banning prenatal scanning and revealing the sex to parents, yet this law has not stopped sex-selective abortions.

Yet Chandrasekharan is also careful to say that challenging patriarchy doesn’t mean that her organisation is anti-men. Patriarchy is a system, she says that has consequences for both men and women, but mostly benefits men.

“We are not against you as an individual we are talking about a system,” she tells the men and boys she works with.

Mora also agrees that it is not possible to end sex selection without addressing gender inequality.

“The evidence we have (of what) what really works is changing social norms and gender norms that under-value girls and at the same time giving opportunities to girls and women.”

This includes giving rights, equal access to education, employment and land, says Mora. “These are the practical things that make a sustainable change.”

This is also why EKTA introduces role models to the community, to show that not all women will spend their lives doing unpaid housework.

EKTA’s most recent role model came from the local community herself. At a young age she met a family member who told her that she had flown to meet them by plane.

Even though the girl came from a marginalised Dalit family, she told her family that she wanted to be the ‘engine driver’ of a plane, since she didn’t yet know the word for pilot.

Last year, says Chandrasekharan, she became a full-fledged pilot and returned to speak to the community as part of EKTA’s role models program.

UNFPA’s new program in the six selected countries is funded by the European Union, however many other UNFPA programs are now in jeopardy, after the United States’ decision to withdraw all of its funding from the agency on Monday.

IPS spoke to Chandrasekharan during the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Excerpt:

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women with actress Patricia Arquette. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown.

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 14 2017 (IPS)

A new UN initiative launched on Monday night calls the women’s pay gap, which sees women paid 23 percent less than men globally: “the biggest robbery in history.”

During the 61^st session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meeting, UN Women and the International Labor Organisation (ILO) launched the high-profile Equal Pay Platform of Champions to raise awareness on the persistent gender wage gap.

The coalition consists of celebrities and activists including award-winning documentary filmmaker Kamala Lopez, Olympic gold medalist Abby Wambach, President of the Garment and Allied Workers Union Anannya Bhattacharjee, and actress Patricia Arquette.

“There has been a normalization for centuries of a bias against women, an acceptance that we are less than…there is no woman that [the wage gap] does not affect,” Lopez said as she moderated the launch.

UN Women’s Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka echoed similar sentiments, stating that such bias has led women’s work in a range of sectors to be undervalued.

“What does a woman in Wall Street have in common with a woman who has a shop in Brazil? Or in a cane farm in South Africa? Or in a sweatshop in Bangladesh? Chances are that they are all not paid equally by their different employers,“ said Mlambo-Ngcuka to delegates in the filled General Assembly Hall.

Globally, the gender pay gap is at approximately 23 percent as women make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.

The figure is even higher in some regions and among certain communities. In the U.S., African American women earn only 60 cents, Native American women 59 cents and Hispanic women 55 cents for every $1 that white men earn. In Turkey, women earn up to 75 percent less than their male counterparts.

Retired U.S. soccer player Abby Wambach shared her story and reasons for joining the Platform of Champions, stating: “I have two gold medals, I won a World Cup with my country…but I actually have to worry about paying my bills now.”

Before the enactment of Title IX, which guarantees that no person in the U.S. can be discriminated on the basis of sex in education receiving federal funds, opportunities for women in sports were extremely limited as women received only two percent of academic athletic budgets. It has since increased to 40 percent due to the law, but its existence is now threatened by the new administration.

“I want to make sure that the world that I leave is better than the world that I found,” Wambach said in reference to raising her stepdaughter.

Garment and Allied Workers Union’s President Anannya Bhattacharjee shed light on the plight of garment workers around the world, including those in Asia who are responsible for the production of over 60 percent of the world’s garments.

Bangladesh alone, which is the world’s second largest textile industry, earns more than $25 billion a year from exports and employs over 4 million workers, the majority of whom are women.

“The workers of this industry who are mainly women cannot access their basic human rights…industries that are dominated by women tend to be lower paid, which means that millions of women and generations of families live in poverty,” said Bhattacharjee.

In December, protests erupted in the South Asian nation as garment workers took to the streets to demand a monthly minimum wage increase from 67 dollars to 187 dollars. The call was dismissed, more than 1500 workers were fired, and over 40 arrested.

Bhattacharjee highlighted the need for a living wage, and to recognize the additional unpaid labor that women often take up to care for their families.

ILO estimates that it will take 70 years to close the gender wage gap at the current rate while the World Economic Forum warned that it could take 170 years for women and men to be paid the same for equal work due to reversed progress over the last few years.

Governments also joined in the call to action, including the Government of Iceland who recently became the first country to require equal pay for all.

“We had laws banning pay discrimination since 1961 in Iceland. Still, even though we are leading in equality, we still have a gender pay gap of around 7 percent. And that’s absolutely intolerable,” said Iceland’s Social Affairs and Equality Minister Thorsteinn Viglundsson.

The country says it wants to eradicate the gender pay gap by 2022.

Mlambo-Ngcuka noted the need for a comprehensive response to the complex wage inequality issue including by providing education to promote a shift in societal norms and sharing best practices from around the world to push for laws similar to those of Iceland.

“We can no longer afford to stand by and allow these deeply entrenched discriminations to persist…Every one of us can be a champion for women and girls. There are no superpowers necessary,” Lopez said.

CSW is the largest inter-governmental forum on women’s rights. The Equal Pay Platform of Champions is a part of the broader UN Women-ILO led Global Equal Pay Coalition that helps create concrete targets and laws to reduce the gender pay gap by 2030 at the global, regional and national levels.

Credit: Hari Gopal Gorkhali/IPS

By Lakshmi Puri
MARRAKESH, Nov 15 2016 (IPS)

The historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change last year is a breakthrough commitment to respect, promote and consider gender equality and women’s empowerment obligations while taking climate change action. It also committed to gender-responsive adaptation and capacity building. A year later, with the Agreement entered into force on 4 November, vigorous efforts are being made at COP 22 in Marrakech to make sure that gender equality is systematically integrated into all aspects of the implementation of the Agreement.

Both gender equality and climate change champions around the globe are meeting here in Marrakesh to transform the climate change agenda into one that recognizes the rights, priorities and capacities of women and girls and harnesses their talent and leadership for effective climate proofing and response.

Yesterday, on 14 November 2016, Parties adopted a decision on gender and climate change which extends the 2014 Lima Work Programme on Gender. The decision is far-reaching in that, for the first time, climate decision-makers supported the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in all areas of work of the Convention — mitigation, adaptation, finance, capacity-building, technology development and transfer, loss and damage. Now, it is incumbent upon Parties to register in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) commitments to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.

A breakthrough in operationalizing gender-responsive climate policy and action was achieved, as the decision mandates the development of a gender action plan that will propose priority areas and concrete activities for gender-responsive climate action across the various work areas of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The decision also strengthens efforts to promote the participation of women in the UNFCCC process, including in bodies established under the Convention. It enhances accountability by requesting regular reporting from constituted bodies and financial mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) on how they are working to promote gender equality in their work.

The global agenda to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and arrest global warming is about more than just tackling climate change. Of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),  SDG-13 “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” is closely linked to SDG-5 “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, recognizing gender equality both as a means and an end to effective climate action is a must. Moreover, the co-benefits of climate action and gender equality also positively and simultaneously address other SDGs – on poverty eradication, health, education, economic growth, sustainable energy, water and sanitation, full and productive employment and decent work, sustainable cities, just and peaceful societies, among others. For example, UN Women launched its Global Flagship Programme on Women’s Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Energy in partnership with the Government of India, the Department for International Development DFID of the UK and UNEP, which has a benefit multiplier effect. When linking efforts to achieve gender equality to climate action, we can effectively respond to the tragedy of climate change by helping to mitigate impacts and build resilient, inclusive societies.

The impacts of climate change range from health threats, resources constraints, loss of livelihoods, displacement, forced migration and conflicts, energy, income and time poverty and food insecurity to reduced access to infrastructure and essential services. They all have disproportionate impacts on women and girls. Climate change impacts also exacerbate the existing inequalities, discrimination, heavy burden of care and domestic work and violence that women face in their daily lives. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, for example, the inadequate sanitary facilities and lighting in the overcrowded camps contributed to the high instances of night attacks on women. The hardship and suffering for women and girls walking millions of miles for endless of hours to fetch water, fuel and food in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia is unconscionable and has a high opportunity cost to them and to society and the economy.

Even without much support and validation, women have been on the front lines of adaptation and mitigation. They have been formidable climate change activists, working in families, communities and economies to fend off the effects of extreme weather events and build resilience. Women have pioneered inclusive and sustainable initiatives. The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) in Benin has been key in the fight against energy poverty while economically empowering women in their local communities.  It is an example of women led resilience building. Similarly, the leadership of CEO Ms. Wandee Khunchornyakong has allowed the Solar Power Company Group, Thailand’s largest solar power generation company, to successfully unlock private financing for photovoltaic capacity, provide clean energy jobs for women, and lead the country on a low-carbon growth path. Women are also demonstrating leadership in science, technology, and innovation, as well as developing and applying protective, resilient and adaptive technologies to deal with flooding, heat, water management and promoting local indigenous practices and traditional knowledge.

Yet, the consistent unequal participation of women and men in decision-making processes has meant rights and contributions of women are not adequately considered in disaster preparations and response plans, leading to further marginalization and greater risks. A 2015 study covering 881 environmental sector ministries from 193 countries found only 12 per cent of the ministers were women. Women account for only 20 to 25 per cent of the workforce in renewable energy. The low representation of women in positions of power and influence has been one of the factors for the slow progress in the formulation and implementation of gender-responsive climate policies and strategies. Gender-based discrimination in all its forms must be eliminated with the utmost urgency.

The successful implementation of the actions under the extended work programme will require significantly increased targeted resources. Although the GCF has promoted a gender-sensitive approach from the outset, the existing resources to finance climate actions rarely ensure access to climate finance for programmes that are led by or have women as beneficiaries. This must change and both GEF and GCF must provide transformative and significantly scaled up financing for specific programs that aim at gender and climate justice together.

UN Women has been working with Parties and other stakeholders to strengthen understanding and the systematic integration of a gender perspective in climate policies and actions. In doing so, it is crucial for Parties to set concrete goals and targets in order to ensure the full, equal and effective participation of women in climate policy making and programme implementation at national, regional and global levels.

A paradigm shift is happening. This represents an unprecedented opportunity to leverage the co-benefits between gender equality and climate action, putting gender equality considerations and the voice and agency of women and girls at the centre of all climate management efforts and investments. We will thereby leave no one behind and do justice to people, planet and the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Excerpt:

Bertha Lutz at the San Francisco Conference, in 1945. UN Photo/Rosenberg.

By Phoebe Braithwaite
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 2016 (IPS)

It was little-known Brazilian delegate Bertha Lutz who led a band of female delegates responsible for inscribing the equal rights of women and men in the UN Charter at the San Francisco Conference on International Organisation in 1945.

“The mantle is falling off the shoulders of the Anglo-Saxons and…we [Latin American Women] shall have to do the next stage of battle for women,” Lutz wrote in her memoir, recalling the conference.

Researchers Elise Luhr Dietrichson and Fatima Sator of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) presented this forgotten history at a recent news conference at the United Nations, wishing to publicise the true history of women’s rights in the UN Charter.

“It’s not only about representing historical facts. It’s political; it’s about how history is presented,” Luhr Dietrichson told IPS. There is, she says, little recognition of the role of nations in the global south in establishing “global norms”.

Contrary to popular assumption, women’s rights in the charter were not achieved by Eleanor Roosevelt – this was not an American, nor a British, stipulation. It was, instead, a Latin American insistence: Lutz along with Minerva Bernadino from the Dominican Republic, and the Uruguayan Senator Isabel P. de Vidal, who insisted on the specific mention of “the equal rights of men and women” at the charter’s opening.

Lutz and those behind her were acting at a time when only 30 of the 50 countries represented at the conference had national voting rights for women. Thanks to their spirited determination, alongside support from participants in Mexico, Venezuela and Australia, she was successful in her demand to have women explicitly mentioned in Article 8, which states that men and women can participate equally in the UN system.

Australian representative Jessie Street “was very vocal, saying: ‘you need to state women specifically in the charter, or else they won’t have the same rights as men; you see this time and time again…’” explains Luhr Dietrichson. Among others in their number, Street’s and Lutz’s feminism enabled them to foresee that the rights of women would be sidelined if they were not explicitly accounted for – that it was not enough simply to enshrine the “rights of man,” as had been argued.

Lutz’ arguments were met with opposition from British and American representatives. Recalling the 1945 conference that brought the United Nations into being, Lutz described the American delegate Virginia Gildersleeve saying “she hoped I was not going to ask for anything for women in the charter since that would be a very vulgar thing to do,” trying to pre-empt any action in the name of women.

Gildersleeve rewrote a draft of the charter, omitting the specific mention of women. In the end, however, alongside Lutz and Bernadino, Gildersleeve and Wu Yi-fang, the Chinese delegate, did sign it as a whole. They were the only four women out of 850 total delegates to sign the seminal document.

A British representative, Labour Parliamentary secretary Ellen Wilkinson, assured Lutz that equality had already been achieved, saying that she had achieved a position on the King’s Privy Council. Lutz disagreed: “’I’m afraid not,’ I had to tell her, ‘it only means that you have arrived”. Such a discourse mirrors contemporary debate born out of Cheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, which celebrates individuals’ ambition and success, rather than taking a more global perspective on the systemic injustices women face.

“They were actively engaged in not fighting for gender equality… This is something that goes against everything we have been taught: that the West has been teaching us about feminism. But on this matter, on the charter, they were more than opposed,” Sator, who is from Algeria, told IPS.

“Again, it goes against everything we have been taught that the global south also has visionary ideas,” Sator said. “We only want these Latin American women to be acknowledged as much as we acknowledge Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Though Roosevelt was not involved in the creation of the charter, she became head of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1946 and was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Yet Western countries – including the United States, the United Kingdom and France – later worked to undermine that same declaration in the early 1950s.

As with the history of women’s rights in the UN charter, the role of countries of the global south in creating and protecting the human rights charter has been underestimated.

“It was very clear that Bertha Lutz and Minerva Bernadino they saw themselves as representing “backwards countries” – this was something they said themselves,” Luhr Dietrichson recounts. “They were so critical that these women from more [economically] advanced countries didn’t recognise where their own rights had come from.”

Speaking at the conference, Brazilian Ambassador Antonio Patriota conveyed that Lutz and this story are not at all well known even in Brazil, and welcomed this effort to share the history more widely. At the conference, Luhr Dietrichson emphasised that a sense of “ownership” can lend legitimacy, enabling the engagement and involvement of future generations.

This research is part of a wider effort to “rediscover the radical origins of the United Nations,” Professor Dan Plesch, Director at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, told IPS. It forms part of a wider academic project, UN History for the Future, which seeks to re-contextualise the UN, created not as “some liberal accessory” but “out of hard, realistic political necessity,” Plesch argues.

At a time when there have been widespread calls not only for a woman to finally lead the United Nations, but for a self-described feminist to be seen in the role, Sator and Luhr Dietrichson’s research is a reminder that we still have a long way to go in fulfilling the charter’s vision of equality.

Still, as Plesch asked, “if it had not been for Bertha Lutz and the work of the enlightened dictator (Getúlio Vargas) of Brazil at the time, where would gender equality be now?”

Two Mexican teenage girls at their school. Investing in education for teenage girls in Latin America is regarded as the way forward for them to become future drivers of sustainable develpment in their societies. Credit: UNFPA LAC

By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Jul 11 2016 (IPS)

Latin America’s teenage girls are a crucial force for change and for promoting sustainable development, if the region invests in their rights and the correction of unequal opportunities, according to Luiza Carvalho, the regional head of UN Women.

“An empowered adolescent will know her rights and will stand up for them; she has tools for success and is a driving froce for positive change in her community,” Carvalho told IPS in an interview from the regional headquarters of UN Women in Panama City.

Adolescent girls and boys will have a leading role in their societies when the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development has been completed, she said. One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is gender equality. Investing in today’s girls will have “a great transformative impact in future,” she said. “Investing in education and protection against violence are important tools for fulfilling the potential of teenage girls and young women,as wellas for promoting gender equality” -- Luiza Carvalho.

The world today has a higher proportion of its population aged between 10 and 24 years old than ever before, with 1.8 billion young people out of a  total population of 7.3 billion. Roughly 20 percent of this age group live in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean, Carvalho said.

According to data given to IPS by the regional office of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 57million of the region’s 634 million people are girls aged between 10 and 19, living mainly in cities.

The theme for this year’s World Population Day, celebrated July 11, is “Investing in Teenage Girls”, on the premise that transforming their present situation to guarantee their right to equality will not only eliminate barriers to their individual potential but will also be decisive for the sustainable development of their countries.

Women Deliver, an international organisation, has calculated the benefits of this investment in financial terms. For every additional 10 percent of girls in school, national GDP rises by an average of three percent; for every extra year of primary schooling a girl has completed, her expected salary as an adult grows by between 10 and 20 percent.

This is fundamental because, as Carvalho pointed out, “lack of economic empowerment, together with generalised gender discrimination and the reinforcemet of traditional stereotypes, negatively affects the capability of women in Latin America and the Caribbean to participate on an equal footing in all aspects of public and private life.”

Luiza Carvalho, regional director of UN Women for Latin America and the Caribbean. Credit: UN Women LAC

That is why “investing in education and protection against violence are important tools for fulfilling the potential of teenage girls and young women,as well as for promoting gender equality,” she said.

Teenage women, she said, “are an especially vulnerable group who face special social, economic and political barriers.” Their empowerment in the region may come up against difficulties such as unwanted pregnancy, forced early marriage or union, gender violence and limited access to education and reproductive health services.”

As an example of these obstacles, the regional director of UN Women said that a Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) study of women aged 15-49 years in 12 countries of the region “reported that for a substantial proportion of these women, their first sexual encounter had been unwanted or coerced.”

Carvalho stressed that “early marriage or union imposed on girls is a major concern in the region, and it significantly affects the exercise of adolescent girls’ rights developing their full potential.”

“It is a form of violence that denies them their childhood, interrupts their education, limits their social development, curtails their opportunities, exposes them to the risk of premature pregnancy at too young an age, or unwanted pregnancy and its possible complications, and increases their risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, including HIV (human immuno-deficiency virus),” she said.

It also increases the girls’ exposure to “becoming victims of violence and abuse,” Carvalho said.

In Carvalho’s view it is very positive that all the countries inthe region have established minimum ages for marriage in their laws, but on the other hand, the laws fix different minimum ages for boys and for girls, and in certain cases such as pregnancy or motherhood, girls may legally marry before they reach the minimum age.

In Latin America, far from diminishing, teenage pregnancies have increased in recent years, due to cultural acceptance of early sexual initiation. As a result, the region ranks second in the world for adolescent birth rates, with an average of 76 live births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 years, second only to sub-Saharan Africa.

Furthermore, 30 percent of Latin American teenage girls do not have access to the contraceptive care services they need, according to UNFPA. Sexual and reproductive health face especially high barriers in this region because of patriarchal,culture, the weight of conservative sectors and the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church.

In Latin America, indigenous teenage girls, together with their rural counterparts, are the group most discriminated against in terms of opportunities and access to education. Credit: Rajesh Krishnan/UN Women

In contrast, the region has a good record on education. Over 90 percent of its countries have policies to promote equal access by teenagers to education. Ninety percent of teenage girls have finished their primary school education, although only 78 percent go on to secondary school, according to UNFPA.

The greatest educational access barriers are faced by rural and indigenous teenage girls, who have difficulties for physical access to some education centres. In the case of indigenous and Afro-descendant girls, this is added to inappropriate curricula or the absence of educational materials in their native languages (mother tongues). 

Carvalho highlighted as a positive element that education laws, especially those that have been reformed recently, “have begun to recognise the importance of establishing legal provisions that promote and disseminate human rights, peaceful coexistence and sex education.”

However, she regretted that “direct connections with prevention of violence against women and girls are still incipient.”

In her view, the school curriculum plays an essential role. Including contents and materials “related to human rights and the rights of women and girls, non-violent conflict resolution, co-responsibility and basic education about sexual and reproductive health,” will potentiate more non-violent societies, inside and outside of the classroom, she said.

Carvalho quoted a 2015 study carried out in 13 Latin American countries by UN Women and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which concluded that education systems are failing to prevent violence against girls.

“This is something that must be improved, because it is in the first few years of early childhood that egalitarian role modelling between girls and boys can occur and lay the foundations of the prevention of violence, discrimination, and inequality in all its forms,” she emphasised.

Carvalho said changes should start with something as simple as it is frequently forgotten: “Girls, teenagers and women are rights-holders and entitled to their rights.”

If girls are given “equal access to education, health care, sexual and reproductive education, decent jobs, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes, sustainable economies would be promoted and societies, and humanity as a whole, would benefit,” she concluded. 

Edited by Verónica Firme. Translated by Valerie Dee.

Evelyn Amony. Credit: Erin Baines / UN Women

By Aruna Dutt
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 2016 (IPS)

Evelyn Amony’s bravery not only helped her survive and escape captivity from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), but has made her an advocate for thousands of abducted women and children who face long term consequences after returning home.

Raised in Amuru District, northern Uganda, Evelyn Amony’s family, neighbours, and friends were bound into a close community. Her happiest memory was when she received the second-highest grade in her class. “When I was a child, my biggest interest was my education,” Amony told Inter Press Service.

“When my father heard the news, he slaughtered a goat and gave me the liver,”  says Amony in her memoir, “I Am Evelyn Amony: Reclaiming My  Life From The Lord’s Resistance Army.” But the next term, she was abducted by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and did not get to attend Primary Five.

IPS spoke with Amony ahead of the launch of her book at the UN, organised by UN Women, the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Liu Institute for Global Issues, the University of British Columbia and the Permanent Mission of Canada to the UN.

She recounts her 11 years in captivity – being trained as the personal escort of the notorious LRA leader Joseph Kony, wanted by the International Criminal Court. Too young to know that childbirth would be painful, Amony was forced to become Kony’s wife and bore him three children from age 14.

“I remember how hard it was to be forced to walk long distances from Uganda to Southern Sudan, to the point where my feet were swollen and I would ask God to just let me rest, and that if I was abducted for the purpose to be killed, then God should let them kill me as fast as they could,” she recalls.

Amony tried to convince Kony to end the war. She tried escaping for years, eventually succeeding ten years later. Shot at many times, surviving a violent ambush, Amony began her journey to freedom from Southern Sudan. “It was at that moment I knew God was really there,” Amony told IPS. On reaching Uganda she was reunited with her family and two of her daughters, one is still missing.

War of Reintegration

For Amony and thousands of formerly abducted women, leaving war did not mean the war was over. In northern Uganda, coming back from the bush to communities where the LRA committed atrocities, meant facing further violence and discrimination.

Reintegrating into the community after over a decade of war, having missed school, meant finding a job was unlikely. Yet many women struggle single-handedly to raise their children.

One of these women may have to see the commander that abused her at the community market daily, says Ketty Anyeko of the Uganda Fund, an organisation that has helped reintegrate some 2,800 war-affected women.

“Uganda has a culture of forgiveness, so these LRA commanders can live freely. But for sexual violence, it is not easy to forgive and forget,” said Anyeko. These women are also often rejected by their families, so do not have access to land or resources needed for them and their children to survive.

Of every five children in northern Uganda, 3 were born during the war in the bush, said Amony. More than 66,000 children have been abducted in the Uganda region by the LRA, according to UNICEF. Only about 6,000 have returned. Many are physically impaired. Amony’s younger daughter, Grace, has hearing problems because of loud gunfire; her elder daughter Bakita’s eyesight is affected. That is in addition to the trauma and experience of war.

“When I ask male children what they want to do when they grow up, many say they want to be soldiers. When I ask why, they tell me that if you are a soldier you have the power to do whatever you want to do, you can get whatever woman you want, because you can use the gun. This is what they have been taught,” Amony says. It is not surprising then that children who returned are viewed negatively and seen as likely to take after their fathers who were part of LRA. In schools, children suffer stigma because some teachers refer to them as the “children of Kony.”

Unable to continue in that environment, many give up education. Girls are becoming pregnant as teenagers and male children are ending up on the streets, Amony says. In short, children are punished for the crimes of the LRA commanders.

When a war-affected woman remarries, the husband often does not show love for the children born in conflict, and even refuses to pay school fees. For Amony, all these are challenges to be overcome.

“I love to speak to children to the point where on holidays many of the kids spend time with me,” she says. They ask her questions to which she has no answers. They want to go to school but Amony does not have the resources to help them. “There are so many of Kony’s children, and they have an impression that I know where their father is,” Amony says.

Women’s Advocacy Network

It was tough for Amony to reintegrate also. After her escape, she attended a tailoring school, where there were 7 other formerly abducted women. When they went to get food, the other students would leave the serving table as they didn’t want to sit with them.

Because they shared similar hardships, Amony and the 7 women decided to start a small group to help each other. Their efforts soon expanded to organizing women in the larger community. But the LRA’s massacres had caused conflict between the communities. The group was sometimes pressured not to go to one community or another. But they persisted, angering one group or the other. Some in Amony’s group were very afraid. But when Amony told them her story, they cried. Amony knew she had won the battle.

In Gulu District, they established three groups of survivors. The Transitional Justice experts Ketty Anyeko and Erin Baines, stepped in to encourage the work. “We started getting involved in community theatre exercises to narrate our experiences in a very visual way,” Amony said. “This was when we started telling the deeper stories about our lives and the war, and we would all cry together.” In 2011, more survivor groups were formed and Amony was elected the chairperson of  the Women’s Advocacy Network. They began radio talk shows reaching out to the grassroots. They visited district offices to raise awareness. “It was not easy for me to introduce myself as the chairperson of Women’s Advocacy Network because whenever I went, they would say “Oh, you are the wife of Joseph Kony”. They would reduce me to “rebel wife” and not see me as a “woman advocate,” Amony said.

“I come here as Evelyn Amony to explain to you what women who suffered the conflict want,” was her response. Today, there are about 16 WAN groups, growing from 20 to 900 formerly abducted women in the last three years.

But it was not easy. “When we introduced ourselves as children who were formerly abducted, their initial reaction would be that we were the ones who committed atrocities.” The survivors explained that they too were victims and that the community must join hands and work together.

“What can we do to ensure Ugandan children live a normal life?” Amony wants to know.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director. Credit: UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz.

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 1 2016 (IPS)

The drugging, abduction and violent gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil calls us all to turn the tide of sexual violence against women and girls in Brazil and in every country in the world.

Her silence was broken by the men who boastfully posted their images of the rape, deepening her abuse by showing her body to the world, in the confident expectation of approval by their peers and impunity from punishment. This is Brazil’s moment to shake that confidence to its core and reassert the rule of law and its respect for human rights. This is the time for zero tolerance for violence against women and girls.

The men’s casual expectation of zero retribution reflects the impunity known by most rapists across the world. Their confidence illustrates a climate of normalized abuse, a culture of daily violence against women and girls, and a stark failure of justice. It is estimated that only 35 per cent of rape cases in Brazil are reported. Even so, the Brazilian police record a case of rape every 11 minutes, every day.

The Brazilian teenager did not get medical attention until after her attack was made public. Fear, shame or hopelessness contribute to the gross under-reporting of sexual violence. Far too few women and girls are getting the help they need—and to which they are entitled—to support healing and protect them from unwanted pregnancy as well as from HIV or other sexually transmitted infections.

One simple fact illustrates this: alongside the horrifically high rates of sexual violence experienced daily by women and girls in Brazil and throughout the region, 56 per cent of pregnancies in Latin America and the Caribbean are unplanned or unintended. Women and girls need access to the full range of reproductive health services and rights at all times.

Attention to the critical lack of access to these services in Brazil and elsewhere has sharpened even further in the light of the unprecedented spread of the Zika virus. The risks are highest for the most vulnerable, who are unable to protect themselves adequately against infection, nor against unwanted pregnancy—especially in the context of rape. There has never been a more urgent time for action against sexual violence and for women and girls to be able to confidentially and easily access the health services they need. Both legal and medical structures need to be mobilized to deal with the cases that already exist and strong action taken to build comprehensive services for survivors.

This one case throws into stark relief the daily discrimination and intimidation experienced by women and girls, not just in Latin America, but all over the world. Violence against women and girls deeply damages our societies, our economies, our politics and our long-term global potential. It constrains lives, limits options, and violates human rights. In all its forms, from physical brutality against women human rights defenders like Berta Cáceres, who was murdered in western Honduras in March, to the character assassination of female political figures, it plays out daily in visible and invisible ways, and diminishes us all. It is both why increased representation of women in leadership positions is so important, and why it is so difficult to achieve.

The intensity of protest in Brazil trending through social networks reflects the deep anger against the unrecognized or undeclared abuses that have suppressed or extinguished so many women’s lives. For so many years the struggle of women’s movements, only now governments share their vision of a world without violence by 2030. The young girl in the news commented: “It does not hurt the uterus, but the soul because there are cruel people who are getting away with it.”

Zero tolerance needs the full weight of the laws already in place to track down, prosecute and punish perpetrators. From the highest levels of government, through the police, lawyers and the courts, all need to act with renewed responsibility and accountability for what is happening to women and girls and understand its real cost and consequences.

Most important of all, this is a situation for every man and boy to consider, and to decide to take a stand to change and positively evolve the ‘machismo’ culture. This must not wait another day.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director.

Excerpt:

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet during an exlusive interview with IPS in the Blue Room in the Moneda Palace, the seat of government, in Santiago, before flying to Paris to participate in the Nov. 30 inauguration of the climate summit, to be hosted by the French capital until Dec. 11. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Nov 27 2015 (IPS)

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet says the climate summit in Paris “is not the end of a process but a beginning,” and that it will produce “an agreement that, although insufficient with respect to the original goal, shows that people believe it is better to move ahead than to stand still.”

In this exclusive interview with IPS, held shortly before Bachelet headed to the capital of France, the president reflected on the global impacts of climate change and stressed several times that the accords reached at the summit “must be binding,” as well as universal.

On Monday Nov. 30 Bachelet will take part in the inauguration of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will run through Dec. 11. At the summit, the 196 countries that are parties to the treaty are to agree on a new climate accord aimed at curbing global warming.

The president also said the Paris summit will have a different kind of symbolism in the wake of the terrorist attacks that claimed 130 lives: “It sends out an extremely clear signal that we will not allow ourselves to be intimidated,” she said.

Q: Latin America is a region where the countries face similar impacts from climate change. But it is negotiating with a fragmented voice. Has the region missed a chance for a leadership role and for a better defence of its joint interests?

A: Sometimes it is very difficult to achieve a unified position, because even though there are situations that are similar, decisions must be taken that governments are not always able to adopt, or because they find themselves in very different circumstances.

We belong to the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) in the negotiations on climate change, along with Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. All of these countries did manage to work together, and we have a similar outlook on the question of climate change.

The countries in this region are not the ones that generate the most emissions at a global level. And above and beyond the differences we may have, the important thing is that we will all make significant efforts to reduce emissions and boost clean energies and other mechanisms and initiatives.

Q: Will the COP21 manage to approve a new universal climate treaty?

A: COP21 is not the end but a beginning of a process where the countries will turn in their national commitments [Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCS)]. After that will come the mechanisms to assess the implementation of these contributions, and, from time to time, propose other targets, which would be more ambitious in some cases.

This will be the first climate change summit, after the Copenhagen conference [in 2009] where no accord was reached even though the Kyoto Protocol was coming to an end, where we will be able to reach some level of agreement.

It might not be the optimal level; apparently the contributions so far publicly submitted by the states parties would not achieve the objective of keeping global warming down to two degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, it is a major advance, when you look at what has happened in the past.

That said, what Chile maintains is that the contributions should be binding, and we are going to back that position which is clearly not supported by everyone.

Q: So you include yourself among those who believe Paris will mark a positive turning point in the fight against climate change?

A: Yes, in the sense that a concrete, definitive agreement will be reached.

But it is, I insist, the start of a path. Later other, more ambitious, measures will have to be adopted, to further reduce global temperatures.

Q: Will the treaty currently being debated include the financing that the Global South and Latin America in particular will need in order to help prevent the planet from reaching a situation that is irreversible for human life?

A: I have a hope that the Green Climate Fund will grow and give more countries access to technology and resources. In this region we will always have the contradiction that we are considered middle-income countries, and thus we are not given priority when it comes to funding, while at the same time our economies are often unable to foot greater costs. And on the other hand, we are the smallest emitters [of greenhouse gases].

This is why in Chile we have set two targets, one without external support and the other with external financing, to reduce emissions by 45 percent. But there is also a possibility of financing through cooperation programmes for the introduction and transfer of new technologies to our countries, which will allow us to live up to the commitments.

Q: As the first executive director of U.N.-Women [2010-2013], you helped establish the idea that women must be taken into account in climate negotiations and actions, because they bear the impacts on a day-to-day basis and are decisive in adapting to and mitigating global warming. What is the central role that women should have in the new treaty?

A: There are a number of day-to-day decisions made by women, which have an influence. For example, energy efficiency is essential when it comes to reducing emissions, and it is often a domestic issue, in questions such as turning off lights, for example.

But in many parts of the world women are also the ones hauling water or cooking with firewood, especially in the most vulnerable areas.

So the importance of women ranges from these aspects to their contribution as citizens committed to the fight against climate change, with the conviction that a green, inclusive and sustainable economy is possible, and to the political role of women at the parliamentary and municipal level, where they are working hard for the adoption of measures and to ensure a livable planet.

Q: As president, and as a Chilean, what worries you most about the current climate situation? What would you see as the highest priority?

A: There are many things that worry me about climate change, ranging from severe drought and flooding to islands that could disappear under water – in other words, how natural events linked to climate change affect the lives of people.

I’m also concerned about two things that are essential for people: clean drinking water and food, two elements that can be profoundly affected by climate change. We have seen that there are areas of the country where people depend on rationed water from tanker trucks.

This not only affects the daily lives of people but also, in agricultural areas, it affects production and incomes. And think about the marvelous variety of fish and seafood that we have in our country, which depends on the temperatures in our oceans.

All of this could be modified. It is all very important, and ends up affecting people’s lives.

Q: Paris was the victim of a Jihadist terrorist attack on Nov. 13, which left 130 people dead. Did these attacks affect the climate surrounding the summit? Will the participation by the heads of state and government also serve as a response to the terrorism?

A: More than 160 heads of state and government have confirmed their attendance at the Paris conference, which sends out an extremely clear signal that we will not allow ourselves to be intimidated.

We are going to Paris first, because the issue to be addressed and discussed is important, but also because we are sending a message that we will not tolerate this kind of action and that we will continue moving forward in the defence of the values that we believe are essential. And we will give a hug of solidarity to our sister republic, France, to President François Hollande and to the French people.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Excerpt:

By Renee Juliene Karunungan
BONN, Sep 2 2015 (IPS)

After surviving the storm surge wreaked by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013, women in evacuation centres found themselves again fighting for survival … at times from rape. Many became victims of human trafficking while many more did anything they could to feed their families before themselves.

Climate change has become one of the biggest threats of this century for women. But these ‘secondary impacts’ of disaster events are rarely considered, nor are the amplifying impacts of economic dependence, and lack of everyday freedoms at home.

At the Road to Sendai conference held in Manila in March, women’s leaders shared their traumatic experience. For many affected by Typhoon Haiyan, simple decisions such as the freedom to decide when to evacuate could not be made without their husbands’ permission.

Renee Juliene Karunungan

When typhoons come, women’s concerns rest with their children, but they remain uncertain of what to do and where to go. These are some of the crushing realities poor women live with in the face of climate change.

“We must recognise that women are differentially impacted by climate change,” according to Verona Collantes, Intergovernmental Specialist for UN Women. “For example, women have physical limitations because of the clothes they wear or because in some cultures, girls are not taught how to swim.”

“We take these things for granted but it limits women and girls and affects their vulnerability in the face of climate change,” she noted, adding that these day-to-day threats of climate change are only set to increase “if we don’t recognise that there are these limits, our response becomes the same for everyone and we disadvantage a part of the population, which, in this case, is women.”

Women’s groups have been active in pushing for gender to be included in the negotiating text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and according to Kate Cahoon of Gender CC, “we’ve seen a lot of progress in negotiations in the past decade when it comes to gender.”“Climate change has become one of the biggest threats of this century for women. But these ‘secondary impacts’ of disaster events are rarely considered, nor are the amplifying impacts of economic dependence, and lack of everyday freedoms at home”

However, this week in Bonn, where the UNFCCC is holding a series of meetings, there has also been growing concern that issues central to supporting vulnerable women have been side-tracked, and may be left out or weakened by the time the U.N. climate change conference takes place in Paris in December.

“We want to make sure that gender is not only included in the preamble,” said Cahoon, explaining that this would amount to a somewhat superficial treatment of gender sensitivity. “We want to ensure that countries will commit to having gender in Section C [general objectives].”

Ensuring that gender is included throughout the Paris agreement is essential to ensure that there will be a mandate for action on the ground, especially in the Philippines. This is the only way to ensure that Paris will make a change in women’s lives at the grassroots level.

“We want a strong agreement and it can only be strong if we account for half of the world’s population,” stressed Cahoon.

Meanwhile, Collantes noted that UN Women is working to ensure that women will not be seen as vulnerable but rather as leaders. She believes that we now need to highlight the skills and capabilities that women can use to support their communities in moments of disaster.

“Women are always portrayed as victims but women are not vulnerable,” said Collates. “If they are given resources or decision-making powers, women can show their skills and strengths.”

In fact, according to an assessment by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), “women play a key role in adaptation efforts, environmental sustainability and food security as the climate changes.”

The women most affected by Typhoon Haiyan could not agree more.

“We are always seen as a group of people to give charity to. But we are not only receivers of charity. We can be an active agent of making our communities more resilient to climate change impacts,” a woman leader from the Philippine women’s organisation KAKASA said during the Road to Sendai forum.

What does a good climate agreement for women look like?

According to Collantes, it must correct the lack of mention of women in the previous conventions, and it must also be coherent with the goal of gender equality, the Post-2015 Agenda, Rio+20, and the Sendai Disaster Risk Reduction Framework.

“Without gender equality, the Paris agreement would be behind its time and will not validate realities women are facing today,” says Collantes.

For the three billion women impacted by climate change, we can only hope negotiators here in Bonn won’t leave them behind.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Lakshmi Puri
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2015 (IPS)

The efforts of the United Nations and the global women’s movement to promote the women’s rights agenda and make it a top international priority saw its culmination in the creation of U.N. Women, by the General Assembly in 2010.

UN Women is the first – and only – composite entity of the U.N. system, with a universal mandate to promote the rights of women through the trinity of normative support, operational programmes and U.N. system coordination and accountability lead and promotion.This is a pivotal moment for the gender equality project of humankind.

It also supports the building of a strong knowledge hub – with data, evidence and good practices contributing to positive gains but also highlighting challenges and gaps that require urgent redressal.

UN Women has given a strong impetus to ensuring that progressive gender equality and women’s empowerment norms and standards are evolved internationally and that they are clearly mainstreamed and prioritised as key beneficiaries and enablers of the U.N.’s sustainable development, peace and security, human rights, humanitarian action, climate change action and World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) + 10 agendas.

In fact, since its creation five years ago, there has been an unprecedented focus and prioritisation of gender equality and women’s empowerment in all normative processes and outcomes.

With the substantive and intellectual backstopping, vigorous advocacy, strategic mobilisation and partnerships with member states and civil society, U.N. Women has contributed to the reigniting of political will for the full, effective and accelerated implementation of Beijing Platform commitments as was done in the Political Declaration adopted at 59^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women; a remarkable, transformative and comprehensive integration and prioritisation of gender equality in the Rio + 20 outcome and in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through a stand-alone Sustainable Development Goal and gender sensitive targets in other key Goals and elements.

Additionally, there was also a commitment to both gender mainstreaming and targeted and transformative actions and investments in the formulation and implementation of financial, economic, social and environmental policies at all levels in the recently-concluded Addis Accord and Action Agenda on  Financing For Development.

Also we secured a commitment to significantly increased investment to close the gender gap and resource gap and a pledge to strengthen support to gender equality mechanisms and institutions at the global, regional and national levels. We now are striving to do the same normative alchemy with the Climate Change Treaty in December 2015.

Equally exhilarating and impactful has been the advocacy journey of U.N. Women. It  supports and advocates for gender equality, women’s empowerment and the rights of women globally, in all regions and countries, with governments, with civil society and the private sector, with the media and with citizens – women and girls, men and boys everywhere including through its highly successful and innovative Campaigns such as UNiTE to End Violence against Women / orange your neighbourhood, Planet 50/50 by 2030: Step it up for Gender Equality and the HeforShe campaign which have reached out to over a billion people worldwide .

UN Women also works with countries to help translate international norms and standards into concrete actions and impact at national level and to achieve real change in the lives of women and girls in over 90 countries. It is in the process of developing Key Flagship Programs to scale up and drive impact on the ground in priority areas of economic empowerment, participation and leadership in decision making and governance, and ending violence against women.

Ending the chronic underinvestment in women and girls empowerment programs and projects and mobilising transformative financing of gender equality commitments made is also a big and urgent priority.

We have and will continue to support women and girls in the context of humanitarian crisis like the Ebola crisis in West Africa and the earthquake relief and response in Nepal and worked in over 22 conflict and post conflict countries to advance women’s security, voice, participation and leadership in the continuum from peace-making, peace building to development.

UN Women’s role in getting each and every part of the U.N. system including the MFIs and the WTO to deliver bigger, better and in transformative ways for gender equality through our coordination role has been commended by all. Already 62 U.N. entities, specialised agencies and departments have reported for the third year on their UN-SWAP progress and the next frontier is to SWAP the field.

Much has been achieved globally on women’s right from education, to employment and leadership, including at the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has appointed more senior women than all the other Secretary-Generals combined.

Yet, despite the great deal of progress that has been made in the past 70 years in promoting the rights of women –persistent challenges remain and new ones have come up and to date no country in the world has achieved gender equality.

The majority of the world’s poor are women and they remain disempowered and marginalised. Violence against women and girls is a global pandemic. Women and girls are denied their basic right to make decisions on their sexuality and reproductive life and at the current rate of progress, it would take nearly another 80 years to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment everywhere, and for women and girls to have equal access to opportunities and resources everywhere.

The world cannot wait another century. Women and girls have already waited two millennia. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and all other normative commitments in the United Nations will remain ‘ink on paper’ without transformative financing in scale and scope, without the data, monitoring and follow up and review and without effective accountability mechanisms in this area.

As we move forward, the United Nations must continue to work with all partners to hold Member States accountable for their international commitments to advance and achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment in all sectors and in every respect.

UN Women is readying itself to be Fit For Purpose but must also be Financed For Purpose in order to contribute and support the achievement of the Goals and targets for women and girls across the new Development Agenda.

This is a pivotal moment for the gender equality project of humankind. In order to achieve irreversible and sustained progress in gender equality and women’s empowerment for all women and girls – no matter where and in what circumstances they live and what age they are, we must all step up our actions and investment to realise the promise of “Transforming our World ” for them latest by 2030. It is a matter of justice, of recognising their equal humanity and of enabling the realisation of their fundamental freedoms and rights.

As the U.N. turns 70 and the entire international development  and  security community faces many policy priorities – from poverty eradication, conflict resolution, to addressing climate change and increasing inequalities within and between countries – it is heartening that all constituents of the U.N. – member states, the Secretariat and the civil society – recognise that no progress can be made in any of them without addressing women’s needs and interests and without women and girls as participants and leaders of change.

By prioritising gender equality in everything they pledge to not only as an article of faith but an operational necessity, they signal that upholding women’s rights will not only make the economy, polity and society work for women but create a prosperous economy, a just and peaceful society and a more sustainable planet.

Part One can be read here.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By Lakshmi Puri
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2015 (IPS)

If there is any idea and cause for which the United Nations has been an indispensable engine of progress globally it is the cause of ending all forms of “discrimination and violence against women and girls, ensuring the realization of their equal rights and advancing their political, economic and social empowerment.

Gender equality and the empowerment of women has been featured prominently in the history of the United Nations system since its inception. The ideas, commitments and actions of the United Nations have sought to fundamentally improve the situation of women around the world, in country after country.Twenty years after its adoption, the Platform for Action remains a gold standard of international commitments on strategic objectives and actions on gender equality and women's empowerment.

Now, as we celebrate the United Nations’ 70th anniversary, the U.N. continues to be the world leader in establishing the global norms and policy standards on women’s empowerment, their human rights and on establishing what we at U.N. Women call  the Planet 50 / 50 Project on equality between women and men.

Equality between men and women was enshrined in the U.N.’s founding Charter as a key principle and objective. Just a year after, in 1946, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was set up as the dedicated intergovernmental body for policy dialogue and standard setting and monitoring gender equality commitments of member states and their implementation.

Since then, the Commission has played an essential role in guiding the work of the United Nations and in setting standards for all countries, from trailblazing advocacy for the full political suffrage of women and political rights to women’s role in development.

It also gave birth to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW, adopted in 1979. Often called the international bill of rights for women, and used as a global reference point for both governments and NGOs alike, the Convention has been ratified by 189 States so far.

These governments regularly report to the CEDAW Committee which has also become a generator of normative guidance through its General Recommendations, apart from strengthening the accountability of governments.

As the torch-bearer on women’s rights, the U.N. also led the way in declaring 1975 to 1985 the International Women’s Decade. During this period the U.N. held the first three World Conferences on Women, in Mexico (1975), Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985) which advanced advocacy, activism and policy action on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s rights in multiple areas.

In 1995, the U.N. hosted the historic Fourth World Conference on Women, and adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, one of most progressive frameworks which continues to be the leading roadmap for the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment globally.

Twenty years after its adoption, the Platform for Action remains a gold standard of international commitments on strategic objectives and actions on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s rights in 12 critical areas of concern including poverty, education, health, economy, power and decision making, ending violence against women, women’s human rights, conflict and post conflict environment, media, institutional mechanisms and the girl child.

Since 1995 gender equality and women’s empowerment issues have permeated all intergovernmental bodies of the U.N. system.

The General Assembly, the highest and the universal membership body of the United Nations, leads the way with key normative resolutions as well as reflecting gender perspectives in areas such as agriculture, trade, financing for development, poverty eradication, disarmament and non-proliferation, and many others. Among the MDGs, MDG 3 was specifically designed to promote gender equality and empower women apart from Goal 5 on maternal mortality.

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has also been a strong champion of gender mainstreaming into all policies, programmes, areas and sectors as the mains strategy in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Progress achieved so far has been in part possible thanks to ECOSOC’s strong mandate for mainstreaming a gender perspective and its support to the United Nations system-wide action Plan on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN-SWAP) which constitutes a unified accountability framework for and of the U.N. to support gender equality and empowerment of women.

Strongly addressing the impact of conflict on women and their role in peacebuilding, the U.N. sent a strong signal by addressing the issue of women peace and security in the landmark Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) which asserted  the imperative of  women’s empowerment in  conflict prevention, peace-making and peace building apart from ensuring their protection.

This resolution was seen as a must for women as well as for lasting peace and it has since been complemented by seven additional resolutions including on Sexual Violence in Conflict. This year as the 15th anniversary of Security Council resolution 1325 is commemorated, a Global Study and Review on its effective implementation is underway.

It is expected to renew the political will and decisive action to ensure that women are equal partners and their agency and leadership is effectively engaged in conflict prevention, peace-making and peace-building.

Part Two can be read here.

Edited by Kitty Stapp 

Excerpt:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the International Business Forum of the UN’s Third International Conference on Financing for Development, hosted by the Ffd Business Sector Steering Committee. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 5 2015 (IPS)

When the United Nations seeks outside financial assistance either for development needs or to advocate social causes, it invariably turns to the private sector these days.

Perhaps the most demanding is Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s appeal to private investors to help the United Nations reach its 100-billion-dollar target per year to battle the devastating consequences of climate change.“We believe that youth can make a difference, especially in the achievement of the post 2015 agenda: but giving voice to them is not enough. It is important to give new generations the tools to make a change.” -- Mariarosa Cutillo of Benetton

But critics have urged the United Nations to double-check the credentials of some of these companies — on issues such as human rights, fair wages, child labour and environmental record — before deciding to collaborate.

Still, on a more modest scale, the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) received over 135 million dollars in funds from the business sector between 2009 and 2013 for some of its projects relating to water, energy, healthcare, agriculture and finance and information technology.

A South African company called Mediclave has provided sterilising machines that decontaminate used medical equipment and waste, such as syringes, personal protective suits and gloves, used in treating communicable diseases.

In Liberia, a Japanese company, Panasonic, has distributed its first batch of 240 solar lanterns to health workers in Monrovia, allowing them to work at night.

The UNDP also has a partnership with Svani Group Limited, a Ghanaian vehicle dealership, which has provided over eight armoured vehicles deployed to the UN Mission on Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana.

And more recently, the U.N. Academic Impact (UNAI), created under the aegis of the Department of Public Information (DPI) has collaborated with United Colours of Benetton’s “UnHate Foundation” for a Diversity Contest to “showcase the engagement of young people around the world, and the innovation, energy and commitment they bring to personally-crafted solutions that address some of the world’s most pressing issues”, including racial intolerance and xenophobia.

The contest drew more than 100 entries from 31 countries worldwide with innovative ideas and solutions for tackling a wide range of issues, primarily intolerance, racism and extremism.

A panel of judges picked 10 winners who received 20,000 Euros each donated by United Colors of Benetton, a global fashion brand based in Italy.

Benetton has also teamed with U.N. Women in its intense campaign to eliminate gender violence worldwide.

Nanette Braun Chief, Communications and Advocacy at U.N. Women, told IPS Benetton’s UnHate Foundation has been supporting U.N. Women in its advocacy on ending violence against women for the past two years through advertising and social media campaigns.

“We hope to expand the partnership and collaboration in the future,” she added.

Asked about Benetton’s role in advocating U.N. causes, Mariarosa Cutillo, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at Benetton Group in Milan, told IPS the main reason is “because, first of all, this is an integral part of the DNA of our company, which has always been in the frontline – often in provocative and very progressive ways – on social issues, including the fight against any form of intolerance and discrimination.”

She pointed out this approach has been consolidated through social projects and communication campaigns, and has been translated also through the establishment of the UnHate Foundation.

Since 2011, the Foundation representing one of the arms of the company has developed social programmes to fight against hate in all its forms, while supporting youth leadership.

“We believe that youth can make a difference, especially in the achievement of the post 2015 agenda: but giving voice to them is not enough. It is important to give new generations the tools to make a change.”

With the UnHate news initiative, in partnership with UNAI/DPI, “we activated youth and gave them a possibility to concretely develop projects on human rights and development.”

Cutillo also cited “another outstanding example of successful support and activation of youth promoted by UnHate Foundation, which is the ‘Unemployee of the Year’ initiative through which the Foundation financed 100 projects and start-ups submitted and implemented by youth coming from all over the world in 2012.”

Unemployee of the Year celebrated young people’s ingenuity, creativity, and their ability to create new smart ways of addressing the problem of unemployment.

In general, she said, “putting people at the centre of our activities is one of the key points of Benetton Group sustainability strategy, of which UnHate Foundation is one of the assets.”

She described it as an example of private/public partnership that can work in an innovative way, by activating new generations and giving them the means to become leaders of change.

Asked if Benetton is planning to get involved in any other U.N. sponsored events in the future,

Cutillo told IPS: “We are presently exploring further joint possible collaboration programmes for the future with UNAI/DPI.”

She also said Benetton has a record of 20 years of cooperation, in different ways, with the United Nations.

More than ever before, “Benetton finds the United Nations as a most crucial partner within the stakeholders’ engagement of our present sustainability strategy.”

She said she sees partnerships with U.N. agencies as “a mutual growth process in our respective roles, where we can bring an active contribution to the achievement of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) by putting in place partnerships that can bring an innovative approach and a real, concrete impact.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2015 (IPS)

The Women’s World Cup has shown people everywhere what women athletes are all about: skill, strength, unity and determination. I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the winners – the team from the United States – and to all others who participated. You are inspiring millions of women and girls around the world to pursue their goals and dreams.

Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Photo: Marco Grob

Women are far more visible in sports today than at any previous point in history. The Women’s World Cup, as just one example, reached tens of millions of viewers, breaking television ratings records. The teams in that event were doing more than adroitly blocking a pass or scoring a goal.

They were challenging stereotypes and demonstrating women’s leadership and other abilities that can readily translate into many other domains. Perseverance and team spirit, among other values, can take women far in business, politics, scientific research, the arts and any other field.

As inspiring as the Women’s World Cup is, however, it also reminds us that gender inequalities still plague professional sports. For example, the women were required to play on artificial turf, which is often regarded as more physically punishing than natural grass – the surface favoured by athletes and provided when male teams play.

And there is the name itself—the World Cup is assumed to be for men, while women require the qualifying “Women’s” to describe their event.The total payout for the Women’s World Cup was 15 million dollars, compared with 576 million dollars for the last men’s World Cup—40 times less.

Women players also face a huge pay gap. The total payout for the Women’s World Cup was 15 million dollars, compared with 576 million dollars for the last men’s World Cup—40 times less.

The winning women’s team received two million dollars in prize money, whereas the winning men’s team took away 35 million dollars. The losing U.S. men’s team was still awarded 8 million dollars—four times as much as the champion U.S. women’s team.

Similar pay gaps occur across other professional sports – with the exception of tennis, which since 2007 has awarded equal prize money at all four Grand Slam tournaments. That should be the model to which all other sports aspire. All sports federations should close the gap and put women and men, in this and all other respects, on an equal playing field.

Deeply entrenched, discriminatory notions of women’s diminished status, whether the issue is a playing field or a paycheck, harm individual women and girls. They are denied their rights and blocked from achieving their full potential. Such norms also undermine sport itself, tarnishing notions such as fair play and open competition.

It is time to overturn the barriers and stereotypes, because every step to do so is a step towards gender equality and women’s empowerment. Many women athletes, especially in sports not traditionally considered “feminine”, lead the way, with grit and grace.

Sports programmes have been successful in reducing restrictions on mobility and social isolation that many women and girls experience, particularly those who live in poverty, and who might otherwise be mainly confined within their communities and families.

Through sport, women and girls can find safe places to gather, build new interpersonal networks, develop a sense of identity and pursue new opportunities, often in the process becoming more engaged in community life.

Governments, the United Nations, civil society, the sport movement and others have recognized the contribution of sports to the social, economic and political empowerment of women and girls. Now is the time to act on this recognition.

Women and girls should be encouraged to explore sports, and anyone who would like to participate should be able to do so. In some cases, this may require increased investments; in others, a rebalancing of resources to ensure equal opportunities for men and women, girls and boys.

Sport and the pursuit of gender equality can be mutually reinforcing — through the creation of role models, the promotion of values and powerful outreach. Both can generate a dream and drive people to strive for change, unleashing tremendous benefits for individuals and for our societies at large.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Photo Courtesy of UN Women

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

Our world is out of balance. It is both wealthier and more unequal today than at any time since the Second World War.

We are recovering from a global economic crisis – but that recovery has been jobless. We have the largest cohort ever of educated women, yet globally women are struggling to find work. Unemployment rates are at historic highs in many countries, including those in the Middle East and North Africa, in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as in southern Europe.Our globalised economy seems to be working at cross-purposes with our universal vision of women’s rights; it is limiting, rather than enabling them.

Where women do have jobs, globally they are paid 24 per cent less than men, on average. For the most part, the world’s women are in low-salaried, insecure occupations, like small-scale farming, or as domestic workers – a sector where they comprise 83 per cent of the workforce.

Why isn’t the global economy fit for women?

In our flagship report Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights, we investigate what this failure means – and propose solutions.

We take a fresh, holistic look at both economic and social policies and their implications for the entire economy. We look particularly at the ‘invisible’ economy of unpaid care and domestic work that anchors all economies and societies.

Conventional measures like GDP have historically been blind to a large proportion of the work women and girls do, and unhearing of the voices of those who would wish to allocate public resources to their relief, for example through investments in accessible water and clean energy.

We suggest the need to apply a human rights lens to economic problem-solving. We propose specific, evidence-based solutions for action by both government and the private sector, to shape progress towards decent, equally paid jobs for women, free from sexual harassment and violence, and supported by good quality social services.

Our public resources are not flowing in the directions where they are most needed: for example to provide safe water and sanitation, quality health care, and decent child- and elderly-care services. Yet water is essential, families still have to be nourished, the sick still have to be tended, children brought up, and elderly parents cared for.

Where there are no public services, the deficit is borne primarily by women and girls. This is a care penalty that unfairly punishes women for stepping in when the State does not provide resources and it affects billions of women the world over.

Data from France, Germany, Sweden and Turkey suggest that women earn between 31 and 75 per cent less than men over their lifetimes. We need policies that make it possible for both women and men to care for their loved ones without having to forego their own economic security, success and independence.

Our globalised economy seems to be working at cross-purposes with our universal vision of women’s rights; it is limiting, rather than enabling them. Where there is no choice, there are few rights.

But there are solutions. The report proposes a number of specific ways in which to mobilise resources to pay for public services and social transfers: for example by enforcing existing tax obligations, reprioritising expenditure and expanding the overall tax base, as well as through international borrowing and development assistance.

Global corporations also have a central role to play by being employers that offer equal pay and opportunities. Shareholders can and should ask corporations to act with responsibility to the countries in which they operate. Annual tax revenue lost to developing countries due to trade mispricing, just one strategy used by corporations to avoid tax, is estimated at between 98 and 106 billion dollars. This is nearly 20 billion more than the annual capital costs needed to achieve universal water and sanitation coverage.

With the right mix of economic and social policies, governments can make transformative change: they can generate decent jobs for women and men and ensure that their unpaid care work is recognised and supported. Well-designed measures such as family allowances and universal pensions can enhance women’s income security, and their ability to realise their potential and expand their life options.

Finally, macroeconomic policies can and should support the realisation of women’s rights, by creating dynamic and stable economies, by generating decent work and by mobilising resources to finance vital public services.

Ultimately, upholding women’s rights will not only make economies work for women, it will also benefit societies as a whole by creating a fairer and more sustainable future.

Progress for women is progress for all.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Almost exactly two years ago, on the morning of Apr. 24, over 3,600 workers – 80 percent of them young women between the ages of 18 and 20 – refused to enter the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, because there were large ominous cracks in the walls. They were beaten with sticks and forced to enter.

Forty-five minutes later, the building collapsed, leaving 1,137 dead and over 2,500 injured – most of them women.

The Rana Plaza collapse is just one of a long series of workplace incidents around the world in which women have paid a high toll.

It is also one of the stories featured in the UN Women report Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights, launched on Apr. 27.

All too often women fail to enjoy their rights because they are forced to fit into a ‘man’s world’, a world in which these rights are not at the heart of economies.
Coming 20 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, which drew up an agenda to advance gender equality, Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016 notes that while progress has since been made, “in an era of unprecedented global wealth, millions of women are trapped in low paid, poor quality jobs, denied even basic levels of health care, and water and sanitation.”

At the same time, notes the report, financial globalisation, trade liberalisation, the ongoing privatisation of public services and the ever-expanding role of corporate interests in the development process have shifted power relations in ways that undermine the enjoyment of human rights and the building of sustainable livelihoods.

Against this backdrop, all too often women fail to enjoy their rights because they are forced to fit into a ‘man’s world’, a world in which these rights are not at the heart of economies.

What this means in real terms is that, for example, at global level women are paid on average 24 percent less than men, and for women with children the gaps are even wider. Women are clustered into a limited set of under-valued occupations – such as domestic work – and almost half of them are not entitled to the minimum wage.

Even when women succeed in the workplace, they encounter obstacles not generally faced by their male counterparts. For example, in the European Union, 75 percent of women in management and higher professional positions and 61 percent of women in service sector occupations have experienced some form of sexual harassment in the workplace in their lifetimes.

The report makes the link between economic policy-making and human rights, calling for a far-reaching new policy agenda that can transform economies and make women’s rights a reality by moving forward towards “an economy that truly works for women, for the benefit of all.”

The ultimate aim is to create a virtuous cycle through the generation of decent work and gender-responsive social protection and social services, alongside enabling macroeconomic policies that prioritise investment in human beings and the fulfilment of social objectives.

Today, “our public resources are not flowing in the directions where they are most needed: for example, to provide safe water and sanitation, quality health care, and decent child and elderly care services,” says UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. “Where there are no public services, the deficit is borne by women and girls.”

According to Mlambo-Ngcuka, “this is a care penalty that unfairly punishes women for stepping in when the State does not provide resources and it affects billions of women the world over. We need policies that make it possible for both women and men to care for their loved ones without having to forego their own economic security and independence,” she added.

The report agrees that paid work can be a foundation for substantive equality for women, but only when it is compatible with women’s and men’s shared responsibility for unpaid care work; when it gives women enough time for leisure and learning; when it provides earnings that are sufficient to maintain an adequate standard of living; and when women are treated with respect and dignity at work.

Yet, this type of employment remains scarce, and economic policies in all regions are struggling to generate enough decent jobs for those who need them. On top of that, the range of opportunities available to women is limited by pervasive gender stereotypes and discriminatory practices within both households and labour markets. As a result, the vast majority of women still work in insecure, informal employment.

The reality is that women also still carry the burden of unpaid work in the home, which has been aggravated in recent years by austerity policies and cut-backs. To build more equitable and sustainable economies which work for both women and men, warns the report, “more of the same will not do.”

At a time when the global community is defining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the post-2015 era, the message from UN Women is that economic and social policies can contribute to the creation of stronger economies, and to more sustainable and more gender-equal societies, provided that they are designed and implemented with women’s rights at their centre.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Bangladeshi women farmers prefer climate-proof crops varieties. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Joni Seager, Deepa Joshi, and Rebecca Pearl-Martinez
NEW YORK/NAIROBI, Mar 30 2015 (IPS)

Experts from around the world gathered in New York recently to launch work on the Global Gender Environment Outlook (GGEO), the first comprehensive, integrated and global assessment of gender issues in relation to the environment and sustainability.

Never before has there been an analysis at the scale of the GGEO or with the global visibility and audience. It will provide governments and other stakeholders with the evidence-based global and regional information, data, and tools they need for transformational, gender-responsive environmental policy-making – if they’re willing to do so.The facts are conclusive: addressing gender equality is both the right and the smart thing to do. And yet, despite the obvious benefits, around the world, gender inequality remains pervasive and entrenched.

The writing workshop happened in the context of the recent 59th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 20 years after 189 countries met in Beijing to adopt a global platform of action for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Beijing+20 offers a critical moment to assess how far we’ve come and put gender at the centre of global sustainability, environment and development agendas. Twenty years later, what have we accomplished?

In 2015, governments will be setting the development agenda for the next 15 years through the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as negotiating a new global climate agreement.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) will be making a bold contribution to these global efforts by putting gender at the heart of environment and development analysis and action in the Global Gender Environment Outlook (GGEO). The GGEO will be presented at the United Nations Environment Assembly in May 2016.

A recent flagship publication by UN Women, The World Survey on the Role of Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable Development (2014), reveals that 748 million people globally (10 per cent of the world’s population) are without access to improved water sources.

Women and girls are the primary water carriers for these families, fetching water for over 70 per cent of these households. In many rural areas, they may walk up to two hours; in urban areas, it is common to have to wait for over an hour at a shared standpipe.

This unpaid “women’s work” significantly limits their potential to generate income and their opportunities to attend school. Women and girls suffer high levels of mental stress where water rights are insecure and, physically, the years of carrying water from an early stage takes its toll, resulting in cumulative wear and tear to the neck, spine, back and knees.

The bodies of women, the Survey concludes, in effect become part of the water-delivery infrastructure, doing the work of the pipes. Not only in water, but also in all environmental sectors – land, energy, natural resources – women are burdened by time poverty and lack of access to natural and productive assets.

Their work and capabilities systematically unrecognised and undervalued. This is a long call away from the Beijing commitment to “the full implementation of the human rights of women and the girl child as an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

On the one hand, our thinking about the inter-linkages between gender, sustainability, and development has progressed significantly since 1995. Innovative research and analysis have transformed our understanding so that gender is now seen as a major driver – and pre-requisite – for sustainability.

Gender approaches in U.N. climate negotiations are a good case in point. Thanks to persistent efforts on advocacy, activism, research, and strategic capacity building by many, it is more widely accepted that gender roles and norms influence climate change drivers such as energy use and consumption patterns, as well as policy positions and public perceptions of the problem.

These were acknowledged – albeit late – in negotiations, policies and strategies on the topic. One small indication is that references to “gender” in the draft climate change negotiating texts increased dramatically from zero in 2007 to more than 60 by 2010.

According to data by the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) as of November 2014, 32 decisions under the climate change convention now include gender.

On the other hand, not much seems to have changed. In 1995, inequalities, foremost gender inequality, undermined economic prosperity and sustainable development. This is even more the case today.

Perpetuating gender inequality and disregarding the potential contribution of both men and women is short-sighted, has high opportunity cost and impacts negatively on all three the pillars of sustainable development – environmental, social and economic.

The course to achieving gender equality also remains plagued by a simplistic translation of gender as women and empowerment as ‘gender mainstreaming’ in projects and interventions that are not necessarily planned with an objective of longer-term, transformational equality.

Numerous studies point out the obvious links between social and political dimensions of gender inequality and the economic trade-offs, and that narrowing the gender gap benefits us all and on many fronts.

The World Bank, World Economic Forum and the OECD, for example, have all concluded that women who have access to education also have access to opportunities for decent employment and sustainable entrepreneurship – key components of an inclusive green economy. The education of girls is linked to its direct and noticeable positive impact on sustainability.

The facts are conclusive: addressing gender equality is both the right and the smart thing to do. And yet, despite the obvious benefits, around the world, gender inequality remains pervasive and entrenched.

And most global policies on environment and development remain dangerously uninformed by gendered analysis.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka speaks at the Commission on the Status of Women, which ended its 59th session in New York last week. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By Josh Butler
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 23 2015 (IPS)

The Commission on the Status of Women, one of the biggest events on the calendar for United Nations headquarters in New York City, is over for another year.

For two weeks, thousands of delegates, dignitaries, ambassadors, experts, and activists flooded the city, with more than 650 events, talks, briefings, meetings, presentations and panels all striving for the same goal – “50:50 by 2030,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of the CSW’s goal for gender equality within 15 years, at the official opening of the commission.

Soon-Young Yoon, U.N. Representative of the International Alliance of Women and Chair of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, estimated more than 11,000 people took part in CSW 59.

“This was the largest feminist movement at the U.N. in New York, ever,” she told IPS.

“It was more than double the number we usually get.”

Yoon attributed the huge attendance to well-documented attempts to scale back women’s rights worldwide in the last year, including fundamentalist activities in the Middle East and Africa, the kidnapping of 270 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, and a growing culture of hostility and harassment of women online.

“Against all this, the women’s movement has stepped up. The CSW is a pilgrimage for the international women’s movement,” she said.

The 59th session of the CSW was about reaffirming the world’s commitment to, and marking the anniversaries of, the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action and the 2000 Security Council Resolution 1325.

Rather than lay out any new bold agenda or fighting for political reforms, it was important to take stock of progress and assess what further action was necessary, said Christine Brautigam, Director of the Intergovernmental Support Division of U.N. Women.

“We were tasked with a comprehensive review of the Beijing platform, of how implementation stands. We’ve come up with good indications of how to move forward,” Brautigam told IPS on the final day of the meeting.

She said the Commission had “benefited tremendously” from an “unprecedented” amount of reporting by member states, with 167 countries preparing reports on how gender equality reforms had been implemented. Brautigam said through the immense preparatory work, member states had agreed CSW 59 would produce a “short, succinct political declaration” reaffirming the commitment to fulfilling the vision of the Beijing platform and achieving gender equality by 2030."I’ve always seen CSW as one of the most, if not the most, dynamic meetings on the U.N. calendar." - Liesl Gerntholtz, Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch

There was not an expectation for lengthy negotiations, as we usually have, it was to pledge further action to accelerate gender equality, and ensure full implementation of the platform. The key outcome is that political outcome adopted on the first day,” she said.

The declaration features six points for action, calling for renewed focus on and faster progress toward the ideals set out in the Beijing platform. Member states called for strengthened laws and policies, greater support for institutional mechanisms striving for gender equality, transformation of discriminatory norms and gender stereotypes, greater investment to close resource gaps, strengthened accountability for the implementation of commitments; and enhanced capacity for data collection, monitoring and evaluation.

“This is a formidable basis for everyone, from governments to the U.N. system to civil society, to take action,” Brautigam said.

While reaffirming past commitments and analysing progress was the official aim of CSW, it was far from the only function of the fortnight of feminism. Liesl Gerntholtz, Executive Director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, said the annual CSW has become an important meeting place for the sharing of ideas, energy and inspiration for women around the globe.

“The value of the CSW has shifted from negotiations and outcome documents, to being a space for civil society to engage with member states and with each other. There are fewer and fewer spaces where civil society can come together, and in this one place hordes of women’s rights organisations can come together and talk,” she told IPS.

“Networking is critical, and it has become the most valuable part of the conference. It’s a chance for the movement to meet and strategise, to make stronger alliances, and have very rich and interesting discussions about what the issues are.”

Gerntholtz said the inclusive nature of the CSW – where activists can mingle with ambassadors, where politicians share panels with academics and celebrities – fostered cross-pollination of ideas, and the sharing of concerns between social strata.

“I’ve been fascinated to watch people talking about forms of harassment we haven’t talked about before, like cyber harassment, women threatened with sexual violence on social media,” she said.

Brautigam echoed the sentiments, saying one of CSW’s most formidable strengths was as a meeting place for sharing of ideas.

“I’ve always seen CSW as one of the most, if not the most, dynamic meetings on the U.N. calendar. It is a prime marketplace of ideas and lessons learnt, for solidarity, and drawing strength for the work for the coming year. People get together, brainstorm and energise each other,” she said.

However, for all the energy, enthusiasm and excitement during the mammoth program, there are also criticisms. Gerntholtz said recent years have seen some member states hoping to roll back progress already carved out, to undo achievements made, and to break pledges for future reform.

“There have been concerns for a while over the value of CSW. There have been some attempts in recent years to push back on language in the Beijing platform, particularly on violence against women and reproductive rights,” she said.

“That remains a huge concern for this forum – every year, it opens up the possibility member states might try to undermine and dilute and change some of these really important rights women have fought to establish.”

Gerntholtz said 2014 saw such a push by representatives from Iran, Egypt, Vatican City and several African nations – a group she called “the Unholy Alliance.”

“In any other circumstances, they wouldn’t be talking to each other, but they caucus to dilute important women’s rights,” she said.

The CSW was also criticised from civil society groups. Ahead of the CSW, the Women’s Rights Caucus labelled the proposed political declaration as “a bland reaffirmation of existing commitments,” saying it “threatens a major step backward” for rights and equality.

“Governments cannot pick and choose when to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of women and should not do so in this declaration,” it wrote in a statement.

On Friday, the CSW wrapped up after two weeks of meetings. UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka called CSW 59 “a forceful, dynamic and forward-looking session.”

“We are all aware that there are no shortcuts to realising gender equality, the empowerment of women and the human rights of women and girls. Based on the road we have travelled, we know that there are more challenges ahead of us,” she said in remarks at the closing of CSW 59, where Brazil was elected Chair of the 60th session.

Already plans for action are being set out for next year’s session. Brautigam said gender equality through the lens of sustainable development would be the theme, with three major global conferences – the Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Abada, negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda and Sustainable Development Goals, and the Climate Change Conference in Paris – to shape, and be shaped by, the women’s rights movement.

“The priority next year is women’s empowerment and the link to sustainable development. Between now and then, many important milestones will be met. We’re trying to ensure gender equality will be at the core of those discussions,” she said.

Yoon also stressed how the outcomes of the three major conferences would influence the next CSW.

“The priority of sustainable development is very important, because gender equality is missing to some extent in the discussions around climate change and sustainability,” she said.

Yoon said CSW 60 would likely have much more substantive, concrete outcomes and action plans than this year’s conference, and hoped 2016 would tackle issues of violence against women.

“The CSW will decide its whole multi-year program of work, for the next four years. We need to stay focused on violence against women in its broader definition,” she said.

“Not just domestic violence, but things like sexual harassment, campus safety and sexual violence on campuses, and online safety. It is inexcusable we have not been able to put all our resources to fix this.”

“We are rescuing victims, chasing perpetrators, but not preventing these things from happening. We simply must do this, otherwise all that we want to accomplish will fall apart, because women are terrified to speak out.”

With the thousands of delegates, dignitaries, ambassadors, experts, and activists now heading home after an exhausting fortnight, the focus will be on implementing the ideas and actions inspired by the conference.

“I hope people can go home with renewed energy, that people can refine their strategies for holding governments accountable, and that they learnt a lot,” Gerntholtz said.

Follow Josh Butler on Twitter: @JoshButler

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

Governments must do more to address the impacts of forced disappearances of women, according to an international justice report released Monday.

Since 1980, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has documented over 54,000 cases of such disappearances from all over the world.

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), in releasing its report ‘The Disappeared and Invisible: Revealing the Enduring Impact of Enforced Disappearances on Women,’ urged governments to better address the effects of such crimes on females.

The report states women are the minority of those who are forcibly disappeared, but “the majority of family members who suffer exacerbated social, economic, and psychological disadvantages as a result of the loss of a male family member who is often a breadwinner.”

In surveying 31 countries – mostly in Africa and Central and South America – the ICTJ urged governments to remember “the need to consider women’s experiences, including when implementing measures like truth commissions, prosecutions, and reparations.”

The report states while women who have been forcibly disappeared experience much the same treatment as men in detention – including torture and ill treatment – women are often subject to gender-based violence including sexual violence and separation from their children.

The ICTJ said women left behind when a family member or partner is disappeared experience “ongoing victimisation” including poverty, family conflict and psychological trauma, as well as often being forced into low-paying, dangerous or exploitative working arrangements to support their families. Women may also face difficulty in accessing bank accounts, social services or ownership rights of property, which may be held in their partner’s name.

Flow-on effects are felt by children and other family members, including impacts on education, health and general well being.

“Although women make up the minority of those who are disappeared around the world, in almost every country we studied… they make up the majority of those who suffer serious, lasting harm after a disappearance,” said Amrita Kapur, senior associate for ICTJ’s Gender Justice programme.

“When a loved one goes missing, most often women are on the forefront of the search for truth and vulnerable to further abuses, even as they take on the role of breadwinner while raising children. Women’s stories are not being told, making it harder for governments to respond effectively.”

The report is part of an ongoing project between ICTJ and UN Women.

The report posits a set of recommendations to better support women who are left behind after the forced disappearance of a partner or family member. Chief among the findings is a call for a new legal category allowing relatives of a disappeared person to access benefits, inherit wealth and assets, and to dissolve marriages even without the person being declared dead.

The report cites the fact that remaining partners are often unwilling or unable to have their disappeared partner declared dead, but that many social benefits or legal avenues for redress only become available upon declaration of death.

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin