African women attending the Commission on the Status of Women chat in the lobby of U.N. headquarters. Credit: Bomoon Lee/TerraViva

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9 (IPS/TerraViva) – The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.

In the 1991 cyclone disasters that killed 140,000 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were reportedly women; in the 2004 Asian Tsunami, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of overall deaths were women.

And following the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States, African-American women, who were the poorest population in some of the affected States in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, faced the greatest obstacles to survival, according to the New York-based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO).

The 2007 Human Development Report, issued by the U.N. Development Programme, points out that women are particularly affected by climate change because they are the largest percentage – accounting for about 70 percent – of the poor population.

Amy North, a researcher working on gender, education and global poverty reduction initiatives at the Institute of Education in the University of London, told IPS climate change is also exacerbating existing gender inequalities, with a devastating effect on the quality of life of poor women and girls.

In many parts of the world, women and girls are responsible for collecting water and firewood.

As these resources become scarcer in the face of increasingly erratic rainfall, they must spend more time looking for and collecting them, further reducing the time they have available to engaging in economic activities, or attending school, she said.

Women are also the main producers of food, providing 70 percent of agricultural labour in sub-Saharan Africa, and so are particularly affected by reduced agricultural output, North added.

“The care responsibilities that fall to women and girls mean that health problems associated with climate change – including an increase in waterborne diseases associated with flooding – often result in them taking on an increased burden of care as they are required to look after sick family members,” she noted.

June Zeitlin, a former executive director of WEDO, has cited a study by the London School of Economics analysing disasters in 141 countries that provides decisive evidence that gender differences in deaths from natural disasters are directly linked to women’s economic and social rights.

That is, gender inequalities are magnified in disaster situations. So when women lack basic rights, more women than men will die from natural disasters.

The study also found the opposite to be true: in societies where women and men enjoy equal rights, natural disasters kill the same number of women and men.

In an interview with IPS, North said that in East Africa – a region that is acutely feeling the effects of climate change, with widespread drought resulting in critical shortages of food and water – research suggests that increased poverty levels is having serious consequences for the education of girls.

In Kenya, participants in the Gender, Education and Global Poverty Reduction Initiatives project have noted that increased poverty associated with drought has affected school attendance, with girls being more likely to be withdrawn from school than boys.

In neighbouring Uganda, the food crises associated with climate change have been linked to higher rates of early marriage for girls, as they are exchanged for dowry or bride price.

These “famine marriages” – as they are called – not only lead to girls dropping out of school, but also make them vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections and related reproductive complications.

WEDO’s Cate Owren told IPS her organisation is also deeply concerned about the political status of negotiations on climate change.

“We do not support the Copenhagen Accord (finalised last December) serving as the basis for ongoing negotiations this year,” she said.

But still, she said, “We are celebrating (and maintaining momentum from) great strides being made over the course of the last few years, during which time gender equality issues were substantively integrated into climate change negotiations.”

According to WEDO, not only did gender texts increase (peaking at 40 plus) in negotiating documents, but so did women’s participation.

At the Copenhagen talks, women comprised about 30 percent of registered country delegates, the largest percentage of women attending a climate change meeting on record.

Stefan Wallin, Finland’s minister of culture and sport, told delegates last week that one of his country’s “strong areas of emphasis” concerns decision-making processes on matters affecting climate change.

“Finland has taken an active role in ensuring that climate change decision-making is inclusive, both of women and men,” Wallin said.

He said climate change does not affect women and men in the same way. “It has gender-differentiated impact,” he noted.

Finland, he said, has argued that climate targets are reachable only “if the knowledge and views of both women and men are included, and if both women and men are committed to the goals.”

Asked how women could be protected from the after-effects of climate change, North said there are a number of important steps that must be taken.

Women’s groups mobilised around the climate talks in Copenhagen last year to demand that a gender perspective be integrated into the Copenhagen outcomes and follow-up activities.

“It is essential that these demands are taken seriously and that all future agreements around climate change recognise the differential impacts that climate change has on men and women,” North said.

For this to happen, she said, women’s participation must be ensured in the negotiation of policies and strategies to tackle the effects of climate change at international and national levels.

And as individual governments draw up National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) to outline their priorities for adapting to the effects of climate change, it is crucial that these take into consideration the particular effects of climate change on women and girls.

Moreover, serious attention must also be given to addressing the underlying gender inequalities that make women more vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the first place.

This includes taking action to ensure women are able to participate in decision making and political processes that affect them; tackling the inequalities that women face in accessing employment and childcare; and making concerted efforts to ensure real progress is made towards achieving gender equality in education.

North said this will be a key feature of discussions that will be taking place at the E4 (Engendering Empowerment: Education and Equality) conference in Dakar, Senegal in May this year, and in e-discussions that will be held from Apr. 12 to May 17 (http://www.e4conference.org/.)

Georg Kell, executive director of the UN Global Compact, speaks about the launch of the Women's Empowerment Principles. Credit: Bomoon Lee/TerraViva

By Sabina Zaccaro

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9 (IPS/TerraViva) Companies with women in leadership positions are reporting a measurable boost to their bottom lines, but they are still a minority in the world’s business community.

To rectify this imbalance, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the U.N. Global Compact (UNGC) have designed specific guidelines to encourage the business community to appoint more women as managers, executives and board members.

“The full participation of women benefits business and, indeed, all of us,” Georg Kell, executive director of the U.N. Global Compact, told TerraViva.

The call for action is part of the Women’s Empowerment Principles – Equality Means Business, seven steps companies can take to empower women in the workplace and address the vast under-representation of women in top positions and on boards.

Principle number one urges company executives to make gender equality a top priority.

The seven principles are informed by leading businesses’ policies and practices from different sectors and around the world, Kell said, and offer a practical approach to advance women. He said the UNGC objective is to integrate these principles into companies’ own corporate social responsibility programmes.

A recent survey by the consultancy firm McKinsey reports that one-third of 2,300 monitored companies said their investments in women had already resulted in greater profits, while another third said their investments would soon show profit.

“The multiplier effect of women’s empowerment has been increasingly acknowledged,” said Inés Alberdi, UNIFEM’s executive director. “What is powerful and new today is that the corporate community itself reports that gender equality is good for business — advancing innovation, attracting top talent, raising positive consumer and community recognition and improving profits.”

Copel is a power utility in southern Brazil that generates and delivers accessible electricity to the entire population of the state of Paraná – more than three million connected households. Its total workforce is around 8,000 direct workers and 5,000 outsourced employees.

“We signed the Global Compact in 2001 and since then we have been trying hard to understand and incorporate its principles, as the corporate pace allows us to,” said Susie C. Pontarolli of the Environment and Corporate Citizenship Division at Copel.

The division she works for is also run by a woman, Marlene Zannin, the only woman appointed to a leadership position since the company was founded in 1954.

“Having a woman as Director of Environment and Corporate Citizenship speaks a lot and loud about how much progress has been made in our corporate culture since we committed to the Global Compact,” Pontarolli said.

“This is something we could have never dreamed of back in 1999, when we got started with the first steps towards corporate social responsibility,” she added.

The women’s empowerment principles were developed over a one-year international consultation process to help companies tailor existing policies and practices to advance women’s empowerment and inclusion.

They also address factors that have an indirect impact on businesses, like violence against women in the workplace. Principle three, in fact, includes establishing a zero-tolerance policy towards all forms of violence at work and training security staff and managers to recognise signs of violence against women.

The complete list of Principles can be found here: http://www.unifem.org/attachments/stories/WomensEmpowermentPrinciples.pdf

High-level discussion about the situation of women at the UN. Credit:BomoonLee/IPS

By Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9, 2010 (IPS) – “What do I get from them? Nothing but bullsh*t,” says Nupur Acharya, reflecting about how she is treated by her husband and two grown sons on daily basis. Continue Reading

Credit: Bomoon Lee/IPS TerraViva

By Armin Rosen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 (IPS/TerraViva) On Monday, the Commission on the Status of Women took a two-hour break from the Secretariat Building’s main conference room while the Iranian, Syrian, Nigerian, Qatari and Saint Lucian delegations used the cavernous meeting hall for a parallel event on “Recognising the Critical Role of Mothers in Society” – an event that has turned out to be one of the more controversial meetings related to the two-week-long Commission.

The conference room was packed with Commission participants who had come to hear speeches from activists and government officials on the importance of motherhood and “traditional” family structures in social and economic development.

The event was put together with the coordination of Family Watch International, an NGO that aims to “preserve and promote the family, traditional marriage, life, parental rights and religious freedom.”

The event was organised when Family Watch International began contacting various U.N. delegations about cosponsoring a parallel event during CSW on the social and economic importance of traditional family structures in general and motherhood in particular.

According to FWI president Sharon Slater, the Syrians and Iranians were receptive to her group’s message. “They thought it was time for the issue of motherhood to be put on the U.N.’s agenda,” she said.

Slater added that her group was not concerned about co-sponsoring an event with the Iranian government. “We’re a non-denominational, nonpolitical group,” she said. “We’ll partner with anyone who believes in the value of family.”

Saint Lucia’s Permanent Mission to the U.N. had a similar attitude towards collaborating with the Iranian government on a CSW side-event. Sarah Flood-Beaubrun, a former health minister and member of Parliament in Saint Lucia, and a member of the island nation’s U.N. delegation, even wondered why anyone would be interested in whether Saint Lucia had any reservations about co-sponsoring an event with Iran.

“I’m not sure why you’re asking that question,” she said. “I would have thought that the subject matter would have been most important. We never agree on everything,” she said of the U.N.’s member states, “but where there is an opportunity to collaborate we wish to do that. This is the U.N. This is where nations do that.”

At the panel, Beaubrun spoke about the importance of family in a Caribbean context, and said that family values could help reign in the region’s seemingly out-of-control murder rates.

But a few activists believe that the event is fraught with irony – both because of Iran’s co-sponsorship and because of Family Watch International’s conservative stance on social issues, which some perceive as being detrimental to women’s interests.

For instance, during the panel, Slater was unsparing in her group’s views on family planning and reproductive rights, two things that most mainstream women’s organisations support. She criticised family planning programmes in the developing world for failing to reduce maternal mortality rates.

“Why do we keep calling on the world to implement more family planning programmes,” she asked, “if the maternal morality programmes in these countries has not been reduced?”

Meanwhile, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has characterised FWI as an “anti-gay organisation.” FWI is also a “signatory organisation” with Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality, a “non-profit coalition of organisations that help people with unwanted same-sex attractions.”

The Iranian government is notoriously hostile towards sexual minorities: homosexuality is still punishable by death in the Islamic Republic, while international rights watchdogs routinely issue statements critical of the government’s treatment of homosexuals.

For instance, this past November, Human Rights Watch issued an appeal on behalf of three Iranian men sentenced to death for homosexual acts they committed while they were teenagers.

The Islamic Republic has a similar record on gender issues. “It is profoundly ironic that a regime that practices gender apartheid on a regular basis and that allows marriage at the age of nine would sponsor an event ostensibly about women’s rights,” says Kenneth Timmerman of the Maryland-based Foundation for Democracy in Iran.

Human Rights Watch also issued a Mar. 6 statement urging Iran to “stop undermining women’s rights”, reporting that the Islamic Republic was on the verge of legalising polygamy – a practice likely out of keeping with FWI’s endorsement of traditional, monogamous family structures.

Despite the Iranian government’s attempts to use CSW to bolster its reputation on women’s issues, Iranian women have succeeded in making themselves heard this week.

Last Thursday and Friday, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran held side events with Iranian women who are not a part of any official Iranian government delegation. According to a Campaign representative, they shared their experiences as women living in the Islamic Republic during the protests and crackdowns of this past year.

Representatives from more left-wing women’s groups simply avoided Iran and FWI’s hour in the CSW’s main venue.

Nathalie Margi of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership did not attend the event, but said it was actually a disturbing reminder of what many of the NGOs at CSW are up against.

“There’s a backlash against the women’s movement and the LGBT movement,” she said when asked about FWI’s presence at the Commission.

“These groups come to these spaces as women’s NGOs,” she said of the conference’s more traditionally minded NGO participants. “We’re celebrating 15 years since the Beijing Conference, but they want to scale back on reproductive rights victories and LGBT victories.”

Women wearing the traditional Hijab attend the Commission on the Status of Women conference at U.N. headquarters. Credit:Bomoon Lee/IPS

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4, 2010 (IPS) – The status of women in a predominantly male-chauvinistic Arab world continues to fluctuate from one extreme to another.

The political and cultural life in the region, by and large, has been characterised by the good, the bad and the ugly.

On the one hand are child marriages and honour killings (deemed barbaric) in the rigidly conservative countries, and on the other, are the appointment and/or election of women to high office (hailed as impressive success stories) in the relatively liberal countries.

“Women can already been seen in greater numbers in our parliament, ministries, judiciary, armed forces and police, and they have also assumed very senior positions in both public office and the private sector,” says Hala Latouf, head of the Jordanian delegation to the Commission on the Status of Women.

She also proudly notes that Jordan now has women governors, mayors, judges and ambassadors, in addition to women chief executive officers (CEOs) in key industries and businesses, consultative bodies and chambers of commerce and industry.

“The new draft law on elections is expected to allocate even greater number of (parliamentary) seats for women,” she declared.

On an equally positive note, Dr. Jouhaina Sultan Seif El-Issa, vice chairperson of Qatar’s supreme council for family affairs, points out that Qatari business women account for more than 50 percent of the total equity investors and dealers in the Doha Stock Market.

At the same time, the number of women-owned companies in Qatar now amount to nearly 1,500.

She said Qatar has established two Foundations: one, for child and women protection, and the other, to combat human trafficking.

Still, says Nadya Khalife of Human Rights Watch, most governments in the region discriminate against women in personal status laws which govern their everyday lives, including issues of marriage, divorce, custody and guardianship, and inheritance.

In an interview with IPS, Khalife said that some provisions in penal laws also allow for perpetrators of so-called honour crimes to receive a mitigated sentence or be exempt from punishment based on “family honour”.

“These crimes are typically committed in cases of adultery or sex outside of marriage,” she said.

And some countries in the region, she pointed out, do not have laws to protect women from domestic violence.

“Women are often not encouraged to report abuses to police and find difficulties in seeking redress,” she added.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Thursday that most of the 5,000 honour killings reported to take place every year around the world do not make the news, nor do the other myriad forms of violence inflicted on women and girls by husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles and other male and sometimes even female family members.

“In the name of preserving family honour, women and girls are shot, stoned, burned, buried alive, strangled, smothered and knifed to death with horrifying regularity,” she added.

Although she did not identify any countries by name, Pillay said the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that in a number of countries domestic legal systems, including through discriminatory laws, still fully or partially exempt individuals guilty of honour killings from punishment.

“Perpetrators may even be treated with admiration and given special status within their communities,” she added.

A study released by the Washington-based Freedom House early this week singles out 15 countries in the region as having recorded “some gains in women’s rights” over the past five years.

Kuwait, Algeria and Jordan saw the most significant progress while Iraq, Yemen and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories – enduring internal conflicts and/or religious extremism – are the only countries to record overall decline.

Nadia Hijab, an independent analyst who works on gender, human rights, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, told IPS that Arab women are constantly making progress in securing political, economic, and social rights – but it is slow and incremental.

The obstacles are huge: women’s rights are tied to the struggle for democracy, defining the role of religion in the state, and the drive for equitable development, she said.

“That there is progress is a testament to the increasingly sophisticated and determined efforts of women’s groups that are pushing the boundaries of debate in all these areas,” she said.

Hijab said that as in many other parts of the world, the key is recognition that women are equal partners within the family and under the law.

This is why it is such a success when women gain the right to grant their nationality to their husbands and children, as they have in Algeria: it is recognition of their equal status at home and in the public sphere.

Similarly, the fact that there are women judges in Morocco and Lebanon sends a very powerful message in a region where some countries still consider women legal minors, Hijab declared.

She said the region is also heavily impacted by internal and cross-border conflicts that set women back.

In Lebanon, progress made by women’s groups ground to a halt recently when the country was in a political stalemate over the election of a president and formation of a government.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, gains women made in political development and economic empowerment have been set back as Palestinians struggle against the occupying Israeli forces’ encroachment on their lands and rights, Hijab said.

(END)

A mother comforts her child as he receives tetanus and diphtheria vaccinations provided by the World Health Organisation. Credit: UN Photo/Sophia Paris

By Marguerite A. Suozzi

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 (IPS/TerraViva) Women in Haiti are more vulnerable than ever to attacks on their dignity and gender-based violence after the massive Jan.  12 earthquake crippled the already struggling nation. Continue Reading

Taina Bien-Aimé heads Equality Now, which reports that more than 25 countries have either repealed or amended laws that were clearly discriminatory against women. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 (IPS/TerraViva) Against the backdrop of a two-week U.N. meeting on gender empowerment, the London-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has blasted the government of Saudi Arabia for its feudal system of justice where women continue to be victimised because of their gender. Continue Reading

Participants at the CSW opening. Credit: Bomoon Lee/IPS

By Armin Rosen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 (IPS/TerraViva) UNIFEM’S Say No-UNiTE platform is only four months old. But since its launch in November of last year, the anti-violence campaign has served as an example of how the world body can use online social networking to organise activists and civil society workers around the globe.

The “Say No” website allows activists working on gender violence issues to share ideas by posting an “action” online. The action can be viewed and commented upon by other registered users, who can use the website to develop ideas and contacts with activists around the world.

There are over 183,000 online “actions” to date – which gave programme participants a lot to talk about at a Commission on the Status of Women side event organised around the so-far successful UNIFEM initiative.

The event was largely an opportunity for NGOs to share their various projects on targeting violence against women. The conference had no specific geographic focus, since the event’s few listed speakers represented organisations with an international presence and mission.

A crowded conference room in the U.N.’s North Lawn Building hosted speeches from European Parliament Member Eva Svensson, who talked about her work in putting violence against women on the Parliament’s legislative agenda, and Dianne Curtis, head of Zonta International, a global women’s empowerment-focused NGO.

Svensson talked about her organisation’s work in over 60 countries, as well as its support for UNIFEM’s 100-million-dollar fund for anti-violence programmes.

The session’s more open-ended second half included statements from NGOs from all over the world.

A representative from an Iraqi civil society organisation called Al Hakim talked about his group’s attempts at getting religious leaders to talk about the need to end gender violence.

An executive with the Young Women’s Christian Association said that UNIFEM’s fund for combating violence against women had helped sponsor YWCA-organised anti-violence workshops all over the world.

And a young woman from Genderlinks, a U.N.-funded programme that holds online dialogues between women’s rights activists around the world, talked about the effect of social networking technology on women’s activism in southern Africa.

During a week in which practically every major women’s organisation has a representative in New York, Tuesday’s event provided a look at how NGOs and activists could connect the other 51 weeks of the year.

Dr. Walter Soria examines a 10-month-old baby girl. Credit:Franz Chávez/IPS

Franz Chávez – IPS/TerraViva

LA PAZ, Mar 2 (IPS) – A social programme in Bolivia that prevents the deaths of two mothers a day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth is making headway despite administrative difficulties, and has the potential to cut the alarmingly high maternal mortality rate in this country by up to 80 percent in just five years. Continue Reading

For Hseng Noung, women are a key part of Burma' struggle. Credit:The Irrawaddy

Marwaan Macan-Markar interviews HSENG NOUNG, women’s right activist from Burma

CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Feb 26, 2010 (IPS) – Women who fled conflict and oppression in military-ruled Burma have become a potent political force during their lives in exile, says a leading women’s rights activist from the South-east Asian country’s Shan ethnic minority.
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