In an address at the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women on March 3, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, Melanne Verveer, spoke on the progress made and obstacles that remain in the effort to realize UN Millennium Development Goals related to women’s empowerment and international development. Verveer emphasized the value that safeguarding women’s rights, improving maternal health, and supporting women’s economic advancement can have on whole communities.

“Millennium Development Goal 3, on gender equality, is the linchpin—the means to the achievement of all other MDGs.”

During its 54th session, the Commission on the Status of Women is undertaking a 15-year review of the global commitments made at the historic UN Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, in 1995. Ambassador Verveer said that much work lies ahead before those commitments are fully honored, especially regarding the challenge of violence against women, but she is urged on by the unanimous passage of a UN resolution for the creation of the first UN agency that will be exclusively committed to women’s global advancement.

Read Ambassador Verveer’s Statement here.

The 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, marking the fifteenth anniversary of the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women, is a year of reflection on the progress on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals. At the opening session of CSW attended by nearly 8,000 NGO and government delegates, the UN Deputy Secretary General, the President of ECOSOC, the Under-Secretary General for the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the Assistant Secretary General Special Advisor on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, the Executive Director of UNIFEM, and the Chair of CEDAW gave overviews of the efforts made by each of their departments and organizations. They each emphasized that Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has designated gender equality and women’s empowerment as priority areas in the next five years. Women are key to national economic growth, peace and security, and development. While gaps remain between legislation and implementation, the rhetoric must be supported by action to achieve these goals.

According to Ambassador Hamidon Ali, the current President of ECOSOC, this year holds special significance for women’s empowerment. This year ECOSOC will review the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), the global blueprints for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Specifically, MDG3 (promote gender equality and empower women) is considered a goal in and of itself but also as a means to achieving all other goals, since no country can develop without the full and effective participation of women.

While education and the development of national laws have been areas of progress, the global economic crisis has impacted the rate of women’s employment, especially poor and rural women. Other challenges include balancing work/caregiving responsibilities for women, the increase of human trafficking, and the uneven and sporadic progress of women’s equality. There is hope that the new Under-Secretary General for Women’s Affairs will leverage the momentum and strength of the UN system to attain further progress in these areas, in collaboration with the invaluable role of NGOs working with local communities.

In her remarks on Human Rights Day during The Courage to Lead: A Global Summit for Women Leaders, a gathering convened by Vital Voices and The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kyung-wha Kang spoke about women worldwide taking the lead in an effort to eliminate discrimination and secure the equal rights of all people. Noting that only six years remain before the 2015 deadline for the UN Millennium Development Goals, Kang pressed for greater efforts to address global gender disparities.

The Deputy High Commissioner went on to cite the importance of certain UN conventions, namely the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Kang said that age-old prejudices persist, threatening the full practice of women’s human rights:

“These underlying prejudices and practices determine gender roles, entrench discrimination in other contexts, such as education and participation in decision-making, and also render women more vulnerable to many forms of violence, including trafficking.”

Women Leaders: The Courage to Lead -UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Related:

On Human Rights Day 2009, UN High Commissioner Calls for Non-discrimination -Vital Voices Blog

The introduction of cell phones and internet access has dramatically reduced the number of maternal deaths in villages of Ghana, reports IRIN Africa News. Health workers say that “the availability of cell phones has been pivotal” in preventing maternal deaths. Since the technology came to Amensie village in 2006, not a single maternal death has occurred. In districts with only one midwife or ambulance, many pregnant women in remote villages were unable to reach out for medical assistance in an emergency. A project of Millennium Villages, the cell phone initiative is an effort to realize the UN Millennium Development Goals.

According to UNICEF, half of the pregnant women in Ghana “give birth at home with no skilled health worker present.” Beginning in 2006, mobile handset producer Ericsson teamed up with mobile communications provider Zain to install internet access and mobile phone coverage in remote villages. The Vice-President of Corporate Responsibility at Ericsson, Elaine Weidman, told IRIN:

“We entered the project because we believe information and communications technology play a critical role in helping to end the poverty cycle.”

Read the full article: Ghana: cell phones cut maternal deaths -IRIN Africa News

From October 31 through November 2, 2009, Vital Voices will host “Breakthrough: Overcoming the Obstacles to Equality, Development and Peace,” which will convene an extraordinary group of 50 individuals at New York University’s Villa La Pietra campus in Florence, Italy to engage in an interactive working session on the status of women worldwide. Made possible with the support from the Paul E. Singer Family Foundation, New York University and Starwood & The Westin Excelsior, this gathering aims to commemorate the upcoming 15^th anniversary of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China in September 1995, and furthermore, to chart a better course forward to advance the status of women worldwide. Participants represent members of Vital Voices’ Global Leadership Network in addition to global thought leaders from government, civil society, academia and the private sector. The meeting will culminate in a report of findings and recommendations that will be released to coincide with the UN’s 15-year review of the Beijing conference, scheduled in March 2010.

Through two days of open-ended, roundtable discussions, this diverse and dynamic group will recognize gains made, consider the current status of women, and, most importantly, address the remaining, and at times worsening, challenges that women continue to face globally.

The gathering will open with a review of past challenges faced by women and strides made to confront them over the past 15 years, with the goals of Beijing and the areas of progress, stalemate or retreat as a starting point. The remainder of the meeting will focus on strategies to address the most pressing challenges facing women across the globe. Participants at the meeting in Florence will ask: Why does inequality endure? What underlies all of these emerging problems? What is needed to turn this around? What has been missing? What will it take? How do we do it? In short, how does a much larger community of institutions and individuals see themselves as stakeholders so that this larger community will act as much out of self-interest as out of any abstract sense of justice?

Continue Reading »

The United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women publishes a quarterly newsletter describing how the UN is working to end violence against women around the world.

Here are a few highlights from the October edition:

1. The General Assembly adopted a resolution on September 14 creating a new agency specifically for women’s issues.
2. The Security Council adopted a resolution on September 30 that appoints a Special Representative of the Council to indentify and remedy sexual violence in armed conflict.
3. The International Conference on Violence Against Women met in Rome, Italy on September 10 to review national and international laws.
4. A new initiative was launched to address sexual violence against girls at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting on September 25. CGI will partner with UN agencies on this program.

Read the full newsletter here.

Dozens of reports have confirmed that investing in women makes good economic sense. Investing in the education of women and girls, in particular, has been found to have lasting effects on communities and nations.

In the third annual report, Plan International, an NGO that works to alleviate child poverty, found that investing in the education of girls would actually fix the current economic recession faster.

NGOs and international institutions have backed the findings of the research, and are using these statistics as a mandate to educate girls.

Titled “Girls in the Global Economy”, the report found that just a one percent increase in the number of girls attending secondary school will boost a country’s per capital income growth by a significant number. In addition, every year that a girl spends in school will produce a 10 to 20 percent increase in her future income.

In many communities, however, girls are seen as less important to educate than boys. Additionally, girls are often expected to assume household and child care responsibilities at a young age.

The Clinton Global Initiative wrote of the new report, “If we turn our backs on this generation at this time, if we fail to invest in these communities and the individuals in them, we do irreparable damage to a whole generation of girls, and to their children. This must change: Poverty may have a woman’s face, but sustainable economic prosperity has the face of a girl.”

The impact that girls make when they are given the opportunity of education is not a new notion. In October of last year, the World Bank launched the Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI) “to promote the economic empowerment of adolescent girls in poor and post-conflict countries”. The pilot program began in Liberia and focused on vocational training and literacy.

Similarly, on August 8, 2009, for the first time in a 39-year history, the World Economic Forum devoted a panel solely to the economic impact of girl’s education.

Economic Forum Director Lee Howell, said, “The field work, economic analysis, and experience all point to the powerful effect you’ll have if you invest in girls. People have to do more with less. If that’s the context we’re operating in, then the girl effect is an answer.”

The findings are conclusive: if girls are allowed greater access to education, there will be an important break in the cycle of poverty. This is how Plan International sees the education of girls serving a long lasting purpose, not only for future generations, but in the present global recession.

Sources: IPS, World Pulse, CGI

In an interview with IPS, Sylvia Mwichuli, deputy director of the U.N. Millennium Campaign, discussed the progress African nations have made in reaching the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number three, women’s empowerment and gender equity.

Mwichuli said that the African countries that have achieved the most progress include Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa, Malawi and Zambia.

“Ghana and most of the North African states are on course to meet all and even surpass some of the targets,” she said.

Internationally, however, MDG 3 was one of the hardest to achieve. “Girls’ primary education enrollment still lags behind that of boys and their dropout rates widen as they go up the ladder of education,” she said. Additionally, 70 percent of the world’s poor are women and children.

The campaign ends in just six years.

Uneven Progress on Development Goals-IPS

After three years of waiting, the United Nations has passed a unanimous resolution creating a new agency specifically for women’s issues on September 14.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan initially proposed the plan in 2006 in general reform plans.

The General Assembly proposed the consolidation of the four existing U.N. groups relating to women: the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues; the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women; and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW). Under this current proposal, the four entities will combine to form the new agency, which will be run by an under secretary-general (USG). The new structure will mainstream the existing offices and increase funding and staff at both regional and country levels.

In order to facilitate the agency’s creation and progress, 300 international NGOs formed a coalition called GEAR, Gender Equality Architecture Reform.

GEAR stated that in order to ensure the agency’s success, the U.N. must swiftly appoint an under secretary-general in order to make the agency “operational” by the Beijing + 15 Review at the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2010.

The Beijing Women’s conference was a 1994 United Nations summit that aimed to advance and empower women.

GEAR also urges donor countries to pledge about one billion dollars to support the agency’s new programs.

Recently, Cuba, Egypt, Iran and Sudan have campaigned to delay the agency’s ratification, likely due to the countries’ poor track records in women’s rights.

In an interview with IPS, Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University, stated, “We are very relieved that the General Assembly has finally taken decisive action to create the new gender equality entity on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the Beijing women’s conference.”

Overall, the resolution of adoption is a great success for women’s rights!

RIGHTS: U.N. Approves Long-Awaited New Women’s Agency
Ratification Threatened- Guardian

August 18 marked the launch of the new United Nations/Africa Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur, or UNAMID, comprised of seven experts to investigate gender-based violence in the country.

The team will work to educate Sudanese citizens on local laws and methods of reporting gender-based crimes. Also a priority is the task of reducing the stigma for victims of sexual abuse and assisting rehabilitation.

Conflict has led to widespread violence in Darfur over the past six years, leaving women and children particularly vulnerable to abuse. It is the goal of UNAMID to work with the government of Sudan, NGOs, and local agencies to help end the ubiquitous human rights violations.

Darfur: African-UN mission sets up unit to investigate gender-based crimes