Africa

Credit: UNICEF
 
The International Women’s Day is not a celebration – it is a reminder that we have yet to empower young girls in crisis to access their inherent right to a quality education.

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Mar 8 2022 (IPS)

For decades now, world leaders have talked about ending hunger and poverty and building a new world order based on human rights and gender-equality.

Still, we have an estimated 64 million girls and adolescent girls suffering in brutal conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters who are held back by illiteracy and left without hope for their future. Amongst them, analysis indicates that as many as 20 million girls may never return to school as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is not enough to have goals and a vision unless we turn that vision into action. Every girl has an inalienable right to a minimum of 12 years of quality education. Girls and teenage girls in conflicts and forced displacement suffer multiple risks already, such as trafficking, gender-based violence and early-childhood marriage, and thus are those left furthest behind in turning our goals and visions into reality. Their education must now come first.

Investing in girls’ education is not just about delivering on our promise of inclusive and equitable education, or Sustainable Development Goal 4, it is the very foundation for reaching all other goals in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Without an education, these girls will never be able to lift themselves out of abject poverty and we can no longer aspire to achieving gender-equality.

We need a laser focus on girls’ education in emergencies and protracted crisis to achieve multiple Sustainable Development Goals. Their experiences of inhumanity, loss and destitution can be turned around into their potential to become empowered women able to contribute to their war-torn countries and communities. Without them – 50% of the population – no crisis-country can build back better. It is logistically impossible.

All the evidence indicates that investing in girls’ education provides one of the best returns-on-investment for overseas development assistance – and the enabling environment and strong women leaders and professionals we need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Agreement targets and other international accords.

According to Plan International, every dollar spent on girls’ education has the potential to generate a general return of $2.80. This could boost GDP in developing countries by 10% over the next 10 years, resulting in less poverty, hunger and violence, and more resilience and greater capacity to respond to new fast-acting crises.

With just eight short years left to deliver on this global promise, we need to build on the progress made, including the Education Cannot Wait target of 60% girls and adolescent girls in crisis-affected countries.

It starts with financing. Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global, billion-dollar fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, has reached approximately 2.3 million girls since its inception five years ago. With $1 billion in additional resources, the Fund could reach an additional 9 million girls by 2026.

It takes partnerships and the United Nations New Way of Working whereby humanitarian and development actors work together towards collective learning outcomes, hence peacebuilding, or what we call the humanitarian-development-peace nexus.

As we are in a race against time and we need real learning outcomes, it also requires humanitarian speed and developmental depth. This is precisely what Education Cannot and its partners in host-governments and communities, the UN system and civil society as well as private sector are doing. We are doing it together, we do it with speed and we are on a quest for results.

Working closely with our in-country partners, we understand the realities these girls and young women face, and tailor our responses to meet their holistic needs. This entails a protective learning environment, gender-sensitive curriculum, mental health and psycho-social services, teacher training, social-emotional skills as well as academic skills, in countries like Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or Lebanon.

To ensure continuity for crisis-affected girls and adolescent girls – of whom only 1 out of 4 is able to complete lower secondary education – we need to make sure that all girls make the transition to high school and beyond, and are able to participate in science, technology, engineering and math studies.

It means creating safe learning environments so girls can walk safely to school without fear of abduction or assault.

It means empowering female teachers and providing incentives to teach science, provide education of menstrual health and hygiene, and ensure dignity in the home and in the classroom.

It means understanding the direct link between climate action and forced displacement and building an education system that that is resilient to climate-change induced disasters. And it means partnering with local women and girls’ groups and organizations, and delivering across a wide range of partnerships that bring together government, UN agencies, donors, philanthropic foundations, civil society and local communities.

There is no simple solution to the interconnected global crises that have left so many girls behind. We do know however through the work of the UN’s Global Fund for Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crisis that by working together through joint planning and one joint programme towards collective outcomes, we can reach the girls and adolescent girls left furthest behind in conflict zones, refugee camps and war-affected communities. We also know that lack of financing is the biggest challenge in achieving our vision of providing a quality and continued education to 64 million girls. So, on International Women’s Day, let us remind ourselves that their right to an education, their human rights, are actually priceless.

The author is the Director of Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.

 

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Excerpt:

The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

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Teresa Lokichu (left) and Joyce Nairesia share their experiences of breaking gender barriers in Kenya. Gender activists say deep-rooted patriarchy has no place in a world which faces climate change, diseases, pandemics and food insecurity. Credit: Facebook and Twitter

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Mar 8 2022 (IPS)

Teresa Lokichu recalls the day she attended a meeting convened by high-ranking government officials, community leaders and elders to discuss various pressing issues such as security in her pastoral community of West Pokot in Kenya’s Rift Valley region.

Despite being a well-known peace champion in the community, women’s leader, and crusader against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), she had no place, let alone voice, in what was meant to be a consultative meeting.

“I did what a woman in our pastoral community is required to do, stand up and quietly wait until the men in charge saw it fit to give me an opportunity to speak. Everyone in the room was seated, but I remained standing. I needed to speak on behalf of women and children who are most affected by insecurity and conflict,” Lokichu, director of Pokot Girl Child Network, tells IPS.

“The meeting went on as if nothing was amiss even as I remained standing. A female cabinet Minister was in attendance and interrupted the meeting to ask why I remained standing. She was very surprised to hear that this is the only way for a woman to ask for permission to speak in such a meeting.”

Lokichu was immediately granted an opportunity to address the gathering and would later become a nominated Member of the County Assembly, West Pokot, in Kenya’s devolved system of governance.

Her experience is not far from that of Joyce Nairesia, the first Samburu woman to join the Council of Elders and chair such a Council.

She tells IPS that male elders lift a traditional rungu (club) during Council meetings while addressing the Council as a show of power. Being a woman in a pastoralist community, she cannot do the same.

“To address the Council, I first stand up, lift a piece of grass, and wait to be permitted to speak. This is a show of respect and humility in their presence,” she says.

“People say, but how is this possible? I say it is better to influence change from within than from outside looking in.”

As the world marks yet another International Women’s Day on March 8 under the theme ‘Break the Bias’, communities across this East African nation are far from a gender-equal world.

A world free from bias, stereotypes, and discrimination and one where gender equity and inclusivity is freely and widely embraced.

Gender experts such as Grace Gakii, based in Nairobi, say that the world faces a myriad of challenges from climate change, diseases, pandemics, food insecurity and fragile peace. Calls for gender equality and equity in all facets of life are crucial to improving social and economic outcomes.

“We have to uproot deep-rooted patriarchy and misogyny as well as the systematic discrimination of women in political leadership and in business,” Gakii, a researcher in gender equality and equity, tells IPS.

UN data on women in politics shows that Rwanda has the highest percentage of women in parliament globally. South Africa, Senegal, Namibia and Mozambique also made it to the top 20 list.

“Rwanda is also one of 14 countries in the world to have 50 percent or more women in their cabinet. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that representation is not enough. Women need the influence to change how the society perceives men and women, and the roles they assign to them,” Gakii explains.

UN figures indicate that 50 percent of African female cabinet members hold social welfare portfolios. Gakii says these positions align with society’s perception of women as nurturers – not wielders of power who participate at high stake political and leadership decision-making levels.

Only 3 percent of African female cabinet members are in charge of critical and highly powerful dockets in finance, defence, infrastructure, and foreign affairs.

Lokichu says women’s voices are lacking in higher levels of decision making and governance, further perpetuating gender stereotypes, bias, and discrimination against women.

Even in business and the corporate world, where Africa’s firms have the highest percentage of female representation on company boards at 25 percent compared to the global average of 17 percent, according to McKinsey Global Institute, Gakii says it is not enough.

“Women are increasingly represented, but their influence is limited. There is no real impact and progress towards gender parity if participation and influence do not go hand in hand,” she says.

“The global average of women in executive committee is 21 percent. Africa is ahead at 22 percent, with South Africa having the highest percentage of gender parity. It is not enough that women are seen in positions of power. Power must be felt for there to be a paradigm shift in the collective societal conscience.”

In recognition of these facts, in February 2021, the African Union (AU) Ministers in charge of Gender and Women’s Affairs adopted the Common African Position (CAP) to advance women’s full and effective participation and decision making in public life.

The AU says that due to existing gender gaps in leadership roles across financial, investment and entrepreneurial markets, the African continent loses over 20 percent of its GDP every year.

Gakii says women must rise to power and influence in politics, business, religion, and institutions of higher learning for them to push gender boundaries in a consistent, systematic and impactful manner.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

The following feature is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

On Feb 26, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have demanded Moscow immediately stop its attack on Ukraine and withdraw all troops, a move several Council members said was deplorable, but inevitable. While 11 of the Council’s 15 members voted in favour of the text, China India, and the United Arab Emirates abstained. Credit: United Nations

By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Mar 8 2022 (IPS)

The ongoing war in Ukraine has raised the question of expulsion or suspension of the Russian Federation from the United Nations. As is known, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, its UN seat was transferred to the Russian Federation.

With the collapse of the USSR in late 1991,the Commonwealth of Independent States signed a declaration agreeing that “Member states of the Commonwealth support Russia in taking over the USSR membership in the UN, including permanent membership in the Security Council.”

USSR Ambassador to UN transmitted to the UN Secretary-General a letter from President of the Russian Federation stating that:

“… the membership of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the United Nations, including the Security Council and all other organs and organizations of the United Nations system, is being continued by the Russian Federation with the support of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. In this connection, I request that the name ‘Russian Federation’ should be used in the United Nations in place of the name ‘the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’. The Russian Federation maintains full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations. I request that you consider this letter as confirmation of the credentials to represent the Russian Federation in United Nations organs….”

The Secretary-General circulated the request among the UN membership. There being no objection, the Russian Federation took the USSR’s place, with President Boris Yeltsin personally taking the Russian Federation’s seat at the Security Council meeting on 31 January 1992.

Without presenting new credentials. USSR Ambassador to UN continued serving as the first Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

UN’s working arrangements

Since its inception, the United Nations has resorted to all kinds of measures, practices, and procedures to circumvent the complexities of an intergovernmental decision-making and legal implications, heavily influenced by the position or opposition of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

As a result, acquiescence in its various manifestations has become all pervasive in the business of the United Nations. A clear manifestation of that is practiced these days through what is known as “silent procedure” whereby the reluctant acceptance of Member States of all kinds of anomalies achieve an agreement or consensus otherwise not possible.

The Russian veto on the Ukraine resolution in the Security Council prevented unanimous global resolve to address the situation there. The continuation of veto is an aberration of the multilateral system as practiced in the UN Security Council, thereby jeopardizing all the positive UN efforts to maintain international peace and security.

Change in multilateral system

The war in Ukraine has reaffirmed more clearly than ever that the “global ideological struggle” that had for so long dominated the international scene does not exist anymore. And the new realities must be translated into a different set of global institutions unless the existing one undertake major and all-pervasive reforms of their decision-making and operational practices and procedures.

The expulsion or suspension of one of the five veto-wielding permanent members would not necessarily result in effective maintenance of the global peace and security. There would still be four others with the ability to deny any time a consensus decision with which any one of them does not agree.

Veto, the chief culprit

The chief culprit in the failure of unified global action by the UN is the continuation of the irrational practice of veto. As a matter, I have said on record that, if only one reform action could be taken, it should be the abolition of veto. Believe me, the veto power influences not only the decisions of the Security Council but also all work of the UN, including importantly the choice of the Secretary-General.

I believe the abolition of veto requires a greater priority attention in the reforms process than the enlargement of the Security Council membership with additional permanent ones. Such permanency is simply undemocratic. I believe that the veto power is not “the cornerstone of the United Nations” but in reality, its tombstone.

Case of China

Unlike the question of the replacement of USSR membership by the Russian Federation in 1991, the case of the recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by the UN is straightforward.

It was decided by the apex body of the UN system, the General Assembly in its groundbreaking resolution 2758 titled “Restoration of the lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations” which was adopted by two-thirds majority on 25 October 1971 in accordance with the UN Charter.

The resolution recognized the People’s Republic of China as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and expelled “forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” from the United Nations.

Following adoption of Resolution 2758, the Beijing government began representing China at the UN from 15 November 1971 and its delegates were seated at the UN Security Council meeting held on 23 November 1971, the first such meeting where representatives of the Beijing government represented China with its veto power as a permanent member of the Council.

UN’s clear position on Taiwan

Over the years, Taiwan’s efforts to revive the application for UN membership separately for itself has received no support of the UN membership in general.

Reflecting the long-standing UN policy is mirrored in the “Final Clauses of “Final Clauses of Multilateral Treaties, Handbook”, 2003 published by the UN, stating that:

“…regarding the Taiwan Province of China, the Secretary-General follows the General Assembly’s guidance incorporated in resolution 2758 (XXVI) of the General Assembly of 25 October 1971 on the restoration of the lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations. The General Assembly decided to recognize the representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations. Hence, instruments received from the Taiwan Province of China will not be accepted by the Secretary-General in his capacity as depositary.”

It is relevant to recall that in 2007, Secretary-General of the UN Ban Ki-moon rejected Taiwan’s membership bid to “join the UN under the name of Taiwan”, citing Resolution 2758 as acknowledging that Taiwan is part of China, although it is important to note, not the People’s Republic of China.

Why not amend the Charter

I have confronted on many occasions the question why Russia and PRC have not called for an amendment of the UN Charter to streamline their membership issue. For that, my opinion is that all Permanent Members are fully cognizant that that would open up a Pandora’s box, including the issue of abolition of veto and other reform issues which are not at all to their liking as part of the P-5 coterie.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, is Former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN; President of the UN Security Council (2000 and 2001); Senior Special Adviser to UN General Assembly President (2011-2012) and Former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN.

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 8 2022 (IPS)

All too many developing countries have been persuaded or required to prioritize inflation targeting (IT) in their monetary policy. By doing so, they have tied their own hands instead of adopting bolder economic policies for growth, jobs and sustainable development.

Anis Chowdhury

Why inflation targeting?
IT refers to monetary policy efforts to keep the inflation rate within a certain low range. Many countries – developed and developing – have adopted this policy priority following New Zealand’s 1989 lead, arbitrarily aiming to keep inflation under 2%.

Initially, developing economies adopted IT after crises to get financial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), e.g., after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. From the mid-1970s, many had borrowed heavily to accelerate growth. After the US Fed raised interest rates sharply from 1980, many succumbed to debt crises.

The IMF insisted on severe short-term stabilization policies to keep inflation and debt low. The World Bank complemented it with medium-term structural adjustment policies demanding market liberalization and other reforms.

Price stabilization policies to keep inflation low have been an IMF priority since. But instead of accelerating growth, as promised, IT has actually slowed it. Yet, developing countries have jumped on the IT bandwagon – 25 had formally adopted IT by 2020, while most others strive to keep inflation very low.

How bad is inflation?
Most believe that inflation is the greatest threat to the economy and growth. Many presume inflation creates uncertainty, causing resource misallocation. All this is said to retard growth – meaning fewer jobs, less tax revenue and lasting poverty.

Higher prices hurt by reducing purchasing power, especially harming wage-earners. On the contrary, price stability – implying low and steady inflation – is believed to be more conducive to ensuring growth and prosperity.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Another core IT belief is that money only temporarily affects growth, but permanently affects prices. IT advocates believe central bankers should mainly strive for price stability – not employment or growth. They usually presume independent central banks are better at doing so.

Many central bankers and economists dogmatically believe – without evidence – that tightly reining in inflation actually spurs growth. Acknowledging developing countries are more prone to external and supply shocks, the IMF recommended targets of up to 5% – higher than developed countries’ 2%.

Most developing countries aspiring to become emerging market economies have formally adopted IT – e.g., South Africa’s 3–6% or India’s 2–6%. By setting successively lower short-term inflation targets, they believe financial markets are impressed.

But by doing so, they prevent themselves from realizing their full economic potential. Striving to emulate the developed countries’ 2% target constrains both growth and structural transformation. After all, it was quite arbitrarily set for no economic reason, except the NZ finance minister liking the ‘0 to 2 by ’92’ slogan!

Arbitrary targets
While there is little disagreement about likely problems associated with ‘hyper-’ or very high inflation, the threshold beyond which inflation becomes harmful is a moot issue on which there is no consensus.

Inflation targets are arbitrarily set, as acknowledged in an IMF paper. Hence, “any choice of a medium-term inflation target for these [developing] countries is bound to be arbitrary”. Harry Johnson had found early IMF empirical studies of the inflation-growth relationship to be inconclusive.

Later studies did not settle the matter. For example, Michael Bruno and William Easterly at the World Bank concluded that inflation under 40% did not tend to accelerate or worsen, and “countries can manage to live with moderate – around 15–30 percent – inflation for long periods”.

MIT’s Rudiger Dornbusch and Stanley Fischer, later IMF Deputy Managing Director, came to similar conclusions. They found moderate inflation of 15–30% did not harm growth, noting “such inflations can be reduced only at a substantial short-term cost to growth”.

A 2000 IMF paper suggested 11% inflation was optimal for developing countries; 7% inflation would have “an insignificant negative effect” on growth, while 18% inflation remained positive for growth. Yet, it recommended an IT target of 7–11% and “bringing inflation down to single digits and keeping it there”.

The IMF Independent Evaluation Office’s 2007 report on Sub-Saharan Africa found “mission chiefs are evenly divided on whether (or not) the Fund should tolerate higher [than 5%] inflation rates…IMF policy staff acknowledge that the empirical literature on the inflation-growth relationship is inconclusive”.

Hence, very low inflation targets are quite arbitrary without any sound theoretical and empirical bases. But the IMF and its chorus of economists have not hesitated to insist on keeping inflation very low by promoting IT for all, especially to susceptible developing country policymakers.

Constraining development
Very low inflation targets particularly constrain low-income countries (LICs). LIC governments face modest revenue bases and limited domestic savings. Hence, they should borrow more from central banks to finance their development spending.

But such borrowings are prohibited by law in many developing countries – especially those which have formally embraced IT – to prove their anti-inflationary commitment. Thus, a potentially major means for central banks to be more developmental is denied by statute.

By raising interest rates to keep inflation very low, central banks reduce not only consumer spending, but also business investments. Such policies also increase both public and private debt burdens, in turn constraining spending.

Thus, overall aggregate demand remains depressed, limiting growth unless compensated by greater export demand. But higher interest rates attract capital inflows, causing exchange rates to appreciate, undermining export competitiveness.

Means deny ends
IT policy is problematic for two major reasons. First, it demands debilitatingly low targets. Second, it denies central banks’ potential developmental role by insisting on price stability – read ‘containing inflation’ – as its principal goal.

IMF researchers have acknowledged, “identifying the growth effects of moving from, say, 20 percent inflation to 5 percent has been challenging”.

They concluded, “pushing inflation too low – say, below 5 percent – may entail a loss of output …, suggesting a need for caution in setting very low inflation targets in low-income countries… In particular, inflation targets should be set so as to help avoid risks of an unintended contractionary policy stance.”

Also, San Francisco US Federal Reserve Bank research has concluded, “developing economies that adopted an inflation target did not show any substantial gains in growth in the medium term compared with those that did not adopt a target”.

Thus, developing countries prioritizing IT have, often unwittingly, curtailed their own economic prospects. Falsely promoted as means to enhance growth, jobs and development, IT, in fact, constrains them – the ultimate con!

Rejecting the IT fetish does not mean doing nothing about inflation. Instead, developing countries need to better know the economic challenges they face and the efficacy of their policy tools. National economic priorities should be comprehensively addressed without subordinating all policy goals to the god of IT.

 

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Every time Angella Okutoyi, whose mother died in childbirth, steps on court she thinks of how tennis will change her family's life.

Some want evangelists to make less noise when trying to convert people in Uganda's capital, Kampala.

The Ukraine war could push millions closer to starvation, the boss of the World Food Programme says.

Mary Robinson with Elizabeth Wathuti at COP26 in Glasgow. Credit: The Elders

By Mary Robinson
DUBLIN, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

Women are already leaders on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Sisters Nina and Helena Gualinga of the Kichwa Sarayaku community in Ecuador work tirelessly to protect Indigenous land. Archana Soreng from the indigenous Khadia tribe in Odisha, India is a talented climate researcher and advisor to the United Nations Secretary General. Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate is encouraging a whole generation of young people to fight for their right to a safe future. There are thousands of other women and girls working tirelessly to protect our planet whose names I do not know but who deserve to be acknowledged this International Women’s Day too.

Many women and girls working in the fight against climate change have stepped into leadership not out of choice but out of necessity – the brunt of the climate emergency, which amplifies existent inequalities, is often felt hardest by women and girls.

Women’s vulnerability to climate change is social, economic, and cultural. Women in climate vulnerable nations tend to be highly dependent on local natural resources for their livelihoods, particularly in rural areas where they shoulder the responsibility for household supplies. However, women must not be seen as passive victims of climate change but as active and effective agents of change.

Women have long been the custodians of the environment in many traditional societies. It is women who are often the providers of food, the stewards of seed banks, and the decision-makers at household level. It is often women who are the early adopters of new techniques and who are frequently the first responders in disaster situations. Our world is also full of remarkable women leading the way as climate scientists, litigators, community organisers, business owners, policy-makers, inventors and more.

While it is important for us to celebrate the vital contributions of women and girls around the world in tackling the climate emergency, we must in turn recognise the gender inequality at the heart of this crisis. The gendered dimensions of climate change and its responses are still insufficiently addressed in either emerging climate finance architecture or in most countries’ strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation.

As exposed in last month’s IPCC report, the threat of climate change reaches across sectors, regions and populations. Tackling it will require all of humanity’s ideas, efforts, and innovations. Ensuring that diverse populations are represented in key decision-making processes is essential if we are to succeed in this colossal task.

We must start to see scaled-up funding for women’s capacity building as well as strengthened efforts to support women and girls to lead on addressing climate change at community, national, and international level.

According to Oxfam, the latest figures show that only 1.5 percent of overseas climate-related development funds named gender equality as their primary objective. Of this, only 0.2 percent was reaching organisations led by women or for women. Things are slowly improving, but there is still a long way to go.

The Elders – the group of independent global leaders working together for peace and human rights that I chair – are calling for more investment for climate vulnerable nations so that millions more women and girls can build resilience to climate and disaster risks. A crucial element of that must be increased financial support for adaptation as well as mitigation.

At COP26 international leaders signed a statement calling for the role of women to be advanced in addressing climate change. This statement remains open for signatures from nation states until the 66th meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, to be held later this month: an event that will have a focus on women’s empowerment in the context of climate change, the environment and disaster risk reduction.

Pledges made on gender-just climate action, like the ones made at COP26 and earlier in 2021 at the Generation Equality Forum, are important; but we now need to see those promises transformed into action. Equitable and inclusive decision-making means not only ensuring that women and girls are always at decision-making tables but also that women and girls from particularly marginalised groups such as indigenous and rural communities are there too.

At COP26, there was a lack of female representation across the board when it came to climate discussions – it was too male, pale and stale. COP27 must not look like that.

This International Women’s Day should be the last one where we are left discussing a lack of representation in climate decision making. When women and girls are excluded from informing climate negotiations and implementation processes, it undermines efforts to protect our collective future.

A young climate activist I greatly admire, Elizabeth Wathuti from Kenya, recently said: “I believe in our human capacity to care deeply and act collectively.” Like Elizabeth, I believe in humanity enough to still have hope that we can do what is needed to address the climate crisis – but it will take all of us.

 

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Excerpt:

Mary Robinson is Chair of The Elders
 
The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

Security forces fire live bullets to disperse angry students who wanted to watch the Manchester derby.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

Georg Hegel once stated: ”What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.” Nevertheless, self-taught historian Vladimir Putin has learned to interpret history in his own manner. During COVID he went down in Kremlin’s archives and after studying old maps and treaties he wrote a lengthy essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, while declaring that ”the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state is an aggression directed against Russia.”

In his essay, Putin stressed Ukraine’s cultural and economic dependency on Russia, among other opinions stating that “in 1991-2013, Ukraine’s budget savings amounted to more than USD 82 billion, while today, it holds on the mere USD 1.5 billion of Russian payments for gas transit to Europe.” However, he fails to mention that after 2013 Ukraine lost approximately 100 billion USD due to the Kremlin backed war in Donbas and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Putin avoids the fact that gas prices were politically motivated, rising and falling depending on Ukrainian politicians’ support of Russian interests. His other history lessons are quite detailed, though nevertheless equally biased, based as they are on an Utopian idea of Russky Mir, a Russian world uniting all Russian-speakers now scattered among different countries, which once belonged to the Russian tsardom.

For example, he claims that Crimea is a natural part of Russia, though he ignores to explain how this came about:

In 1441, Mongols established the Crimean Khanate and their descendants, the Tatars, governed Crimea until 1783, when the area was annexed by the Russian Empire. A move that was part of an effort to colonize the fertile lands north of the Black Sea, which the tsars named Novorossiya, New Russia – a term frequently used by Putin while referring to the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine.

The “russification” of Crimea triggered an exodus to the Ottoman Empire. Between 1784 and 1793, 300,000 Tatars emigrated, out of an original population of about one million, while Russian settlers moved in. The Crimean War (1853-1856) caused another mass-migration when approximately 300,000 Tatars left Crimea. During World War II, Stalin decided to “empty Crimea of Tatars”. Soviet military forces did from the 18th to the 20th of May 1944 force “191,044 Tatars” to border cattle trains to become “resettled” far away in the East.

Vladimir Putin is now justifying his fierce attack on Ukraine by referring to genocide: “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime.” The term genocide (from Greek génos, family/clan/race and Latin cīdium, killing/murder) was in 1943 coined by Raphaël Lemkin, who in 1900 was born in Bezwodne, a village that in those days was part of the Russian Empire, nowadays it is found in western Belarus.

During World War I, Bezwodne became part of the battleground between German and Russian armies. The Lemkin house was burned down and after the Germans had seized their crops, horses and livestock the Lemkins sought shelter in the woods, where the youngest of Raphaël’s two brothers died from pneumonia and malnutrition.

In 1920, Raphaël enrolled at the Jan Kazimierz University in what at the time was Lwów. This ancient town had been ruled by Germans, Ruthenians, Russians, Tatars, Turks, Cossacks and even Swedes. Most of its existence, Lwów had been part of Polish territory, until it in the eighteenth century was annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I, the town became Polish again, until the Soviet Union conquered it in 1939. Germans, calling it Lemberg, occupied the town between 1941 and 1944, after that the Soviets came back. In 1991 it became independent Ukraine’s second biggest town and is now called Lviv.

Each change of government was accompanied by protests and upheavals, generally followed by violence as emperors, kings, khans, hetmans and sultans imposed changes in language, religion, culture, and law, while inviting people from other areas to settle in the town.

Raphaël Lemkin, who for ten years studied and taught at the Kazimierz University, became increasingly engaged by the question why huge groups of people were harassed and ”put to death for no other reason than a language different from rulers who dictated laws and customs.” In his autobiography, Lemkin described his distress about the plight of Armenians, particularly after Taalat Pasha in 1915 had ordered an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenian women, children, and elderly to be sent on death marches into the Syrian Desert. In 1918, Taalat Pasha was in Brest-Litovsk as Turkish representative during peace negotiations between Germany and Russia. When Allied fleets in November 1918 entered the Bosphorus, Taalat Pasha chose to remain in Berlin, where he on 15 March 1921 was assassinated by a young Armenian, Soghomon Tehlirian.

Lemkin asked his professor in international law why Tehlirian was tried for murder, while no one had arrested a mass-murderer like Taalat Pasha. The professor answered: ”Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens, he kills them, that’s his job; if you intervene, you are harassing him.” Lemkin responded: “But … Armenians are human beings, not chickens.” The professor declared: ”When you interfere in the internal affairs of a country [in this case – Turkey], you are violating that country’s sovereignty.” After this encounter, Lemkin continued to wonder why Tehlirian’s assassination of Taalat Pasha by most jurists was considered to be a lesser crime than a Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire ordering the death of more than a million individuals. Lemkin wrote: “How could the flag of sovereignty protect people trying to destroy an entire minority? Wasn’t it possible to create a norm in international law that worked for the prosecution of mass murder?” Tehlirian was by the Berlin court ”acquitted on grounds of insanity.”

From 1929, Lemkin worked for the District Court of Warsaw. When Poland in September 1939 was caught between invading German and Soviet armies he barely evaded German capture and execution, reaching Sweden through Lithuania. After a year as lecturer at the University of Uppsala, Lemkin escaped to the US. In 1944, he introduced the term genocide in his Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, an analysis of Nazi terror rule explaining why there are legal grounds for persecuting individuals who order and support genocide. During the Nuremberg trials Lemkin served as legal advisor to Chief Counselor Robert H. Jackson. In the 1950s, Lemkin cooperated with the Government of Egypt to establish means to outlaw genocide under domestic penal law. He also worked with Arab delegations at the UN to build a case to prosecute French officials for genocide in Algeria.

In 1953, Lemkin identified the Holodomor as a genocide. The word means “a plague of famine” and is used to designate the 1932-1933 Ukraine famine with an estimated 3,5 to 7 million victims. Ukraine’s ”black earth” is among the most fertile in the world and due to a constant lack of wheat in the rest of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian regime collectivized agricultural activities in Ukraine, at the same time as it tried to annihilate all opposition. However, while Soviet authorities were squeezing out ever increasing amounts of food, directing them to Russian cities and industrial centres, most Ukrainian collectives proved to be inefficient. In the 1930s, lack of grain became acute and agricultural products were violently confiscated from farmers, creating a state of terror and starvation. Mendacious propaganda was used to cover up expropriations, deportations and killings.

In 2006, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law declaring Holodomor to be a ”Soviet genocide against the Ukrainian people.”

Several researchers have denied that the Holodomor was primarily waged against Ukrainians. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose father was Russian and mother Ukrainian, stated that the Holodomor, like other catastrophes occurring under Soviet rule, was a result of a generally inhuman Soviet ideology and not much different from the 1921 famine during which six million Soviet citizens died.

However, it cannot be denied that Ukraine, due to its fertile land and its crucial position between power hungry empires, constantly suffered incursions from regimes which terrorized and subdued its inhabitants. The word Ukraine appears to emanate from an old Slavic term for ”borderland”. In his 2010 book Blood Lands, Timothy Snyder described how 13 million people within a relatively short time span were killed within border regions stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. They became victims of Soviet terror, of the Holodomor, of the Nazi staged Holocaust/Porajmos that exterminated at least 5.4 million Jews and Roma/Sinti. During the same time, 3.1 million Soviet prisoners died in Nazi camps and half a million Germans in the Soviet Gulag, where millions of Russians, Poles, Balts and Ukrainians also perished.

Of the estimated 8.6 million Soviet troop losses during World War II, 1.4 million were ethnic Ukrainians, while Ukrainian civilian casualties are estimated at 6 million, including1.5 million Jews killed by Nazi Einsatzgruppen. More than 700 Ukrainian cities and towns and 28,000 villages were destroyed. Five days ago, Moscow people brought flowers to the Kyiv memorial by The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. However, after an hour police had thrown them away and sealed off the area.

It is against this background Vladimir Putin presents his biased slice of history, ignoring millions of war casualties, genocide, state induced famine and enormous deportations. His dream of a “New Russia” appears to be nothing else than a version of an “Old Russia”, characterized by state violence, famine, war and mass deportations.

Once again Russian politics are dominated by a man imbued with a sense of Russian superiority, someone who apparently cannot perceive the difference between human victims and slaughtered chickens. The spectre of genocide might once again rise from its grave inflicting new ordeals on a long suffering Ukrainian population, not to mention the terrible possibility of a nuclear war.

Main sources: Applebaum, Anne (2018) Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. London: Penguin Books. Lemkin, Raphael (2013) Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin. New Haven CT: Yale University Press. Snyder, Timothy (2012) Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books. Putin, Vladimir (2021) On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. https://www.prlib.ru/en/article-vladimir-putin-historical-unity-russians-and-ukrainians

 

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Credit: UN Women

By Claudia Sadoff
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

The increased empowerment of rural women in Bangladesh over the past 10 years has been no accident.

A decade ago, not even one in four rural women could be said to be “empowered” across five key metrics, a figure that surprised even those working on the ground with the country’s poorest. By 2015, this had risen to more than two in five, or 41 per cent, with continued gains in recent years.

A key reason for this rise was a systematic effort to measure empowerment among rural women in real terms using measurements that were directly related to their daily lives, including farming and fishing.

The findings were a wake-up call that guided and motivated action towards a more targeted approach to improving women’s participation and decision-making in food systems.

The result is not only greater gender equality but subsequent improvements in nutrition, health, and productivity. And while the gender gap was slowly closing, Bangladesh achieved lower-middle-income status, with reductions in extreme poverty, as well as child and maternal mortality.

Clearly, for women around the world, there remains a long way to go. But as Bangladesh has demonstrated, unlocking the multiple benefits that gender equality can bring begins with first quantifying the level of empowerment and gender parity among rural women and their communities. In this case, researchers deployed a pioneering tool, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI).

Bangladesh became the first country to carry out a national household survey that included the WEAI in 2012. One component of the index provided the first measure of women’s empowerment across five key domains: decisions about agricultural production; access to and decision-making power about agricultural resources; control of use of income; leadership in the community, and time allocation.

In addition, another component measured gender parity, or the percentage of women who are empowered or whose achievements are at least as high as the men in their households. This allowed women’s empowerment to become a litmus test for agricultural productivity, nutritional status, and public health.

The publicly available data was instrumental in demonstrating the scale of gender inequality in Bangladesh as well as exposing the variation in empowerment within the country. And this information also enabled the second step, which was to inspire government-backed programs that addressed the mutual links between women, agriculture, and food security.

The Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) program, designed in partnership with Bangladesh’s Ministry of Agriculture, featured agricultural training, nutrition behaviour change communication and gender sensitization trainings in Bangladesh between 2015 and 2018.

Not only did these trainings positively impact women’s empowerment by up to 13 percentage points, but the program also increased the production of crops other than rice and improved the quality of household diets. The ANGeL program has since been rolled out nationwide.

To date, the WEAI has spawned several different versions, some including more extensive metrics and others fewer, to meet the needs of more than 200 organizations in 58 countries.

But applied at a global level, supported by CGIAR, tools like WEAI can provide a common metric that helps design policies to meet multiple goals, from improving diets and childhood development to increasing women’s livelihoods.

If more countries, governments and agencies made use of the WEAI or similar, to guide policy and investment decisions, women’s empowerment could be leveraged as a gateway towards a healthier, more inclusive and fairer world.

When performance is measured, performance improves but when performance can also be directly compared across countries, regions, and different production systems, the result can accelerate progress by inspiring a race to the top. This is why efforts are under way at CGIAR to harmonise different instruments to allow progress worldwide to be monitored and stimulated more widely.

Governments also have a critical role to play in investing in collecting and reporting on empowerment indicators and working alongside development partners to act upon their insights.

The more policymakers and researchers know about the extent of gender inequality and its wider role in the health and prosperity of its population, the more governments, researchers and NGOs can take targeted and effective action that addresses global challenges at their roots.

Women’s empowerment in agriculture leads to greater diversity in food production and household diets, and, in many countries, helps children’s long-term nutritional status. With a consistent approach that first reveals and then reduces the gaps in women’s empowerment, everyone stands to benefit.

 

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Dr. Claudia Sadoff is Managing Director for Research Delivery and Impact at CGIAR, the world's largest publicly funded agricultural research network.
 
The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

A case worker at a camp for internally displaced people in Somalia helps abused women get medical care. Credit: UNDP

By Caroline Ngonze
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

It was on a visit to Lesotho that I first heard the derogatory term Mmutla – nocturnal hare. It is a word used in some southern districts to insult adolescent girls who have been forced into sexual exploitation and transactional sexual relations for survival.

That one cruel word summed up the multiple marginalisations faced by so many adolescent girls across sub-Saharan Africa: excluded for being poor, for being female, for being young; excluded further through exploitation, and then excluded further as they get blamed for that exploitation.

On our continent, one in four adolescent girls in a relationship have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from their partner, and over a third of girls are married while still children.

The consequences are seen in the unrelenting young female HIV pandemic. In West and Central Africa, 82% of new HIV infections within the age group 15-19 years are of girls. In the East and Southern Africa region, that figure rises to 85%.

On visits to Lesotho, South Africa, Senegal and Malawi, I’ve heard from the public and private sector, from civil society organizations, from traditional and religious leaders, and teenagers in and out of school, including teenage mothers, the same message: if Africa is to fulfil its potential, it has to enable all of its girls to fulfil theirs. And that depends on all girls completing school and being empowered at school.

Evidence shows that completion of secondary education by adolescent girls can reduce HIV infection by up to 50%. A layered approach to interventions that combines completion of secondary education with universal access to comprehensive sexuality education, fulfilment of sexual and reproductive health and rights, ensuring that school environments are free from gender-based and sexual violence, and successful school-to- work transitions for economic security and empowerment, will lower the risk of HIV infection even further.

Communities concur on the main reasons why so many girls do not complete secondary school. The cost of education is cited as a key barrier everywhere I visit. Even when fees are removed, charges for “school development”, or for exams or text books or uniforms keep many girls out. In addition, discriminatory policies, laws and practices (both at school and in the community) deny girls their right to education and entrench inequalities, poverty, quality and relevance of education. Adolescent girls with disabilities, those from rural settings, low-income and child-headed households as well as those from marginalized groups are at a significantly elevated risk of sexual exploitation and abuse, violence and teenage pregnancies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned a chronic challenge into an acute one. For instance, the restrictions imposed to curb the spread of COVID19 led to school closures, disruptions to health and social services, and job losses in households. With the protective cover of school pulled back, huge spikes have been recorded in teenage pregnancies, child marriage, gender-based and sexual violence, and sexual exploitation. Millions of girls may not ever return to school.

Fixing such a crisis depends on a whole-of-society commitment. It is that recognition which has brought together allies from across the African continent and beyond in the Education Plus Initiative – a high-level political advocacy drive and broad-based campaign, co-led by the Executive Directors of UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF and UN Women. It leverages and combines the mandates, expertise, knowledge, skills and impact of five UN agencies, and brings in too the insights and determination of civil society organizations, adolescent girls and young women, youth and feminist networks.

Unequal gender power dynamics and harmful gender norms – compounded by intersecting forms of discrimination based on income, education, and disability – drive the risks girls face. These risks help drive the HIV pandemic, which, in turn, further exacerbates these inequalities. There is no way to succeed in ensuring that girls are safe and healthy unless they are empowered. As this year’s International Women’s Day theme notes, we need gender equality today for a sustainable future tomorrow.

Gender inequalities are systemic, and can only be countered with social mobilization, bold policy reform and scaled-up financing.

Every group of girls I meet on this continent teaches me something new, but they all remind me of one key lesson that we need all decision-makers to align their policies and their investments to: Everything we do to give girls a fair chance, they will give us back so much more in return.

Africa’s girls are the ones who will ensure that our development goals are realized. All they ask is that we ensure that they are schooled, safe and strong.

Caroline Ngonze manages Education Plus, a movement for the education and empowerment of every adolescent girl and young woman. You can read more about Education Plus here https://www.unaids.org/en/topics/education-plus

 

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The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

Credit: United Nations

By Gabrielle Lipton
BONN, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

When I was a young girl, a friend and I spent our summers building a treehouse. We built it because our older brothers were building one and wouldn’t allow us to help them. So, we asked our parents to support us through the procurement of basic tools, collected scrap wood from the local hardware store, chose a tree, and then spent day after day puzzling beams and boards together into structure in which only people of our small size could fit.

Our brothers would often scope out our progress, refusing to believe we had managed some of the architectural feats on our own, but we didn’t mind their judgements. It was sturdy, it was ours, and it was perfect.

Although we’ve outgrown the treehouse now too, I pay it a visit from time to time, remembering the seasons spent among the branches building our humble stronghold – and building ourselves. Those summers taught me that even with the most minimal amount of support, there was little I couldn’t do with hard work, resourcefulness, teamwork and friendship.

I share this story today, ahead of International Women’s Day 8 March 2022, because I believe that every woman has such a story – likely one that involves far more odds that had to be overcome than the simple and privileged ones from my youth. Indeed, the statistics about gender equality in the context of sustainable development continue to be staggering.

While the exact percentage is debated, it’s widely agreed that women comprise the majority of the world’s poor. Eighty percent of people displaced by climate change are women and girls, and sixty percent of the world’s food insecure people are women and girls. And pretty much all pre-existing gender inequities have been exacerbated by COVID-19.

But what is more staggering still are women’s stories of triumph despite the obstacles – when they’ve turned others’ doubts into opportunities, when the fruits of their tireless labors yielded literally unbelievable results, when they were given a dime and built a castle.

This deserves reflection and recognition, which is why we at the Global Landscapes Forum are honoring such leaders and agents of change in our annual 16 Women Restoring the Earth campaign. This list raises up women from across five continents, three generations and all sectors who are using their efforts, resources, relationships, and willfully-built selves to help piece together a better reality – and future reality – for everyone else too.

This is our third year publishing 16 Women Restoring the Earth (see here 2020 and 2021), and in each iteration, it has been an immense privilege to learn about the lives of such extraordinary women and to work with them on creating and sharing this feature.

In this year’s list, we have a Grammy-nominated artist and musician who documents the hardships and joys of womanhood in Africa through song; a Pulitzer Prize–winning politician who helped negotiate relationships between major global powers while raising children; a young Indian activist who filed a lawsuit against her government at the age of 9 for not doing enough to protect her future from climate change; a scientist who has tracked the Amazon’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades so that we can know the state of the world’s most important forest; and a philanthropist who is courageously finding new ways to channel funds to local communities, to name just a few.

The phrase “restoring the Earth,” as one might notice, is used in the broadest sense, to encompass the multitudinous ways women are using their minds, bodies, time and gifts to reinstate harmony on this planet. The common thread between the women we’ve featured is their level of integrity, determination, resilience and humor.

The mission of the Global Landscapes Forum, in essence, is to help usher in a new relationship between communities and ecosystems in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The women we choose for our 16 Women Restoring the Earth campaigns have all been involved in our organization in some form or fashion during of our nine years of existence, whether they’ve spoken at one of our events, supported us through partnerships, or simply believed in our mission and played an active part of our global community.

It’s a difficult selection process each year, but one filled with gratitude for the contributions so many women have made to helping build our treehouse, so to speak.

This campaign, then, is a means by which to gently remind ourselves of the many forms of inequality that exist on this planet, some of which can be numerically quantified but many only told through words, stories and life experiences. It is to put forward a group of diverse role models that anyone can look to and think, “If she can do it, so can I.” It is a collection of light in challenging times to celebrate the many reasons for optimism and hope that still exist.

Most of all, we hope it serves as a pause, a moment for you to think of what it is you’re building and how you are contributing to the restoration of our Earth, whatever that means to you.

 

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The writer is head editor, Landscape News
 
The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

Women predominate in the world's food production (50-80 per cent), but they own less than 10 per cent of the land. Credit: Jency Samuel/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

The picture is gloomy: not only do women represent 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in conditions of poverty, but also up to 40% of the poorest households in urban areas are headed by women.

Should this not be enough, please know that:

• Women predominate in the world’s food production (50-80%), but they own less than 10% of the land.
• 80% of the displaced by climate-related disasters and changes around the world are women and girls.
• Climate change may lead to more gender-based violence, an increase in child marriages, and worsening sexual and reproductive health.

The above staggering data come from the UN on the occasion of the 8 March International Women Day.

Despite all that, the UN goes on, women and girls are effective and powerful leaders and change-makers for climate adaptation and mitigation.

“They are involved in sustainability initiatives around the world, and their participation and leadership result in more effective climate action.”

 

Equality, essential

Continuing to examine the opportunities, as well as the constraints, to empower women and girls to have a voice and be equal players in decision-making related to climate change and sustainability is essential for sustainable development and greater gender equality.

“Without gender equality today, a sustainable future, and an equal future, remains beyond our reach.”

In fact, the 2022 International Women’s Day claims “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”.

 

Women and climate change

For its part, the UN Women underlines that advancing gender equality in the context of the climate crisis and disaster risk reduction is one of the greatest global challenges of the 21st century.

“The issues of climate change and sustainability have had and will continue to have, severe and lasting impacts on our environment, economic and social development. Those who are amongst the most vulnerable and marginalised experience the deepest impacts.”

Women are increasingly being recognised as more vulnerable to climate change impacts than men, as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent on the natural resources which climate change threatens the most, adds UN Women.

According to this United Nations entity in charge of promoting the rights of women worldwide, “Without gender equality today, a sustainable future, and an equal future, remains beyond our reach.”

 

Women empowerment

The theme for International Women’s Day is aligned with the priority theme for the upcoming 66th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66): “Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes”.

UN Women puts the focus on four key action areas:

• Economic empowerment
• Ending violence against women
• Peace and security
• Humanitarian action

 

Leadership, political participation

Women’s equal participation and leadership in political and public life are essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. However, data shows that women are underrepresented at all levels of decision-making worldwide, and achieving gender parity in political life is far off.

 

Women in executive government positions

• As of 1 September 2021, there are 26 women serving as Heads of State and/or Government in 24 countries. At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.
• Just 10 countries have a woman Head of State, and 13 countries have a woman Head of Government.
• Only 21 percent of government ministers were women, with only 14 countries having achieved 50 percent or more women in cabinets. With an annual increase of just 0.52 percentage points, gender parity in ministerial positions will not be achieved before 2077.
• The five most commonly held portfolios by women ministers are: Family/children/youth/elderly/disabled; followed by Social affairs; Environment/natural resources/energy; Employment/labour/vocational training, and Women affairs/gender equality.

 

Equality out of reach

In another report, UN Women says that with the latest data, we now understand the vital link between gender, social equity and climate change, and recognise that without gender equality today, a sustainable future, an equal future, remains out of reach.

“Women and girls experience the greatest impacts of the climate crisis as it amplifies existing gender inequalities and puts women’s lives and livelihoods at risk. Across the world, women depend more on, yet have less access to, natural resources, and often bear a disproportionate responsibility for securing food, water, and fuel.”

As women and girls bear the burden of climate impacts, they are also essential to leading and driving change in climate adaptation, mitigation and solutions.

“Without the inclusion of half of the world’s population, it is unlikely that solutions for a sustainable planet and a gender equal world tomorrow will be realised.”

Dr Awofaa Gogo Abite fled Ukraine because of the war - but he is now providing medical help to others at the border.

A Play Leader in a BRAC Play Lab. Credit: Shananuzzaman Angkan

By Erum Mariam
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

Women around the world play crucial roles in education as formal educators, school staff members, and parents of students. But women are also transforming education as non-formal educators in ways that can be scaled to improve education broadly. As we celebrate International Women’s Day (March 8), it’s important that this transformative role is recognized.

I’ve seen it first-hand in my work with the BRAC Institute of Educational Development (BRAC IED) in Bangladesh, where we conduct research, develop curricula, and train and mentor women in Asia and Africa to become proficient in non-formal educational roles. That enables us to create educational innovations that can be scaled efficiently and broadly, because they rely on women in local communities, recruited from and trained in those communities, adapting and delivering programmes using locally available resources.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Cambridge and Columbia University, and supported by researchers in Bangladesh, underscores the point. A new two-year study reveals that an early childhood development model led by locally trained women has achieved one of the greatest goals of early childhood development – enabling children regardless of their initial readiness or level of privilege to enter kindergarten equally prepared.

The focus of the research is BRAC’s Play Lab model in Bangladesh. Play Labs provide safe spaces where children aged 3-5 engage in playful activities, supported by a flexible play-based curriculum – one that is culturally relevant and contextualized to suit local settings, and that promotes cognitive, language, physical, and social-emotional development. The activities are led by non-formal educators called Play Leaders – young women trained by BRAC IED, who also design the curriculum.

What’s so exciting about the study’s results is not only that it proves the extraordinary impact of Play Labs but that it demonstrates the power of the Play Leaders. These non-formal educators are the backbone of this study, and what’s even more encouraging is that there are young women whose potential is ready to be unlocked in every community in the world. That’s the key to scaling this proven solution, and a new Play Lab PlayBook provides essential resources and tools to equip partners and practitioners to scale this approach.

When COVID-19 arrived, it was the Play Leaders who innovated first. With limited or no access to the physical Play Labs, Play Leaders used basic mobile phones to maintain regular contact with children and teachers. This organic beginning led to the creation of Pashe Achhi (which means Beside You in English), a remote learning mechanism that provides learning opportunities for children and psychosocial support for caregivers. It also serves as a new emergency infrastructure for early childhood development during crises.

Experts at BRAC IED brought together psychologists and play-based curriculum developers to create 20-minute tele-conversational scripts, with a component for psychosocial support and another component for play-based learning. 1,300 Play Leaders were trained on effective delivery of scripts, and Play Leaders facilitated weekly 20-minute one-on-one calls with caregivers and children. In total, 40,000 calls took place weekly until Play Labs reopened.

The experts provided scripts and training, but 1,300 young women working as non-formal educators put the plan into action.

The focus on women as non-formal educators derives from BRAC’s investment in women in communities across Bangladesh to work as catalysts for change in a wide variety of roles. These health workers, legal aid providers, programme organisers, non-formal educators and community mobilisers have been the backbone of Bangladesh’s incredible social development. In education, for example, Bangladesh faced a massive challenge: 40% of its primary-aged children were not in school in the early 1980s. Half of the students who enrolled dropped out, and only 30% went on to complete primary education.

BRAC reimagined education: instead of expecting students to go to distant schools with all the logistical burdens and costs associated with that, BRAC brought schools to the students. It created an extensive system of one-room schools in almost every community and trained women in each community to teach grades 1-5. The training of these non-formal educators made scaling possible, and the results were impressive. Almost 100% of students completed fifth grade, and BRAC students consistently did better than public school students on government tests.

The role of women as non-formal educators should be celebrated for its proof of impact, its scalability, and its vital importance. At least 175 million children do not have access to quality, play-based early childhood education, and the world needs 69 million new teachers by 2030. Women – especially those serving as non-formal educators – are the key to meeting this need.

The author is Executive Director of the BRAC Institute of Educational Development at BRAC University in Bangladesh.

 

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Excerpt:

The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.