Advocacy News

February 27-March 9, 2012
United Nations, New York, New York

As with previous Commissions on the Status of Women, the meetings begin informally on the day before the UN’s Commission. These meetings take place at a conference off the UN Campus which is known as “Consultation Day.” This year’s NGO/CSW/NY Consultation Day entitled “Empowering Rural Women” set the tone for advocacy and policy development during the 56th Commission. Over a thousand women and several men attended this all day event. Speakers included Michelle Bachelet, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Olivia Mugabirwe, Executive Director of PeerLink Initiative Uganda all of whom stressed the need for gender equality, empowering women and the eradication of violence against women. Sessions included: Orientation for New Participants to the CSW, Advocacy Training and Training for Rural Women Leaders-Speak-Out. The conference day ended with the closing theme song: “Keep on Movin’Forward.” more »

The Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) will meet in New York from 27 February to 9 March. It will consider the priority theme of “The empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, development and current challenges.

• General information on Education and rural girls & women
• What can we do?
• IFUW at CSW
• Key UN documents
• Useful links

EDUCATION AND RURAL GIRLS & WOMEN

Education is a human right that is fundamental to the achievement of many other human rights. Equal access to education at all levels is also necessary to achieve equality between men and women. more »

In December 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (HRET). This Declaration asserts that everyone has the right to know, seek and receive information about their human rights and fundamental freedoms. It is a call to the United Nations, governments, non-governmental organizations and other bodies to intensify their efforts to promote the universal respect and understanding of HRET.

The Declaration defines HRET as comprising “all education, training, information, awareness-raising and learning activities aimed at promoting universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”  It also states that HRET encompasses:

• Education about  human rights
• Education through human rights
• Education for human rights

The Declaration recognizes that HRET is a lifelong process that includes all parts of society, at all levels and should be based on principles of equality.

• Read the full text of the Declaration

more »

Hazel Bowen, President of the South African Association of Women Graduates (SAAWG) shared the following report on the  South African Parliamentary briefing on the Concept Document for the Campaign on the 16 Days of Activism on No Violence Against Women, Children and People with Disabilities.

Hon Lulu Xingwana, Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, said that the campaign had previously focussed on women and children, and was now being extended to include people with disabilities. The Minister expressed her desire to work closely with all government departments in fulfilling the campaign’s mandate. She highlighted the fact that women, in the period following the country’s achieving democracy, had worked very hard to ensure that the rights of women were upheld, and that the issue of abuse and violence towards children was placed on the national agenda as a matter of priority. more »

On 5 December international leaders met in Bonn Germany to discuss the future of Afghanistan.  IFUW national federations and associations in countries around the world contacted their Ministries of Foreign Affairs and other government leaders to bring pressure on national governments to ensure that Afghan women would be adequately represented.  Heike Mensch of the German Federation, who is a media specialist, was able to obtain press accreditation to the meeting. She sent the following first-hand account:

Sunday afternoon:

I arrived at the hotel where the press center was established and bumped into the half the delegates of the Afghan Women’s Network. I met their European Media Contact Jennifer Rowel. One of their press releases available can be found at http://www.ifuw.org/docs/2011_bonn_awn.pdf. They were very careful in their formulations – they didn’t refer to CEDAW and 1325; they only circled around it. Other women referred to UN Resolutions as necessary and binding for Afghanistan.

Sunday evening:

A very interesting event was organized by the German Ministry for Economic Development (BMZ) “Women’s Rights and Peace for Afghanistan – a Process in the Hands of the Afghan People” with representatives of Afghan NGOs, followed by an exchange with the delegates of the Afghan civil society. The group arrived more than an hour late because UN Secretary General Ban Kim Moon had unexpectedly asked them to meet him for one hour. They said the meeting had been very good but gave no details.

Most of the Afghan speakers were very good; all were very eloquent.  Here I heard the woman speaker of the NGO group, Selay Ghaffar for the first time and was highly impressed: She speaks her mind very clearly, has strong demands and statements. She is certainly somebody to watch and support. Her topics: much too little empowerment of women, bad handling of women at court, major threats for womens’ rights.

The guiding theme of the evening was the lack of rule of law, violence by security forces (specially to women), not enough participation of women in all areas, the current highest corruption ever in Afghanistan, no access to schools for girls and women, danger of negotiating with “those who violate human rights”, the danger posed by terrorists trained in neighbouring countries and the necessity to involve civil society in high-level planning and decision making, lack of health facilities and treatment – 2nd highest maternal mortality in world, discrimination of women in laws.

At the end there was a strong call for “women of the world to stay with us in our struggle”.

There wasn’t much chance for exchange with the delegates of the Afghan civil society, as they left soon after the official part.

Monday: I stayed on the Press Gallery for several hours and had several useful exchanges.

Opening of Conference by

1. German Min. Foreign Affairs Dr. Westerwelle: He didn’t mention women at all, ending with a wish of hope for children.

2. President Karsai: only mentioned some statistics – percentage of women now in public sector, education, central governmentt – never near 50 %. He spoke of being on a good path.

3. Secretary General Ban Kim Moon: He was the only opening speaker to explicitly and extendedly demand “more women in positions of power”, “more women in political participation in all areas”, “guarantee of women’s rights”, “more education for boys and girls”, “women are ½ the population … must be fully empowered”, Afghanistan must apply international standards”.

4. German Chancellor Merkel: mentioned women only once in context: All parts of society, including women and children, must be respected.

I talked to several members of the Afghanistan NGOs that travelled over for the Civil Society Forum. Most interesting was Najiba Ayubi, the Media Director of the Killid Group, the biggest NGO funded group of radio stations in Afghanistan – now eight stations. It has a women’s magazine produced only by women. 40% of her employees are women. We spoke for a long time and exchanged many ideas and experience – she is a very enlightened, free thinking journalist and feminist and strong fighter for the cause of women. She is very interested in contacts with IFUW and would like to help us find good contacts to university women.

While talking to Najiba the women of the Civil Society Forum received a note from Hilary Clinton. She asked only the women to meeting with her. I tried to speak with Najiba after this, but she was in constant talks with politicians. Will try to get in touch with her by mail to find out more.

I got some more addresses of Women NGOs and several Afghanistan representatives promised to send me some more contacts. Here again, all were very interested in finding out more about us.

Monday evening:

 Conclusion of Conference. The text of Afghanistan Government can be found at http://www.ifuw.org/docs/2011_bonn_conclusions.pdf. There are several important remarks about the inclusion of women on all levels and about human rights and fundamental freedom – where women are mentioned explicitly.

I had some very good conversations on the side with Afghan expatriates and with journalists from the region. They are all very concerned, that the insurgents (Taliban) will gain more power. They called for sanctions against the enemies of Afghanistan – “some neighbours”. Many said “we know who our enemies are”. They all spoke of the great need of education in all parts of the country, specially the rural areas. All expressed their hope, that Afghanistan will never again be left alone by the international community.

Education, a Crucial Foundation for Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment

Access to quality secondary education is essential if girls, particularly rural girls, are to achieve their full economic potential.  A joint statement submitted by IFUW and the Worldwide Organization for Women (WOW) to the Fifty-sixth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women to be held in 2012, points out that there is a clearly established, positive relationship between keeping girls in school and future earning power.  Each year of secondary schooling increases girl’s future wages by 10 to 20 percent, but for many girls this remains an unattainable dream.  Girls under the age of 16 make up more than 90 per cent of the global domestic work force, and out of 130 million out-of-school young people, 70 per cent are girls.

Significant barriers continue to keep girls out of school.  These rang from lack of financial resources, traditional preferences for educating boys, distance to schools, lack of safe school facilities and environments, lack of female role models and traditional religious and cultural practices such as female genital mutilation and early/forced marriage. more »