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Scene from the event, “Gender equality: From the Biarritz Partnership to the Beijing+25 Generation Equality Forum”, hosted by France and Mexico ahead of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, 2019. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By Pedro Conceição
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2020 (IPS)

Architectural metaphors are a popular way to think about inequality between men and women.

When it comes to the fundamentals, we often talk about whether there is a “sticky floor” that is holding women and girls back. And the good news is that, for billions around the world, the floor is a lot less sticky than it used to be.

Maternal mortality significantly reduced since 1990, and boys and girls now have equal access to primary school education in most countries.

But pull away from the sticky floor and many women will hit a glass ceiling. Or rather glass ceilings. Though the term was originally used to talk about women’s prospects for advancing in the workplace, other invisible barriers are a factor in many areas of life.

And here there is much less progress to celebrate. Consider politics. Men and women may share the same right to vote in most countries for example. But under a quarter of parliamentarians are women. Only one in ten heads of government is female.

But this doesn’t go anywhere near telling the whole story. In fact, many women face layers of glass – at home, work, education and beyond – which prevent them from reaching their full potential.

Break through one ceiling and they invariably find another, more impenetrable, waiting just above them.

Why is this still happening in 2020?

Part of the answer lies in barriers thrown up by the perceptions and biases of both women and men around the world. Progress towards genuine gender inequality will never succeed if people don’t believe in it.

UNDP’s gender social norms index which uses data from the World Values Survey and covers 81 percent of the world’s population, shows clearly that the great majority of citizens in almost every country – both men and women – do not believe women and men should enjoy equal opportunities in key areas like politics or work.

About 50 percent of men and women interviewed across 75 countries, say they think men make better political leaders than women. More than 40 percent felt that men made better business executives. And in some countries these attitudes seem to be deteriorating over time.

Credit: UN Women

Much of this bias seems to be directed at giving women more power. And indeed, the data shows, time and time again, the greater the power the greater the bias. Although women work more hours than men, they are much less likely to be paid for that work.

Women on average do three time more unpaid care work than men. When they are paid, they earn less than men and they are less likely to be in management positions – only 6 percent of CEOS in S&P 500 companies are female.

At the very time when progress is meant to be accelerating to reach global goals on gender by 2030, it is slowing down in some areas. The massive improvements in many aspects of gender equality in recent years show what is possible.

But we now need new approaches to get to grips with the architecture of inequality. Investing in education, raising awareness and encouraging women and girls into traditionally male dominated jobs all have a role to play.

Tackling the invisible barriers of bias could be the game changer.

The post Sticky Floors, Glass Ceilings & Biased Barriers: the Architecture of Gender Inequality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Pedro Conceição is Director of the Human Development Report Office, UNDP

The post Sticky Floors, Glass Ceilings & Biased Barriers: the Architecture of Gender Inequality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The economic inequalities plaguing much of the world today are reinforced by many other forms of inequality, including inequalities in sexual and reproductive health-Dr. Natalia Kanem, ED UNFPA. Credit: UNFPA Kenya / Douglas Waudo

By Prof. Margaret Kobia, Amb. Aline Kuster-Ménager, Amb. Erasmo Martinez Martine and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 6 2020 (IPS)

Development efforts over the past two decades have seen millions of people freed from poverty and hunger, and inequalities reduced worldwide. This is an undoubted achievement, but is no reason for complacency. The fact is that inequality between men and women, between boys and girls, remains not only a social justice concern, but one of the impediments on development in countries across Africa and beyond. Addressing such inequalities is a duty for all of us, and one which is at the heart of the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day on 8th March: Each for Equal.

Facing reality, then act accordingly

Gender inequality is so deeply ingrained in many societies that simply being born female can have a deleterious impact on a girl’s life chances. Too often, girls are still viewed as a drain on their families’ resources, kept out of school in favour of their brothers when money is tight, married off as children to older men, and condemned to a lifetime of poor health, unwanted large families and poverty. Too often, they are also condemned to illiteracy and economic dependence on men.

The effort towards achieving gender equality is not only the business of women. It is the business of each of us. Male champions have a critical role to play when it comes to challenging stereotypes, fighting bias and standing up against discriminations and violence against their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters. In this regard, H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta, as a gender champion, has set a path by taking personal commitments to End Female Genital Mutilations (FGM) by the year 2022.

Globally, Kenya has demonstrated its engagement against gender-based violence through the development or enactment of the following: a National Policy on Gender and Development (2019), a National Policy for the Eradication of FGM (2019), the Sexual Offences Act (2006), the Counter-Trafficking Act (2011), the Children’s Act (2001), the Prevention against violence Act (2015), and the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act (2011). The wins for gender equality and women empowerment will also be achieved through the implementation of the ‘Big Four’ Agenda which focuses on Universal Health Care, Food Security and Nutrition, Affordable Housing and Manufacturing.

Win-Win

The irony is that gender equality would benefit all and make no losers. In its 2016 Africa Human Development Report, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) pointed out the clear intersections and interdependencies between gender equality and human development. Improving women’s capabilities and opportunities improves in return their ability to contribute better economically, as employers, employees and entrepreneurs, to the common wealth; it brings social and environmental benefits in terms of better health and education, changes the attitudes that enable the scourge of physical and sexual violence against women, and works to improve sustainable resource use. Additionally, the report argues, women’s political involvement leads to fairer and more representative decision-making and resource allocation, to the benefit of all and that of the environment too. Actually, none of the UN-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) will be achieved if girls and women are institutionally and systematically discriminated against and left behind. Hence, these complex issues must be worked on at all levels at a time.

While much of the gender equality debate globally focuses on income disparities, it is crucial to look beyond. Upstream, achieving equality at work is hampered by unequal access to education. Our daughters are profoundly unlikely to earn as much as our sons, or even to be able to compete for their jobs, if they have not been educated, or if societal attitudes to women allow employers to dismiss their applications out of hand. To accelerate the achievement of SDGs and in particular SDG 5 on Gender equality will help, among others, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights. And it happens that healthiest women with fewer chores at home can spend more time prospecting on the job market, and ultimately secure higher revenues to sustain their families.

For these virtuous circles to become our everyday reality, we need to go deeper, to challenge the social and political norms and entrenched interests that prevail in many nations, communities and families.

A mission for each of us

But what can we, as individuals, do? How can we help shape a world where your gender does not dictate your future? Each of us needs to understand how his/her own thoughts and actions shape society.

The Each for Equal campaign urges each of us to challenge our deeply-held assumptions about girls and women, about their abilities and rights. Silence always benefits the status quo and perpetuates situations of oppression. Conversely, speaking up takes courage, determination, and a willingness to stand out from the crowd. Our thoughts and actions are powerful. Our voices are powerful when we use them to speak up against the injustice we testify, or to celebrate women’s aspirations and achievements. It is both an individual and collective responsibility to achieve justice, opportunity and equality for half the world’s population.

The reasoning is valid both nationally and worldwide. 25 years after the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, the 2020 Generation Equality Forum will gather governments, the United Nations, civil society, feminist groups and other stakeholders to call for action and accountability for the full realization of the gender equality agenda. Priority issues and structural obstacles to progress on gender equality will be put at the center of the agenda, and stakeholders will make commitments along six thematic coalitions of action: Gender-Based violence, Economic justice and rights, Bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights, Feminist action for climate justice, Technology and innovation for gender equality, Feminist movements and leadership. An outcome of the Forum will be the establishment of a mobilization strategy to make concrete progress on gender equality. Convened by UN-Women, co-hosted by Mexico (Mexico City, 7-8 May) and France (Paris, 7-10 July), and organized in partnership with civil society, the Forum is animated by a single, overarching ambition: streamline gender equality as an asset – and a prerequisite – to achieve any political objective, anywhere in the world.

At the end of the day, gender equality is not ‘merely’ an agenda item for the UN and the development sector. It is rather a necessity for human society to thrive – and perhaps even to survive – in a future of diminishing resources and mounting global challenges such as climate change. All of us must be #EachforEqual.

H.E. Prof. Margaret KOBIA, Cabinet Secretary for the Public service and Gender Affairs
H.E. Aline KUSTER-MENAGER, Ambassador of France to Kenya
H.E. Erasmo Roberto MARTINEZ MARTINEZ, Ambassador of Mexico to Kenya
Siddharth CHATTERJEE, United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya

The post On 8th March – and All the Other Days: Each for Equal appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Gender equality is a basic human right and a prerequisite for sustainable development, so why does inequality persist in so many countries, and what can we all do to address it?

The post On 8th March – and All the Other Days: Each for Equal appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: We Can International

By Verania Chao and Koh Miyaoi
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2020 (IPS)

Gender equality and women’s rights have progressed immensely since the adoption of the most visionary agenda on women’s empowerment, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 25 years ago.

However, gender equality experts across the world are signaling that we need to identify additional paths for a sustainable world, including in our response to climate change.

This year, we have the opportunity to make a real difference in our climate response and to recognize its critical links to gender equality.

In addition to the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration this year, 2020 is also the year when countries are requested to deliver stronger climate action plans to adapt and cut their emissions further and faster under the global Paris Climate Accord.

As UNDP plays a central role in strengthening countries’ capacity to plan and implement their climate targets, the organization has worked with countries on gender-responsive climate action and climate finance.

UNDP’s Strengthening Governance of Climate Change Finance Programme (GCCF), supported by the Government of Sweden, has worked with countries to include gender in climate change policies and budgets in Asia and the Pacific since 2012.

Meanwhile, the Governments of Germany, Spain and the European Union have joined forces to support a pilot on integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment in 17 countries through UNDP’s NDC Support Programme.

With a focus on national climate plans as an entry point, the pilot is elevating the integration of gender aspects from the project or programme-level to a more systemic, sectoral level.

As countries are approaching the deadline to deliver more ambitious, gender-responsive climate plans later this year, UNDP has also stepped up its efforts by offering additional support to 100 countries through the Climate Promise, a global initiative aimed to enhance NDCs and raise ambition.

This also offers an opportunity to improve and embed the integration of gender into the next generation of national climate plans.

To make this a reality, however, we must better integrate gender into the various areas of climate financing – public, private and multilateral.

Climate action is attracting a large volume of funding through increasingly diverse funding streams, but often ignores its impacts on gender equality and misses to benefit from women’s leadership and expertise on climate-related issues.

If countries’ climate actions are to involve the whole population, climate finance needs to become gender-responsive. So, what does it mean to integrate gender into climate finance?

Many countries trying to implement gender-responsive climate action have found that even if capacities are in place, data has been collected and analyzed, and policies have been formulated, implementation bottlenecks remain.

One such bottleneck is the lack of an effective system to ensure planned actions are budgeted for and implemented on the ground.

Therefore, a robust and compelling framework for the integration of gender into climate finance streams is needed. In particular, there is a need to better understand how these different funding streams complement and reinforce each other, and how the experiences of gender integration in one funding stream can be leveraged for scaling up gender equality outcomes in the others so that broader development priorities can be more effectively addressed.

Budgeting can be a powerful tool to advance the implementation of gender-responsive climate actions. While ministries of finance can directly advance this goal through by preparing the budget and proposing financial policy, they alone cannot ensure the embedding of gender-responsive climate actions in the policy and budget cycle.

Key ministries, such as Gender Equality, Women’s Empowerment, Energy, Transport, Planning, and Environment, have a vital collective role to play through integration processes in their respective sectors.

By the end of 2020, UNDP will not only have supported 100 countries on preparing more ambitious climate plans, but also with the embedding of gender-responsive climate measures.

To make a transformative change in a world that is being increasingly marked by deepening inequalities, climate change and natural disasters, it is also time to recognize the vital link between gender equality and financing for climate change to accelerate progress on our climate response.

In 2020, we have a real opportunity to make this happen.

The post Want to Go for Inclusive Climate Action? Then Start with Integrating Gender Equality into Climate Finance appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Verania Chao is Programme Specialist, Climate Change and Gender Equality/Inclusion, UNDP and Koh Miyaoi is UNDP Asia-Pacific Gender Team Leader/Regional Gender Advisor

The post Want to Go for Inclusive Climate Action? Then Start with Integrating Gender Equality into Climate Finance appeared first on Inter Press Service.

As a Pokot girl in Kenya undergoes Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), her father stands guard with spear at hand to ensure that the ritual goes as planned. FGM was outlawed in Kenya in 2011 but is still practiced among pastoralist communities. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Mar 6 2020 (IPS)

Pokot girls are expected to face the knife stark naked and with courage. To inspire confidence, their fathers sit a few metres away from them with a spear in hand.

“If a girl screams or shows even the slightest resistance, the father is allowed to throw the spear at her for bringing shame to the family. The men can also throw the spear at me if I do not circumcise fast enough,” Chepocheu Lotiamak, a circumciser, tells IPS.

It defies belief that young girls between the ages of nine and 15 could sit side by side, legs spread apart as one after the other their external genitalia is chopped off by an elderly female circumciser.

Lotiamak says that when it comes to payment of a bride price, a Pokot girl who has undergone FGM receives 60 to 100 cows, or on the lower side, 25 to 40 cows. Those not ‘cut’, even if university graduates, receive four to eight cows. But then again, very few make it to university.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) was outlawed in Kenya in 2011.

But the situation of women and girls in Kenya’s expansive West Pokot County, approximately 380 kilometres from the capital, Nairobi, is characterised by FGM, child marriages, and high maternal and child mortality rates.

Apakamoi Psinon Reson, a conflict mitigation expert based in West Pokot, says that FGM is closely linked to conflict and pastoralist communities, as those communities that enjoy relative peace have all but abandoned FGM.

Even as the world marks International Women’s Day on Mar. 8 under the theme I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights, it is a long road ahead for Pokot girls and women.

“Whether in West Pokot, Baringo, Kerio Valley in the Rift Valley region or the northern parts of Kenya experiencing conflict over natural resources, livestock and poor leadership, women have no rights and are living very difficult lives,” Mary Kuket, the chairperson of the Baringo County chapter of Maendeleo ya Wanawake (Development of Women), a national women’s movement, tells IPS.

Northern Kenya has a long history of ethnic conflict and marginalisation, and now terrorism spilling over from neighbouring Somalia has intensified conflict in this region.

Reason argues that it is difficult to protect women and girls, and to enforce the law in these conflict situations.

“We have many pockets of heavily armed bandits in pastoralist communities who are happy to maintain a situation of lawlessness in these regions,” he tells IPS, adding that even after years of disarmament missions communities have not been fully disarmed.

Kenya, recognised as East Africa’s largest economy by the World Bank, is not among the top 10 Sub-Saharan African countries lauded for promoting gender equality, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020. 

It ranks 109 out of 153 countries by the World Economic Forum based on progress made towards gender parity.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) cites a lack of accountability for serious human rights violations, including rape perpetrated largely by security forces in the 2017 elections.

Kenya is outperformed by much smaller economies such as Rwanda, Uganda, Namibia, Zambia and Madagascar, all of which made it on the list of top 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for their notable steps towards gender equality.

But with the current pace of transformation, gender gaps in sub-Saharan Africa can only be closed in 95 years, according to the World Economic Forum.

South Sudan remains on the radar of human rights organisations since December 2013 when a fresh round of conflict began. The World Report 2019 released by HRW estimates that more than four million people have fled their homes.

Gender champion and executive director of the non-governmental Coalition of State Women’s and Youth Organisation in South Sudan, Dina Disan Olweny, explains the harmful and retrogressive traditions that prevail, particularly in some of the country’s more fragile states.

Olweny tells IPS that South Sudan’s Eastern Equatorial state is particularly notorious for the abhorrent practice of blood money.

Regional clashes between the government and rebel forces resulted in crimes committed against civilians, including sexual violence.

“There is frequent conflict here over livestock and grazing fields. When a family loses a loved one, they expect to be compensated with livestock by the family that killed their loved one,” says Olweny.

“This compensation is called blood money because the affected family receives something for life lost. Those too poor to afford livestock usually give away one of their young girls,” she says. She says that at least five of the 12 tribes in this state continue to give away young girls as blood money.

• Other frail states across Africa, including Chad, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Central African Republic, Somalia, Niger, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have the worst gender indexes, according to a 2019 global report by Equal Measures 2030, a civil society and private-led partnership that connects data and evidence with advocacy and action.
• Throughout 2018, HRW reported that DRC’s government officials and security forces carried out widespread repression and serious human rights violations.
• The World Report 2019  further documents that “government officials and security forces carried out widespread repression and serious human rights violations. In central and eastern DRC for instance, the situation reached alarming levels as an estimated 4.5 million were displaced from their homes, and that more than 130,000 refugees fled to neighbouring countries”.

The Central African Republic (CAR) remains a particularly fragile state as armed groups, which have expanded control to at least 70 percent of the country, continue to perpetrate serious human rights abuses — killing civilians, raping and sexually assaulting women and girls.

• The African Union has entered into a political dialogue with the armed groups towards ending the fighting in the country.

Similarly, Somalia is now defined by fighting and lack of state protection. Currently, at least 2.7 million people are internally displaced, many of them at risk of abuse such as sexual violence.

Women in Mauritania are not sufficiently protected by the law. According to the World Report 2019 “a variety of state policies and laws that criminalise adultery and morality offences renders women vulnerable to gender-based violence, making it difficult and risky for them to report sexual assault to the police”.

HRW has raised concerns that Mauritanian law does not adequately define the crime of rape and other forms of sexual assault. Nonetheless, a more comprehensive draft law exists.

Despite ongoing conflict, across Africa, women have made significant effort to participate in the labour force nearly on par with men. However, gender experts such as Olweny raise concerns over the wide gap between male and female professionals and technical workers.

She says that women remain marginalised and excluded from the economy because they are confined to unskilled work, and are working out of necessity to put food on the table.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 concludes that this is an indication that a vast majority of women are in poorly paying jobs within the informal sector.

• For instance, in the DRC about 62 percent of women and 67 percent of men participate in the labour force. However, only about 25 percent of women are employed in professional and technical work.
• Similarly, only 23 percent of women in Cote d’Ivor’s labour force are professionals. The numbers are similar in Mali and Togo, coming in at 21 percent and 20 percent respectively. 

“Across Africa, although in varying degrees, we are experiencing prevailing levels of discriminatory gender norms and practices. We still have alarming levels of violence towards women, and institutions that are too weak to address the plight of women,” Fihima Mohamed, the founder of the Women Initiative, a local social movement for the empowerment of women and girls in the republic of Djibouti, tells IPS.

She says that while more girls are enrolled in school, they are not staying long enough to acquire technical skills to engage in professional work.

“Our women therefore remain excluded from political and economic decision making. It is very unfortunate that, as a collective society, we are yet to realise that more gender-equal countries such as Norway, Finland and Sweden are also global economic powerhouses,” says Mohamed.

• A Foresight Africa 2020 report shows that Africa will not overcome many of the economic challenges facing it, until it narrows existing wide gender gaps in its labour force.
• According to the report, if African countries with lower relative female-to-male participation rates in 2018 had the same rates as advanced countries, “the continent would have gained an additional 44 million women actively participating in its labour markets”.
• Further, the report emphasises that “by increasing gender equality in the labour market, the gain in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ranges from 1 percent in Senegal to 50 percent in Niger”.
• Meanwhile, the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 shows that Nigeria, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini and South Africa are among the very few African countries where women outpace men as professionals or technical workers.
• Other countries where the percentage of women professionals has not outpaced men but impressively ranges from 40 to 46 percent are Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania.

To realise gender equality in this generation, Mohamed called for a total outlawing of retrogressive traditions such as FGM, a renewal of efforts to keep girls attending school to the highest level, and incentives — such as tax exemptions — to support women in business.

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The post Realising Women’s Rights Difficult for Africa’s Fragile States appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

The world marks International Women’s Day on Mar. 8 under the theme I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights. IPS takes a look at the complex challenges facing African women.

The post Realising Women’s Rights Difficult for Africa’s Fragile States appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ambassador Kshenuka Senewiratne from Sri Lanka says much of the parameters around diplomacy are endless because there’s also so many dimensions, especially with the Sustainable Development Goals. Courtesy: Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2020 (IPS)

It’s a rainy February morning in New York, but inside the walls of her room, it might as well be summer — bright and warm, much in contrast to the drizzles reluctantly crawling on the window panes of Ambassador Kshenuka Senewiratne’s office overlooking Manhattan. 

Senewiratne, Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, welcomes IPS with a smile and the world famous Ceylon tea. This is her sixth month here, and she says it has passed by in the blink of an eye. 

“Six months in another posting to me would be very new but here the number of permanent representatives that keep coming in after you just pushes you up,” she says with a laugh. 

From hamburgers to diplomacy 

This is not her first time with the U.N. Between 1988 and 1990, she served as First Secretary in the Permanent Mission to the U.N. in New York. But for Senewiratne, her journey started more than three decades ago as she was walking down the streets in London, where her parents had just moved from Sri Lanka to provide her and her brother with high quality education. 

Having just completed her high school board exams from Sri Lanka, she wasn’t sure what was ahead of her. 

“I was walking down High Street, and  saw ‘Help Wanted,’” she recalls of a sign she saw at a McDonald’s. So she figured she would give it a try. 

Soon after she joined the cafe, she heard back from the University of Salford that she had been accepted into their programme for the next academic year. 

She decided to continue working for McDonald’s in order to earn some money until her school began. 

“And that was a time when they thought I had some amount of potential and they wanted to send me on training for floor management,” she recalls. 

When she declined the offer citing her university admission, they were even more moved by her honesty. They still decided to send her to the training and told her they’d have an open space for her whenever she wanted to return. 

She did return once after she joined university. Even though the McDonald’s experience came far before her expansive career in foreign diplomacy — spanning from London to Brussels to Geneva – she still holds her lessons from the McDonald’s store in her work today. 

Because of the nature of the work pressure on workers at a fast-food joint such as McDonald’s, Senewiratne says it taught her the importance of being punctual and to think quick on her feet — which she says are key requirements in diplomacy. 

“You have to learn everything around the store — from cleaning the toilets to the lobby area, the dining area, [or] how you would put the milkshake machine together — all those technical things,” she says of her time there. “If something happens you must know which button to pull.”

She recalls a particularly funny memory with the milkshake machine where she pulled the wrong button, and was drenched in chocolate syrup. Today, decades later, she laughs as she re-tells the story. But back then, it was a major cog in the wheel of what would become her career. 

“That’s where you learnt the essence of time that is inculcated into you,” she says, “whether be it flipping the hamburger, whether it is putting french fries, getting it and bagging it, [or] serving customers — it is all on timing.”

The experience of addressing a crisis situation such as a disappointed customer whose fries were cold, or has something missing in their burger, or doesn’t like their milkshake further taught her to address criticism with calm.  

“It’s a case of how you prioritise,” she says, “in diplomacy it’s a situation of prioritising what you need to get done and what you want to achieve.” 

Bringing own causes to the world 

Her ability to prioritise and negotiate paved the path for her to many governments and international diplomacy efforts. Soon after completing her education, she would go on to become Sri Lanka’s deputy High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, then High Commissioner, then to Geneva as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations. 

In 2014, she was made foreign secretary in Sri Lanka, before she moved back to New York as Permanent Representative. In between, she also served as Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Thailand. She was the only woman in her batch when she joined the foreign service of Sri Lanka in 1984. She was also the first female High Commissioner in London, as well as the first female Permanent Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Permanent Representative to the U.N. in New York. 

Her journey is as extensive as it’s glorious but it didn’t come without challenges. 

“Especially in my position here I’ve been so idealistic at the beginning,” she says. Often, she would come into the office with a plan to do certain chores in certain order, but once she arrived at work, just by sheer nature of the work itself, that order would be reoriented. 

“This is the way it is,” she says, “but that’s something that’s also the challenge of issues and situations and trying to negotiate positions. And it has not been easy in the international arena for Sri Lanka.” 

As someone who joined the table while Sri Lanka was still in the middle of its civil war, Senewiratne says sometimes it was difficult to push her country’s issues at the forefront against other international concerns. 

But with her persistence, she was able to push forth those stories. Today, she feels at home with the sense of camaraderie she feels with other Permanent Representatives here. There is even an app that brings all the ambassadors together, and another app for female ambassadors. 

“Diplomacy is a very interesting field and now the parameters are endless because there’s also so many dimensions, especially with the Sustainable Development Goals being sort of at the end of the rainbow,” she says. 

And that, she says, is what makes a career in diplomacy accessible to anyone who wants to work in the field of serving their country, as well as the international community. 

At the end of our chat, the New York sky outside remains gloomy. 

“The world is a global village in the end and this village is open to anybody,” she says in her message to anyone around the world — perhaps someone in a McDonald’s kitchen who someday hopes to enter the field. “Be a part of the development of your country, and you can go global after that.” 

 

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The post Q&A: Learning Diplomacy From Flipping Burgers at McDonald’s appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

For International Women’s Day, IPS UN is featuring female permanent representatives who to share about their work, inspiration and challenges in an otherwise male-dominated field. This profile is part of the series.

The post Q&A: Learning Diplomacy From Flipping Burgers at McDonald’s appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Webster Mavhu
HARARE, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

Women are the face of HIV in Africa, yet four of every 10 persons living with HIV in East and Southern Africa are men. Despite higher rates of HIV infection among women, more men living with HIV are dying.

Men are often left behind by programs that aim to reduce HIV rates as well as those providing HIV treatment.

Global HIV targets are that by December 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV will know their status, 90% of those HIV positive are on treatment and, 90% of those on treatment have reduced replication of the virus in their body.

Some African countries are on track to achieve these targets because programs for women are doing so well. Unfortunately, men in many settings are far from achieving these targets.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) report shows that globally, less than half of men living with HIV are on treatment, compared to 60% of women. Data from 30 African countries also show that, across all age groups except 45-49 years, men are much less likely than women to have ever taken an HIV test.

In response to HIV testing and treatment gaps between men and women, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief emphasizes the need for an acceleration of strategies to reach men under 35 years.

Webster Mavhu. Credit: Natasha Sweeney.

For more than a decade, I have been researching why men in sub-Saharan Africa do not take up HIV services even though they are aware that they need to take the necessary steps to either prevent HIV or ensure it does not eventually kill them. I recently visited four African countries – Lesotho, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe – to explore why men act against their own best interests.

One issue that came out in all countries is that men believe that the body and mind ought to be resilient. They consider ‘submission’ to the healthcare system as necessary only when the body can no longer hold out, or when men are certain they are no longer in control of their health and fate. A fisherman in Tanzania summed it up as: “A man is like a car which only goes to the garage when it has broken down.”

Men want to be seen as being in control, but HIV – considered a serious, life-long condition – undermines this image, with the result that men want to avoid knowing they have it.

HIV programs therefore need to change the narrative around HIV for example by repositioning HIV testing and treatment as acts that allow men to regain control of their health and fate more broadly.

Another concern voiced by men is that programs are largely based at clinics, but men rarely visit clinics. Programs need to take services to where men are.

We implemented HIV self-testing in three African countries and found that it increased HIV testing among men. Men liked that they were in ‘control’ of the testing process and that they were the first to know the result, which is different from when a health worker does the testing.

Global HIV targets are that by December 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV will know their status, 90% of those HIV positive are on treatment and, 90% of those on treatment have reduced replication of the virus in their body

But self-testing requires a second test to confirm a possible positive result, so programs need to consider how to make confirmatory testing easily accessible for men who self-test positive. 

It is also important to ensure that men who test HIV-positive access treatment. Large numbers of HIV-positive men choose not to seek treatment nor stick to treatment plans once started. An innovative way to address barriers to treatment access has been the use of community medication refill groups, where groups of individuals who are doing well on HIV treatment take turns to collect medication for each other, reducing the need to go to the clinic regularly.

Another barrier for some men is fear that others may learn their HIV status, which can mean they prefer to collect medication from male community health workers, and in secret. 

While some argue that too many resources have been channeled to HIV and it is now time to focus on other conditions, HIV has provided huge learning which can be adapted by other programs. Better still, health systems (including community-based approaches) developed for HIV prevention and care can be combined with those for non-communicable diseases (e.g. diabetes, hypertension) and implemented alongside each other.

I am not arguing for less focus on women. But all that focus and hard work will be undone if we do not also focus on men. To do that, we need to use targeted approaches that take into account men’s particular concerns about privacy, self-determination (control) and need for flexibility.

At stake is more than simply reaching global goals. At stake is the health and well-being of millions of African men.

 

Webster Mavhu is a linguist-turned social scientist and public health practitioner who has been conducting research to inform programming for the past 15 years. He is an @aspennewvoices fellow. Follow him on twitter @webstermavhu

The post Target Men to Reach Our HIV Goals appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Workers produce charcoal in Andrequice, a town in the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. The activity employs large numbers of workers who are subjected to modern slavery, in addition to damaging the environment by deforesting large areas. It was a frequent target of inspections carried out by the Mobile Inspection Team for Combating Slave Labour, especially during the first decade of this century. Credit: Courtesy of João Zinclar/CPT

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

“Slave labour is not declining; it has taken on new forms and is growing; it expanded to new sectors where it did not previously exist,” said Ivanete da Silva Sousa, an activist in the fight against modern-day slavery in northern Brazil.

This scourge expanded from livestock farming, charcoal and sugar production and other rural activities to urban areas: the construction and textile industries, among other sectors, she told IPS.

As one of the founders of the Centre for the Defence of Life and Human Rights (CDVDH), created in 1996, Sousa has monitored the evolution of contemporary slavery, characterised by forced labour, excessive working hours, degrading conditions, and restrictions on freedom of movement, as typified by the Brazilian Penal Code.

The Centre was born in Açailandia, in the west of the state of Maranhão, because this municipality of 112,000 inhabitants was a hub of slave labour to produce the charcoal consumed by the local iron and steel industry, which exports pig iron, a product of smelting iron ore that is used in the production of steel."The discovery of slave labour in new parts of Brazil and new branches of activity revealed situations that probably existed already, but which until then no one had reported or which had not been sufficiently or properly investigated.” -- Xavier Plassat

It was also a hotbed of trafficking of virtually captive workers, as it was located on the border of Maranhão, the largest supplier of labour for degrading and illegal work, together with Pará, the Amazon jungle state where slavery conditions are rife.

For these reasons Carmen Bascarán, a Catholic lay missionary from Spain, chose Açailandia as the headquarters of the CDVDH, to put into practice her ideas to help the poor. She was the soul and leader of the Centre, which added her name to its own when she returned to her home country in 2011.

Street vendors of hammocks made in Ceará, another neighbouring state to the east, are recent examples of workers in slavery-like conditions identified in Maranhão, Sousa said from Açailandia in her dialogue with IPS.

Stores are also taking advantage of the new facilities provided by the use of the “hour bank”, adopted in the 2017 reform of the labour laws, to force their employees to work many extra hours and give up their weekly day off, without the obligatory compensation.

“Hours worked accumulate,” but the compensation in hours off in later days, as stipulated by the law, “never arrives,” said the activist, the administrative secretary of the CDVDH for the past six years.

The 2017 reform, defended as an adaptation to the current conditions in the economy and labour relations, offered new opportunities for the “modernisation” of slave labour: “It became more difficult for people to detect slave labour,” Sousa said.

A poster from the latest gathering of workers rescued from neo-slavery conditions. Since 2014, the Centre for the Defence of Life and Human Rights has been organising these annual meetings, which are held in different locations in the state of Maranhão every year on May 13, the day the abolition of slavery in Brazil (in 1888) is commemorated. In the gatherings, workers discuss their experiences and how to overcome poverty and inequality in order to eradicate slave labour. Credit: Courtesy of CDVDH

The statistics collected by different government agencies engaged in the fight against slave labour also point to a complex picture which has evolved over time.

The Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) processed the data gathered from 1995 – when Brazil acknowledged the problem and began to combat it systematically – to 2019.In Brazil, 369,000 victims of slave labour

The Walk Free initiative of the Australia-based Minderoo Foundation has conducted a study on modern-day slavery, which states that there are 40.3 million victims of this practice worldwide. Of that total, 24.9 million are victims of forced labour and 15.4 million are victims of forced marriage.

In the case of Brazil, a country of continental dimensions and with 220 million inhabitants, there are an estimated 369,000 workers in slavery conditions, according to a study based on data from 2016 and conduced in conjunction with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

In the past 25 years, a total of 54,778 workers were rescued from slavery or degrading conditions by the authorities, especially the Mobile Inspection Team, which brings together people from the ministry of labour, the labour prosecutors office, and the police.

The crackdown on modern-day slavery intensified in the 2003-2010 period, when more than 3,000 workers were freed each year, with a record 6,001 rescued in 2007. Since then the number has dropped steadily, to 1,050 last year.

In this process, the rescue operations that were concentrated in the agricultural frontiers of the Amazon jungle states of Pará, Mato Grosso and Maranhão spread throughout the country, to the wealthier and more industrialised southern and southeastern regions as well.

Since 2006, the phenomenon has been expanding in urban areas, especially the construction and textile industries.

“The discovery of slave labour in new parts of Brazil and new branches of activity revealed situations that probably existed already, but which until then no one had reported or which had not been sufficiently or properly investigated,” Xavier Plassat, who coordinates the CPT’s campaign against contemporary slavery, told IPS.

“These statistics have to be analysed carefully”, because they can lead to misleading conclusions, Plassat, a Dominican friar, warned in an interview.

Xavier Plassat, a French friar of the Dominican Catholic order, who has lived in Brazil since 1989, gives Pope Francis, during an audience at the Vatican in April 2019, a booklet from the Brazilian Pastoral Land Commission’s campaign against slave labour, which he coordinates. Credit: Courtesy of the Pastoral Land Commission

The large number of workers rescued in the first decade of this century, for example, was due to inspections in the sugar industry, which identified in one fell swoop hundreds of workers subjected to abusive conditions during the sugarcane harvest, he pointed out.

That situation changed quickly with the mechanisation of cane cutting, imposed by local governments in response to air pollution in nearby cities, created by the practice of pre-harvest sugar cane field burning.SDG goal against trafficking

One of the 169 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for “immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour”.
Dominican friar Xavier Plassat said the target, number 7 of SDG 8 on decent work, "has a concrete positive effect, but the governments of the last three years have forgotten the commitments" of the SDGs.
"What helps to promote the targets of SDG 8 in Brazil is the presence of the International Labour Organisation with a well-designed programme to combat slave labour that outlines what to do after the rescue" of the victims, said Plassat, who coordinates the Catholic Pastoral Land Commission’s efforts against slave labour in Brazil, in reference to the Integrated Action designed to keep workers from falling back into the trap.
At the international level, the Global Sustainability Network (GSN), which emerged in 2014 as a result of an international meeting of religious leaders of different faiths and denominations, also fights forced labour and other forms of human trafficking, especially promoting target 7 of SDG 8, by pushing for national legislation to combat new forms of forced labour slavery.

In the sectors of cattle breeding and farming, where some employers are abusive, there was a similar attempt to reduce the workforce by means of mechanisation, and to reduce the use of agrochemicals as well, said Plassat, who is from France and has lived in Brazil for 31 years.

In the charcoal industry, modern-day slavery was reduced by the heavy scrutiny and inspections triggered by multiple complaints, as well as by the loss of a large part of its market due to the crisis in the pig iron trade.

Finally, Plassat added, the economic recession in Brazil, which began in 2015, led to high unemployment, which made it less likely for workers afraid of losing their incomes – even when earned in terrible conditions in poor-paying jobs – to report abuses.

Complaints, and thus inspections and rescue operations, also fell off, possibly because employers resorted to different tactics to circumvent the crackdown on this form of trafficking in persons.

“They started to use smaller groups of workers, in short-term tasks, to avoid the risk” of being caught, said the friar, who also explained that employers abandoned the practice of transporting workers in large groups over long distances, to escape detection.

In the Amazon, “there is ‘surgical’ deforestation, which is on a smaller-scale and takes place in protected areas, where satellite images reveal nothing,” he said.

The result is that fewer workers in slavery conditions are detected, even though inspection operations have not been reduced.

Efforts to combat the phenomenon now require “more intelligence in the inspections, examining the companies’ books,” for example, he said.

The central government reduced the budget for the agencies fighting slave labour. However, the rescue operations continue because local authorities in some states are making a great effort, albeit with limited resources, to fight the problem.

Minas Gerais, Bahia, São Paulo and Goiás are the states that presented the best results in recent years, said Plassat from Araguaina, the city of 180,000 inhabitants where he lives in the central state of Tocantins, near Maranhão and Pará, the areas where the most numerous rescue operations were carried out in the first decade of the century.

The CPT and the CDVDH, which form part of the Integrated Action Network to Combat Slavery (Raice) that promotes initiatives aimed at “breaking the cycle of slave labour” in the heavily affected states of Maranhão, Pará, Tocantins and Piauí, stress the need for prevention rather than merely repression.

Addressing the vulnerabilities and lack of local alternatives that drive people into migration and forced labour, and training rescued victims to keep them from falling back into the trap, are necessary measures to effectively eradicate the new types of slavery.

The post Slavery Modernises, Adapts to Stay Alive in Brazil appeared first on Inter Press Service.

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020
 

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

The narrative surrounding women’s rights in 2020 carries much hope and possibility. A new decade is ushering in important anniversaries and milestones: 25 years since the Beijing Platform for Action, 110 years since the birth of International Women’s Day and the 10-year countdown to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Farhana Haque Rahman

These dates are all significant of course, and their impact is sure to be positive to an extent, yet there is an undertone of wishful thinking that events in themselves can ignite powerful change, and a simplicity that disregards the more complex and insidious existence of systematic inequality.

These milestone moments will be written about, documented in the news, and read by many. But the opportunity for real tangible change gets diluted as we forget that actions perpetuating gender inequality are often normalised, taken for granted, and occur in social strata globally where the news of such events seldom reaches. International Women’s Day,for example, perceived by some as an unmissable opportunity to celebrate, campaign for, and protect women’s rights, is simply ignored elsewhere.

That’s the issue with these occasions and high-level discussions attended by those with access – they create a barrier to understanding for those who aren’t even aware they are occurring. They don’t form part of everyday life for those most actively affected. Women denied education won’t understand what specific legislation means for them, and women denied the opportunity to take autonomy in their lives are not going to be the ones in attendance, or those given access to the results. Women with the privilege of being part of such occasions are likely to have already a recognisable level of emancipation from explicit forms of oppression.

Campaigns for women’s suffrage began over a century ago and the first IWD has its roots in a 1910 session of the International Socialist Congress, although March 8 became accepted as the common date some years later, and was adopted by the feminist movement in 1967. The UN designated 1975 as International Women’s Year and has consistently recognised the annual honoring of women as a call for change and celebration of progress.

Political figures with an unequivocal platform to promote equality are becoming evermore visible. Germany’s Angela Merkel is widely respected for her strong opposition to nationalist and populist movements; Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand is hailed for her stand against hate and discrimination; Bangladesh has been praised for its assistance to one million Rohingya refugees driven out of Myanmar and Sheikh Hasina has been prominent on the international stage in seeking to resolve the humanitarian crisis. All women, all leading purposefully in situations that could easily perpetuate discrimination against so many. Barack Obama’s comments on women making “indisputably” better leaders are clearly justified by these game-changers.

The point here is that while 2020 could be a landmark year for gender equality, the efforts required to reach our goal have to be deliberate and far reaching. Just the instance of these events happening won’t have any measurable result.

Positive reinforcements of achievements do plant the seeds of change. The celebration of role models who represent shattered glass ceilings, the publicised calls for action, and the spotlight on game-changers all bring this possibility of change where women and girls can access conclusions to be reached this year. Having solidarity and a purposeful connection can nurture the strength to fight for the elimination of gender inequality. The girl in Nepalforced to sleep in a tiny hut during her period should hear about the government minister’s wife who became the first menstruating women in her district to spend a night in her own house. The woman who is reluctant to demand that she be paid equal to her male counterpart should hear about other women doing that. The girl consistently told that she is bossy when trying to take initiative should hear about female politicians and businesswomen who are widely respected for their leadership styles. The list goes on.

Access to the knowledge of a possibility of change is crucial. Giving those most affected by gender inequality the solidarity of a community which knows that change is possible will have a significant effect on igniting the shift in gendered practices.

With the SDGs acting as a blueprint for global efforts to eliminate poverty and inequality by 2030, the 10 years we have to achieve this are scarcely enough. More than half of the 129 countries measured in the 2019 SDG Gender Index scored poorly on SDG 5, which calls for international gender equality and the empowerment of all women. There is a serious question to be asked whether setting such goals are operationally viable. As the UN highlights: “The emerging global consensus is that despite some progress, real change has been agonisinglyslow for the majority of women and girls in the world.”

Complete elimination of gender inequality, and the genuine expectation for this to have been met in the 25 years since the Beijing Platform for Action, may be too far-reaching to even aspire to. It risks creating a defeatist mentality, a sense we just don’t have the means to get there. At what point can we confidently say that a country has achieved full equality?

Smaller, more manageable goals with a clearer path for completion, should be adopted instead. In this context it is also important to recognise the shortcomings of setting an absolute in the first place. Such is the volatility of human behavior that there will never be ‘complete’ equality, but there is much that can be done to make the situation better for all.

One of the arguments for the SDGs is that they provide a strong framework for action to be implemented by those in a position of power, such as equal pay for the same job, and access to reproductive health facilities. While these are crucial steps in giving women equality of opportunity, identifying legislative acts as indication of progress towards equality can givethe illusion that further action is unnecessary. This in turn drives more subtle and clandestine forms of gender inequality further away from public recognition.

Yes we should be celebrating these monumental events that bring to light incredibly important issues. IWD 2020, aptly named “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights” which aligns with the UN Women’s Generation Equality campaign, carries this torch. But do not let such moments obscure the painfully slow pace of progress and theinsidious existence of systemic inequality.

However the coronavirus outbreak means that these landmark events are likely to be much curtailed. The first major event to be knocked off course is a March 9-20 meeting in New York of the Commission on the Status of Women. It had been expected to draw more than 7,000 attendees, but will be shortened and scaled down after the UN urged capital-based ministers and diplomats not to travel. But instead of treating this as a setback, we should seize the opportunity to really push the agenda ahead without being bogged down in the usual meaningless formalities and empty platitudes.

The post Many Milestones but Painfully Slow Progress Towards Gender Equality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The post Many Milestones but Painfully Slow Progress Towards Gender Equality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jennifer Morgan
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

Gender inequality – like the climate emergency – is not inevitable, but is kept in place by the poor choices too many cis men make on a daily basis. And it is not just womxn who are hurt and trapped by this patriarchal problem, but girls and non-binary people too, as well as many boys and men.

For millennia, gender inequality has been working very well for the majority of men. Globally, men hold 85% of senior leadership roles in companies, for example, while the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all of the womxn in Africa. None of this is by accident and many men are reluctant to change a system they think benefits them.

Meanwhile womxn remain on the frontlines of gender inequality and the climate emergency. And due to the patriarchy, unsurprisingly they are rarely heard on issues that deeply impact them, which as a result, affects society as a whole.

A great number of men do believe in gender equality and this needs to be acknowledged. But it is easy for men to merely ‘believe’ in something they subsequently reap social rewards for. Accepting that gender inequality exists – as much as the climate emergency – and taking positive action is crucial if we are to achieve a more equitable, peaceful and green planet.

Because the fact is equity across the world and spectrum would lead to more life satisfaction, better security and economies, and more sustainable solutions to climate change.

That’s why this International Women’s Day, I call on men to be more than feminist; to do more than just celebrate womxn.

For a start, we need men to be anti-patriarchal and anti-misogynist, and to be actively campaigning against climate denial, for the benefit of all. Only then would we begin to get closer to the #IWD2020 theme of equality.

Jennifer Morgan

What I am calling for may sound overwhelming, but small individual changes in attitude can lead to huge progressive shifts in the stale social norms that are damaging too many people at our collective detriment.

“We are all parts of a whole. Our individual actions, conversations, behaviors and mindsets can have an impact on our larger society,” as the IWD organizers say.

Men can proactively start to promote gender equality in the spaces they dominate in many straightforward ways: by listening to womxn and not talking over them; crediting them for their ideas; rejecting male only settings; ensuring womxn are included on panels and sports teams; refusing to play into stereotypes, and calling out others who are being anti-womxn, anti-diversity and anti-science.

In my privileged position as a white Western female leading a global and diverse environmental organization, I strive to use my leadership to empower and protect, and include people of all backgrounds.

It often strikes me how I have more access to the halls of power than those with the experience of living on the frontlines of the climate emergency. Those dealing with the devastating droughts, floods and fires linked to climate change, who predominantly are womxn who are Black, Indigenous, of color, from the Global South.

They are truly powerful people, from whom I get much inspiration, and yet their voices remain too often unheard by decision-makers, policymakers, the media, and beyond, due to the patriarchy. Amplifying these womxn’s voices and increasing their access to opportunities and platforms is central to my mission, and the mission of Greenpeace.

For there can be no green peace without gender equality. At Greenpeace, we aspire to become a leader in building and supporting a workforce that more accurately reflects the diversity of the global community Greenpeace serves, as well as the values the organization espouses, and have initiatives on harassment prevention, unconscious bias and structural power.

We take a zero-tolerance position on sexual, verbal, or physical harassment, bullying and any kind of discrimination based on gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, faith, or any other aspect of our beings.

We will continue to examine how systematic marginalization and issues of equity intersect with our core mission and values as Greenpeace. We do this work readily because people power is linked to virtually everything Greenpeace does, from the impact we can make in the world to our ability to thrive as part of a movement.

We must always try to act in a way that sees, values, and embraces people in all their diversity. Boosting the voices of those the patriarchy actively tries to silence will lead to greater equity and better climate solutions.

Remarkable womxn are already leading the charge from Autumn Peltier and Brianna Fruean, the matriarchs of Wet’suwet’en fighting the Coastal Gas Link pipeline, to Vanessa Nakata and Winona LaDuke, among the many others.

But the patriarchy is man-made, much like climate change. It is more than time for cis men to combat gender inequality and the climate emergency alongside womxn, whom they should truly accept as their equals.

The post There Can Be No Green Peace Without Gender Equality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Jennifer Morgan is the Executive Director of Greenpeace International

The post There Can Be No Green Peace Without Gender Equality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Teenager Karen Semens, from the Federated States of Micronesia, says her main challenge growing up is being a girl. She says that her culture doesn’t afford girls the same rights and opportunities of boys. Photo supplied.

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

For 13-year-old Karen Semens, growing up on Pohnpei — one of the four main island states in the Federated States of Micronesia, which comprises of more than 600 islands in the western Pacific Ocean — the main challenge is being a girl.

“In our culture, girls don’t have the same rights and opportunities nor do they get credit and recognition for their achievements as boys do. This prevents us from speaking our minds. For example in family meetings, only men make the decisions. I would like all girls to be treated as equals and have a say in decision making,” the 8th grade pupil from the Ohmine Public Elementary school in Pohnpei, tells IPS.

Equal rights for the girl child, climate change, access to healthcare and education are some of the issues Pacific island children are raising at the 84th extraordinary outreach session of the Committee on the 1989 United Nations (U.N.) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) being held in Samoa’s capital, Apia, from Mar. 2 to 6.

Over 100 children from Pacific Island nations are having the opportunity to highlight the issues impacting them and their hopes for the future to the Committee on CRC. In a historic first, a U.N. human rights treaty body is meeting outside the U.N. headquarters of New York or Geneva, offering more governments, civil society organisations, regional agencies, and national human rights and academic institutions a chance to directly interact with the CRC and learn about its work. Having the session in Samoa is also providing the Committee with new insights and understanding of local and regional issues of the Pacific.

On the Mwokilloa atoll, where 13-year-old Austin Ladore’s mother grew up and where he spends his summer holidays, rising sea levels and coastal erosion are threatening the very existence of this low lying island and its people.

“We want action on climate change so our islands are protected and we, the children, can have a sustainable future,” Austin, Semens’s classmate, tells IPS.

“We are at the frontline, facing the consequences of climate change,” Ladore says. 

Austin Ladore (13), who is in 8th grade at the Ohmine Public Elementary school in Pohnpei, one of the four main island states in The Federated States of Micronesia, says children on his island are on the frontline of climate change. Photo supplied.

These children would also like access to proper healthcare, drinking water, good quality education, and affordable nutritious food.

“There aren’t enough qualified doctors and our hospitals aren’t equipped to treat some of the chronic diseases. Many of us eat unhealthy instant noodles as fruits and vegetables are very expensive. Every day, it is getting hotter. It makes us dehydrated, but there is scarcity of drinking water. Most of the schools on the islands have outdated books. We want a solution to all these problems,” Semens tells IPS.

The Committee consists of 18 Independent experts that monitor implementation of the CRC, the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, by its 196 States parties. During this session, the Committee will review the Federated States of Micronesia, the Cook Islands and Tuvalu on how their countries are protecting, promoting and can further improve the rights of children under the CRC. It will also prepare Lists of Issues on the Republic of Kiribati.

Acting chief justice Vui Clarence Nelson of Samoa, who is the vice-chair of the CRC and the only Pacific Islander to ever sit on any of the U.N. treaty bodies tells IPS: “The Pacific is a strategic choice by the Committee as it is a region with big potential for improved treaty body effectiveness where: reporting rates and civil society engagement levels are generally low; treaty body engagement and implementation is impeded by geographical and resource constraints – in Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Cook Islands, it takes three days to travel by boat to the more remote outlying islands; and representation on the treaty bodies is extremely low, further reducing the likelihood of effective engagement and implementation.”

The Session is ‘extraordinary’ in nature because of being held in Samoa and is one week in length as opposed to three.

“By ‘bringing the treaty body system to the regions and rights holders in their backyard’ it is believed that the following impacts will be achieved: Increased ratification of human rights instruments; increased engagement of the States, national human rights institutions, and the civil society with the treaty body system in particular with the Committee on the Rights of the Child; and raising global awareness of regional issues – especially the effects of climate change in the Pacific. To this end a special part of the Session is being devoted to climate change and the right to a healthy environment,” Nelson tells IPS.

The principal intergovernmental organisation in the region, the Pacific Community’s (SPC – Sustainable Pacific Development) human rights division Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT) has partnered with the U.N. to bring this extraordinary session to Samoa.

SPC RRRT director Miles Young tells IPS: “It is an excellent example of collaboration amongst many parties with a common interest in bringing the treaty body system closer to its stakeholders – in this case, the children, people and countries of the Pacific. This level of interaction with Pacific Islanders would not have occurred had the hearing been held in Geneva or New York.  The effect will be to make the treaty body system – and therefore human rights – more tangible to Pacific Islanders.”

Fourteen Pacific Island Countries (Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu) have ratified the CRC.

While progress has been made in implementing the CRC, especially in enacting child protection laws, reducing child poverty, child marriages and mortality rates for children under five years of age, many challenges persist.

Besides climate change, children are suffering from economic inequalities, food and water insecurity, poverty, epidemics and outbreaks of diseases, domestic violence, sexual abuse and neglect, absence of child protection laws and mechanisms, high levels of corporal punishment in the family and domestic setting, outdated child rights legislation in some of the jurisdictions, and in some States an inadequate child justice system.

“The event has raised the profile of the CRC in the Pacific and we can build on this to generate greater momentum for human rights. We, in the Pacific, are almost always the ‘forgotten’ region when it comes to global affairs.  This is an opportunity to raise a key issue for the region – climate change in the context of Pacific children and the region more generally,” Young says.

In June 2019 the annual meeting of chairpersons of the treaty bodies stated its support for conducting dialogues with States Parties at a regional level. The U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has organised the Samoa session with assistance and advocacy of SPC RRRT. The governments of the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden are sponsoring the session and the Government of Samoa is hosting the event.

“RRRT will be assessing the pros and cons of the sitting – this analysis will feed into the U.N.’s review of the treaty body system, which the U.N. is currently undertaking, and help inform decisions on how and where it holds future treaty body hearings,” Young adds.   

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the session on 2nd March, SPC’s deputy director general, Dr A Aumua said: “In the Pacific, there is a saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. The meaningful participation of children is essential to the fulfilment of their rights, aspirations and full human potential. I’m confident that we can show the leadership needed to build a sustainable future for the children of this region.”

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The post The Future Pacific Island Children Want appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations, Ambassador Mona Juul, is also president of the U.N.Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Courtesy: Monica Hellman/Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

Ambassador Mona Juul started her role as the Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations in January 2019, and is also the president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 

Prior to joining as the Permanent Representative, Juul had an extensive career where she played key roles in major foreign diplomacy efforts. Soon after starting her career in 1986, she was a part of the Cabinet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs team from 1992 to 1993 that worked on secret negotiations between Israel and Palestine Liberation Organisation that culminated in the 1993 Oslo Accords. 

With a Master’s degree in political science from University of Oslo, Juul went on to embrace numerous other roles including the Special Advisor, Ambassador and Middle East Coordinator in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In July 2019, just within a few months of joining as the Permanent Representative to the U.N., she also became the president of ECOSOC. 

Her role in Norway’s foreign relations, as well as in diplomacy efforts in the Middle East is one that is of inspiration to anyone who dreams of being in the field — more so for women. We caught up with Ambassador Juul on her journey: 

Inter Press Service (IPS): As the U.N. Permanent Representative for Norway, what is your key message for this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD)?

Mona Juul (MJ): My message to women and men, girls and boys is to speak up in favor of women and girls, and protect those who defend their rights. 

IPS: As president of ECOSOC, you have expressed your concern about “a new generation of global inequalities – fuelled by climate change, technological change” – can you share how these inequalities affect women specifically? And how do we address that?

MJ: Norway fights for women’s rights and opportunities every day. In the U.N. and all over the world, we are continuously working to increase girl’s access to education, to decide over their own bodies and to have fundamental human rights. Norway is a consistent partner for women’s rights. We will keep our promise to work tirelessly to promote gender equality for all.

IPS: As the U.N. Permanent Representative as well as president of ECOSOC, what does this year’s IWD theme #EachforEqual mean to you?

MJ: We must place gender equality at the heart of our work. The rights of women and gender equality remains a reform priority and a cross-cutting issue for me as president of ECOSOC. This year, we celebrate 25 years of championing women’s rights since we adopted the Beijing Platform for Action. It is a vision of a more prosperous, peaceful and fair world, that is better for women and men, girls and boys. Women’s participation is a prerequisite and a key factor for economic growth.

IPS: What is your message to young women who would like to one day work in this field? 

MJ: Stand up against inequalities. Fight for what you believe in. Each one of us can make a difference. Today and every day, I am reminded of Nelson Mandela’s words: ‘The best weapon is to sit down and talk’. I hope that if we all followed that advice, we would each be equal.

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The post Q&A: ‘Place Gender Equality at the Heart of our Work’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

For International Women’s Day, IPS United Nations is featuring female permanent representatives who to share about their work, inspiration and challenges in an otherwise male-dominated field. This is the first in the series.

The post Q&A: ‘Place Gender Equality at the Heart of our Work’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

As the outbreak of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 threatens a global pandemic, major stock markets around the world have suffered their worst performance since the 2008 financial crush.

Growth disruption
The OECD has warned that the coronavirus outbreak could halve global economic growth this year to 1.5%, the slowest rate since 2009. It has cut its 2020 growth forecast for China to a 30-year low of 4.9%, down from 5.7% in November.

Anis Chowdhury

The IMF downgraded its growth forecast for China to 5.6% in 2020, its lowest since 1990. Economists, polled by Reuters during 7-13 February, expected China’s economic growth to slump to 4.5% in the first quarter of 2020, down from 6% in the previous quarter, the slowest since the financial crisis.

Meanwhile, China’s manufacturing sector tumbled in February, as many factories remained closed after the annual lunar new year break. The Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), a widely used measure of factory activity, plunged to a record low in February, reflecting the sharp contraction.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) head expects the coronavirus epidemic to greatly slow the global economy, as China accounts for 19.1% of global GDP using purchasing power parity (PPP), or 17% at current exchange rates, 13% of global trade, and 28% of global manufacturing output in 2018.

Impact on developing economies
Developing countries, especially those dependent on commodity exports and global supply chains, are particularly vulnerable.

The impact is expected to be more severe for the 21 African countries the IMF sees as ‘resource-intensive’, where growth had already slowed to about 2.5%. Trade between Africa and China grew 2.2% in 2019 to US$208.7bn, compared with a 20% rise the year before.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Even Latin America counts China as its largest overall trade partner. The key downside risk is further deterioration of the commodity terms of trade. The most exposed economies are Chile, Peru and, to some extent, Brazil.

Asian developing countries linked to China through supply chains, raw material exports, investment and tourism are especially vulnerable, while other Asian giants, Japan and South Korea, have also been hit by the virus.

Global supply chain disruptions
The virtual shutdown of the ‘factory of the world’ has slowed the supply of products and parts from China, disrupting production the world over. Apple’s manufacturing partner in China, Foxconn, is experiencing production delays, while a Lombardy electronics factory was forced to close by the Italian authorities due to an outbreak.

Some carmakers, including Nissan and Hyundai, have temporarily closed factories outside China due to parts supply shortages. European manufacturing could suffer considerably due to its extensive links with China through supply chains. Already, four of the world’s biggest carmakers are expected to shut down European production.

Meanwhile, 94% of Fortune 1000 companies are facing supply chain disruptions due to the coronavirus. Even the pharmaceutical industry is expected to face disruption.

For the Harvard Business Review, “the worst is yet to come”, expecting the Covid-19 impact on global supply chains to peak in mid-March, “forcing thousands of companies to throttle down or temporarily shut assembly and manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Europe”.

Commodity prices plunge
Prices for commodities, from natural rubber to coal, plunged in February as Chinese companies cancelled orders, dragging down prices.

The Wall Street Journal reports one of the worst routs in commodity prices in years due to the coronavirus outbreak as prices for some natural resources plunged to new lows.

With the outbreak spreading to more countries, the oil price has been dropping precipitously as global demand weakens further. US and Brent crude benchmark prices fell 16% and 14% respectively during the past week, to its lowest levels since July 2017.

Meanwhile, iron ore prices dropped to US$81.35 per tonne during the first week of February from around US$90 throughout January.

Perfect storm?
Years of spending cuts due to fiscal austerity policies have undermined public health provisioning, not only in developing countries, but also in developed economies.

Various countries are bracing for economic fall outs from the COVID-19 virus outbreak, but have very limited policy space after eschewing sustained fiscal recovery efforts following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

Instead, monetary policies, including unconventional ones, with historically low interest rates and central bank balance sheets, are still being relied upon.

China’s central bank has already cut the country’s benchmark lending rate in February. The US Federal Reserve has recently further loosened monetary policy, with others quickly following or expected to follow. However, while rate cuts may temporarily boost financial market indicators, they are unlikely to be of much help.

Despite rejecting sustained fiscal efforts to revive economic growth in favour of austerity for a decade, debt levels continued to rise as revenue declined due to tax breaks. Scope for a ‘big boost’ fiscal package is also limited by public perceptions of the record global debt level—estimated at US$253tn, more than three times global GDP.

Although the economic consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak require a global response, multilateralism is in disarray. As if to underscore its growing irrelevance, the G20 missed an important opportunity to provide leadership at its 22-23 February finance ministers’ meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The post Coronavirus Exposes Global Economic Vulnerability appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Patrícia Campos Mello. Credit: Marcos Villas Boas

By Natalie Southwick and Renata Neder
NEW YORK, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

Brazilian journalist Patrícia Campos Mello made her career reporting from conflict zones around the world — but lately, the greatest threats to her security are coming from closer to home.

In recent weeks, Campos Mello has faced a violent onslaught of crude threats and personal attacks, after a witness in a Congressional hearing suggested she had offered to trade sexual favors for information.

The unfounded allegations spread on WhatsApp and Twitter, fed by trolls and politicians sharing memes calling her a “prostitute,” and spilled over into the public conversation, with President Jair Bolsonaro repeating the claims in a February 18 interview.

“It’s an attempt to discredit the work of us female journalists,” says political journalist Juliana Dal Piva, who has also been harassed for reporting on the president and his family. “When the articles are critical of Bolsonaro, this is the attack. They imply that journalists are willing to trade sex for information.”

From denied opportunities to workplace harassment, attacks by troll armies, sexual violence and even femicide, the job description for female journalists in Latin America has some horrifying drawbacks.

Most governments and workplaces still lack proper mechanisms to respond to these threats, leaving female reporters to come up with survival tactics on their own.

For most male journalists, danger lies in the field — but for women, the office can pose a threat, too. In 2017, Bolivian television journalist Yadira Peláez was fired from a state TV station after reporting her boss for sexual harassment — then the station sued her for “economic damage.”

A 2017 survey of almost 400 women journalists in 50 countries found that 38 percent of incidents of gender-based violence against women journalists came from a boss or supervisor.

The lurid attacks on women like Campos Mello play on an old sexist trope: the glamorous journalist who, in the process of reporting a big scoop, falls in love — or at least into bed — with her source.

The reality is closer to the opposite. In a 2017 survey of nearly 500 female journalists in Brazil, 10 percent said they had received offers of exclusive information or materials in exchange for sex.

Although sources are more likely to try to negotiate a date in exchange for an interview, female journalists are the ones who face professional consequences for any rumor of impropriety.

They are the ones whose social media profiles are scoured, private information shared, personal photos downloaded and turned into memes, who open their email to a deluge of violent threats — stalking, rape, murder, photos of dismembered bodies — and who must keep doing their job.

To attack a male journalist’s credibility, go after his work or objectivity. To attack a female journalist’s credibility, go after her body.

For women in the public eye, their physical appearance, personal relationships, professional histories and families all become fair game. Dal Piva says her greatest fear is that the campaigns against her might expose her family members to similar harassment.

The attacks are even harsher against women of color and queer women, like Brazil’s Maria Júlia Coutinho, or sports reporter Fernanda Gentil, who has talked openly about the homophobia she faced in 2016 when her relationship with another woman became public.

While threats against female reporters are a universal truth, they have frightening implications in Latin America, a region with some of the world’s highest violent death rates for women.

Since 1992, 96 women journalists have been killed in connection with their work. Eleven of those were in Latin America — all but two in either Mexico or Colombia.

Yet despite institutional barriers, threats and sexist smear campaigns, Latin America’s female reporters continue setting the standard, leading newsrooms, developing innovative projects and pushing the envelope on what journalism can — and should — do.

And they are fighting back. As the #MeToo movement has rippled through offices and newsrooms, its effects appear in coordinated efforts among female journalists to support and protect one another.

After Bolsonaro’s comments on Campos Mello, nearly 850 women journalists published an open letter protesting the “sordid and false attacks.”

In 2018, after a series of on-camera assaults targeted female soccer reporters, a group of Brazilian journalists launched the #DeixaElaTrabalhar (#LetHerWork) campaign, pressuring authorities to take action against sexual harassment on and off the field.

A year earlier, a group in Mexico launched an NGO, Versus, to combat “abuse, violence and discrimination” against women reporters. Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya, herself a survivor of sexual violence, has for decades been an outspoken advocate for safety for women journalists and justice for survivors.

CPJ and other organizations, including the International Federation of Journalists and the International Association of Women in Radio and TV, have resources on how to protect accounts from hacks or doxing, responding to online harassment, and preventing sexual violence.

While preventative steps and advice are useful in the moment, they don’t address the source of the problem: a professional and societal context that devalues the work and presence of women, and often pressures women to simply be quiet — something out of character for successful journalists.

Fighting those norms will be a long-term battle, but Latin America’s women journalists are ready.

*The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. Press inquiries: press@cpj.org +1-212-300-9032

Latest Data:
250 journalists imprisoned as of Dec 1, 2019
Journalists killed globally (updated regularly)

The post To Attack a Female Journalist’s Credibility, Go After Her Body appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Natalie Southwick is Program Coordinator/Coordinadora del Programa, Central and South America & the Caribbean, The Committee to Protect Journalists* (CPJ) & Renata Neder is CPJ's Brazil Correspondent

The post To Attack a Female Journalist’s Credibility, Go After Her Body appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Mar 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) call upon all parties to the conflict in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon to uphold international human rights and international humanitarian law and cease all attacks on civilians without delay.

The crisis destabilizing the English speaking parts of Cameroon has taken a worrying turn, with an increasing number of reports of targeted attacks against civilians, property and violations of the humanitarian space. More than 700,000 people are displaced, nearly 1 million children are out of school, and the humanitarian needs are mounting.

Survivors have shared testimonies of gruesome attacks that have left children orphaned, people homeless, and limited or cut off access to public facilities such as hospitals and schools. “I have been out of school for two years. The boys stopped us from going to school. They would beat you if you tried,” said Charlene, a 23 year-old single mother. “My teacher wanted to give us private classes so we could sit our exams, but they took and tortured him”.

The conflict would take even more from Charlene when her home was burned down by the military. “There was fighting and the boys hid in our corridor. The military set fire to the house to catch them. We became homeless. We lost everything.”

Reports indicate that an incident on February 14 in Ngarbuh Village, North-West Cameroon, left 24 killed, most of whom were women and children. This is only one of several incidences of disturbing attacks, many of which remain undocumented and impact directly the civilian population.

NRC, the IRC and partners have also witnessed attacks on civilians during humanitarian distributions. “We cannot silently witness defenceless civilians, who are already suffering from extreme deprivation, being attacked while seeking lifesaving assistance,” said Maureen Magee, NRC Regional Director for Central and West Africa. “People in need of humanitarian assistance must be allowed to access necessary support, without having to fear for their lives.”

“This crisis needs more attention,” said Paul Taylor, IRC Regional Vice President for West Africa. “People have been forced to flee and sleep in open air without adequate food or clean water. Aid agencies need additional resources to meet the needs of those displaced by this crisis, and all parties need to ensure that aid agencies are able to access those who are in desperate need of basic services.”

The IRC and NRC call for the immediate cessation of attacks against civilians, the respect of humanitarian space, and that parties to the conflict allow unimpeded access for humanitarian organizations, in accordance with the law, to conduct a coordinated response to reach the people most in need.

For interviews or more information, please contact:

NRC: media@nrc.no, +4790562329

IRC: Kellie Ryan, kellie.ryan@rescue.org or communications@rescue.org, +254758710198

The post Joint statement on attacks on civilians in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Rashmi Hamal is a local heroine who helped to save her friend from an early marriage. She campaigns actively against child marriages in the Far Western Region of Nepal. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

Twenty-five years after the historic Beijing women’s conference in China – a milestone in advancing equal rights – violence against women and girls is not only common, but widely accepted, a new UN report revealed.

While there have been remarkable gains for girls in education, little headway has been made to help shape a more equal, less violent environment for them, warned the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), together with UN Women and the non-governmental organization Plan International in their report, A New Era for Girls: Taking stock on 25 years of progress.

“25 years ago, the world’s governments made a commitment to women and girls, but they have only made partial good on that promise”, flagged UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

The report highlighted that in 2016, women and girls accounted for 70 per cent of detected trafficking victims globally, mostly involving sexual exploitation.

“As long as women and girls have to use three times the time and energy of men on looking after the household, equal opportunities for girls to move from school into good jobs in safe workplaces are going to be out of reach”

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director

Moreover, an astonishing one-in-20 girls between the ages of 15 and 19, has experienced rape in her lifetime.

“While the world has mustered the political will to send many girls to school, it has come up embarrassingly short on equipping them with the skills and support they need not only to shape their own destinies, but to live in safety and dignity”, the UNICEF chief spelled out.

 

Lagging on equal rights

The report has been launched in line with the Generation Equality campaign to open a global conversation for action and accountability on gender equality, and to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

“Since 1995 in Beijing, when a specific focus on ‘girl child’ issues first emerged, we have increasingly heard girls assert their rights and call us to account”, said UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. “But the world has not kept up with their expectations of responsible stewardship of the planet, a life without violence, and their hopes for economic independence”.

Girls today are at a startling risk of violence, whether it is in school, at home, or online as well as throughout their communities, which leads to physical, psychological and social consequences.

A New Era for Girls also covers harmful practices, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), which continue to disrupt and damage the lives and potential of millions of girls around the world.

According the report, each year 12 million girls are married in childhood, and four million risk FGM.

And girls aged 15-19, are as likely to justify wife-beating, as boys of the same age.

“As long as women and girls have to use three times the time and energy of men on looking after the household, equal opportunities for girls to move from school into good jobs in safe workplaces are going to be out of reach”, said the UN Women chief.

“For everyone’s sake, that’s got to change, along with making sure that the skills girls learn are right for the new tech and digital jobs of the future, and that the violence against them ends”.

 

Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS

 

79 million fewer girls out of school

The report noted that in the past 20 years, the number of girls out-of-school has dropped by 79 million and over the last decade, more are actually likely to be in secondary school than boys.

However, it also pointed to negative trends for girls in nutrition and health.

For example, globalization has shifted traditional diets to more processed, unhealthy foods and aggressive marketing techniques targeting children have fuelled consumption, along with sugar-sweetened beverages.

“Access to education is not enough”, maintained the UNICEF chief, adding, “we must also change people’s behaviours and attitudes towards girls”.

Meanwhile, concerns are growing over poor mental health, exacerbated in part by the excessive use of digital technology.

A New Era for Girls revealed that suicide is currently the second leading cause of death among adolescent girls in that age bracket, surpassed only by maternal conditions.

Turning to their heightened risk of sexually-transmitted infection, the report found that some 970,000 adolescent girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are living today with HIV – accounting for around three-in-four new infections among adolescents worldwide – as compared to 740,000 girls in 1995.

“True equality will only come when all girls are safe from violence, free to exercise their rights, and are able to enjoy equal opportunities in life”, concluded the UNICEF Executive Director.

This story was originally published by UN News

 

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An increasing number of New Yorkers appear to have started wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus. The city recorded its first case 1 March. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

First, it was the ill-fated annual sessions of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), scheduled for March 9-20, which was undermined by the spreading coronavirus COVID-19.

Now comes a second potential casualty—the upcoming month-long (27 April-22 May) Review Conference of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which may be upstaged by the deadly virus.

The landmark treaty— which represents the only binding multilateral commitment to the goal of disarmament by the world’s nuclear-weapon States—would also mark its 50th anniversary this year.

But a lingering question remains: will the Review Conference be either postponed, cancelled or held under restrictive conditions–even as the Trump administration plans to deny entry visas to visitors, and by extension delegates, from heavily-infected countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, Iran, Italy and the Philippines, among others.

The 10-day CSW meeting, one of the key annual gatherings of women, was shrunk to a one-day event, scheduled for March 9 — because of the fast-spreading coronavirus—which would have shut off most of the approximately 8,000-9,000 participants from overseas.

“The 50-year old NPT is threatening the world with an even worse illness than the new terrifying coronavirus,” one anti-nuclear activist warned.

According to the United Nations, the Treaty, particularly article VIII, paragraph 3, envisages a review of the operation of the Treaty every five years, a provision which was reaffirmed by the States parties at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and the 2000 NPT Review Conference.

John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, New York City, told IPS that aside from whether protection of health warrants a postponement of the Review Conference, delay could be good for the non-proliferation/disarmament regime.

Right now, the United States, Russia, and China have nothing to offer in the way of nuclear arms reductions, actual or prospective, he argued.

Signing ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 20 September 2017. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

“This is despite the commitments they made, along with the United Kingdom and France, at the 2010 Review Conference, “to undertake further efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate all types of nuclear weapons”.

The failure to fulfill this and other commitments made at the 1995, 2000, and 2010 conferences is the single most important factor casting a pall over the upcoming conference and making a consensus substantive outcome unlikely, warned Burroughs.

Dr Rebecca Johnson, Director, Acronym Institute for Disarmament and Diplomacy, who has reported on every NPT meeting since 1994, told IPS “the COVID-19 coronavirus spreads quickly, so on grounds of public health, we all need to limit physical meetings and travel.”

“On those grounds, I think it would probably be prudent to postpone the NPT Review Conference to a time when we have a clearer idea of the COVID-19 impacts and there is greater capacity to deal with it’.

If this is to be their decision, she noted, the UN and NPT states need to make it sooner rather than later, as a lot of people — myself included — have already booked travel and accommodation in New York.

“I would not support any proposals to “limit” the NPT Review Conference as this would likely be used to restrict the full participation of civil society and many delegations who do not have their nuclear experts based in New York”.

Dr Johnson said the postponement of the Review Conference to 2021 should not be a political problem for the NPT and non-proliferation regime, and may even turn out to be advantageous for the health of the NPT.

“This year, there are deep concerns that toxic political relations between several nuclear-armed or significant NPT States Parties will cause the NPT Review Conference to fail, the third time since 2015. There may be better prospects for a positive NPT outcome in 2021, though of course nothing is certain in life or politics!”

She added: “If held in 2021, it would be sensible to choose the most practical NPT-related city, whether Vienna, Geneva or New York.”

Burroughs said it is conceivable that the picture will be better by the end of 2020. He said Reuters reports that on February 28, a senior US administration official said that President Trump is willing to hold a summit of the five NPT nuclear weapon states to discuss arms control.

“While China maintains that it will not join trilateral arms control negotiations due to the vast disparity between its nuclear forces and those of the United States and Russia, it has said that it would discuss “strategic security” issues in a five-power format”.

China’s position that it will not engage in arms controls talks should be challenged. Negotiators can be creative, he said.

One can imagine, for example, addressing intermediate- and short-range missiles, most conventionally armed, fielded in its region by China, as well as US and Russian actual and planned deployments of such missiles, Burroughs said.

“Or China’s long-range nuclear forces could be capped while US and Russian reductions proceed. More ambitiously, the five NPT nuclear weapon states could launch negotiations on global elimination of nuclear arsenals and invite non-NPT nuclear-armed states and perhaps other states to join”.

The five NPT nuclear weapons states are the US, UK, China, Russia and France – all veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council– while the four non-NPT nuclear armed states are India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-summit-idUSKCN20M3CJ
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/t1746174.shtml

Dr M. V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, and Director, Liu Institute for Global Issues, at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, told IPS “I think there is a good case to postpone the Review Conference”.

“At this point, we don’t know how the coronavirus infections will spread — and bringing together a large number of people from different countries to one building definitely contributes a level of risk”.

Further, he said, there will be the additional uncertainty imposed by the Trump administration’s plans to block people from various countries with high levels of infections. Some of those countries, China and Iran, are central to the future of the NPT.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

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Afra Burga Ambui spent 9 years in forced servitude. Now her former employer is in court in Jakarta, Indonesia, facing charges of assault. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

When her uncle offered her an opportunity to work in Jakarta almost a decade ago, the then 15-year-old Afra Burga Ambui immediately agreed and soon she was boarding a two-hour flight to the country’s capital and away from her village on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara, southern Indonesia.

Soon she will likely testify in a case of assault against the man who kept her as virtual prisoner for almost eight years. It was only last October, after he had beat her so severely that it resulted a head injury, that she was finally able to speak out and seek help.

“I want him to be given a very long jail sentence. He locked me up like a prisoner for over eight years, he has to experience what I have gone through,” Ambui told IPS.

Held captive and abused

Shortly after arriving in Jakarta in November 2010, Ambui was hired as a live-in maid by the businessman. He had agreed to pay her a monthly salary of $44, which was roughly half the city’s minimum wage at the time.

“My employer promised to increase my salary by $3.8 every six months but he never paid my salary. As a live-in maid, I also worked long hours without a day off,” Ambui told IPS before a court hearing in western Jakarta.

Seven months into her job, her employer began beating her with sharp objects, plastic pipes, and sometimes even broom handles.

A family in mourning

“I could not tell my condition to family members or friends because I was not allowed to have a cellular phone. Also I could not run away as the doors were always locked. Even when he asked me to buy something from the nearby grocery stores, he would watch me from the gate,” she said.

Meanwhile, at home on Flores Island, her family had already performed her funeral rites and were mourning her death. Her uncle, who had recruited her, had told them that he and the labour agency had lost touch with Ambui.

And her family had decided not to report her missing to the police because they “didn’t want to destroy family relations,” with the uncle who had recruited her, Ambui explained.

But even though Indonesia has the 2007 Eradication of the Criminal Act of Trafficking in Persons law, which imposes imprisonment of between three to 15 years and a fine between $8,440 and $42,216, Ambui’s former employer is only standing trail for assault under a domestic violence act that carries a sentence of up to 10 years. 

When asked why he had not been charged under the anti-trafficking law, lawyers prosecuting the case told IPS it was the best they could do.

A work contract doesn’t guarantee safety against human trafficking

Santi Arief, a 27-year-old migrant domestic worker from West Sumatra, Indonesia, left for Malaysia in January 2019 with a contract, which, among other things, stated that she would receive a salary of $288 per month. She was also to receive overtime pay for work done outside of work hours and one day a week off. However, her employer wanted to pay her only $234, with no overtime or days off.

Upon her arrival in Malaysia, Arief said she was “locked up in a room, while my boss searched my belongings and confiscated all related documents [her work contract, work permit, visa and passport] and my cellular phone”.  

“I insisted that he honour the signed contract but because of that he decided not to pay my salary altogether. I was also made to work long hours and without a day off,” she told IPS.

Towards the end of last year she escaped and sought protection at the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, but her employer had falsely reported her as an irregular migrant to immigration authorities and she was later arrested.

She was detained in prison for several months, living in “unbearable” conditions and also being verbally assaulted by the guards. Eventually someone forced her to sign some documents, which Arief now believes were papers to withdraw the complaint against her employer.

She was sent back to Indonesia soon after.   

Indonesia lacks official records of human trafficking 

Arief and Ambui are just two of thousands, or even tens of thousands, of victims of human trafficking. According to Fitri Lestari, head of Migrant CARE’s Legal Division, a non-governmental organisation working with migrant workers, “human trafficking is becoming rampant with the number of victims increasing every month, in fact every day”. 

The government has no official record of human trafficking cases here. According to the national police, a total of 2,400 cases were investigated and brought to court over from 2013 to 2018.

“We believe those 2,400 cases are just the tip of the iceberg of trafficking in Indonesia,” Destri Handayani, Deputy Assistant for Women Right’s at the  Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, told IPS.

“Many victims don’t want to report to the police because it involves their own family members, close relatives, or in some cases well-connected public figures,” Handayani said.

In some cases, active or retired military/police officers are taught to own or have a connection with many of the so-called labour agencies here.   

Endemic corruption and a human trafficking law that is not implemented  

The 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report, by the United States Embassy in Jakarta praised efforts taken by Indonesia to stem human exploitation but noted the country “does not fully meet the minimum standard for the elimination of trafficking”. It paid attention to the fact that “endemic corruption among officials remained, which impeded anti-trafficking efforts and enabled many traffickers to operate with impunity”.

But not all law enforcement agencies are charging accused criminals with the human trafficking law. In late January, Jakarta police arrested six people for luring 10 teenage girls into prostitution. The girls were reportedly forced to serve at least 10 customers per night or face a fine if they refused, prompting the National Commission on Child Protection (KPAI) to call for harsher punishment for traffickers.

“Those children were recruited and sold both off and online by recruiters,” KPAI commissioner Ai Maryati Shalihah told IPS. “The perpetrators should be punished severely under the anti-trafficking law, not the child protection law, to deter anyone considering exploiting children.”

But Indonesia still remains a transit country, particularly for refugees and asylum seekers from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and East Africa, who are looking to for a better life in Australia or other countries.

• Since 2008, the government has established task forces to combat human trafficking in almost half of its 514 municipalities and regencies across 32 provinces.
• Task force members come from various government agencies, including the national police, the state intelligence agency and the ministries of foreign affairs, health, labour, and social affairs.
• These task forces coordinate prevention efforts and handling of victims of human trafficking, conduct advocacy campaigns and trainings on the dangers of trafficking, and monitor victim protection programmes such as rehabilitation and social reintegration.

In 2017, Indonesia ratified the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Person Especially Women and Children and enacted a national law designed to protect its workers overseas.

Demand for Indonesian workers abroad

But, according to Handayani, high demand for Indonesian workers and the involvement of human trafficking syndicates have undermined the country’s efforts to combat the crime.

“Overseas demand for Indonesian workers remains high, while law enforcement has managed to prosecute small-time field recruiters only, while the funders and end-users remain free to operate,” Handayani said.

At least 4.5 million Indonesians are working in Asia and the Middle East and around 1.9 million of them are undocumented, making them vulnerable to trafficking. A majority of these workers are in domestic service, or work in factories, in the construction industry, on palm oil plantations in Malaysia, and aboard fishing vessels in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ), which actively supports the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 8 of decent work and economic growth, has focused much of its work on eliminating modern slavery.  It has been focusing efforts on creating a global movement of change and a list of recommendations aimed at employers, it states, among other things, that there should be; no withholding of passports and IDs, wages should be directly paid into employees’ bank accounts, their living conditions must be safe and they must be guaranteed freedom of movement.

Emi Sahertian, a church leader and activist in Kupang, the capital of East Nusa Tenggara province, said that while Jakarta’s anti-trafficking programmes were good, they did not address economic poverty as a root cause.

According to a World Bank report, around 9.4 percent of the country’s 264 million people still live below the poverty line in 2019.

“People risk their lives by entering a country illegally because they have no stable income at home. The government should direct its efforts towards creating new jobs,” Sahertian told IPS from Kupang.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

 

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The post Indonesia’s Laws Ineffective against Human Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Despite having a law and various tasks forces to combat human trafficking, Indonesia is still grappling with the crime that likely sees tens of thousands of people turned into modern day slaves.

The post Indonesia’s Laws Ineffective against Human Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 3 2020 (IPS)

The great American impeachment show has ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. The dirt was washed away from President Trump, the perfect Teflon Guy. Maybe his invulnerability comes from the fact that he appears to be more of a brand than a real person, adapted to a frame of mind that increasingly dominates social media – cheap entertainment, shallowness, vulgarity, invectives, and catchy phrases without support in well-founded facts. Trump is all and nothing, a shape shifting trickster pretending to be the role model for voiceless masses.

We are subjects to a constant flow of information. Social media makes it easy to select issues that interest us. Influenced by this selective behaviour people tend to adapt their views to those of their idols, accepting them with lock, stock, and barrel, defending them as if they were part of them. Just as they tend to excuse their own improprieties, they accept the flaws of their role models.

An era characterized by strong mainstream parties with loyal followers and generally stable politics is now coming to an end, the latter being replaced by general opinions floating around on social media. However, this does not hinder that some of these opinions are supported by fanatical believers.

In 1848, Marx and Engels proclaimed: ”A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism”.2 We may now replace this spectre with National Populism, haunting not only Europe, but many other regions of the world as well. This ideology has been claimed to emanate from the so-called Four Ds´ – distrust, destruction, deprivation, and de-alignment.3

Distrust of politicians and institutions fuelled by a general feeling that they are governed by elites distanced from ordinary citizens. It is also assumed that a ”voiceless” majority is ignored while historically marginalized groups, like women and ethnic minorities, gain voice and presence in the legislature.

Destruction of national groups´ historic identity and established way of life. North America and most of Europe are assumed to be ruled by culturally liberal politicians, transnational organizations and global finance, eroding nations and moral values by encouraging mass-migration. At the same time it is believed that ”politically correct” agendas seek to silence any opposition.

A sense of deprivation is growing, particularly among workers and small business owners who are experiencing decreasing wealth and vanishing benefits. Millions are convinced they are losing out relative to others. Feelings inflamed by a conviction that even if they do not belong to an underclass of strangers and welfare-takers they are nevertheless excluded from decision making. Accordingly, many suffer from de-alignment, feeling lost in a world perceived as more chaotic and less predictable than it was in the past.

Such notions are by demagogues successfully applied to seductive tactics. They present themelves and their party as spokespersons for the people, an imaginary unified group, with the same identity, interests, characteristics, and needs. What the people have in common are their nationality and culture. Gender, class, ideology, income, education or individuality do not matter. Political schemers indicate the existence of an elite that is not on the people’s side. A self-sufficient class of highly educated and wealthy politicians and bureaucrats who control media and have lost all contact with the common man, while lining their own pockets on the bases of their influence. For a political rabble-rouser it is also opportune to identify a group as scapegoats, who are not part of the people and accordingly lack any common interests with them. These scapegoats are depicted as being in league with the elite, which ensures that resources of the people are directed towards these alien parasites. Should the people get rid of the scapegoats as well as the elite everything would be just as fine as before.

Through such deceptive simplifications a politician like Donald Trump, in spite of the fact that he is a billionaire and part of a wealthy, privileged elite, attracts a fan base cosidering him to be the incarnate hope for benign change. Donald Trump, who was a pop-culture icon before he became a politician, has been adopted by what has been called toxic fandom.

Fan is short for fanatic originating from the Latin fanaticus, meaning “of or belonging to the temple, a temple servant, a devotee.” Fandom is a subculture composed of people characterized by a shared feeling of empathy and camaraderie emerging from a common interest. It is supported by a parallel ”make-believe” universe created by social media and a growing industry catering to the wishful thinking of gratified consumers. Several supporters of nationalist leaders seem to consider them as incarnations of their own beliefs. If such an idol is accused of misconduct his/her fans are ready to rush to his/her defense, since attacking an idol would be like attacking them.

Michael Schulman, staff writer at The New Yorker, recently stated that ”a glance around the pop-culture landscape gives the impression that fans have gone mad”.4 ”Couch potatoes” that earlier idled their time away in front of TV-sets and computers are now rising up and are through social media becoming active, opinionated participants in what is happening around them.

For example, when the TV-series Game of Thrones in May 2019 did not end in accordance with several fans´expectations more than 1.7 million of them signed a petition to HBO to ”remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers.” However, such incidents are nothing compared to what happens to an individual who dares to question the behaviour of an admired idol. Social media provides numerous examples of how idol detractors are targeted by outrageous threats directed towards them and their families.

The stout support Donald Trump receives from Republican politicians and his immovable base appears to be a mixture of fandom and concerns about personal power and well-being. Extremely few Republicans want, or dare to, state that ”the emperor is naked”, that Trump actually is an ignorant bully and a narcissist guilty of a great number of misdeeds and abuse of power. Doing that may result in being hounded by Trump fans who brazenly stood by his side during the impeachment proceedings.

Contrary to Trump, who seems to be a self-consciously constructed media product, US Senator Mitt Romney appears to be a morally motivated politician adhering to steadfast principles. Trump proclaims his guiding principle to be America First, while Mitt Romney in 2010 realeased a book he called No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.5 However, Romney´s Americanism is contrary to Trump´s populism founded on strict morals. The American Exceptionalism he brings forward in his book is based on three related ideas. The first is that US history is different from the one of other nations. Through the American Revolution (1765-1783) the USA became the first new nation and thus developed a unique ideology – Americanism, based on liberty, equality before the law, individual responsibility, republicanism, representative democracy, and laissez-faire economics. Second is the idea that the US has a unique mission to transform the world, that Americans have a duty to ensure that ”government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” The third is a conviction that the United States’ history and mission give it superiority over other nations.

Mitt Romney served as Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. Furthermore, he is a fifth-generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and has throughout his adult life served as this religion´s bishop. He is a faithful follower of the Mormons´ moral code based on a scripture called the Word of Wisdom. Accordingly, he abstains from the consumption of alcohol, coffee, tea, and tobacco and follows his Church´s Law of Chastity, which prohibits adultery and sexual relations outside of marriage. When Romney critizises Trump he does so from a moral standpoint.

One might be skeptical to both Mormonism and American Exceptionalism, though it is difficult not to admire the personal courage Romney displayed on February 5, when he on the Senate floor decried President Trump’s intents to ”corrupt” a general election to keep himself in office as “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of an oath of office that I can imagine.” Romney was the only Republican politician who publically supported the impeachment of Trump. In his speech Romney condemned the lies and moral laxity of the US president, answering the question ”whether the President committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of high crime and misdemeanor” by ”Yes, he did.”

Romney counted with attacks and accusations of disloyalty from his fellow Republicans. And he certainly became a target of the uncontrollable wrath of Trump´s fandom and of course of their idol as well. Trump labeled Romney as a ”failed presidential candidate” adding that ”I don´t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” Nevertheless, it was the other way around – Romney used his faith to justify what he believed to be right. In opposition to the complicity of his party colleagues, he stood his ground by declaring ”I am a profoundly religious person. My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential.” 6

Mitt Romney proved that personal moral conviction and decency can survive within a party that has been hijacked by National Populism and spineless sycophants. We may hope that more people like Mitt Romney are prepared to listen to their conscience and be brave enough to reveal the manipulations and lies of narcissistic manipulators like Donald Trump. We also have to find effective means to address the deceit, hate and ignorance that have invaded social media.

1 Nicoletti, Gianluca (2015) “Umberto Eco:´Con i social parola a legioni di imbecelli´,” La Stampa, June 11.
2 Hobsbawm, Eric (2012) How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism. New Haven.Yale University Press.
3 Eatwell, Roger and Matthew Goodwin (2018) National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democarcy. London: Penguin Books.
4 Schulman, Michael (2019) ”Fans are more powerful than ever. Does their passion have a dark side?” The New Yorker, September 9.
5 Romney, Mitt (2010) No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. New York: St. Martins Press.
6 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/us/politics/mitt-romney-impeachment-speech-transcript.html

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

The post Personal Conviction Versus Fandom: The Case of Mitt Romney appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. They were immediately silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots.” 1

                                                                                                                                                           Umberto Eco

The post Personal Conviction Versus Fandom: The Case of Mitt Romney appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Iffat, humanitarian public health promoter for Oxfam, talks to Rohingya refugees Asia Bibi*, son Anwar* and daughter Nur* in the camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Iffat was part of the Oxfam emergency response team working to provide vital aid including clean water, food vouchers and toilets. Credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith/ Oxfam

By Anna Tonelli
NEW YORK, Mar 3 2020 (IPS)

This International Women’s Day, 25 years after we first heard it declared that “women’s rights are human rights” at the historic Beijing 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, we need to take the space and time to reflect on just how far we’ve come – and just how much more work there is to do.

This year, achievements in the quest for recognizing women’s rights, leadership, and voice must be celebrated; but more than anything we need to double down and hold governments and other powerbrokers to account – to be part of the movement to ensure women’s rights are actually respected as human rights once and for all.

Every March, women arrive in New York from around the world to do just that – to advocate for the implementation of the myriad commitments that international decision-makers have made to the realization of women’s rights.

Tucked away in a small corner of Manhattan, the yearly Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the UN brings thousands of women and allies together to connect and learn from each other, and to hold their governments accountable.

This year would have been historic as more than 12,000 people had registered to join this conference, a testament to the importance of Beijing’s anniversary and the commitments it produced.

Sadly, this series of events has been postponed due to the Coronavirus – a grim but important reminder of how interconnected our world has become, and how much we must rely on each other to protect ourselves and make progress.

Anna Tonelli

Oxfam, just one small piece of this moment was set to bring 22 partners to participate – activists and leaders from places like Russia, India, Palestine, Zambia and Bolivia.

Oxfam and our partners were to host events and conversations on issues ranging from gender-based violence, women land rights, fundamentalism in Latin America and Russia, women and climate, natural and resource governance and unpaid care work. These issues and conversations may not be happening in person next week, but they must still go on.

Right now is a critical moment for Latin America, and Oxfam staff and our partners are speaking out against the chronic violation of women’s rights and feminicides that have become the norm in the last years.

It is where the rise of fundamentalism, toxic masculinity, and extreme authoritarianism have created a wave of impunity and normalization of human rights violations.

As we have watched forests burn, air quality suffer and temperatures rise, women from Zambia, India, Colombia and more are pushing for transformative feminist leadership and climate-just governance for natural resources like coal, oil and other extractive industries – and for the intrinsic connection between women’s rights and the climate crisis to be more widely recognized.

As inequality spirals out of control, Oxfam is calling for an end to our sexist economies that have put us in the position where the richest 22 men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.

It’s no accident that while most billionaires are men, women do more than three-quarters of all unpaid care work, and when they do work, dominate the least secure and lowest-paid jobs. These are just more barriers women face when trying to make a difference and lead in their communities.

Dorothy, 27, stands inside the house she is rebuilding with her brother, in the village of Malambwe, southern Malawi, following the flooding brought on by Cyclone Idai. Dorothy’s house collapsed and the floodwaters carrying away many of her belongings, as well as some of her livestock. She took her four year old child, and went to higher ground to escape the floodwaters. Credit: Philip Hatcher-Moore/Oxfam

Even as thousands had plans to travel and convene at CSW, this space was never open for all. Travel restrictions and statelessness had stopped plans to have a Rohingya leader join from Bangladesh to help launch an Oxfam report highlighting Rohingya women’s challenges, priorities and leadership.

It calls for an immediate focus on addressing the root causes of the crisis, better supporting women to meet their basic needs with dignity and further enabling their leadership in decision-making at all levels.

Many women caught in some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and conflicts – like Yemen, Syria and South Sudan – also do not have access to these opportunities due to instability at home, threats to their safety, and the discriminatory Muslim Ban enacted by the Trump administration.

The postponement of CSW is a reminder of the women’s voices we must always be amplifying around the world during these moments and in between. Whether we’re together in New York or spread around the globe, acts of solidarity through elevating women’s stories and demands on social media, signing petitions for national decision-makers, and joining campaigns make all the difference.

We also need to see more women and men in power who support women and who will put forward a feminist foreign policy. On International Women’s Day and every day, we have a duty to shine a light on these women and the efforts they are making to realize their rights. In a time of increasing anxiety about health, politics, climate and more – we should appreciate the advocates and leaders who paved the way for anniversaries like Beijing, and celebrate the communities of smart, driven, tireless women who continue to push for a more inclusive and just world.

The post Sexist Economies Where World’s 22 Richest Men Have More Wealth than All the Women in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of special IPS coverage of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020

 

Anna Tonelli is Oxfam’s Inclusive Peace and Security Senior Policy Advisor

The post Sexist Economies Where World’s 22 Richest Men Have More Wealth than All the Women in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By GGGI
Mar 3 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has partnered with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA) to support Peru’s efforts to reduce deforestation through an innovative approach that promotes sustainable agroforestry practices and secures land tenure of small farmers in the Amazon.

Representatives from the Government of Norway, GGGI, ICRAF and the SPDA, gathered in Lima to mark the start of a 3-year project whose objective is to provide technical, legal, financial and institutional support to help the Government of Peru implement the Agroforestry Concessions system.

Among those present were Thorstein Wangen, Advisor for Climate and Forestry of the Royal Embassy of Norway concurrently accredited in Peru, Elise Christensen, the Senior Advisor for the Norway International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), Einer Telnes, NORAD Senior Advisor of the Department for Climate, Energy and Environment, as well as Aaron Drayer, the GGGI Peru Country Representative, along with the GGGI teams and project leadership from ICRAF and SPDA.

Agroforestry Concessions are an innovative legal mechanism that seeks to incorporate family farmers in the forest economy by offering those that occupy land in the public forest domain a forty-year usufruct contract over land and tree resources. Their possession is conditioned upon halting deforestation and implementing sustainable land use, including agroforestry.

The project’s expected impacts are to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions in the Peruvian Amazon, promote restoration through agroforestry of previously deforested land, and improve livelihoods of vulnerable small-scale farmers at the forest frontier. It is estimated that Agroforestry Concessions could benefit more than 120,000 families that are currently farming over 1.5 million hectares of forest land.

Successful implementation of Agroforestry Concessions will require the coordination of multiple sectors and governance levels to support the transition of family farmers at deforestation frontiers to engage in sustainable land-use practices that are also financially sound. For this reason, the consortium team will work hand in hand with the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, the Peru Forestry and Wildlife Service and the Ministry of Environment, as well as Amazonian regional governments.

In the meeting, consortium members and the representatives of the Government of Norway discussed the importance of a multi-stakeholder process to ensure that the Agroforestry Concessions system is successful. Mr. Aaron Drayer indicated how the consortium represents a sum of complementary expertise and approaches to respond to that complexity.

The representatives of the Government of Norway highlighted the importance of this new mechanism to help Peru comply with its climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement. Mr. Thorstein Wangen highlighted the importance of engagement with government actors at all levels and connecting the project to public policies. And. Mr. Einer Telnes stressed the importance of this new system to support the Government of Peru towards its zero-deforestation goal. He also emphasized the opportunity for other countries to learn from the Peruvian experience promoting agroforestry, securing land rights and improving farmers’ livelihoods.

Finally, Elise Christensen pointed out that the project’s approach is built upon an in-depth understanding of the complexities of land use at the agricultural frontier and that it focuses on a model that relies more on recognizing land tenure rights for farmers and providing financial incentives than on command and control models.

GGGI and the consortium partners will work closely with the National Forest and Wildlife Service (SERFOR), the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MINAGRI), the Ministry of the Environment (MINAM) and key regional governments to help build the enabling financial, legal, institutional and technical conditions for the successful implementation of the new Agroforestry Concessions system for family farmers in the Peruvian Amazon.

The post GGGI Supports Peru’s New Agroforestry Concessions System for Family Farmers to Reduce Deforestation in the Amazon appeared first on Inter Press Service.