The following is a post written by Vital Voices Asia Program intern, Shonali Banerjee.

The small Pacific island of Timor-Leste has been referred to by many as one of the world’s newest and poorest nations. However, recent progress has been made in women’s health and education.

According to the country’s latest Demographic and Health Survey, the current fertility rate stands at 5.7 births per woman, two children less than in 2003. The infant mortality rate has also dropped significantly in the last 7 years, from 60 to 44 deaths to 1,000 births.

Experts have attributed these leaps in public health to women’s increased access to education, a higher number of women in the work force, and the increased availability of reproductive health services. A recent survey also shows that there is a greater demand for family planning and an increase in the use of skilled birth attendants and maternal services.

One of the most drastic changes in the nation has been a shift in women’s attitudes toward childbearing. According to a survey, 72 percent of women in Timor-Leste want to have less children and space out having children. Only 35 percent of surveyed women felt the same way in 2003.

Former Health Minister Rui de Araujo says that these striking results show that the country was right to focus many of its policies on primary health care, health promotion, community involvement and education.

Read the full story: “Timor-Leste: ’spectacular’ reduction in child mortality rates,” IRIN Asia.

The following is a post written by Vital Voices Asia Program intern, Shonali Banerjee.

In an effort to reduce the domestic maternal mortality rate, the Indonesian government has announced that it will provide funding for deliveries performed by skilled birth attendants for three million women.

The Indonesian Health Minister has said that many maternal deaths can be attributed to the use of unskilled birth attendants. During the opening of a conference addressing the Millennium Development Goals, the Health Minister stated that the national government would help local governments fund skilled health professionals and health centers.

Only 5 percent of the 5 million pregnant women in Indonesia currently receive assistance for deliveries. Indonesia is currently off-track in meeting its maternal mortality rate target of 102 per 100,000 live births by 2015. The maternal mortality rate in Indonesia is six times higher than in its neighboring country Malaysia.

Read the full story: “Indonesia to provide poor with safer maternal care,” IRIN Asia.

The followig is a blog post written by Vital Voices Asia Program Intern, Shonali Banerjee.

A new sex education initiative is sparking controversy throughout the Philippines. The new plan aims to cut down the rapid population growth rate that is arguably responsible for the country’s skyrocketing poverty rates. Speaking openly about sex is taboo within the nation, and the influential Roman Catholic Church has demanded that the new plan be scrapped. However, the federal government is struggling to find any other potential solutions to the 2 percent annual population growth.

According to Mona Valisno, the Education Secretary, the plan is to introduce the Adolescent Reproductive Health Program to students from fifth grade onward. The initiative will at first be launched in 80 public elementary schools and 79 high schools, but will soon be expanded nationwide. Numerous topics will be discussed within the program, including the different aspects of personal hygiene, reproductive health, pre-marital sex, teenage pregnancy, and HIV/AIDS awareness.

Secretary Valisno has said that numerous psychologists were consulted during the planning process of the program, ensuring that the material discussed would be age appropriate.

“Our role here is to educate the young people on issues that directly affect them and empower them to make informed choices and decisions.”

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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?

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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