Young women from the Brazilian state of Bahia attend an informational campaign which also hands out menstrual hygiene products. Poverty and the lack of adequate information on this subject affect millions of girls, adolescents and adult women. CREDIT: Government of Bahia

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 26 2023 (IPS)

Menstrual hygiene management is elusive for millions of poor women and girls in Latin America, who suffer because their living conditions make it difficult or impossible for them to access resources and services that could make menstruation a simple normal part of life.

“When my period comes, I miss class for three or four days. My family can’t afford to buy the sanitary napkins that my sister and I need. We use cloths for the blood, although they give me an uncomfortable rash,” says Omaira*, a 15-year-old high school student.

From her low-income neighborhood of Brisas del Sur, in Ciudad Guayana, 500 kilometers southeast of Caracas, she speaks to IPS by phone: “We can’t buy pills to relieve our pain either. And my period is irregular, it doesn’t come every month, but there are no medical services here for me to go and treat that.”

In Venezuela, “one in four women does not have menstrual hygiene products and they improvise unhygienic alternatives, such as old clothes, cloths, cardboard or toilet paper to make pads that function as sanitary napkins,” activist Natasha Saturno, with the Solidarity Action NGO, tells IPS.

“The big problem with these improvised products is that they can cause, at best, discomfort and embarrassment, and at worst, infections that compromise their health,” says Saturno, director of enforceability of rights at the NGO that conducts health assistance and documentation programs and surveys.

Campaigns that adult and young women have carried out in Mexico and Colombia demanding the right to menstrual health managed to get the authorities to eliminate the value added tax on essential feminine hygiene products. CREDIT: Nora Hinojo/UN Mexico

Universal problem, comprehensive approach

Is this a local, focalized problem? Not at all: “On any given day, more than 300 million women worldwide are menstruating.  In total, an estimated 500 million lack access to menstrual products and adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene management (MHM),” states a World Bank study.

“Today more than ever we need to bring visibility to the situation of women and girls who do not have access to and education about menstrual hygiene. Communication makes the difference,” said Hugo González, representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Peru.

UNFPA says there is broad agreement on what girls and women need for good menstrual health, and argues that comprehensive approaches that combine education with infrastructure and with products and efforts to combat stigma are most successful in achieving good menstrual health and hygiene.

The essential elements are: safe, acceptable, and reliable supplies to manage menstruation; privacy for changing the materials; safe and private washing facilities; and information to make appropriate decisions.

UNFPA’s theme this year for international Menstrual Hygiene Day, which is celebrated every May 28, is “Making menstruation a normal fact of life by 2030”, the target date for compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the international community at the United Nations.

United Nations Population Fund workers prepare packages of menstrual hygiene items for women from poor communities in Central America. The cost of some of these products makes them unaffordable for many families. CREDIT: UNFPA

The pink tax

Nine out of 31 countries in the region consider menstrual hygiene products essential, which makes them exempt from value added tax or reduced VAT, according to the study “Sexist Taxes in Latin America” ​​by Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

After a “Tax-free Menstruation” campaign, in 2018 Colombia became the first country in the Americas to eliminate VAT – 16 percent – on menstrual hygiene products. Its neighbor Venezuela still charges 16 percent VAT, and Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay charge VAT between 18 and 22 percent on such products.

Colombia was joined by Ecuador, Guyana, Jamaica, Mexico – where street demonstrations were held against charging VAT on menstrual products – Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. Other countries have reduced VAT, such as Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay and Peru, while in Brazil VAT differs between states and averages 7 percent.

The so-called “pink tax” obviously affects the price of menstrual hygiene products such as disposable and reusable sanitary pads and menstrual cups, which becomes especially burdensome in countries with high inflation and depreciated currencies, such as Argentina and Venezuela.

According to the average price of the cheapest brands, ten disposable sanitary pads can cost just under a dollar in Mexico, 1.50 dollar in Argentina or Brazil, 1.60 dollar in Colombia, Peru or Venezuela, and almost two dollars in Costa Rica.

“It’s an important problem,” Saturno points out, “in a country like Venezuela, where the majority of the population lives in poverty and the minimum wage – although it has been increased with some stipends – is still just five dollars a month.”

Adult women, young women and girls participate in a session to share information and experiences organized by the Colombian association Menstruating Princesses, which emphasizes the importance of education to combat taboos and make menstruation a normal, stress-free experience. CREDIT: Menstruating Princesses

Hostile environment, scarce education

“If you often can’t buy sanitary pads, that’s the smallest problem. The worst thing is the shame you feel if you go to work and the cloth fails to keep your clothes free of blood, or if you catch an infection,” Nancy *, who at the age of 45 has been an informal sector worker in numerous occupations and trades in Caracas, told IPS.“Poverty causes women and adolescent girls to miss days of secondary school or work because they do not have the supplies they need when they menstruate. It becomes a vicious circle, because their academic or work performance is affected, hindering their chances of developing their full potential and earning a better income.” -- Natasha Saturno

The mother of four young people lives in Gramoven, a poor neighborhood in the northwest of the capital. Her two unmarried daughters, ages 18 and 22, have had experiences similar to Nancy’s on their way to school, in the neighborhood, on the bus, and on the subway.

“The thing is, the period is not seen as something natural, boys and men see it as something dirty, at work they sometimes do not understand that if you are in pain you have to stay at home,” said Nancy. “And when you work for yourself, you have to go out no matter what, because if you don’t go out, no money comes in.”

Saturno says that “poverty causes women and adolescent girls to miss days of secondary school or work because they do not have the supplies they need when they menstruate.”

“It becomes a vicious circle, because their academic or work performance is affected, hindering their chances of developing their full potential and earning a better income,” she adds.

But the problem “goes far beyond materials, it does not end just because someone obtains the products; it includes education and decent working conditions for women,” psychologist Carolina Ramírez, who runs the educational NGO Menstruating Princesses in the Colombian city of Medellín, tells IPS.

For this reason, “we do not use the term ‘menstrual poverty’ and speak instead of menstrual dignity, vindicating the need for society, schools, workplaces and States to promote education about menstruation and combat illiteracy in that area,” says Ramírez.

To illustrate, she mentions the widespread rejection of using tampons and cups “because of the old taboo that the vulva shouldn’t be touched, that the vagina shouldn’t be looked at,” in addition to the fact that many areas and communities in Latin American countries not only lack spaces or tools to sterilize products but often do not have clean water.

A concern raised by both Saturno and Ramírez is the great vulnerability of migrant women in the region – which has received a flood of six million people from Venezuela over the last 10 years, for example – in terms of menstrual and general health, as well as safety.

Another worrying issue is women in most Latin American prisons, which are unable to provide adequate menstrual hygiene, since they do not have access to disposable products or the possibility to sterilize reusable supplies.

Throughout the region, “greater efforts are required to break down taboos that violate fundamental rights to health, education, work, and freedom of movement, so that menstruation can be a stress-free human experience,” Ramírez says.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the interviewees.

Excerpt:

By Kirsten Stade
ST PAUL, Minnesota, USA, May 25 2023 (IPS)

A new study estimates that global heating will push billions of people outside the comfortable range of temperature and weather in which we have evolved.

While coverage of the study notes that rapid emissions cuts could greatly reduce the number of people forced to live amid unprecedented extremes, it fails to mention the obvious: that reducing our population would have the same effect.

Not long ago, the idea that human population growth drives both human suffering and environmental decline was considered common sense. That changed in the 1990s in the wake of several egregious population control programs, ranging from China’s one-child policy to forced sterilizations in China, India, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.

Today, the mere mention of population growth in connection with environmental protection or human well-being gets demonized as “neo-Malthusian” or “eugenicist” – notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of efforts to lower fertility, whether to alleviate poverty or to reduce pressure on resources, have been rights-based and voluntary.

What is most troubling about this mischaracterization is that it deflects attention from the enormous violations of reproductive rights that occur in the name of increasing reproduction.

Pronatalism — the social pressures, religious doctrine, and government policies designed to induce people to have more children – has long been the most prevalent form of reproductive coercion.

Impressed upon people by family members, religious leaders, and politicians pursuing racist, nationalist, military, and/or economic agendas, pronatalism shows up through abortion bans and alarmist messaging that promotes childbirth for certain ethnic groups. The common thread is treating people as reproductive vessels for external agendas.

Over 218 million women worldwide who want to avoid pregnancy have an unmet need for contraception. This troubling reality is the result of both simple unavailability of contraceptives, and of deep-seated pronatalist attitudes–often held by husbands and other family members- that make it impossible for women to use them.

When women are expected to produce large families regardless of their own wants, pronatalism not only denies their reproductive autonomy; it also worsens poverty and damages the environment. A new study by the Swedish Research Council debunks the stubborn misconception that population growth has a negligible effect on climate change since it’s concentrated in low-consumption countries.

In fact, the study finds, population growth is the biggest driver of carbon emissions and is canceling out emissions reductions made through renewables and efficiency. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), population growth is one of the “strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade.”

Population growth and resultant agricultural expansion drive water scarcity, soil depletion, deforestation, land degradation, and damage to ecosystems that humans depend on. The connection between population growth and environmental impacts is clear, yet frequently denied, and this denial has real consequences.

Since addressing population growth fell out of favor in the 1990s, international funding for family planning declined 35 percent and falls far short of meeting global need.

Population denialism is reminiscent of climate denialism in its disregard for science and its failure to acknowledge the suffering of millions. Population deniers invoke Malthus and Margaret Sanger to invalidate population concerns by associating them with infamous sources, while ignoring unimpeachable ones like the IPCC.

While Malthus’ doomism and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb failed to foresee new agricultural technologies that averted the famine and population crash they predicted, population denialists make the opposite mistake.

They adhere to a cornucopian faith that technology will magically solve our problems, and assume that new low-carbon energy sources and unproven interventions like carbon capture will fix everything.

They won’t.

In fact green tech raises serious environmental and social problems of its own. Solar and wind energy and the infrastructure for transmitting the power they generate requires far more land area than fossil fuel plants, with consequences for wildlife and its habitat. Lithium-ion batteries in electric cars and e-bikes use cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by low-wage workers subjected to toxic dumping and en masse displacement.

Population deniers are rightly concerned with equitable development of the world’s impoverished regions, but development will mean more emissions, more water use, more habitat destruction.

If current trends continue, the global middle class is projected to reach 5 billion by 2030. To enable all people to attain a reasonable standard of living without further straining natural systems, we must make access to family planning for all people a matter of urgent international concern.

The good news is that doing so reaps rewards not only for the planet but for human well-being. In every culture where fertility rates have declined, even staggering government investment in pronatalist incentives is insufficient to compel women to go back to the high birth rates they have left behind – an indication that women have a latent wish for low fertility.

This suggests that the path forward lies in acknowledging both the human and environmental toll of high birth rates and resultant population growth, and giving women the universal, free access to contraceptives and abortion care that will enable them to realize their reproductive wishes.

Kirsten Stade is a conservation biologist and communications manager of the NGO Population Balance

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Parliamentarians attending the Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development Toward the 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit. Credit: APDA

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, May 9 2023 (IPS)

Parliamentarians from more than 30 countries agreed to send a strong message to the G7 Hiroshima Summit in Japan later this year, focusing on human security and support of vulnerable communities, including women, girls, youth, aging people, migrants, and indigenous people, among others.

The wide-ranging declaration also called on governments to support active political and economic participation for women and girls, enhancing and implementing legislation that addresses gender-based violence (GBV) and eradicating harmful practices like child, early, and forced marriages. During discussions and in the declaration, a clear message emerged that budgetary requirements for Universal Health Care (UHC) should be prioritized and the exceptional work done by health workers during the pandemic be recognized.

In his keynote address, Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio reminded delegates that Covid-19 had exposed the “fragility of the global health architecture and underscored the need for UHC.”

Kishida said that the central vision of the G7 Hiroshima Summit was to emphasize the importance of addressing human security – through building global health architecture, including the “governance for prevention, preparedness, and response to public health crises, including finance. We believe it is important for the G7 to actively and constructively contribute to efforts to improve international governance, secure sustainable financing and strengthen international norms.”

Apart from contributing to resilient, equitable, and sustainable UHC, health innovation was needed to promote a “more effective global ecosystem to enable rapid research and development and equitable access to infectious disease crisis medicines … and to support aging society,” Kishida said.

Former Prime Minister of Japan Fukuda Yasuo, Chair of APDA, and Honorary Chair of JPFP said this conference and its declaration would follow in a tradition of delivering strong messages to the G7 that improving reproductive health was crucial to the development and the future of a planet which now had 8 million people living on it.

“International Community is becoming increasingly confrontational and divided, and there is the emergence of a national leader who is threatening the use of nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons have been used in the nearly 80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We must work together to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, which can take many precious lives and people’s daily lives. In this instance, I would like you to search for the path toward appeasement and not division. We must keep all channels of dialogue open so as to ease tension,” Fukuda asked of the conference.

While calling on parliamentarians to work together to address challenges, Fukuda also expressed concern about the widening inequities caused by Covid-19 and climate change and noted: “This network of parliamentarians on population and development has been a vital resource for parliamentarians who share the same concern for not only their own countries but for the entire planet and future generations.”

Kamikawa Yoko, MP Japan, Chair of JPFP, said that with a world population of 8 billion, it was essential to “realize a society where no one is left behind … and Japan would share its experiences of being on the frontlines of an aging society with declining birth rates. “We are living in an aging society … and given these challenges in Japan, we will try to share with you our experience and lessons through our diplomacy while trying to deepen our discussions and exchanges to seek solutions.”

Japan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa said it was essential for all to cooperate during the “Anthropocene era, when human activities have promised to have a major impact on the global environment, global issues that transcend national borders, such as climate change, and the spread of infectious diseases, including Covid-19 are becoming more and more prevalent.”

He reminded the delegates that at the center of Japan’s economic growth post World War II was mainly through health promotion and employment policies.

Delegates of the Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development Toward the 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit agreed to send a strong message on human security to the Summit. Credit: APDA

Director of the Division for Communications and Strategic Partnerships of UNFPA, Ian McFarlane, said it was not about the “numbers of people but the rights of the people that matter. It’s not about whether we are too many or too few, but whether women and girls can decide if, when, and how many children to have.”

A recent UNFPA report indicated that nearly half of the women across the globe could not exercise their rights and choices, their bodily autonomy, and expressed hope that policies in the future continue to focus on humanity and universal human rights.

Despite being close to the 30th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), the conference heard that much still needed to be done regarding women’s rights.

New Zealand MP and co-chair of AFPPD Standing Committee on Gender Equality and Women Empowerment, Angela Warren-Clark, reminded the audience that women still only held 26 percent of parliamentarian seats globally. While women make up 70 percent of the workforce in the health sector, only 25 percent have senior leadership positions.

“It is women in this pandemic who bore the increased burden of unpaid work at home as schools were closed, and it is girls and the poorest families who were taken out of school and forced into early marriages … We believe that if women had an equal say in decision-making during the pandemic, some of these mistakes would have been avoided.”

Baroness Elizabeth Barker, MP from the United Kingdom, told parliamentarians their role was to ensure that “no person on earth, from the head of G7 country to a poor person in a village, can say that they do not know what gender equality is. And they do not know what gender violence is.”

Barker suggested they use international standards, like the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against Women, to compare countries. “And you know that if your country doesn’t come out very well, they really don’t like it.”

She pointed to two successes in the UK, including stopping virginity testing and tackling the practice of forced marriages. She also warned the delegates that there was a right-wing campaign aimed at destroying human rights gained, and they chose different battlegrounds. The overturning of abortion rights in the United States in the Roe vs. Wade case was an example, as was the anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda.

Hassan Omar, MP from Djibouti, gave a host of achievements in his country, including ensuring that women occupy 25 percent roles in politics and the state administration and the growing literacy of women numbers in his country.

Risa Hontiveros, MP Philippines, painted a bleak picture of the impact of Covid in her country.

Hontiveros said GBV increased during Covid and extended to the digital space.

“The Internet has become a breeding ground for predators and cyber criminals to prey on children, especially young women, and girls. The online sexual abuse and exploitation of children … has become so prevalent in the Philippines that we have been tagged as the global hotspot.”

In a desperate attempt to provide for their families, even parents produced “exploitative material of their own children and sold them online to pedophiles abroad.”

To address these, she filed a gender-responsive and inclusive Emergency Management Act bill, which seeks to address the gender-differentiated needs of women and girls, because they were “disproportionately affected in times of emergencies.”

Former MP from Afghanistan Khadija Elham’s testimony united many in the conference and even resulted in proposals from the floor to include a condemnation of the Taliban’s women’s policies.

Elham said GBV had increased since the Taliban took over – women were forced to wear a burqa in public, they were not allowed to work, and those who wish to “learn science or (get an) education are forced to continue their studies and hidden places like basements.”

If their secret schools are exposed, they face torture and imprisonment. During the last two months, 260 people, including 50 women, were publicly whipped – a clear violation of their human rights. Women’s representation in political life has been banned, and women are no longer allowed to work in NGOs – and it has been “550 days since women could attend high schools and universities.”

She called on the international community, the United Nations, to pressure the Taliban to restore women’s work and education rights.

Nakayama Maho, Director of the Peacebuilding Program at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, announced new research on factors contributing to men’s propensity to GBV. The research found that the higher a man’s educational attainment, the lower the level of violence. There were also lower levels of violence with “positive” masculinity – such as a man being employed, married, and capable of protecting his family. Men who experienced violence during times of conflict tended to support violence to instill discipline, or protect women and communities.

Dr Roopa Dhatt, Executive Director of Women in Global Health, summed up this critical session by saying, “Equal leadership for women in all fields is a game changer, particularly in politics and health.”

Japan’s Health, Labour and Welfare Minister, Kato Katsunobu, noted during his closing address that the G7 countries “share the recognition that investment in people is not an expense, but an investment… and as you invest in people you can create a virtuous cycle between workers well-being and social and economic activities.”

He said Japan had a lot to offer concerning aging populations.

“Japan has been promoting the establishment of a comprehensive community-based care system so that people can continue to live in their own way in their own neighborhood until the end of their lives and is in the position to provide knowledge to the G7 countries and other countries who will be facing (an aging population) in the future.”

Dr Alvaro Bermejo, Director-General of IPPF, commended the conference and said he was “thankful” that the conference declaration would tell G7 governments to set an example. “Marginalized and excluded populations are at the heart of human security and can only be achieved in solidarity, and that message from this conference is clear.”

Professor Takemi Keizo, MP Japan, Chair of AFPPD, summed up the proceeding by saying that parliamentarians as representatives of the electorate were vital to creating a “positive momentum in this global community and overcoming so many difficult issues.”

Takemi elaborated on some issues facing the world now, including climate change and military conflicts, but as parliamentarians, there was the opportunity to “build up the new basis of the global governance, which can be very beneficial.”

NOTE: Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development Toward the 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit was organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD), and the Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP).

It was supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (MOFA), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Japan Trust Fund (JTF), and Keidanren-Japan Business Federation in cooperation with the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Saima Wazed and Zain Bari Rizvi
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 31 2023 (IPS)

When is too much Autism awareness still not enough? This thought recurs every April as we near World Autism Day on April 2, and parents reach out to me after reading enthusiastic and well-meaning news and journal articles – which are actually harmful and hurtful.

Saima W. Hossain

Today, we feel our work in Bangladesh, through effective national and international partnerships with equally dedicated parents and professionals, has impacted the country. Professional training, extensive awareness activities, and inclusion in social situations are demonstrable. The best part is that parents no longer view themselves as victims punished by fate for having a child with a disability.

Despite all the efforts in educating people in the many sectors of our country, including the formulation of a detailed National Strategic Plan, it is shocking to still find blatant disregard for the truth. I have, therefore, requested a parent, a former Shuchona Foundation head of operations and now a member of our executive board, to share her thoughts. Nothing speaks the truth louder and stronger than the person who has been on the receiving end of the discriminatory, hurtful, and unethical behaviour than the parent who hears it over and over again.

Here below excerpts of what I learned from Zain Bari Rizvi

If I had a Taka (Bangladesh currency) for each time someone said: ‘But he looks so normal,’ when I share that my son is on the Autism Spectrum, I would have been able to take early retirement at a villa in the Maldives!

Zain Bari Rizvi

As I watch my feisty, opinionated and uber affectionate ASD child thrive in a typical school and social setting thanks to early childhood interventions and therapy, I shudder at the thought of what could have been our reality if I had paid heed to the photos of what Autism looks like in Bangladesh media.

I hope those reading this will take heed. Autism is a complex state of being, and no two autistics are alike. Every time I meet and spend time with someone with Autism, I am amazed at how unique, creative, and what a gift they are to the world. I want to change how we treat those we deem to be different, not change who they are.

For centuries all we have done is find creative ways to separate the majority from the minority. I hope the two years of the global pandemic will finally make us realize that when one group of people mistreat another, be it through military, financial or social power, we all suffer, not just the ones we discriminate against.

Saima Wazed Hossain is Advisor to the Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), on Mental Health and Autism. She is Chairperson, National Advisory Committee for Autism and NDDs, Bangladesh and Chairperson, Shuchona Foundation. She is a specialist in Clinical Psychology and an expert on Neurodevelopment disorders and mental health. Her efforts have led to international awareness, policy and program changes, and the adoption of three international resolutions at the United Nations and WHO.

Zain Bari Rizvi is a Board Member of Shuchona Foundation, an Operations and Finance professional who is a passionate advocate for people with Autism and a mother of two children.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

On Mar. 22, 2023, dozens of people watched a live broadcast from San José, Costa Rica, on a large screen at the University of El Salvador, in San Salvador, of the open hearing of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, listening to the testimony of witnesses in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case. The screenshot shows Beatriz's mother giving her testimony. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR , Mar 24 2023 (IPS)

An open hearing in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is raising hopes that this country and other Latin American nations might overturn or at least mitigate the severe laws that criminalize abortion.

That will happen if the Inter-American Court rules that El Salvador violated the right to health of Beatriz, as the plaintiff is known. In 2013 she sought to have her pregnancy terminated because it was high risk and her life was in danger."I hope that in the end my daughter's name will be vindicated, and that what happened to her will not happen again to any other woman.” -- Beatriz´s mother

But she was not given an abortion, only a tardy cesarean section, which affected her already deteriorated health and, according to the plaintiffs, eventually led to her death in October 2017.

The hearing on the emblematic case was held Mar. 22-23 at the Inter-American Court in San José, Costa Rica. Beatriz’s case builds on similar ones: the cases of Manuela, also from El Salvador, Esperanza from the Dominican Republic, and Amelia from Nicaragua.

The seven judges heard the arguments of the plaintiffs, the representatives of the Salvadoran State and the witnesses on both sides.

After the hearing, the parties have 30 days to deliver their written arguments and the magistrates will then take several months to debate and reach a resolution.

The open hearing held by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is the first time that the complete ban on abortion has been tried, and the verdict will have implications for Latin America, a region that is especially restrictive in terms of women’s sexual and reproductive rights. CREDIT: Inter-American Court of Human Rights

A historic case

“I hope that in the end my daughter’s name will be vindicated, and that what happened to her will not happen again to any other woman,” Beatriz’s mother said when testifying on the stand. Her name was not revealed in court.

The hearing has drawn international attention because it is considered historic for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in a region that is especially restrictive with regard to the practice of abortion.

“This will be the first case where the Court will rule on the absolute prohibition of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, particularly regarding the risk to health and when the fetus is nonviable,” Julissa Mantilla Falcón, from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), told the Inter-American Court.

Beatriz turned to the IACHR when the Constitutional Court of El Salvador denied, on Apr. 11, 2013, her request for an abortion.

On Apr. 19, the IACHR issued a precautionary measure in favor of Beatriz, and on May 27, 2013, it asked the Inter-American Court to adopt provisional measures which would be binding on the State.

In its November 2020 Merits Report, the IACHR established that the Salvadoran State was responsible for the disproportionate impact on various rights of Beatriz, by failing to provide her with timely medical treatment due to the laws that criminalize abortion.

The IACHR identified the disproportionate impact of this legislation on Salvadoran women and girls, especially the poor.

The Commission stated that it did not expect full compliance by the State with the recommendations of the report, and therefore referred the case to the Inter-American Court, which now, ten years later, is a few months away from handing down a resolution.

Anabel Recinos, from the Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, one of the Salvadoran organizations that are co-plaintiffs in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case, hopes that the Inter-American Court sentence will set a legal precedent and pave the way for the modification of the 1998 law criminalizing abortion under any circumstances in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

For her part, Anabel Recinos, from the Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, one of the Salvadoran organizations that are co-plaintiffs in the case, told IPS that she hopes that the Inter-American Court ruling will set a new precedent.

She said her hope is that the court will rule that laws in El Salvador and the region banning abortion under all circumstances must be modified.

In addition to El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are the countries in the region where abortion is completely prohibited in their penal codes. It is only legal in five countries in Latin America, while it is allowed only in strict circumstances in the rest.

“Or at least it should be allowed for specific reasons or exceptions, such as safeguarding health and life, or the incompatibility of the fetus’s life outside the womb,” Recinos said.

Twenty Latin American and Caribbean countries recognize the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname and Uruguay.

The IACHR and the Court make up the inter-American human rights system. They are independent bodies and in the case of the Court the sentences are final and binding, although they are not always enforced.

Recinos spoke to IPS at the University of El Salvador, in the country’s capital, where dozens of people gathered to watch the hearing, broadcast live from San José, on a large screen.

The activist added that it is likely that the Court will rule against the Salvadoran State, backing the IACHR’s conclusions.

The Court is made up of judges Ricardo Pérez Manrique (Uruguay), Humberto Sierra Porto (Colombia), Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor (Mexico), Rodrigo Mudrovitsch (Brazil), Nancy Hernández López (Colombia) and Verónica Gómez (Argentina).

In March 2003, Beatriz requested an abortion during her second pregnancy, because she suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy organs, and preeclampsia, a dangerous increase in blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as other health problems.

In other words, her life was at risk. In addition, the fetus had malformations and would not live long at birth.

However, the medical personnel, although they were aware that an abortion was indicated to save Beatriz’s life, did not carry it out due to the fear of prosecution.

Beatriz was forced to continue with a pregnancy that continued to harm her health as the days went by.

But after the Inter-American Court granted provisional measures, Beatriz underwent a cesarean section on Jun. 3, 2013, almost three months after requesting an abortion.

The child, who was born with anencephaly, missing parts of the brain and skull, died just five hours later.

Activists for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in El Salvador demonstrate on Mar. 22 outside the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica, during the hearing for the emblematic case of Beatriz v. El Salvador. Many carried green balloons, whose color is a symbol of the fight for the right to abortion in Latin America. CREDIT: Collaborating Organizations

Misogyny on the part of the State

Since 1998 El Salvador, this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, has been the most drastic in the region in the persecution of abortion, punishing women who terminate their pregnancies with sentences of up to 30 years, in all cases, even when the life and health of the pregnant woman is at risk or in cases of rape.

The legislation mainly affects poor women in rural areas. According to data from women’s rights organizations, 181 such cases have been prosecuted since 2019.

Guillermo Ortiz, a gynecologist and obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, testified before the Inter-American Court: “Yes, I saw many women die because they did not have access to a safe abortion, despite my having requested it.”

In her testimony, Beatriz’s mother said that the many doctors who treated her daughter had recommended that the pregnancy be terminated, but did not dare to perform an abortion or c-section to remove the fetus, for fear of going to prison.

“They told my daughter that they couldn’t, because in El Salvador it’s a crime, and if they did, they could go to jail,” said the mother.

“The State failed Beatriz twice,” said the mother, before breaking down in tears.

She was referring to the failure to carry out an abortion promptly, despite her daughter’s serious health conditions. She also was talking about a motorcycle accident that the 22-year-old suffered later.

“She had an accident that shouldn’t have been fatal, she was in stable condition” when she was admitted to the hospital in Jiquilisco, a municipality in the eastern department of Usulután.

But a storm caused a flood in some parts of the hospital, so they transferred her to the hospital in Usulután, the capital of the department.

“The doctor who treated her there didn’t even know what lupus was,” she said. In the hospital, Beatriz caught pneumonia.

The mother’s testimony and that of the other witnesses at the hearing has been closely followed in El Salvador and other nations by feminist and human rights organizations that have been monitoring and criticizing the country’s strict anti-abortion law.

Women in the health and care sector face a larger gender pay gap than in other economic sectors, earning on average of 24 per cent less than peers who are men, according to a joint report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Credit: ILOGENEVA (ILO News)

By Roopa Dhatt and Ebere Okereke
WASHINGTON DC / LONDON, Mar 16 2023 (IPS)

Women health workers are more than two thirds of the health workforce and represent 90% of the world’s frontline health workers, yet hold less than a quarter of senior leadership roles – a situation which is unfair and a significant risk for global health security.

Despite five years of ad hoc commitments, our new report The State of Women and Leadership in Global Health shows few and isolated gains, while overall progress on women’s representation in global health governance has remained largely unchanged.

The report, launched on March 16, assessed global data together with deep dives into country case studies from India, Nigeria and Kenya. It found that women lost significant ground in health leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Women in Global Health study calculated that 85% of 115 national COVID-19 task forces had majority male membership. At global level, during the World Health Organisation’s Executive Board meeting in January 2022 just 6% of government delegations were led by women (down from a high point of 32% in 2020).

It appears that during emergencies like the pandemic, outdated gender stereotypes resurface with men seen as ‘natural leaders’.

A key and disturbing finding in the report was that women belonging to a socially marginalized race, class, caste, age, ability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or with migrant status, face far greater barriers to accessing and retaining formal leadership positions in health.

Without women from diverse backgrounds in decision-making positions, health programs lack insight and professional experience from the women health workers who largely deliver the health systems in their countries.

Expanding the representation of diverse leaders in health is not just a matter of fairness, it also contributes to better decision-making by bringing in a wider range of knowledge, talent and perspectives.

Further, the report shows there is a ‘broken pipeline’ between women working in national health systems and those working in global health. As long as men are the majority of health leaders at national level and systemic bias against women continues, the global health leadership pipeline will continue to funnel more men into positions with global decision-making power.

The issues women face in national health systems are then reproduced at the global level where women are excluded from political processes and marginalized from the most senior appointments.

A deep dive of case studies in India, Nigeria and Kenya confirms that women are held back from health leadership by cultural gender norms, discrimination and ineffectual policies which don’t redress historic inequalities.

The similarities in the barriers faced by women health workers from very different socio-economic and cultural contexts are marked, indicating widespread systemic bias right across the global health workforce.

The consequences of locking women out of leadership represents a moral and justice issue, and also a strategic loss to the health sector. Through the pandemic, we saw how safe maternity and sexual and reproductive health services were deprioritized and removed from essential services in some countries, with catastrophic consequences for women and girls.

We saw women health workers unpaid or underpaid, and we saw dangerous conditions escalate as community health workers were sent to enforce lockdown, do contact tracing or provide services in unsafe conditions with no forethought given to providing security.

The findings of our report show that systemic change goes beyond numbers in gender parity leadership. What is needed is a transformative framework for action involving all genders from institutional, to national and global level.

Recommendations to drive transformative approaches include:

● Men must ‘lean out’ and become visible role models in challenging stereotypes to make way for qualified women
● Normalization of paternity leave to shift gender norms and reduce the burden of care of women
● Governments taking targeted actions to fast track the number of diverse women in health leadership roles through quotas and all-women shortlists, particularly for senior global health leadership roles that have never been held by a woman
● Institutions must be intentional about creating and maintaining a pipeline for women to move into leadership
● Measurable actions such as mentorship, shadowing / pairing and deputizing opportunities should be created and monitored to ensure women are visible for promotion opportunities
● A zero tolerance of discrimination towards pregnancy
● Supported flexible working options for all parents and carers

Investing in women is not only the right thing to do, but it also makes good business sense. When we get it right, we can unlock a “triple gender dividend in health” that includes more resilient health systems, improved economic welfare for families and communities, and progress towards gender equality.

The lessons of the pandemic have taught us much about the value of the health workforce and even more about the value of health workers. They are mostly women. It’s time for them to take their rightful roles in leadership.

Dr Roopa Dhatt is Executive Director and Co-Founder Women in Global Health, Washington, DC and Dr Ebere Okereke is Snr Health Adviser Tony Blair Institute London & incoming CEO Africa Public Health Foundation, Nairobi

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Benson Musyoka rides his motorcycle from Kamboo health centre to transport vaccines to Yindalani village. Photo Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Mar 13 2023 (IPS)

Up until 2019, nurses in three health facilities located in the semi-arid south-eastern Kenya region of Makueni County struggled to bring critical health services closer to a hard-to-reach population scattered across three remote, far-flung villages.

“Kamboo, Yindalani and Yiuma Mavui villages are located 17 and 28 kilometres away from Makindu sub-county hospital, and 10 and 22 kilometres away from the nearest electricity grid,” Benson Musyoka, the nurse in charge of Ndalani dispensary in Yindalani village tells IPS.

Without a cold chain capacity to store vital vaccines and drugs, health facilities records show vaccination coverage across these villages was well below 25 percent.

Babies were delivered at home because mothers could not raise 6 to 12 USDs to hire a boda boda or motorbike taxi, which is the only means of transportation in the area. Others could not reach the hospital in time to deliver.

“Every morning, I would collect vaccines at Makindu sub-county hospital and transport them inside a vaccine carrier box to Ndalani dispensary. Once the vaccines are inside the carrier box, they are only viable for up to six hours, at which point whatever doses will have remained unused must be returned to storage at Makindu sub-county hospital for refrigeration or thrown away,” Musyoka expounds.

In February 2019, a groundbreaking donation of a solar-powered freezer to the Kamboo health centre significantly improved availability and access to vaccinations as well as maternal health services across the three villages and surrounding areas.

Francis Muli, the nurse in charge of Kamboo health centre, tells IPS that without a fridge or freezer, “you cannot stock Oxytocin, and without Oxytocin, you cannot provide labour and delivery services.”

He says it would be extremely dangerous to do so because Oxytocin is injected into all mothers immediately after delivery to prevent postpartum haemorrhage. Oxytocin is also used to induce labour.

As recommended by the World Health Organization, Oxytocin is the gold standard for preventing postpartum haemorrhage and is central to Kenya’s ambitious goal to achieve zero preventable maternal deaths.

In 2017, the Ministry of Health identified sub-standard care in 9 out of 10 maternal deaths owing to postpartum haemorrhage. Overall, postpartum haemorrhage accounts for 25 percent of maternal deaths in this East African nation.

Usungu dispensary and Ndalani dispensary are each located 10 kilometres away from Kamboo health centre in different directions. Nurses in charge of the facilities no longer make the long journey of 28 kilometres to and another 28 kilometres from Makindu to collect and return unused vaccine doses on vaccination days.

“We collect vaccine doses from Makindu sub-county hospital at the beginning of the month and store them in the freezer at Kamboo health centre. The freezer is large enough to store thousands of various vaccine doses collected from the sub-county hospital for all three facilities,” says Antony Matali, the nurse in charge of Usungu dispensary in Yiuma Mavui village.

Two to three times a week, Matali and Musyoka collect doses of various vaccines, including all standard routine immunization vaccines, with the exception of Yellow Fever. The vaccines are transported to their respective dispensaries in a carrier box that can hold up to 500 doses of different vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccines. All three facilities have recorded significant improvement in immunization coverage from a low of 25 percent.

At Kamboo health centre, where the freezer is domiciled, records show measles immunization rate has surpassed the target of 100 percent to include additional clients outside the catchment population area of 4,560 people. Overall immunization coverage is at 95 percent, well above the government target of 90 percent.

At Ndalani dispensary, the immunization rate for measles has also surpassed the target of 100 percent as additional patients, or transit patients from four surrounding villages and neighbouring Kitui County, receive services at the dispensary. The overall vaccination rate for all standard vaccines is 50 to 65 percent.

In the Usungu dispensary, the vaccination rate for measles is at 75 percent, and for other vaccines, coverage is hovering at the 50 percent mark.

“Usungu and Ndalani have not reached the 90 percent mark because we suffer from both missed opportunities and dropouts. Missed opportunities are patients who drop by a facility seeking a service and find that it is not available at that very moment. Dropouts are those who feel inconvenienced if they do not find what they need in their subsequent visits, so they drop out along the way,” Musyoka explains.

A cold chain or storage facility such as the solar-powered freezer, Muli says, is the cornerstone of any primary health unit in cash-strapped rural settings, and all services related to mother and child are the pillars of any health facility. Without these services, he emphasizes, all you have is brick and mortar.

“At Usungu and Ndalani, we are currently not offering labour and delivery services because we do not have Oxytocin in the facility at all times due to lack of storage, and we cannot carry it around in the hope that a delivery will materialize that day due to the six-hour time limit,” Musyoka expounds.

Still, pregnant women receive the standard tetanus jabs and all other prenatal services, but close to the delivery period, Ndalani and Usungu refer the women to the Kamboo health centre and follow-up to ensure that they receive referred services. Facility records show zero infant and maternal mortality.

Annually, the Ministry of Health targets to vaccinate at least 1.5 million children against vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, polio, tuberculosis, diarrhoea and pneumonia. Currently, one in six children under one year does not complete their scheduled vaccines.

Only one in two children below two years have received the second jab of Measles-Rubella, and only one in three girls aged 10 have received two doses of the HPV vaccine which protects against cervical cancer.

Ongoing efforts are helping address these gaps. For instance, the HPV vaccine was introduced in Makueni in March 2021. Musyoka vaccinated 46 girls aged 10 years with the two doses of HPV vaccine in 2021, and another 17 girls received their first HPV dose in 2022 and are due for the second dose in November 2022.

Healthcare providers say the freezer has transformed the delivery of mother and child services in the area by bringing critical immunization services closer to a marginalized and highly vulnerable community.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (6-17 March) gets underway at UN headquarters in New York . Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Dana Abed
BEIRUT, Mar 10 2023 (IPS)

This month, government and civil society organization representatives gathered in New York for the United Nations’ 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to discuss technology as a tool to facilitate access to education for women and girls.

But what should have been discussed were the basic issues of gender equality in education. As more than 85% of the world is living under austerity, and with 70% of countries cutting funding to education services, access to education for women and girls is being devastated by the lack of public funding.

The gap between boys and girls when it comes to school enrolment continues to be major, and quite concerning. Data consistently shows – particularly in low- and middle- income countries – that girls from poor families are the children most likely to be, and remain, out of school.

And the cost of education is one of the main barriers for access – which raises the question of affordability when it comes to technological integration.

While technological innovation has the potential to support instruction and education governance, we cannot turn a blind eye to the reality of digital inequality, the possibility of increased fees, and the privatization of education.

That is on top of the existing risks that are associated with the use of technology, including online violence and abuse and the lack of digital protection for girls, further locking girls out of their rights to education.

Austerity measures, public funding cuts, and privatization severely limit the goal of universal education. In a report published last November, Oxfam found that austerity is a form of gender-based violence.

And during CSW67, we emphasized that access to public and quality education is fundamental to gender equality and the realization of the rights of women and girls.

Oxfam does not claim that austerity measures are designed to hurt women and girls, but as policy makers design those policies, they tend to ignore the specific needs of women and girls and turn a blind eye to the disproportionate impact that those policies have on our communities.

We’ve reached this conclusion by gathering evidence from around the world, which showed that governments do not prioritize the needs to women and girls. For instance, more than 54% of the countries planning to cut their social protection budget in 2023 have minimal or no maternity and child support.

In their misguided attempts to balance their books against a looming global economic crisis, governments are treating women and girls as expendable. Women, particularly those from marginalized racial, ethnic, caste, and age groups, are inherently discriminated against when it comes to economic and social opportunities and accessing available public resources. Additional cuts to inequality-combatting public services mean these groups are the hardest hit.

Cuts to both the public wage bill and public health and social protection services – measures that women and their families rely on for survival – mean that women and girls bear the brunt of this austerity because health, education, feeding the family, paying the bills, caring for children and elderly all fall most heavily onto them.

For example, cutting wages in the public work force – especially in sectors like health where women represent 90% of the workforce or education where they represent 64% of the workforce – will directly impact job security.

We must resist austerity and should instead be taxing the wealthiest corporations and people properly. A progressive tax on the world’s millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.1 trillion more than the savings that governments are currently planning to make through their austerity cuts.

With such funding, governments could adopt feminist budgeting across all sectors that put women and girls in all their diversity at the heart of policy making, including ensuring access to quality, and public education.

Feminist movements have for years pushed for bold alternatives to our neo-liberal, capital-oriented economies, and Oxfam raises its voice with them. The integration of technology in education must be looked at from an intersectional lens, taking into consideration barriers to access for girls and low- and middle-income countries, and should not come with an additional cost to the education bill.

We need to stand in solidarity with the women’s rights and feminist movements in demanding that our leaders stop peddling the gender-based violence of austerity as the solution and support more feminist progressive representation beyond identity politics.

We must resist creating societies that prioritize the needs of the most privileged at the expense of everyone else – and instead work to create communities and policies that reflect our diverse backgrounds and identities.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Children are assessed for malnutrition at an IDP camp in Borno State, Nigeria. Credit: WFP/Arete/Siegfried Modola

By Vidya Diwakar
BRIGHTON, UK, Mar 9 2023 (IPS)

This year marks the halfway point— eight years in and eight years out— of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty and reduce inequalities.

Yet we are a long way off from these commitments, and multiple crises – now known as ‘polycrisis’ – such as conflict, disaster and extreme poverty are converging on low income and lower-middle income countries, necessitating systemic change in our poverty eradication efforts.

The scale of the challenge before us is undeniable. Poverty has long been concentrated in certain low- and lower middle-income countries that continue to experience conflict and a high number of conflict related fatalities, and high numbers of people affected by disasters from earthquakes, to floods, fires or drought.

These are just two causes of impoverishment and chronic poverty, which often combine with other crises and shocks including ill health.

This isn’t just a concern, however, at the country level. The challenge we are increasingly facing because of polycrisis in many parts of the world is that inequalities within countries are also worsening. The complex and often multi-layered nature of today’s crises means that policymakers need to develop longer term solutions, instead of firefighting crises as they emerge.

Our work at the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN) in Afghanistan saw that the pandemic, layered with the transition in power, drought, and heightened economic crises, all combined to drive poverty and a dramatic increase in hunger.

Its consequences were especially worrying for certain groups, not least women and girls, and with intergenerational consequences.

In Nigeria, research points to a confluence of hardships over the years experienced by the poorest populations due to sequenced, interdependent crises. The poorest households pre-pandemic were more likely to experience hunger and sell agricultural and non-agricultural assets to cope during COVID-19 in 2020.

As time went on they were also more likely to pay more than the official price for petrol in 2022 during rampant economic crisis, and to expect drought and delayed rains to negatively affect them financially into 2023.

Yet despite interconnected crises, most governments and international agencies respond to each disaster individually as it arises. This could limit the effectiveness of poverty eradication interventions or create additional sources of risk and vulnerability amidst polycrisis.

For example, the singular focus of many countries responding to COVID-19 often diverted resources from other interventions including peacebuilding operations, thereby allowing new conflict risks to arise.

Working ‘in’ and ‘on’ polycrisis: centring equity and risk

To reach the goal of poverty eradication and reducing extreme inequities, it is critical to respond in a way is sensitive to working in places experiencing polycrisis. This requires at a minimum upholding principles of ‘do no harm’ and being sensitive to local conditions and contexts.

At the same time, we need to find ways of proactively working on polycrisis, by responding to multiple crises simultaneously rather than one at a time. In other words, building on learning from conflict contexts, we need to be working in and on polycrisis in the road to zero poverty.

Many countries worked ‘in’ polycrisis when responding to climate-related disasters during COVID-19. For example, the Bangladesh government adapted its Cyclone Preparedness Plan through various actions including modifying dissemination of messaging through public announcements and digital modalities, and combining early warning messaging with COVID-19 prevention and protection messaging.

Afghanistan disaggregates needs by sector, severity, location, and population groups in its humanitarian needs overview, which when considered holistically can help ensure responses that prioritise benefiting people in poverty.

There are equally important lessons from working ‘on’ polycrisis. The World Food Programme’s operational plan in response to COVID-19 was regularly updated to consider evolving layered crises and support pre-emptive action, scale-up direct food assistance, and reinforce safety nets.

There are also examples we can draw on for reducing poverty from around localised decision making, relying on the knowledge that local communities, women’s rights organisations, and local disaster risk management agencies have about populations in the areas in which they operate.

Flexibility in funding is important in this process to be able to respond to rapidly changing contexts and needs.

Working ‘in’ and ‘on’ polycrisis together necessitates matrix thinking, rebooting and recasting what we know of complexity of intersectionality. While we previously recognised intersecting inequalities primarily by identity markers, such as gender, caste, and socio-economic status, we need to increasingly be aware of how inequalities of people and place converge over time, and how we might centre equity in risk-informed responses.

This requires a fundamental shift from single-issue technocratic approaches to crisis management. For example, though social protection – direct financial assistance for people – was heralded as a key mitigation measure during COVID-19 and in response to recent food and energy price inflation, most cash transfer programmes averaged just four to five months during the pandemic.

Social protection could be adjusted to increasingly target the vulnerable as well as people in poverty, and within those categories the people who have arguably been most disadvantaged by these crises. Recovery programmes by governments and international agencies also need to go on for longer than they typically do to build people’s resilience in times of uncertainty.

Disaster-risk management agencies within government could also consistently integrate conflict considerations in their activities. There are examples of anticipatory action such as early warning systems that draw on local, customary knowledge that could be built on in this process.

Investments in coordination between disaster risk, social protection, and peacebuilding agencies, as well as multilateralism between governments, civil society, and international organisations more broadly are needed to anticipate and adapt to systemic risk.

But this risk-informed development will only get us so far, if equity is not centred alongside risk management. Just as crises are increasingly layered and interdependent, we need to similarly integrate our responses to break the link between polycrisis and poverty.

Vidya Diwakar is Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and Deputy Director, Chronic Poverty Advisory Network

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: Canva via UNESCO

By Giulia Ribeiro Barao and Bosen Lily Liu
PARIS, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

In September 2020, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action for women’s rights celebrated its 25th anniversary. It was, however, a bittersweet commemoration, mixing joy for the progress in gender equality achieved since 1995, and the stark realization about the multidimensional gaps awaiting tackling and the new divides brought by the social consequences of COVID-19.

In 2021, UNESCO projected that 11 million girls were at risk of not returning to school after the education interruptions caused by the pandemic. Even though the educational disruption accelerated the way into innovative learning practices, including distance and online education, it was not an equal reality for all social groups, since those already marginalized were also overrepresented in the offline population, including girls and women, and especially those living in poverty and rural communities (ECOSOC, 2021).

In 2020, worldwide, 57 percent of women used the Internet, compared with 62 per cent of men (ECOSOC, 2021). In the least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), Africa, and the Arab States, the gender gap in internet use remains more significant.

For instance, in LDCs, only 19 per cent of women are using the internet, which is 12 percentage points lower than men. Similarly, in Africa, 24 per cent of women use the internet compared to 35 per cent of men, while in the Arab States, the Internet usage rate is 56 per cent, compared to 68 per cent of men.

Girls and women who are kept without access to Internet and digital literacy will not benefit from the technological revolution that is currently transforming all areas of life, most centrally the educational sector and the job markets.

Even though innovation and technology for girls and women’s education is undoubtedly a critical topic in the contemporary scenario, we should notice that innovation itself extends beyond the boundaries of the digital world.

To further explore the field of innovation in education, the UNESCO Young People on Transforming Education Project (YPTEP) focuses on innovative learning practices – technological or non-technological tools and techniques – initiated and led by learners themselves for meaningful and transformative engagement in their own educational journeys.

One highlight of the project is on understanding the gender-responsive practices from girls and women.

Girls and women worldwide have long been innovative in fighting gender barriers and creating self-initiative and community strategies to accessing learning even when excluded from Internet access and other forms of innovation.

A female leader who creates a finance course for mothers, while providing turns of collective care for their children, is innovating in education. A girl who creates a book club with her friends to read and debate publications on feminism is innovating in education.

Women in STEM, taking part in research and development groups, although still underrepresented, are innovating in education.

So, here we are – right at the crossroad where education, innovation and gender inequalities meet. Not paying attention to those issues will only aggravate previous gaps, hampering the advancement of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

To contribute to this debate and pathways for solutions, the UNESCO team of Young People on Transforming Education Project (YPTEP) at UNESCO IESALC hosted a Fireside Chat on “Women and girls, innovation, and higher education” on 6 March 2023 to reunite women and girls from different countries and regions and celebrate their success not only to overcome challenges, but also to become changemakers in the field.

During the chat, we had the opportunity to engage with ten female storytellers who shared their stories on innovative learning and expand our understanding of innovation, creativity, and transformation in education.

Stories approached, in a broader sense, innovative paths in getting access to higher education; innovative learning practices to get through education and achieve learning goals; innovative tools and techniques that have enhanced their experiences as learners both inside and outside the classroom; and studying and working initiatives to design new technology and broader forms of innovation for education.

Participation in the Fireside Chat is also open and expected from all those who wish to share their experiences on innovative learning and higher education. We have organized interactive activities and will have “open chatbox” and “open mic” for anyone who are willing to present yourselves typing and tell your stories live.

References
Global Education Monitoring Report Team & UNESCO. (2021). #HerEducationOurFuture: keeping girls in the picture during and after the COVID-19 crisis; the latest facts on gender equality in education [Programme and meeting document, ED/GEM/MRT/2021/FS/G/1/REV.3]. UNESCO.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Credit: Equality Now, Millicent Kwambai

By S. Mona Sinha
NEW YORK, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

The internet has a pivotal role to play in empowering women and girls across Africa, but preexisting forms of gender discrimination and marginalization are underpinning a widening digital gender divide.

The root causes preventing millions from getting online need to be urgently addressed, because until we close the technology gap, longstanding gender inequalities will be exacerbated, and new expressions of discrimination will manifest.

More women are coming online, but progress is slow

In a speech to the UN General Assembly for International Women’s Day 2023, UN Secretary General António Guterres spoke about how “centuries of patriarchy, discrimination, and harmful stereotypes have created a huge gender gap in science and technology.”

Warning that “gender equality is growing more distant” and will take 300 years to achieve on the current trajectory, the Secretary General called on governments, civil society, and the private sector to work collectively to bridge the digital gender divide.

ITU estimates that in 2022, 66% of the world’s population used the internet. This is a 24% increase since 2019, with 1.1 billion more people coming online. Despite this substantial uptake, 2.7 billion people remain offline – the majority of whom are female.

According to GSMA’s Mobile Gender Gap Report 2022, mobile phones are the primary way people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) access the internet, accounting for 85% of broadband connections in 2021.

But over 1.7 billion women do not own a mobile phone, and women globally are 14% less likely to have one than men, with the largest disparities in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Worryingly, GSMA found that globally the gender gap in mobile internet use has worsened from 15% in 2020 to 16% in 2021. And although women’s uptake of mobile internet in LMICs continues to grow, adoption has slowed, with just 59 million women coming online in 2021 compared to 110 million the previous year.

This significant shortfall means many women and girls are missing out on the benefits of digital, social, and financial inclusion, and this is especially acute amongst those burdened with intersectional discrimination linked to characteristics like race, caste, religion, poverty, and disability.

Smartphones are key to connectivity

Smartphone ownership offers life-changing connectivity by opening portals to crucial resources, markets, and services for education, healthcare, business, and finance. Providing important and timely information that might otherwise be hard to obtain, handsets are a vehicle for formal and informal learning and enable social and civic networking and participation.

According to the UN, over 90% of jobs worldwide now have a digital component. Digital literacy expands a person’s employment and economic prospects and facilitates greater earning potential. Without digital adoption and use, women have fewer employment opportunities and face additional barriers to workforce participation.

Unequal access to the digital realm is undermining women’s economic independence, financial prospects, and decision-making power. It limits their life chances, increases their risk of gender-based violence and exploitation, and makes it harder to escape abusive situations or obtain justice when rights have been violated.

Barriers to internet access faced by women and girls

For many women and girls in the Global South, low literacy and digital skills are major barriers to phone ownership and use. They are more likely to live in poverty and have less schooling, and this translates into underconfidence in utilizing technology. A Web Foundation study found that women are 1.6 times more likely than men to report a lack of skills as a block to internet use.

Language exclusion is also a challenge. Nine in ten users in Africa have to switch to a second, often European colonial language, to use apps and websites, while over half of the world’s 7,151 languages have no digital footprint – effectively shutting out those who only speak local dialects.

To overcome this, more local language internet services and operating systems are required, alongside video content tailored to women’s contexts and needs.

Another hurdle is money. Global Digital Inclusion Partnership estimates that for 2.5 billion people, buying the cheapest available smartphones would cost over 30% of their monthly income. For many women, this is unaffordable, particularly as they are more likely to have lower earnings.

Mobile data is a burdensome cost, partly because of exorbitant pricing. African countries have some of the world’s most expensive data due to issues such as high taxation in the telecom industry, and unavailability of infrastructure. Coming top on the continent is Equatorial Guinea, where one gigabyte can be a whopping $49.67.

Only half of the 1.1 billion people in the Least Developed Countries have access to electricity – 13% of the global population – and many more face regular disruptions to energy supplies, making it harder to keep devices charged.

Especially in rural and remote locations, reliable and affordable electricity is limited or absent. With over half of Africa’s women living in rural areas, energy scarcity too has a gender dimension.

Strengthening online safety

Harmful social norms in the offline world impede women’s and girls’ access to and experiences of the digital domain. Gender stereotypes and power hierarchies within households can result in males having priority over using digital tools.

Some communities view the internet as posing a risk to the traditional social order, with male family members acting as gatekeepers that control and monitor female access to devices and the internet.

Safety concerns also discourage online engagement, and not without cause. A report by Equality Now found that governments are failing to effectively address an alarming increase in online sexual exploitation and abuse of women and girls because national and international laws are not keeping up with advances in technology and cybercrime, leaving perpetrators unpunished.

Governments need to urgently review and update legislation and policies, and implement comprehensive laws that clearly specify the legal responsibilities that digital service providers have to people using their platforms, and for the content posted on their sites.

Equality Now and Women Leading in AI have launched the Alliance on Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi), a global campaign calling for “the adoption of a universal digital rights framework, rooted in human rights law and underpinned by an intersectional feminist, anti-discrimination analysis.”

AUDRi has produced a set of Digital Principles that articulate how human rights should be applied to the digital sphere, with binding agreements buttressing these rights so that governments and the private sector can be held more accountable.

Strengthening digital inclusion for women and girls in Africa is crucial to upending harmful gender norms and stereotypes, and preventing backsliding on women’s rights. Across the continent, digital technologies must be better harnessed to accelerate progress towards closing the gender equality gap.

To achieve this, state institutions, policy-makers, industry, and civil society have to collaborate to understand and eliminate the root causes hindering women’s and girls’ digital participation, and enact universal legal protections that foster a safe, inclusive, accessible online world for all.

For media inquiries please contact: Tara Carey, Equality Now Global Head of Media, E: tcarey@equalitynow.org; M: +447971556340 (WhatsApp)

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Mahfudha Abdullahi Hajji is the second woman ever to be elected to a non-affirmative action political seat after renowned gender advocate Sophia Abdi made history by being elected Ijara MP, Garissa County, in 2017. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

Low literacy levels, a high prevalence of outlawed Female Genital Mutilation, early marriages, forced marriages, low contraceptive usage, multiple births, as well as high maternal, infant and child deaths, define the life of a woman in Kenya’s vast North Eastern region.

Here, women are to be seen and not heard – as life is organized around the all-powerful male-dominated clan and sub-clan system.

But as Kenya marks International Women’s Day, a once-in-a-year opportunity to assess the place of women in their respective countries and communities, Mahfudha Abdullahi Hajji has shown that a male-dominated system in a highly patriarchal society is not impenetrable.

“I vied for the Member of County Assembly (MCA) position in Ademasajida Ward, Wajir County, in 2013 and 2017 on the Orange Democratic Movement, the biggest political party in Kenya, but I was rigged out because I am a woman,” she says.

Hajji says she fell victim to negotiated democracy. A political euphemism for unchallenged leadership where clans negotiate and share political positions long before a single ballot is cast. On the day of the general election, the informal agreement is formalized.

In a region where women are equated to children and are expected to defer to their sons, clans are neither eager to be led by a woman nor front a woman for political leadership. As such, processes to deliver negotiated democracy do not prioritize women’s issues, least of all their inclusion.

“The absence of women in politics means that women are also absent where resources are shared. A woman can set budgetary allocations that are in line with the challenges facing us. Being represented by one of us is very important,” Habiba Mohamed Situpia, a retired teacher in Wajir County, tells IPS.

Abdirashid Jelle, the Sultna of Degodia Council of Elders, speaks of the challenge of women not being able to make decisions about their lives, “and then their lack of participation in politics, and this is dictated by clanism. Women have always been invisible in these clans, and this means we do not expect them to talk where it matters.”

For politically ambitious women like Hajji, as she found out in the last 10 years, there is no happy ending in contesting for a political seat without blessings from leaders of the Council of Elders or Sultnas, as they are all male.

Against this backdrop, women in Wajir County, which alongside Mandera and Garissa Counties constitute the expansive North Eastern region, formed the first-ever Women Council of Elders. The first such council in the entire region to enable them to negotiate with the Sultnas and other religious leaders toward the empowerment of women and girls.

“We first approached the Sultnas to make it very clear that the women’s council was not in competition or opposition to the traditional system. We spoke about how the world is changing, and we needed to change with it. We said that where women are left behind, the entire community lags behind,” Situpia explains.

In the beginning, she says, Sultnas in urban areas were more receptive compared to those in remote rural areas. In the end, the Wajir Woman Council of Elders was formed in 2020.

Kheria Kassim, one of the founding members of Wajir Council of Elders, tells IPS, “there is no resistance towards us because we concern ourselves with issues that hold us back. We want all our children to go to school and have an opportunity to make a living.”

“We are saying that as daughters, wives, and sisters of these Sultnas when we are left behind, the entire community falls behind other communities where women are more empowered.”

A few months before the 2022 general elections, Kassim says Hajji was already been referred to as a ‘mheshimiwa’ – Swahili for an honourable member of parliament.

“The Sultnas had finally agreed to support her. With their blessings, we all knew way before the general elections that she would win the MCA seat, and she did. Something that no woman has ever done in the whole of North Eastern region,” she says.

Hajji is the second woman ever to be elected to a non-affirmative action political seat after renowned gender advocate Sophia Abdi made history by being elected Ijara MP, Garissa County, in 2017.

Additionally, Situpia says the Women’s Council of Elders has made notable steps towards addressing Violence against Women and Girls, rampart in the strongly patriarchal community where the subjugation of women is normalized.

Even in such serious cases of rape or defilement, there is a preference for Maslaah and strong resistance to these cases being heard through formal judicial processes. Maslaah is a male-dominated, male-friendly traditional system akin to a kangaroo court and will, at best, confer a small fine to perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence.

“Today, it is very rare to find Sultnas dealing with sexual violence cases. We now work closely with Wajir Central police station and police officers in all six sub-counties in Wajir County to ensure that offenders are taken to court. It is also a way to warn potential offenders that they will experience the full force of the law,” Kassim expounds.

More so, a number of women have been absorbed into the male Council of Elders through the endorsement of the Sultnas.

“I belong to the sub-clan of the Degodia Council of Elders in Wajir; we are two women and six men. We sit together and consult as equals. Something that was unheard of before,” says Safi Abdullahi Adan, a senior member of the Women Council of Elders.

She further says that the Wajir Women Council of Elders has opened membership to women outside of the County to include those in Mandera and Garissa, “we share the same culture and religion, same challenges, and there is no winning for Wajir when our sisters are left behind. We do not know how many members we have because we are growing day by day.”

As Hajji settles down in a win that is very much a milestone for other women in the North Eastern region, she represents a new dawn of more girls in school, more women in gainful employment and progressively, increased participation in critical decision-making processes.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Credit: Kyrgyz Space Program

By Achim Steiner
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tremendous power of technology and innovation has become clear to the world.
However, it has also increased exclusion, discrimination, and inequalities — especially for women and girls.

On International Women’s Day, we must re-imagine a world whereby innovation and technologies are more intentionally leveraged towards transforming our societies and economies so that resources and power are more equitably distributed.

Women and girls across the globe are anxious for this radical change, and it’s easy to understand why.

There is a growing gender digital divide and a mistaken assumption that the use of digital tools and services will simply increase with universal internet access. 95 per cent of the world’s population has access to a mobile broadband network.

Yet just one-quarter of people in lower-income countries use the internet, with 21 per cent of women in those countries online compared to 32 per cent of men. In tandem, many women and girls — especially women politicians, voters, human rights, and environmental defenders, LGBTIQ+ people, activists, feminist groups, and young women — face widespread forms of violence online, threatening their participation as well as their mental health and wellbeing.

Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator

Digital technology can nurture democracy and human rights by boosting civic engagement and political participation. That includes using behavioural science to help ensure that women can access their property rights in Syria, an effort supported by the UNDP Accelerator Lab there.

Or consider the eMonitor+ platform developed in Tunisia that uses Artificial Intelligence to identify mis/disinformation, hate speech, and violence against women around elections.

Or look to new innovations that are using solar power to capture rainwater and treat it to produce drinking water in Tanzania — allowing women and girls to avoid trekking for kilometres every day to collect water.

At a time when women and girls are denied access to education in countries such as Afghanistan, the STEM4ALL platform coordinated by UNDP and UNICEF aims to increase the representation of women and girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

This network of ‘STEMinists’ plans to expand from 34 countries to a global reach — part of much-need efforts to help ensure that women can lead our new digital societies that will drive forward everything from climate action to the restoration of our natural world.

UNDP is working with key partners like UN Women to support countries to build inclusive digital ecosystems that work for women in all their diversity, guided by our Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025 and our Digital Strategy 2022-2025.

All of us have a role to play in amplifying women’s voices; women’s participation in public life and access to justice, including through e-governance initiatives.

More efforts are also needed to tackle discrimination and violence against girls with disabilities. And digital finance will be a key means to allow women to gain full control over their finances — perhaps the most powerful means to reduce poverty and advance the Global Goals. In short, women and girls must be an intrinsic part of answering people and planet’s most pressing challenges.

Achim Steiner is Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

On International Women’s Day, let us remind ourselves of the power of education. We have all benefited from an education that less than a century ago was not a given for a girl and which still remains a distant utopia for millions of young girls.

I know from my own life and that of my daughter that a quality education empowers us. This is a universal truth for every girl in the world. Education empowers girls to realize their dreams and achieve their goals, and most of all to empower other girls. A quality education expands the mind, nurtures the soul, and equips us with a tool to realize our full potential during our life’s journey.

With over 120 million girls enduring armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate disasters unable to benefit from a quality education, we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to their humanity, their rights, their potential and their dreams.

We must stand up ¬– united as a global community of the 21st Century – and say no to gender-based violence, say no to child marriage, say no to workplace inequities, and say no to the deprivation of a quality education for women and girls everywhere.

We must apply a laser focus on the millions of girls left furthest behind in emergencies and protracted crises. Because of their suffering and dispossession, because of the depth of despair in which they live, I am firmly convinced these girls have a unique capacity and potential to achieve unknown and extraordinary heights in any profession of their choice. Their resilience, combined with a quality education, has the magical strength of contributing greatly to their society, their country and the world at large. We cannot afford to lose out on this treasure for the sake of all of us.

To make good on our commitments, we must ensure every girl is ensured 12 years of quality education. For girls caught in conflicts in places like Ukraine and the Sahel, for the millions of girls denied their human right to an education in Afghanistan, and for the girls displaced from their homes in South America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and even Europe and North America, education is the key that will unlock a better life for them and a better world for all.

What we can and must do is empower them to break the chains of thousands of years of inequity to once and for all break through that glass ceiling and declare this generation of girls as “Generation Equality!”, and with that also, “The generation that unleashed humanity’s potential.”

The challenges are daunting. ECW partner UNESCO estimates that around the world, 129 million girls are out of school, including 32 million in primary school and 97 million in secondary. For girls caught in conflict and crises, the situation is even worse. Two out of every three girls in humanitarian crises won’t start secondary school. And if current trends continue, by 2025, climate change will be a contributing factor in preventing at least 12.5 million girls from completing their education each year, according to the Malala Fund.

Our investment in girls’ education is our investment in the future for all of humanity, our civilization, our evolution, and above all for human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals. As the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW has achieved gender parity between girls and boys in its First Emergency Response and Multi-Year Resilience Programme investments. The Fund has also committed to support gender-equitable investments in the new Strategic Plan period 2023-2026. And through smart investments like our new Acceleration Facility Grants for gender equality, we are building the public goods and global movement we need to create transformational change in the sector.

Imagine the economic and social impact if every girl on planet earth was actually able to go to 12 years of school? A World Bank study estimates that the “limited educational opportunities for girls, and barriers to completing 12 years of education, cost countries between US$15 trillion and $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings.” Imagine the transformation of a world that badly needs to move from extreme poverty to equity, and a world that establishes peace and security, and human rights for all. We made that promise in 1945 in the UN Charter. It is not an utopia. It is a real possibility. We know what needs to be done: Empower her through a quality education.

Indeed, education is the answer.

Yasmine Sherif is Director of Education Cannot Wait.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

By External Source
Mar 7 2023 (IPS-Partners)

From the earliest days of computing to the present age of virtual reality and artificial intelligence…

…women have made untold contributions to the digital world in which we increasingly live.

Their accomplishments have been made against all odds, in a historically unwelcoming field.

Today, a persistent gender gap in digital access keeps women from unlocking technology’s full potential.

Underrepresentation in STEM education and careers remains a major barrier to their participation in tech design and governance.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, women are still underrepresented in the technology sector.

They make up only 17% of the core technology workforce.

And the pervasive threat of online gender-based violence forces them out of the digital spaces they occupy.

A survey of women journalists from 125 countries found that 73% had suffered online violence in the course of their work.

Exclusion extends in more subtle forms as well:

Women make up only 22% of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) workforce.

And a global analysis of 133 AI systems across industries found that 44.2 per cent demonstrate gender bias.

However, there is some progress being made.

Women’s participation in the technology sector has increased by 10% since 2014.

According to the National Center for Women and Information Technology…

…the number of women in executive positions in the technology sector has increased from 11% in 2012 to 20% in 2019.

There is still a long way to go in terms of achieving gender equality in the technology sector.

International Women’s Day is a global celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

It is a call to action to continue to strive for progress.

This year, let’s celebrate our International Women’s Day theme: “DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality”.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Katja Iversen
NORMA, Italy, Mar 7 2023 (IPS)

International Women’s Day is right around the corner and it presents an obvious opportunity to dig into what female and empowerment means for different people.

INXO invited their female CEO and two female board members to answer five sharp political and personal questions.

The following is a shortened version of my answers. It is an adapted version of the original Danish version, which can be found here.

Katja Iversen

I think: “More of that”…. We need more gender equality. We need more women in economic and political power. And we need more women to feel more in the driver’s seat, be more powerful and more valued in their personal and professional lives.

– Where do you see the biggest obstacle to Women’s Empowerment – in the individual woman?

Women are often brought up to be liked. We are often socialized to put others’ needs before our own, to be seen not heard, to smooth conflicts, and not to spoil the party – and taught that we indeed do spoil it, if we are too loud, or claim our rights, and rightful share of power.

Hence, many girls and women don’t articulate their own needs and what they themselves want, but – consciously or unconsciously – live a life in service for others, whether it is the children, the partner, the parents or the workplace.

This is not only an individual problem, but very much also a systemic problem, which is underscored by the statistics, documenting that women shoulder by far the largest share of the unpaid care work at home, as well as the largest part of the unpaid voluntary work at work, adding up to more than US$10 trillions a year.

– … and the obstacle to Women’s Empowerment – in the outer world?

Apart from the current political push back on gender equality, women’s rights, and not least sexual rights, I see three groups of obstacles: systems, stereotypes and language.

Many of the existing power structures and systems in societies are keeping men in power.

The world values production, but not reproduction. We already spoke about the unpaid care work which needs to be recognized, reduced and redistributed. But add to that the motherhood penalty – the systematic disadvantage that women encounter in the workplace when they become mothers – and how sector’s and jobs with predominantly women in them often have lower worth and salaries. And don’t get me started on the tax systems or systematic lack of diversity and inclusion in top leadership.

Then there are the norms and stereotypes: How many times haven’t we heard women in power be called too loud, too much, too aggressive, or criticized on their body, dress, looks? “Good girls” are typically described and defined as sweet, caring, quiet and beautiful, while “real boys” must be strong, fast, energetic and assertive.

Let it be clear that these stereotypes don’t just hold women back, they also hold men back. When men for example, do not live up to the stereotypical image of the ‘real man’, who is tall, powerful, never cries, and earns a lot of money, they too can feel inadequate.

Language is gendered. There are so many phrases in our language that denigrate or disparage women – bossy, nasty, catty, chatty, ditzy, slutty, mousy, moody, flakey, blond, kept. Or reproduce the man as the one with influence and power: Chairman, fireman, business man, manmade, manpower, mankind. And if you want to diminish or make less of a man, there are plenty of gender slurs like sissy, queen, cunt, bitch available – or just tell him that he acts, run or cries like a girl.

Luckily how language reproduces gender norms HAS gained much more attention, and it has begun to change, not least thanks to young people, who are challenging that and gender stereotypes at large.

– How have you empowered yourself throughout life?

You can be what you can see, and I have always had good female role models who were inspiring and strong in different ways – Pippi Longstocking, Rosa Parks, Virginia Woolf, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Christine Lagarde and my grandmother just to name a few.

Also, I followed by my grandmother’s strong advice of getting an education and never become financially dependent on a man.

Even if my family does not come from money, I know I am privileged – and that I am fortunate that my parents instilled in me from an early age that I am good, loved and worthy, just the way I am. I know, I don’t have to be perfect to be loved, and I’m allowed to make mistakes. This has made me confident in trying new things, without fear of failing.

I’m also good at forgiving myself – and others. I actually think, that I am both smart, beautiful and talented, even if I don’t live up to the standard norms. If someone says otherwise, I don’t listen.

In general it is a way of holding women down and back, indicating that SHE is the less capable, less confident, less good at this or that. But it is not the women who need to be fixed, it is the systems.

– … and what is your best advice to other women if they want to empower themselves?

The first piece of advice: You are good enough, you are strong enough, and you have enough worth in yourself. All women should remember that. We are not only worth something in relation to others. We are not only worth something or worthy of something when we give, care and nurture.

The second: We must stand up for ourselves and stand up for each other. Show some good old sister solidarity – and not just to women who look like us, or are privileged like us. Women should play each other good, and lift each other up.

The third: Be aware of what you want and what you desire – and this is both in relation to sexual desire and life in general. Desire (and pleasure) is a good thing and can be a huge positive, driving force, as can breaking habits and being more conscious about the choices you make every day.

Imagine if you for a period of time consistently could asked yourself: What do I want to do? Who do I want to see? How do I want to show up in life today? Imagine what an energy and power that could unleash.

Katja Iversen is Executive Adviser, Author, Advocate, and Professional Board Member

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Researchers from different backgrounds and genders at a project meeting in Guimarães, Portugal, during a conference. Credit: UNU-EGOV / Cristina Braga

By Mercy Erhi Makpor
Guimarães, Portugal, Mar 7 2023 (IPS)

The accelerating pace of digitalization has ushered humanity into a whole different era of information and communication. Today, digitalization permeates every aspect of our lives, socio-economically and politically.

People can leverage digital technology to scale up activities to impact their private and public lives. Citizens can access various digital services such as registrations, voting, conducting business and making online transactions, amongst others. Changes have seen digital technologies thrive.

However, this has come with little or no impact on gender, especially on women and girls. Thus, how is gender equality promoted amid this fast pace of digitalization, and how has this impacted digitalization?

There is a great gap in women’s and girls’ adoption of digital technology compared to men’s and boys’. It has been reported that more than 50% of women are offline globally. In the Global South, this is more pronounced as the internet penetration rate for women is 41%, compared to 53% for men.

In 2020, it was found that 393 million women in developing regions do not own mobile phones when compared to 8% globally.

Mercy Erhi Makpor. Credit: UNU-EGOV / Cristina Braga

Some studies show that women are 20% less likely than men to own a digital device. Depending on the ability to access, use and adopt digital technology, digitalization will keep increasing in speed.

More so, as digital technology is proactively embraced, it is essential to facilitate skills, access, affordability, and usage for women and girls. Associated policies for facilitating these processes should propel or bring about change for gender equality and inclusion.

Digital technology can indeed be a concrete tool for the development of policies and programs for women and girls to overcome inequalities. Digitalization can also help to speed up gender policy interventions while at the same time bridging the gender digital divide.

This can be achieved by engaging more women and girls in sectors such as health, education, technology, services, etc. However, in the absence of indicators differentiated by gender, it is difficult to measure impact.

More so, without indicators such as age, income level, and literacy, there is always bound to be little or no impact. Gender equality remains one of the fundamental means of curbing the gender digital divide while digitalization is taking place. It is very significant to the progress of women and girls in a digitalized society.

Currently, taking up initiatives for the promotion of gender equality is one of the ways through which countries strive to close the gender digital divide amid digitalization. For instance, there is a strong call for promoting an educational and knowledge infrastructure scheme in remote rural areas in the Global South.

Countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Botswana, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal are taking the initiative to improve the skills level and usage of women for the reduction of the gender digital divide. For women with small- and medium-scale enterprises, having proper access to financial products and services is of great importance.

Governments and financial institutions are seen to be taking up initiatives to help accelerate access for female entrepreneurs and business owners to tap into financial resources, which in turn leads to a reduction in the digital gender divide and the promotion of gender equality.

Furthermore, women play very vital roles in their families and communities, as they traditionally are the incubators of small start-up businesses. This also promotes gender equality while presenting the possibility of accelerating women’s participation in digital technology, thereby reducing the gender digital divide.

For instance, In Europe and North America, scholars and institutions are calling on policymakers to address the need for the continuous improvement of digitalization and skills for women through innovative technical ideas.

As a functional tool for attaining sustainable development, digitalization is not only central to modern societies; it is a means to unlocking opportunities for social interactions. More so, it is an opportunity for the promotion of gender equality and the reduction of the gender digital divide.

However, due to it not being gender-neutral, gender dimensions that impact women and men must be considered when addressing the gender digital divide. Significantly, access, ownership, and use of digital devices are not gender-neutral; therefore, women tend to face more barriers than men in the accessibility and use of digital technology.

There have to be better opportunities for women to be able to access and take advantage of both socioeconomic and political positions. Also, access to digital devices will help to increase women’s online activities, thereby reducing the gender digital divide and promoting gender equality.

Notably, women must play active roles, get involved, and through gender experts and women’s organizations, come up with policies and service designs to enhance women’s needs, inclusion, and empowerment.

Governments must ensure that the privacy and security of women and girls are protected. They should also safeguard enhanced, affordable, and inclusive service delivery for women, especially those in rural environments.

In summary, engendering digital technology by adopting digitalization policies with gender perspectives is significant not only to women but also to the whole of human development.

Mercy Erhi Makpor is Senior Research Assistant at the United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV).
Email: makpor@unu.edu
More info: https://egov.unu.edu/experts/mercy-makpor.html

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Women hold a vital stake in the health of the land, yet they often don't have control over it. Securing women's land rights can help advance the intertwined global goals on gender equality and land restoration.  Credit: United Nations

By Andrea Meza
BONN, Mar 7 2023 (IPS)

When it comes to land, gender inequalities are pervasive. Today, nearly half of the global agricultural workforce is female – yet less than one in five landholders worldwide are women ¹.  

Women’s land rights are essential for their economic empowerment and the sustainable development of rural communities. However, women continue to face significant barriers to accessing and controlling land resources, which limits their ability to participate fully in agricultural production, improve their livelihoods, and contribute to broader economic growth. 

Moreover, the lack of access to land and other productive resources adversely impacts on women’s enjoyment of human rights.

According to a landmark study by UNCCD, gender equality remains unfinished business in every part of the world. For instance, in more than 100 countries today, women cannot inherit their husband’s property under customary, religious, or traditional laws and practices.

Andrea Meza Murillo

Discrimination related to land tenure, credit access, equal pay and decision making often keeps women from playing an active role in sustaining land health. When they do have property rights, women often own smaller plots, and less fertile lands, compared to male landowners.

And when land becomes degraded and water is scarce, rural women are usually the worst affected, often skipping meals in favour of other family members.  

Globally, women already spend a collective 200 million hours every day collecting water. In some countries, a single trip to fetch water can take over an hour. Droughts make the situation even harder—they tend to increase the burden of unpaid care and domestic work shouldered by women and girls. 

But women are not only on the frontline of climate change and land degradation impacts; they can also be major actors in the global efforts to restore the land back to health and boost drought resilience. 

Evidence shows that when women and men have equal land tenure rights, women are more likely to invest in soil conservation and sustainable land management practices. For example, in Ethiopia, land certification and registration undertaken in the early 2000s increased tenure security for women and men and boosted landowners’ likelihood of investing in soil and water conservation measures by 20-30%. 

Gender equality is vital to deliver sustainable, progressive, and meaningful action to advance sustainable land stewardship. The recognition of women’s land and resource rights will accelerate land restoration efforts by opening doors to markets and finance, training and other services, and gender-appropriate sustainable land management tools and technologies.

It will also enable women to step up their contribution to the achievement of climate and biodiversity goals, keeping global temperature increase to 1.5°C and restoring at least 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.

Already, women worldwide use traditional knowledge and innovative solutions to address desertification, land degradation and drought. In India, irrigation systems developed by women farmers rely on rainwater harvesting. In Jordan, a plant nursery entirely run by women using state-of-the-art methodologies and protocols is producing high-quality native seedlings for land restoration. 

The UNCCD has a long track record in placing gender equality firmly at the core of its mandate as a vital catalyst of progress. Gender-responsive land restoration is an obvious pathway to reduce poverty, hunger, and malnutrition.

When women are empowered to have a say in decision-making on land matters, entire communities and societies benefit, and these benefits can be passed on to future generations. 

We must urgently change the way both women and land are treated. We must invest more in women as the custodians of healthy land and thriving communities. It’s time for women and girls to be at the forefront of land restoration efforts.

For this, governments must take action to assess and reform legal and regulatory frameworks, promote gender-responsive policies and public services, and support successful programmes that promote women’s rights to land and resources.

Ending discrimination against women in their access to, use of, and control over land and other resources is crucial. In doing so, we can create a more just and sustainable world for all.

Andrea Meza Murillo is Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Prior to joining the Convention, she served as Minister of Energy and Environment for the Government of Costa Rica. She brings over 20 years of expertise in sustainable development, having worked in more than 15 Latin American countries to formulate public policies, participate in international negotiations, and execute climate, conservation and restoration projects.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Credit: UN Women
 
Gender inequality exacerbates the impact of natural disasters, and the consequences of natural disasters compound gender inequality. States must introduce progressive taxation to finance the expansion of rights such as universal access to health care and education, and strengthen women's resilience to natural hazards, including climate change.

By Magdalena Sepúlveda
GENEVA, Switzerland, Mar 6 2023 (IPS)

She will be called Aya. This is the name that nurses gave to the infant baby pulled from the rubble of a five-story building in Jinderis, northern Syria. A miracle. Beside her, the rescuers found her mother, dead.

She had given birth within hours of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on the night of February 6, 2023. Like her, more than 50,000 people died in the earthquake. As tragic as it is hopeful, this story has moved the international media.

It also reminds us that over 350,000 pregnant women who survived the earthquake now urgently need access to health care, according to the United Nations. And this is only one aspect of women’s vulnerability to natural disasters.

Floods, droughts, earthquakes, and other extreme events are not gender-neutral, especially in developing countries. Evidence shows that women and girls die in greater numbers and have different and uneven levels of resilience and capacity to recover.

Of the 230,000 people killed in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, for example, 70% were women. Because of gender barriers, they often have fewer survival skills: boys are taught to swim or read first. This makes it difficult for them to access early warnings or identify safe shelters.

In addition, it is more difficult for women to escape from danger, since they are most often responsible for children, the elderly, and the sick. Heightened tensions and fear, as well as the loss of income provoked by disasters, drive increased domestic violence against women and girls.

They are also the first victims of sexual violence and exploitation when entire populations are displaced – this was one of the first concerns in Pakistan when more than 8 million people had to leave their homes because of the terrible floods in June-August 2022.

Natural catastrophes negatively impact everyone economically, but women and girls are disproportionately affected. World Bank data show that female farmers suffer much more than male ones in rural areas.

Assigned to domestic tasks, they are more dependent than men on access to natural resources and are, therefore, the first to suffer when these become scarce. In every region, food insecurity is higher among women than men.

In 2020, it was estimated that nearly 60% of the people who go hungry are women and girls, and the gender gap has only increased since then. Their lack of access to bank accounts also means that women’s assets are less protected than men’s.

And, of course, recovery from any crisis builds on societal expectations related to gender roles. Consequently, women bear the brunt of the increased domestic burden after a disaster at the cost of missing out on other income-generating activities.

We know that women spend, on average, 3.2 times more time than men on unpaid care work, and the COVID-19 pandemic – another human-induced natural catastrophe – made evident how unequally unpaid care and domestic work is shared, and how undervalued and underrecognized it is.

This is a major constraint on women’s access to education, an obstacle to their entry into and advancement in the paid labor market, and to their political participation, with serious consequences in terms of social protection, income, and pensions.

Gender inequality exacerbates the impact of natural disasters, and the consequences of natural disasters exacerbate gender inequality. An unacceptable vicious cycle. With the world already facing a growing number of climate-related tragedies, governments must take immediate and long-term action to invest in universal access to health care, water and sanitation, education, social protection, and infrastructure for gender equality and the full enjoyment of women’s human rights.

Even in times of crisis, when state coffers are nearly empty, there are equitable solutions to raise revenues to fund the investments needed to strengthen women’s resilience: to make those who profit from the crises ravaging the planet, including from those natural disasters, pay, as recommended by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), of which I am a member alongside, among others, Joseph Stiglitz, Jayati Ghosh, and Thomas Piketty. Instead of implementing austerity programs that devastate the most disadvantaged, states can increase their fiscal space by taxing companies and the super-rich more.

It starts with taxing the super profits made by multinationals, and several countries in Europe and Latin America have already begun to do so. This is particularly true for the pharmaceutical giants that have made a fortune selling vaccines against Covid-19, which they were able to develop due to public subsidies. This is also the case for multinationals in the energy or food sector.

Oxfam estimates that their profits increased by more than two and a half times (256%) in 2022 compared with the 2018–2021 average. For the same reasons, it is urgent to tax the richest, who get away with paying hardly any taxes these days.

One cannot accept that, as Oxfam reminds us, a man like Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest men in history, is taxed at 3.3%, while Aber Christine, a market trader in Uganda who sells rice, is taxed at 40%.

Progressive taxation – making the richest people and multinationals pay their fair share – is one of the most powerful tools for reducing inequality of all kinds. As the world celebrates International Women’s Day, let’s keep in mind that it is impossible to build more resilient societies without fighting for gender equality.

Continuing to ignore it is a political choice, and an even more perilous threat to development than natural disasters themselves.

Magdalena Sepúlveda is the Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). From 2008-2014 she was the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights @Magda_Sepul

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Pakistani women peacekeepers in the audience at the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad, where Secretary-General António Guterres delivered an address on the topic of peacekeeping. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten
 
On the one hand, the special procedures under UN Human Rights focused on women should be re-organized and on the other hand, country level programs supporting women should become more unified. Meanwhile, a new global platform, building on the Generation Equality Forum, could bring these two complementary but vastly different realm of works, together to engage the global public and the leaders.

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 6 2023 (IPS)

If you want to have a good reading on women and young girls’ activism, there is a high chance that you have missed an incredibly interesting report.

Entitled Girls’ and Young Women’s Activism, the publication is a product of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, formally a special procedure mechanism within the United Nation Human Rights, officially the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The blueprint offers a real and practical guidance on about how the direct involvement and engagement of women and young girls is essential if governments are serious about achieving gender equality and ends, once for all, any type of gender-based discriminations.

The Working Group is composed by five experts, mostly academician but also practitioners, on women’s rights and despite the low profile, it maintains a real busy annual schedule that makes its work incredibly relevant and valuable.

It does not only meet three times a year for planning and coordination and but also holds a dialogue at the Human Rights Council in June in addition to reporting to the General Assembly in October/November and also participates at the annual March meeting of the Commission on the Status of the Women.

On the top of all these tasks and consider that their commitment with the Working Group proceeds along their official and equally demanding full-time jobs, the members also conduct annual visits to member states to monitor and assess their work to protect women and girls against discrimination.

The problem is that its work does get neither visibility nor recognition.

One of the reasons is that the UN human rights architecture promoting and defending the rights of women is too complex and fragmented and requires a drastic overhaul.

There are too many mechanisms often with an almost overlapping mandates tasked to protect women’s rights, perhaps also a reflection on the inevitable rivalries at the UN and the consequent compromises that are always struck by the member states.

In addition to the Working Group, there is also the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, currently Ms. Reem Alsalem, who started her tenure on August 2021.

Her mandate is stronger and certainly more visible than those of the members of the Working Group even though she operates within UN Human Rights.

Though the former mechanism is focused on fighting discrimination and the latter is instead exclusively aimed at assessing cases of violence against women, you might wonder if it could be more effective and value for money to devise a more united approach, a more effective modality to monitor and defend the rights of women around the world.

Certainly, we cannot discount the fact that we are talking about special procedures mechanisms within the Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental body within the UN that is actually the only forum where the member states of the UN discuss, share and peer reviews their human rights.

The special procedures are important because they uniquely involve top experts in matters of human rights and their contributions provide even more legitimacy to the important work that the UN System is doing to uphold the rights of vulnerable persons around the world.

A possibility to strengthen their work could be to imagine a different “governance” that maximizes their opinions and reviews, even with the possibility to provide full time tenures and adequate resources to support their work and give it the visibility it deserves.

Let’s also bear in mind that in matter of women’s rights, there is also the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women that should be considered as the guardian of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women known as CEDAW.

It is composed by twenty-three experts and one of its main tasks is to “assist States parties in the preparation of initial and subsequent periodic reports” and holding constructive dialogue with them and issue the so called “concluding observations” on what the member states present to show their commitment to CEDAW.

To help with coordination among mechanisms, there is actually, at least on the paper, a very lean and weak coordinating mechanism called Platform of Independent UN and Regional Experts Mechanisms on Elimination of Discrimination and Violence against Women, or EDVAW Platform.

Officially started in 2017, the platform aims to “promote thematic and institutional cooperation between the UN and regional expert mechanisms on the elimination of discrimination and violence against women and girls with the view of accelerating domestication of international and regional standards, achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls”.

The reality is that this mechanism never got traction nor got the mandate to truly coordinate among UN and external, autonomous regional mechanisms outside of the purview of the UN system.

Mentioned earlier, the Commission on the Status of the Women is the oldest of all these mechanisms that, while proved to be indispensable over the last decades to mainstream women rights within the universal human rights agenda, is now outdated.

Till now we have been only focusing on mechanisms to uphold, monitor and protect the rights of women.

We have not yet discussed the “program” side of the equation, the work to prevent violence and discrimination against women and promote their empowerment being done by UN agencies and programs, including UN Women the agency that provides the secretariat of the Commission on the Status of Women.

In this respect, there is also, always within the UN System, the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality or IANWGE, bringing together all the main women focal points of all UN agencies and programs.

Under responsibility of UN Women, the Network appears weak and just a formality though we should assume that at country level, all the work related to women’s empowerment is coordinated under the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (formerly named United Nations Development Assistance Framework).

This is a process that itself could require a further upgrade to truly maximize cooperation and avoidance of overlaps between and among agencies and programs.

It is evident that in both domains, on the one hand, the human rights accountability mechanisms and on the other hand, the actions and programs on the ground to change the status quo, there is need of a much stronger synergy and coordination, something that might be objected by several members of the UN that are unlikely to support anything akin to strengthen mechanisms upholding human rights.

Even the Commission on the Status of Women itself, whose upcoming session will be held between the 6 and17 March, should be re-thought.

With a multiyear thematic plan, the Commission, is a toothless and unnoticed advocacy and knowledge creation institution that each year comes up with a topic up for analysis and discussion.

This year, for example, the focus will be on “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls” while last year’s theme was centered around climate change, environment and disaster prevention.

There are no doubts that it is important to have a global convening forum that brings together the top experts on issues that are so relevant to achieve SDG 5. Yet it is not hard to imagine how a stronger, more coordinated women centered architecture in the UN could achieve and produce more while spending less.

Let’s remind ourselves that the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs brought some institutional innovations in the way the UN operates, primarily the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, that is the major SDGs focused platform promoted by the UN.

Besides its usual gathering in July, this year the Forum will also host another SDG Summit in September, the biggest format to discuss about and review the SDGs at the highest levels of political leadership worldwide.

Yet, while we are referring to a strong advocacy and review mechanism with a considerable amount of convening power, the High-Level Political Forum is simply what it is, a review mechanism of countries’ performances towards accomplishing the SDGs and important vehicle for debating them.

A reform of a stronger UN System that is better positioned to truly achieve SDG 5, should acknowledge an existing deep gulf between promotion and defense of human rights focusing on women (as well other human rights issues) and, on the other end, actions on ground at legislative, judiciary and economic and social levels to change the status quo.

For example, UN Human Rights has no formal role in hosting the High-Level Political Forum that is instead organized by ECOSOC and has a very limited presence at countries level.

A better chance at ensuring that the rights of women are defended while their living conditions improve, could be based on two complementary internal reforms within the UN System: an improvement on how Human Rights operates and a drastic rethinking of how the women focused service, advocacy and delivery-oriented agencies of the UN work.

On the former, the UN Human Rights could undertake, with the aim of giving them more voice and authority, a major reform of its “accountability” mechanisms that rely on the professionalism, integrity and expertise of world class activists, advocates and legal scholars.

The role of the Commission on the Status of the Women should also be reviewed. As per now, its outreach and voice are limited within the development sector and it has become almost irrelevant and unknown to the global public opinion.

On the latter, in terms of programs and initiatives supporting women and their rights around the world, only a true One United Nations approach at country level could do the job with ultimately a much better coordination and one unified “delivery” channel.

Both processes of change and their respective spheres of work, accountability and program, could then be promoted through a united “Global Women” platform that could end up with the same visibility that COP process gained for climate action.

A recently created multi partnership forum could, potentially, become such main vehicle to achieve SDG 5. I am talking of Generation Equality Forum, a joint initiative of Mexico and France that has been facilitated by UN Women.

It holds a great potential to facilitate new collaborations that so far has been convened twice in 2021, first in Mexico City and then in Paris, paving the way for an ambitious global program of action, the Global Acceleration Plan.

The interesting part of it is that the Forum is truly action oriented with its members committing to take action through six sub areas groups, branded as Generation Equality Action Coalitions that include the entire spectrum of areas that would ensure achieving SDG 5.

From gender violence to economic justice, to bodily autonomy and sexual reproductive rights, to climate justice to technology and innovation, to leadership, the coalitions, made up by hundreds of civil society organizations, global foundations and private corporations, can really facilitate partnerships with private sector and civil society, a capacity that the UN System has never mastered.

Can this new and bold attempt to catalyze efforts and investments for the rights of women and girls around the world become the epicenter of a new women focused development architecture?

Can a hybrid vehicle to rally global investments and actions for women help galvanize global attention on their rights and at same time do the job of meeting the targets of SDG 5?

Finally, would a new women focused “governance” of development assistance also force the UN System to change for good its working modalities?

Even if the accountability mechanisms under UN Human Rights would remain formally separated by this process of renewal for women ‘rights, nevertheless the banner of the Generation Equality Forum transformed into a “Global Women” platform could be used to highlight and “empower” their work.

The fact that this year there will be another gathering of the Generation Equality Forum could offer additional new momentum to the initiative though last year only a very low key event celebrated its 1st year anniversary.

Yet it was still an important gathering because it was where the Forum’s first accountability report was unveiled.

In few days from now the Forum will actively participate in the upcoming session of Commission on the Status of Women but with some insights, perhaps, the opposite process should occur.

The Commission and all other women focused mechanisms and programs, at minimum, could become part of a much larger and more institutionalized institution that should also be fully aligned to and possibly become the central pillar for SDG 5 of The High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

We know from the latest Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: the Gender Snapshot 2022 that there is still so much to be done in the field of gender empowerment that urgency and radical thinking should not be discouraged nor set aside.

Rather they should be truly embraced head-on. Meanwhile another great publication on women and young girls’ activism will be read by too few people.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE and co-initiator of the Good Leadership, Good for You & Good for the Society, both active in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Credit: UN Trust Fund/Phil Borges
 
The theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March 2023 is, “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”. This theme is aligned with the priority theme for the upcoming 67th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (6-17 March 2023), “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Mar 1 2023 (IPS)

New technologies and innovations are reshaping our world and its future, often at a dizzying pace. Yet women and girls continue to be left behind in this burgeoning digital universe. How, then, can we harness these developments to create a better future for all of us?

This year’s International Women’s Day theme, “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality,” seeks to answer exactly that question.

We know that women and girls are less likely than men and boys to use the internet or own a smartphone. In fact, only 54 per cent of women in Asia and the Pacific have digital access, cut off from opportunities to move any digital needles forward.

The root causes are many and varied: deep-rooted discriminatory social norms, increased gender-based violence (including online violence), and the unequal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work. Addressing these impediments to women realizing their full potential requires our joint and immediate attention and response.

One child, one teacher, one pen

When and where women and girls are discouraged from studying and working in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) fields, we let them down. And we have left a whole generation of women and girls behind. We need the talents and voices of women and girls brought to the boardrooms and coding rooms.

Today many innovations in AI, medicine, entertainment, transportation, work and other fields treat men as the standard and ignore women’s physical and social differences – to the detriment of half of the world’s population.

Getting more women into careers in technology starts with breaking down the gender stereotypes that prevent girls from studying STEM subjects. Comprehensive changes to the way STEM subjects are taught and targeted programs to support girls’ learning are needed.

In Viet Nam, the Ministry of Education and Training has updated the country’s National Early Childhood Education curriculum on “de-stereotyping” women and girls and has included gender-sensitive budgeting into the Education Sector Plan. Through changes such as these, governments can foster girls’ enthusiasm for technology, expanding the future digital workforce.

Harnessing technology to support women entrepreneurs

Women entrepreneurs play a key role in developing economies. Supporting them to start and grow businesses through technology will lead to more sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Women have historically struggled to access capital because they are less aware of funding options.

They are less likely to own land or have large savings to offer as collateral and have not been included in traditional financial networks. Technological innovations provide an opportunity to connect women entrepreneurs across the region with new financing models that cater to their particular needs.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship project has unlocked almost USD 65 million in capital to support women entrepreneurs in several countries.

Through identifying and backing a number of experimental technology-driven business models, the project has supported women-led micro, small and medium enterprises through a range of technology solutions such as payment platforms, online marketplaces, bookkeeping and inventory management.

Enabling women to become drivers of inclusive innovation

If we pair the untapped potential of women and girls to contribute to our common future together with the potential of the innovations of digitalization, science and technologies, we may well have cracked the code to rectifying many of the inequalities and injustices created by generations past.

Women have the know-how to harness technology and innovation. Given equal opportunities, they will flourish and contribute to creative solutions to tackle the world’s multi-faceted challenges.

Women leaders in Asia and the Pacific are already using technology to address inequalities and gender-based violence. Founded by Virginia Tan, Rhea See, and Leanne Robers, She Loves Tech, headquartered in Singapore, runs the world’s largest start-up competition for women and technology and aims to unlock over USD 1 billion in capital by 2030 for women-led businesses.

Safecity is a crowd-mapping platform for people to share experiences of sexual harassment in public spaces and allows communities to identify problems and work towards solutions. The platform was launched by three women, including current leader Elsa Marie D’Silva, in response to incidents of gender-based violence in the region.

“We can all do our part to unleash our world’s enormous untapped talent – starting with filling classrooms, laboratories, and boardrooms with women scientists,” said United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently. Indeed, we need women in leadership roles in all science and technology spaces to accelerate inclusive innovation.

Let’s work together towards our dream of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. What better way to do so than to use innovations and new technologies to overcome inequalities in the digital age?

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

The UN which commemorates On Zero Discrimination Day on 1 March, says: “We celebrate the right of everyone to live a full and productive life—and live it with dignity. Zero Discrimination Day highlights how people can become informed about and promote inclusion, compassion, peace and, above all, a movement for change. Zero Discrimination Day is helping to create a global movement of solidarity to end all forms of discrimination.

By Roomi Aziz
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb 24 2023 (IPS)

While its origins may be rooted in the discrimination faced by people living with HIV, Zero Discrimination Day has evolved to celebrate commitments to the fundamental human right of being treated equally in law and in practice.

Within the context of global health, the day is an opportunity to examine discrimination from the perspective of health and care workers, who face barriers based on their race, gender, and other socio-economic and cultural factors.

In the context of a global health workforce under siege from the threat of the great resignation in health, it is especially important to examine the impact of discrimination on health systems at global, national and local levels.

It is widely recognized that Human Resources for Health (HRH) play a crucial role in achieving Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. According to the World Health Organization, there is an anticipated shortage of 10 million health care workers globally by 2030, with the greatest demand in low and lower-middle income countries where the burden of disease is higher.

In recent times, recognition of the gender pay gap in health of 24% and its impact on national and regional economy has spurred greater research into the unequal treatment of women, taking into account their specific contexts and locations. Despite efforts to address these issues, progress has been uneven.

Mounting evidence around gender inequities in the health workforce, specifically at the leadership level underscores the problem of gender bias in health decision-making. Women who make up 70% of the overall health workforce and 90% of frontline staff continue to be marginalised in leadership, occupying just one-quarter of the decision-making roles in health.

Furthermore, occupational segregation and the clustering of women into low-earning professions and settings further limit their career advancement. Their experiences in the health workforce are further compounded by various forms of discrimination, such as harassment, violence, assault and discrimination at several levels.

Gender is not the only factor at play. As health workers migrate from rural and remote areas to well-resourced urban centres, or from developing to developed countries, new forms of barriers and biases emerge in a global context where high-income nations wield most of the socio-economic power.

These include the need to undergo resource-intensive accreditation and licensing exams, encountering anti-immigrant hostility and changing patient-provider dynamics, limited options from smaller job pools, and being affected by global events and geopolitical shifts.

This “brain drain” of health workers also has negative implications for the understaffed health systems that they leave behind.

In addition to gender and migrant status, healthcare workers may also face discrimination based on their race, ethnicity, language and dialect, marital status and sexual orientation, amidst other factors. These experiences affect the health workforce in different ways, resulting in inefficiencies, demotivation and burnout at the local, national and regional levels.

Healthcare systems that fail to acknowledge and address latent discriminatory actions may unintentionally perpetuate these inequalities, further exacerbating the biased experiences of healthcare workers, despite the need for a diverse health workforce to better serve their diverse populations.

While we talk about zero discrimination, dignity, decent work, fair pay, and the importance of endorsing diversity and practising inclusion at the macro level of health systems, are we also ‘seeing’ and ‘acknowledging’ where this discrimination exists and understanding the negative consequences on health workers and population’s health? Are we collecting and analysing the data that give us the full picture?

More importantly, discrimination in healthcare settings not only violates the fundamental human right to be treated with respect and equality, but also severely limits the chances of achieving the SDGs by 2030. The 2017 UN statement succinctly framed this understanding in their call to end discrimination in healthcare settings.

Equal opportunities and experiences for health and care workers must be ensured at every stage of their career, including recruitment, promotion, growth and advancement, particularly in the post-COVID era of globalisation.

Gender and race are the primary drivers of inequality, around which most of the structural discrimination in health revolves. Therefore, policies and practices must be devised to study and address this discrimination and their underlying drivers, to fully exploit the available talent and potential of the health workforce and to ensure equitable opportunities for growth and leadership and strategically achieve UHC.

Now more than ever, it is urgent that leaders in global health take bold action by committing to a new social contract that prioritises the rights of health and care workers. This step will not only ensure a more equitable and just health workforce, but also provide better health outcomes for communities worldwide.

Roomi Aziz is Technical Lead of the Pakistan Chapter, Women in Global Health

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Cooperative members in southern Lebanon make a rare, traditional bread called Mallet El Smid to be sold at the MENNA shop in Beirut. Women are central to meeting the SDGs, say parliamentarians. Credit: UN Women/Joe Saade

By IPS Correspondent
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 23 2023 (IPS)

The post-COVID-19 period has been a crucial one for members of parliament who have their work cut out to ensure that issues that arose during the pandemic are addressed, especially concerning the ICPD25 commitments and programmes of action for universal access to sexual and reproductive rights, gender-based violence and building peaceful, just and inclusive societies. Across the world, progress toward achieving the SDGs by 2030 was impacted during the pandemic.

As Dr Samar Haddad, a former member of the Lebanese Parliament and head of the Population Committee at the Bar Association in Lebanon commented at a recent meeting of the Forum of the Arab Parliamentarians  for Population and Development (FAPPD): “The main theme for this year is combating gender-based violence, which is a scourge that the entire world suffers from, and its rate has risen alarmingly in light of the economic crisis, bloody stability, wars, and displacement.”

IPS was privileged to interview two members of parliament from the region about how they are tackling GBV, youth empowerment, and women’s participation in politics, society, and the economy.

Here are edited excerpts from the interviews:

Pierre Bou Assi, MP from Lebanon

Pierre Bou Assi, MP from Lebanon

IPS: What legislation, budgets, and monitoring frameworks are in place or planned for combating GBV in Lebanon?

Pierre Bou Assi (PA): Lebanon has launched a project to support protection and prevention systems to prevent gender-based violence within the framework of continuous efforts aimed at responding to social and economic challenges in Lebanon and aims to strengthen prevention and monitoring mechanisms for gender-based violence, and support the efforts made by the Public Security Directorate through the Department Family and juvenile protection.

IPS: One of your speakers at a recent conference spoke about rapid population growth, youth, and high urbanization rates. Youth are often impacted by unemployment or low rates of decent employment. What are parliamentarians doing to assist youth in ensuring that the country can benefit from its demographic dividend?

PA: Youth are the pillar of the nation, its present and future, and the means and goal of development. They are the title of a strong society and its future, stressing that the conscious youth (educated and mindful) armed with science and knowledge are more than capable of facing the challenges of the present and the most prepared to enter the midst of the future.

I would like to say that the Youth Committee in the Lebanese Parliament is working on developing a targeted and real strategy that includes advanced programs that are agreed upon by experts and active institutions in this field to consolidate the principles of citizenship, the rule of law and patriotism, and empower the youth politically and economically to achieve their potential and develop and expand their horizons.

In addition, we are expanding youth participation in public life by providing them with opportunities for practical training in legislative and oversight institutions, and refining the participants’ personal skills by informing them of the decision-making process in the Council.

IPS: Looking back at the COVID-19 situation, most countries experienced two clear issues, an increase in GBV and its impact on children’s education. There was also an issue with high levels of violence experienced by children. Are parliamentarians concerned about the COVID impacts on children, and what programs have been implemented to support them?

PA: There is no doubt that Lebanon, like other countries in the world, was affected by the coronavirus pandemic in all aspects of life, including children and its impact on the quality of education, as well as the high level of violence that children were exposed to during that period, as I would like to take a look at the more positive side. We note a number of measures Lebanon took during the pandemic – which included the release of children who were in detention, the strengthening or expansion of social protection systems through cash assistance, and an overall decrease in levels of violence in conflict situations.

Lebanon has a plan that includes the following points:

• The continuity and safety of learning for all school children, including bridging the digital divide and creating low-cost technology.
• Implementing a basic package for equitable access to primary health care for children and mothers.
• Expanding the scope and appropriateness of infant and young child feeding programs and general educational messages.
• Expanding social protection systems to reach the most affected children and families through cash transfer programmes.
• Enhancing government budgetary allocations and public funding for social sectors, with a special focus on health care and education.

Hmoud Al-Yahyai, MP from Oman.

Hmoud Al-Yahyai, MP from Oman

Al-Yahyai spoke to IPS about the development of a human-rights-based framework. The interview followed a meeting with the theme “Human Rights and their relationship to the goals of sustainable development. The meeting was held by the Omani Parliamentary Committee for Population and Development in cooperation Omani National Commission for Human Rights, the Forum of Arab Parliamentarians for Population and Development (FAPPD), and the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) on “Human Rights and their relationship to the goals of sustainable development.”

IPS: How is Oman working towards a human rights-based legislative framework, and what role are parliamentarians taking to ensure implementation? What role does Oman Vision 2040 play in this?

Hmoud Al-Yahyai (HY): The government of the Sultanate of Oman has integrated the sustainable development goals into national development strategies and plans and made them a major component of the long-term national development strategy components and axes known as Oman Vision 2040. The strategy is enhanced by broad societal participation when designing and implementing it and evaluating the plans and policies set. And we, as parliamentarians, make sure, as stated in the voluntary national report, (to provide oversight of) the government’s commitment to achieving the goals of sustainable development, with its three dimensions, economic, social, and environmental, within the specified time frame.

I commend the efforts of the Sultanate of Oman in implementing the goals of sustainable development through several axes, including the pillars of sustainable development, implementation mechanisms, progress achieved, and future directions for the localization of the sustainable development agenda in the short and medium term, and the consistency of Oman Vision 2040.

The Sultanate of Oman reviewed its first voluntary national report on sustainable development at the United Nations headquarters as part of its participation in the work of the UN Economic and Social Council.

Sustainability is crucial to Sultanate, emphasizing that development is not an end in itself, but aimed at building up its population.

Future directions for the localization of the SDGs in the short and medium term are represented on five axes, which include raising community awareness, localizing sustainable development, development partnerships, monitoring progress and making evidence-based policies, and institutional support.

The axes for sustainable development are human empowerment, a competitive knowledge economy, environmental resilience through commitment and prevention, and peace. These form the pillars for sustainable development through efficient financing, local development, and monitoring and evaluation.

Oman has adopted a coordinated package of social, economic, and financial policies to achieve inclusive development based on a competitive and innovative economy. This is being worked upon toward Oman Vision 2040 and its implementation plans, through a set of programs and initiatives that seek to localize the development plan toward achieving the SDGs 2030 and beyond.

IPS: What role do women play in your legislative framework, and do they play a role in ensuring, for example, SRHR rights?

HY: The Sultanate has taken many positive measures to sponsor women. The Sultanate’s policies towards accelerating equality between men and women stem from the directives of the Sultan and his initiatives to appoint women to high positions, to feminize the titles of positions when women fill them, and to grant them political, economic, and social rights.

Women benefit from support in the

• Social field: through comprehensive social insurance and social security system.
• Political field: through the appointment of female ministers, undersecretaries, and ambassadors, and in the field of public prosecution.
• Economic field: through labor and corporate law.
• Cultural field: through the system of education and grants.

There are many programs geared or dedicated to women. The government has begun to circulate and implement a program to support maternal and childcare services at the national level to reduce disease and death rates by providing health care for women during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum and encouraging childbirth under medical supervision.

IPS: What are the achievements of Oman in reaching SDG Target 3.7 (Sexual and reproductive health by 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies)?

HY: In this regard, a campaign was launched on sexual and reproductive health in the Sultanate due to its positive impact on public health and society. This campaign confirms that reproductive health services are an integral part of primary health care and health security in the country and that it has long-term repercussions on health and social and economic health. Family planning is one of the most important of these services because, if it is not organized, it constitutes a social bomb that can hit everyone, whether a citizen or an official. Therefore, we must take proactive preventive steps.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Universal Health Care priorities in Pakistan have been boosted by free healthcare insurance for the poor. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Feb 22 2023 (IPS)

A free health insurance initiative started in Pakistan has benefited poor patients, especially women who have outnumbered men in using the cashless health services under the Sehat Card Plus programme.

“The initiative is in line with the ICPD25 Programme of Action, under which 4.5 million people have received free services, with 62 percent of them women. In the last three years, we have been able to cut down maternal mortality rate from 186 deaths per 100,000 live births to 172,” Dr Muhammad Riaz Tanoli, CEO of the Sehat Card Plus (SCP), told IPS.

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Nairobi in 2019 set a programme of action aimed at empowering women and girls. The SCP aims to ensure Pakistan meets the 2030 deadline for sustainable development goals for universal health and women.

So far, USD 80 million have been spent on treating patients at 1,100 hospitals across the country.

Shaheen Begum, a resident of Peshawar, is thankful to former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who launched the programme and said that her sister had died of delivery-related complication years ago because they didn’t have money to get quality treatment. She was lucky to undergo a caesarean section at one of the city’s top private hospitals on SCP, and she and her newborn baby are in good health.

“Since my first-month of pregnancy, I have been getting diagnostic services free of cost. Two days before delivery, I was admitted because of complications, and doctors performed a caesarean operation,” Begum, 26, a housewife, said.

Pakistanis living abroad with chronic ailments return to the country for treatment. Muhammad Kashif, 55, recently arrived from Malaysia to undergo liver transplant surgery.

Kashif said that the cost of a liver transplant in Malaysia was USD 7,000. Not only was it beyond his reach, but he would have had to call relatives to Malaysia to donate a liver. That would have been impossible, he said in an interview with IPS.

“One of my friends called me and asked to come back and get the surgery free of cost. I came to my native Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in November last year, and next month, my transplant was done at one of the country’s premier hospitals,” he said.

Like Kashif, Mushtari Gul, a Pakistani nurse working in Saudi Arabia, became extremely sick as her kidneys stopped functioning.

“Initially, I received dialysis for two months, but doctors advised renal transplant that wasn’t possible there due to its cost and donor,” she said.

Gul, 51, is one of the 235 people who received free renal transplants under the SCP. She said it wasn’t possible without an insurance scheme because its cost was  USD 6,500, not affordable even by affluent people.

Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) is appreciative of the scheme. “It is an unprecedented programme where the people are able to get services in expensive hospitals. Most patients who couldn’t afford heart surgeries are among the beneficiaries,” PMA’s Secretary, Dr Qaisar Sajjad, told IPS.

PMA has been asking the government to ensure World Health Organization’s aim for Universal Health Coverage is delivered, and this was a step in that direction, Dr Qaisar said.

Public health specialist Dr Fayyaz Shah told IPS that the system has been very good. Unlike the health insurance schemes in developed countries where people deposit annual premiums, here, the government pays the insurance company without charging people.

Before the programme’s launch, the infant mortality rate was 41 per 1,000 live births, which has now come down to 35. Shah elaborated that other health indicators also show improvement as poor people receive timely treatment.

Patients are getting free services for renal and liver transplants and major ailments and procedures, including cancers, surgeries, cardiac diseases, hernia, cataracts, gynaecology, eye, ear, nose and throat and other diseases.

The major beneficiaries are women and children, followed by cancer, heart, dialysis and people with urinary and diabetic problems, he said.

Local gynaecologist Dr Naseem Akhtar terms the programme a blessing for women. Ever since the start of the programme, there has been a drastic decline in mortality among women for pregnancy-related complications.

“Our staff also work harder because they get extra financial incentives from the funds generated from SCP. The patients in hospitals also get free medicines and diagnostic services,” she said.

At the end of every month, we send patients’ details and expenses to the government, and the payment is made within a week. The state-run insurance company is implementing the programme on behalf of the government, which has proved beneficial both for patients and healthcare providers, she said.

A senior nurse, Sania Ali, at a local hospital, said her monthly salary is $200, but she earns $300 additional from the patients undergoing treatment on SCP.

“Our doctors, nurses and paramedical staff want the mechanism to continue as it was a big source of their extra income they received in addition to their fixed salaries,” he said.

“This system has not only helped the poor patients but is also a big source of income for private hospitals. We are extremely busy dealing with patients, and our staff is working round-the-clock to operate on more patients and get more money,” said Dr Shah Raj, a public health physician. She said that each family is entitled to $4,500 per year from the programme. In case of liver and kidney transplants, the patients’ benefits are around $20,000, she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Muslim Women in a rickshaw, Varanasi India, 2018. Credit: Adam Cohn/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
 
The United Nations will commemorate International Women’s Day (IWD) on 8 March.

By Mariz Tadros
BRIGHTON, UK, Feb 17 2023 (IPS)

Since researching the experiences of gender discrimination against women in poverty who belong to religious minorities, many fellow feminists have turned their back on me.

The inherent assumption among some of my feminist critics is that by defending women who are targeted on account of their religious affiliation, I am defending their religions. Yet defending the rights of a Hindu woman in Pakistan or Muslim woman in India do not constitute defending Hinduism or Islam.

Defending a woman’s right not to be discriminated against because of her identity and challenging religious bigotry both go hand in hand. We need to challenge all political projects that seek to homogenize people while simultaneously defending women, minorities, artists and others whose positioning accentuates their experiences of inequality.

Feminist reluctance to address injustices experienced by women who belong to religious minorities is also driven by concern that we end up empowering religious movements whose ethos is against women’s equality.

Again, we need to distinguish between women who are the targets of hate because they do not share the same faith as the majority, and anti-feminist movements who often are from the majority. We need to show solidarity with the former while challenging the latter.

Well-meaning progressive, feminists based in the West are reluctant to openly advocate for the rights of religious minority women living in Muslim majority contexts because of legitimate concerns that this would feed into orientalist (racist) representations of radical militant Islamist groups or by intolerant sections of society.

Yet can we be inadvertently reproduce a colonialist mindset when we decide to omit the experiences of minority women out of fear of misappropriation in the west?

Why should women who have experienced genocide be denied transnational feminist solidarities because it would be more progressive to focus on the Muslims who were against the genocide.

Research undertaken by the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development, shows that in countries including Iraq, Pakistan and Nigeria, experiences for women are made worse where their experiences of gender inequality, religious marginality and socio-economic exclusion intersect.

For example, women belonging to religious minorities become easy targets of vilification and assault because of the visible manifestation of difference through what they wear. Yazidi, Sabean or Christian women are exposed to harassment in disproportionate levels in Iraq because they do not cover their hair while in Pakistan, Hindu women dressed in Sari are subject to ridicule and targeting because their middle bodies are said to be ‘exposed’.

Even if you belong to the majority religion, and you cover up more than the others, this still means exposure to harassment for being seen to practice the religion differently, as experienced by Ahmediyya women in Pakistan and the Izala Sufi women in Nigeria.

Women from religious minorities can also be at significant risk of sexual assault. While all women in patriarchal societies are exposed to sexual harassment independently of their religious affiliation, women affiliated to religiously marginalized communities are targeted because of the circulation of stereotypes that they are more available or ‘fair game’ or that men are not obligated to respect them the same respect as those from the majority religion.

While all women living in poverty suffer the impact of gender, caste and socio-economic exclusion combined, the experiences of discrimination become more acute and severe when shaped by ideological prejudice.

In our research in the aftermath of covid, Muslim women spoke about being denied health care because of the scapegoating of Muslims for the spread of the pandemic, while in Iraq Yazidi women spoke of how despicable stereotypes of Yazidi women not washing meant doctors denied them treatment.

The feminist movement cannot continue to represent itself as committed to inclusivity through intersectionality (the recognition of and redress to- interface of gender, race, class, ableism and so forth in shaping and influencing power dynamics) while turning its back on women who come from a religious minority background where their rights are denied.

A review by doctoral researcher Amy Quinn-Graham of UN Women’s website and publications related to intersectionality and/or ‘minorities’ from 2014 – 2019, showed that compared to indigenous women, migrant women, women with disabilities, women and girls living in rural localities, older women, and women and girls of African descent, all of which were accounted for in the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women agreed conclusions from 2017 onwards, concerns for the vulnerabilities facing “ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities” were raised only once and for the first time in 2019, by the EU.

Certainly, there are feminist movements, scholars and those engaged in policymaking who recognize and seek redress for discrimination on grounds of religion experienced by socio-economically excluded women, but it seems they are the exception, rather than the norm.

It is not too late for us to be inclusive, and this International Women’s Day we should recognize and show solidarity with women who belong to religious minorities living on the margins. We just have to start by not making excuses for their omission from our “intersectional lens”.

Professor Mariz Tadros is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies; a professor of politics and development and an IDS Research Fellow specialising in the politics and human development of the Middle East. Areas of specialisation include democratisation, Islamist politics, gender, sectarianism, human security and religion and development. Prof Tadros has convened the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development (CREID) since November 2018.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Two of the six Russian women who were detained by the Argentine immigration authorities when they reached the country on Feb. 8 and 9 sleep in the Buenos Aires airport. A federal judge ruled that they were placed in a situation of vulnerability and ordered that they be allowed to enter the country. CREDIT: TV Capture

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES , Feb 16 2023 (IPS)

They began to arrive en masse in Argentina in the second half of 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They are pregnant Russian women who land in the capital to give birth, with the hope of gaining an Argentine passport, given the fact that so many countries refuse to let in people with Russian passports today.

Authorities are investigating whether they are the victims of scams by organizations holding out false promises.

“Of the 985 deliveries we attended in 2022, 85 were to Russian women and 37 of them were in December. This trend continued in January and so far in February,” Liliana Voto, Head of the Maternal and Child Youth Department at the Fernández Hospital, one of the most renowned public health centers in the Argentine capital, located in the Palermo neighborhood, told IPS.“One thing are human trafficking networks, which make false promises in exchange for large sums of money, and another thing is the rights of women to enter Argentina and have their children here. They are victims.” -- Christian Rubilar

“Some come with an interpreter and others use a translation app on their phones. We do not ask them how they got to Argentina, but it is clear that there is an organization behind this,” added Voto.

In this South American country, public health centers treat patients free of charge, whether or not they have Argentine documents.

The issue exploded into the headlines on Feb. 8-9, when the immigration authorities detained six pregnant Russian women who had just landed at the Ezeiza international airport, on charges of not actually being tourists as they claimed.

The six women filed for habeas corpus and on Feb. 10 a federal judge ordered that they be allowed to enter the country, after some of them spent more than 48 hours on airport seats.

The ruling handed down by Judge Luis Armella stated that the authorities’ decision not to let them into the country put the women in a vulnerable situation that affected their rights “to proper medical care, food, hygiene and rest,” and said he was allowing them into the country to also protect the rights of their unborn children.

In addition, the judge ordered a criminal investigation into whether there is an organization behind the influx of pregnant Russian women that is scamming them or has committed other crimes. The results of the investigation are sealed.

On Feb. 10, shortly after the court ruling was handed down, 33 Russian women who were between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant arrived in Buenos Aires on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa. (There are no direct flights between Russia and Argentina.)

As reported by the national director of the migration service, Florencia Carignano, in 2022, 10,500 people of Russian nationality entered Argentina and 5,819 of them were pregnant women.

The immigration authorities carried out an investigation in which it interviewed 350 pregnant Russian women in Argentina. They discovered that there is an organization that “offers them, in exchange for a large sum of money, a ‘birth tourism’ package, and gaining an Argentine passport is the main reason for the trip,” Carignano tweeted.

The Fernández Hospital, in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, is one of the most prestigious public health centers in Argentina. In December 2022, 37 Russian women gave birth there. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“Argentina’s history and legislation embrace immigrants who choose to live in this country in search of a better future. This does not mean we endorse mafia organizations that profit by offering scams to obtain our passport, to people who do not want to live here,” she added.

Under Argentine law, foreign nationals who have a child born in Argentina are immediately given permanent residency status, in a process that takes a few months. To obtain citizenship, they have to prove two years of uninterrupted residence here, in a federal court.

“Becoming a citizen is a difficult process that takes many years. If the organizations promise Russian women a passport in a few months, they are lying or there is corruption behind this,” Lourdes Rivadeneyra, head of the Migrant and Refugee Program at the National Institute against Discrimination (INADI), told IPS.

Rights in Argentina

“One thing are human trafficking networks, which make false promises in exchange for large sums of money, and another thing is the rights of women to enter Argentina and have their children here. They are victims,” Christian Rubilar, a lawyer for three of the six women who were held in the Ezeiza airport, told IPS.

Rubilar pointed out that the constitution guarantees essential rights “for all people in the world who want to live in Argentina.” He added that the country’s laws do not mention “false tourists”, and that therefore the immigration office exceeded its authority by denying them access to the country.

Argentina received different waves of European migration from the end of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. This created a culture of respect for the rights of immigrants among citizens and in the country’s legislation, which see Argentina as a land that welcomes foreigners in trouble, such as Venezuelans who have arrived in large numbers in the past few years.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, hundreds of thousands of people have fled Russia, in what has been described by some as a third historic exodus, after the ones that followed the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Although there are no official figures, recently the English newspaper The Guardian estimated that between 500,000 and one million people have left Russia since the beginning of the war. Many leave out of fear of being sent to the front lines, or because they are in conflict with the government or due to the consequences of international economic sanctions on the country.

The RuArgentina website offers a package of services including a hospital birth for pregnant woman in Buenos Aires and the promise of obtaining Argentine passports for the parents, which gives them entrance without a visa to most countries around the world. CREDIT: Online ad

As can be quickly verified in an Internet search, there are organizations operating in Argentina that promise Russian women who give birth in this country that they and their husbands can quickly obtain citizenship here.

“Give birth in Argentina. We help you move to Argentina, obtain permanent residence and a passport, which gives you visa-free entry to 170 countries around the world,” announces the RuArgentina website, which offers a package that includes accommodation in Buenos Aires, medical assistance, the help of a translator and aid in applying for documents, among other services for pregnant women.

The founder of RuArgentina is a Russian living in Argentina, Kirill Makoveev, who said in an interview on TV that “there are a variety of reasons why our clients come to Argentina: some want a passport because the Russian passport is toxic now. So we explain that the constitution and immigration laws here allow you to obtain a passport without breaking the law.”

The Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires did not respond to IPS’s request for comments, but the pregnant women have not been defended by the Russian community in Argentina.

“They are not coming to Argentina as immigrants, to work and seek a better future, as many Russians did in different waves of immigration. They are coming in order to use Argentina as a springboard to go to Western European countries or the United States,” Silvana Yarmolyuk, director of the Coordinating Council of Organizations of Russian Compatriots in Argentina, which brings together 23 community associations from all over the country, told IPS. .

Yarmolyuk, who was born in Argentina and is the daughter of a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, said that the Russians who are coming to Argentina now are people of certain means who are taking advantage of Argentina’s flexible immigration policies.

“Just the ticket from Russia to Argentina costs about 3,000 dollars,” she said. “The danger is that this exacerbates the spread of Russophobia, which hurts all of us.”

APDA organizes regular conferences bringing together various parliamentarians from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe to address critical issues on population and development – including youth employment and other issues arising from ICPD25 take center stage. Here Bridget Bedu takes a test in computational electronics as her daughter Giovana plays under the desk at the National Vocational Technical Institute training center. Credit: IMF Photo/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 6 2023 (IPS)

Many Ghanian Members of Parliament (MPs) champion adolescent reproductive health rights to stop the practice of child marriage, which is prevalent in some areas of the country even though the country’s Constitution and Children’s Act outlaw it, Dr Rashid Pelpuo (MP) told IPS in an exclusive interview.

Pelpuo, who is President of the African Parliamentarians Forum on Population and Development, also said it had become “normal practice” for MPs to work to support youth and “lead discussions on issues of family planning and adolescent reproductive health at youth sensitization programmes.”

He told IPS the Presidents of the Pan African Parliament (PAP) and the African Parliamentarians Forum on Population and Development recognize: “Our shared interest in, commitment to, and existing cooperation on population and development issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights, including family planning and HIV/AIDS…” This commitment is expected to be signed in a memorandum of understanding in 2023.

President of the African Parliamentarians Forum on Population and Development and Member of Parliament Dr Rashid Pelpuo.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

IPS: While Ghana’s Constitution and its Children’s Act both outlaw child marriage, according to a study, 1 in 5 girls get married before age 18 and 1 in 20 before they are 20. These marriages are more common in the northern regions.

How are parliamentarians dealing with these issues?

RP: The issue of child marriage in Ghana is traceable to an age-old tradition of marrying women early ‘before they are spoiled’ – a woman who has ‘known a man’ before marriage was a disgrace to the family that has brought her up. Though this situation no longer exists, the practice of early marriage of women continues, especially in rural Ghana.

Parliamentarians of the Population and Development Caucus and others are strong advocates against this practice both in and outside Parliament.

According to the Ghanaian 1992 Constitution and the Children’s Act, it is unlawful to marry a girl before she’s 18 years of age. In a few cases when such laws are violated by a man who marries before the minimum age or even before the girl has finished her basic education, MPs will normally work with law enforcers to free the girl and help prosecute the culprit.

A good number of MPs have signed on as champions of adolescent reproductive health and rights and are key supporters of family life education. This year alone, MPs have worked with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in key locations to interact with young people and address their health and education challenges by referrals.

IPS: West Africa’s population accounts for about 30% of Africa’s population. From roughly 367 million people today, it is expected to increase to almost 570 m by 2035. However, the region is yet to benefit from the ‘demographic dividend.’ Many say that a high population of youth is a challenge for the government; there is a high cost of health care, education, and other services and high levels of unemployment. How are parliamentarians working towards policies that may reduce fertility rates, improve education, family planning, etc.?

RP: The fertility rate in Ghana is 3.696 births per woman (Ghana Statistical Service, 2022), as against the fertility rate of Africa at 4.212 births per woman. Ghana’s fertility rate has been consistently declining since 1985 and is expected to be 2.9 births per woman in 2025. As part of efforts to sensitize the public about unplanned birth and avoidance of teenage pregnancy, Parliamentarians often interact with youth leaders along with experts on the issue of reproductive health.

For example, in November last year, MPs interacted with young people about issues with their reproductive health. Also, at the beginning of December 2022, on the occasion of the birth of the world’s 8 billionth child, MPs held a workshop, with the UNFPA sponsorship, to view the implications of having a global population of 8 billion on Ghana.

After that programme, the MPs pledged to revise their annual advocacy on Ghana’s population growth and concerns to quarterly advocacy through statements on the floor of Parliament. The thrust of MPs’ work in supporting the education and awareness of the youth is in policy advocacy and direct interaction with the youth. It has become normal practice for MPs to lead discussions on family planning and adolescent reproductive health issues at youth sensitization programmes.

A chunk of the programme of the African Parliamentarians Forum, often sponsored by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the UNFPA, centers on issues of family planning, reproductive health, and universal health. This appears to be a direct response to the high fertility rate of sub-Saharan Africa at 4.6 births per woman (World Bank Report, 2021). Knowing the frequent occurrence of teenage pregnancy and unplanned births throughout the continent, it has become a necessary effort to sink home the need for policy advocacy in these areas for all African countries.

In a memorandum, yet to be signed by the Presidents of the Pan African Parliament and the African Parliamentarians Forum on Population and Development, Parliamentarians recognized “our shared interest in, commitment to, and existing cooperation on population and development issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights including family planning and HIV/AIDS…”

IPS: In Ghana, the maternal mortality rate is shrinking. Figures quoted online are that it is 308 per 100,000. It is much higher in other countries in the region; in Ghana’s neighbor Nigeria, the rate stands at 917/100,000. While both seem to be going down (which is good), they are a long way from the 70/100,000 in the SDG 3 targets. What are parliamentarians working toward to improve this in Ghana? Is there regional cooperation to address this?

RP: Parliamentarians often make policy statements on maternal health directed at the ruling government to address the concern about the unacceptable situation of high maternal deaths in Ghana. Issues on maternal death are paramount in our health policies. Ghana has introduced a Free Maternal Health Care Policy (FMHCP) on which pregnant women register for free health insurance and receive free medical care. Parliamentarians have played an advocacy role in developing this policy and have been reaching out to women who may not be aware of it to help them take advantage of it. The impact has been very positive (and shows) in annual improvements in maternity health.

There has been regional cooperation in discussing and sharing information on Universal Health Care and reproductive health and rights. The African Parliamentarians forum has had a number of meetings and conferences with their counterparts from other regions, especially with the Asian and European Parliamentarians forums that touch on issues on reproductive health and policy sharing. Major cooperation in areas of maternal health is recorded in various international conferences that tackle the problems of high maternal mortality. Such conferences include Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), New Delhi, India, in December 2018, and Women Deliver (Africa Parliamentarians), Vancouver, Canada, in June 2019. Such arenas of cooperation give a good comparative understanding of how various countries across regions tackle reproductive health challenges.

IPS: Could you elaborate on APDA’s role in facilitating regional cooperation on the ICPD25 programme of action?

The Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) was established in Japan as a Non-Governmental Organization directed at addressing the challenges posed by issues on population and development. It serves as the Secretariat of the Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP) and directs its focus on the role of the Japanese MPs and their counterparts in Asia, Africa, Arab and other regions. APDA’s research focuses on three main areas, which are gender, health, and social policy issues. Since the establishment of the ICPD 25 as a focus area of intervention, APDA has organized various programmes.

APDA often organizes conferences in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East under ICPD 25 thematic areas. These conferences often bring together various parliamentarians from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe to address critical issues on population and development. Issues such as youth unemployment and other goals of ICPD25 are center stage at the conferences.

Indeed each year, APDA, in collaboration with the UNFPA, organizes annual conferences on ICPD25. In recent times APDA has organized webinars and conferences for regional participation both in June, July and September 2022.

In September 2022, the conference with the theme “The Role of Parliamentarians in Realizing the ICPD25 Commitments” was patronized by Asian and African Parliamentarians.

Another follow-up meeting on ICPD25 Commitments was held in June 2022 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was supported by UNFPA ESARO and Japan Trust Fund (JTF) with cooperation from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). More than 100 participants, including parliamentarians, officers of national committees on population and development, and UN experts, attended.

In effect, APDA has always supported the implementation of the ICPD25 in various ways but mostly through international conferences that ensure regional cooperation and participation.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Africa needs to urgently invest in health programmes to reduce maternal deaths, which is more than five times above the 2030 SDG target of fewer than 70 maternal deaths per 100 000 live births. Measures include ensuring women access to skilled birth attendants. Credit: Ernest Ankomah/IPS

By Francis Kokutse
ACCRA, Jan 3 2023 (IPS)

As the effects of COVID-19 on Africa’s health sector become clearer, it looks the continent will need to take urgent steps to overcome the disruptions suffered in the breakdown in antenatal and postnatal care for women and newborns and neonatal intensive care units. The pandemic brought some setbacks to the gains achieved in maternal mortality over the past decade.

Consequently, the continent needs to race against time to improve its health sector to meet the Sustainable Development Goals against the backdrop of a new report, the Atlas of Health Statistics 2022, which called for increased investment to avert the growing number in maternal mortality across the continent.

The report said that inadequate investment in health and funding for programmes were some of the major drawbacks to meeting the SDG in the sector.

“For example, a 2022 WHO survey of 47 African countries found that the region has a ratio of 1.55 health workers (physicians, nurses, and midwives) per 1000 people, below the WHO threshold density of 4.45 health workers per 1000 people needed to deliver essential health services and achieve universal health coverage.”

It noted that 65% of births in Africa are attended by skilled health personnel – the lowest globally and far off the 2030 target of 90%, adding that “skilled birth attendants are crucial for the well-being of women and newborns. Neonatal deaths account for half of all under-5 mortality. Accelerating the agenda to meet its reduction goal will be a major step toward reducing the under-5 mortality rate to fewer than 25 deaths per 1000 live births.”

The Ghanaian authorities might have taken note of the trend last year and launched a national campaign to avert all preventable deaths related to pregnancy dubbed “Zero Tolerance for Maternal Deaths.”

Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said the campaign was to remove all barriers and unfair treatments that increased the vulnerability of pregnant women and girls to maternal mortality and also push those with unintended pregnancies to indulge in unsafe abortions and other risky action.

Kuma-Aboagye said the campaign was critical to accelerating the decline of maternal mortality from 308 out of every 1,000 live births to 70 by 2030, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “The slow decline in maternal mortality in Ghana is of great concern to the Ministry of Health, the GHS, and its partners.”

Reacting to the Atlas report, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, said: “This means that for many African women, childbirth remains a persistent risk and millions of children do not live long enough to celebrate their fifth birthday.”

She asked governments to take note.

“It is crucial that governments make a radical course correction, surmount the challenges, and speed up the pace towards the health goals. These goals aren’t mere milestones, but the very foundations of a healthier life and well-being for millions of people.”

The report estimated that, in sub-Saharan Africa, 390 women will die in childbirth for every 100 000 live births by 2030. This is more than five times above the 2030 SDG target of fewer than 70 maternal deaths per 100 000 live births and much higher than the average of 13 deaths per 100 000 live births witnessed in Europe in 2017.

“It is more than double the global average of 211. To reach the SDG target, Africa will need an 86% reduction from 2017 rates, the last time data was reported, an unrealistic feat at the current rate of decline,” the report said.

The region’s infant mortality rate is 72 per 1000 live births. At the current 3.1% annual rate of decline, there will be an expected 54 deaths per 1000 live births by 2030, far above the reduction target of fewer than 25 per 1000.

The report assessed nine targets related to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on health and found that at the current pace, increased investment is needed to accelerate progress on the targets. Among the most difficult to achieve will be reducing maternal mortality.

Physician and chief executive officer of Medway Health, Dr Omotuyi Mebawondu, has expressed concern that despite the worldwide reduction in maternal mortality rate, sub–Saharan Africa still accounts for two third of an average of 800 daily deaths of women from pregnancy and its complications.

Mebawondu said one of the key interventions is to ensure that pregnant women have access to antenatal care principally to identify danger signals early and enjoy delivery with the assistance of skilled birth attendants.

Accordingly, he has suggested that another way of reducing maternal mortality is to look into the use of technology. “The challenge of human resources for health in sub-Saharan Africa imposes a great responsibility on policymakers to explore technology in delivering health interventions to hard-to-reach populations.

Mebawondu said this must be preceded by adequate internet penetration and access, especially in rural areas, as such technology will help update and upgrade the health workers’ skills and educate the women on the challenges of pregnancy.

“A database of all pregnant women in poor rural localities must be collated and followed up through such technology. In addition, technology can be used to enhance emergency response to common causes of maternal deaths like bleeding, sepsis, and eclampsia. It can also be used to deliver most needed family planning services,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A community health worker spreads the message of screening for cervical cancer along with HIV. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Dec 6 2022 (IPS)

Damaris Anyango* was recently discharged from Kenyatta National Hospital, battling the twin challenge of cervical cancer and HIV. She is 50 years old and was diagnosed with HIV nearly ten years ago.

Despite the heightened risk of developing cervical cancer due to the underlying HIV-positive condition, her first cervical cancer screening was undertaken three years ago.

“It has been a big challenge dealing with HIV and cervical cancer. When I was told that my HIV test was positive, many years ago, I thought my life was over. I started giving away my possessions, but I was counselled and accepted my status. Only to receive a second blow,” she says from her home in Homabay County.

Research by the World Health Organization (WHO) paints a female face of HIV. Women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa accounted for two in every three new HIV infections in 2021, entering a cohort of women at significant risk of developing cervical cancer.

“Women living with HIV are six times more likely to develop cervical cancer compared to women without HIV. Cervical cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus and is the most common sexually transmitted infection,” says Oscar Raymond Omondi, a cervical cancer expert and researcher across the East African region.

He says that even though most human papillomavirus (HPV) infection clears up on their own and that most pre-cancerous lesions resolve spontaneously, this is not often the case for women living with HIV.

“Women living with HIV are not always able to clear an HPV infection due to a weakened immune system. In the first place, women with HIV have a higher risk of acquiring HPV. Thereafter, pre-cancerous cells progress very fast in developing cervical cancer,” Omondi observes.

Against this backdrop, an even larger magnitude of cervical cancer looms. According to data from Kenya’s Ministry of Health, HIV prevalence is highest among women at 6.6 percent compared to men at 3.1 percent.

Today, cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in Kenya. Yet, Mary Kamau, a nurse in HIV care and treatment at Kiambu Sub-County Level 5 hospital, says that efforts to prevent, screen and treat have not been urgently scaled up.

“Cervical cancer is a very big problem in Kenya even though it is easily preventable. One of the major barriers to combating cervical cancer is low screening. Despite the magnitude of the disease, cervical cancer screening coverage for all women in the country aged 15 to 49 years is a shocking 14 percent,” Omondi says.

Kamau says HIV and cervical cancer are driven and accelerated by significant gender inequalities, poverty, low education, rural residence and low knowledge levels of cervical cancer, HPV and available options for prevention, treatment and control.

Omondi concurs, saying that HIV and cervical cancer are very closely related and thrive under similar conditions, and yet, “we continue to employ very different strategies in tackling both diseases. We can fast track prevention and control of these diseases by employing a combined approach.”

Against this backdrop, the WHO released a new edition of its guidelines on cervical cancer screening and treatment to prevent cervical cancer, including 16 new and updated recommendations and good practice statements for women living with HIV.

Omondi stresses the importance of collaboration between HIV and cervical cancer programs, saying that such a model would accelerate the prevention, control and elimination of HIV and cervical cancer.

He emphasizes that cervical cancer is preventable and curable if detected early. But due to lack of timely screening and treatment, according to UNAIDS research, cervical cancer is an AIDS-defining illness.

Once they acquire HPV and if left untreated, women with HIV quickly develop cervical cancer. Health experts such as Kamau say that while women are living longer due to antiretroviral treatment, they are left significantly vulnerable to other illnesses and premature death.

“Women living with HIV are in regular, close contact with health care systems. There is a need to assess why health systems are unable to deliver cervical cancer screening services to said women on a regular basis,” she observes.

“There are definitely challenges with staffing. There is a lot more focus on HIV and especially when it comes to funding. There is outreach and sustained sensitization of HIV and very little going on in the cervical cancer camp.”

Anyango agrees, saying that she has received full support, including home visits concerning HIV, but the same cannot be said of cervical cancer.

“I was screened for cervical cancer because my daughter, who is studying nursing, insisted on it. I did not know what it was all about. In fact, I always thought cervical cancer was caused by chemicals, and since I live in the village, I thought we were safe from it,” she says.

Even though research by WHO suggests that cervical cancer could be the first cancer to be eliminated, for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, it will be a long and gruelling journey unless there is sustained sensitization of the importance of cervical cancer vaccination and screening.

“Health facilities have been providing vaccination against HPV for girls aged ten years since 2021. We need to scale up efforts to improve vaccination, screening and treatment. I believe reaching young girls in schools with this information would be a great step in the right direction,” says Kamau.

Meanwhile, Anyango urges all women to undergo regular cervical cancer screening and suggests that the government partner with churches to boost awareness levels.

“If you visit any church, you will see that a majority of the worshippers are women. This is a good place to spread the message on cervical cancer,” she suggests.

Anyango says her body has responded well to treatment, and she has returned to her fish-selling business on the shores of Lake Victoria in Homabay County.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Testing new approaches for preventing gender-based violence to galvanize more and new partners and resources. Credit: UN Women

By Jacqui Stevenson, Jessica Zimerman and Diego Antoni
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 30 2022 (IPS)

How are the multiple shocks and crises the world is facing changing how we respond to gender-based violence? Almost three years after the COVID-19 pandemic triggered high levels of violence against women and girls, the recent Sexual Violence Research Initiative Forum 2022 (SVRI) shed some light on the best ways forward.

Bringing together over 1,000 researchers, practitioners, policymakers and activists in Cancún, Mexico, the forum highlighted new research on what works to stop and address one of the most widespread violations of human rights.

While some participants candidly – and bravely – shared that their initiatives did not have the intended impact, many discussed efforts that transformed lives, in big and small ways.

After 5 days of the forum one thing was clear; a lack of evidence is not what is standing in the way of achieving a better future. It is a lack of opportunities and the will to apply that evidence.

Among the many shared findings, UNDP presented its own evidence.

Since 2018, the global project on Ending Gender-based Violence and Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a partnership between UNDP and the Republic of Korea, and in collaboration with United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, has tested new approaches for preventing and addressing gender-based violence, to galvanize more and new partners, resources, and support to move from rhetoric to action.

Three key strategies have emerged.

1. We need to integrate

Gender-based violence (GBV) intersects with all areas of sustainable development. That means that every development initiative provides a chance to address the causes of violence and to transform harmful social norms that not only put women disproportionately at risk for violence, but also limit progress.

Bringing together diverse partners to jointly incorporate efforts to end GBV into “non-GBV” programmes has been central to the Ending GBV and Achieving the SDGs project. Pilots in Indonesia, Peru and the Republic of Moldova integrated a GBV lens into local development planning.

The results were local action plans that focused on needs and solutions identified by the communities themselves, including evidence-based GBV prevention programming such as the Common Elements Treatment Approach, which has been proven to reduce violence along with risk factors such as alcohol abuse. This approach is growing, opening up new and more spaces for this work.

2. We need to elevate

While evidence is crucial to creating change, the work doesn’t stop there. We also need to elevate this evidence to policy makers and to support them in putting the findings into action. In our global project, we went about this in different ways.

In Peru women’s rights advocates and the local government worked together to draft a local action plan to address drivers of violence in the community of Villa El Salvador (VES). By working collaboratively and building trust between key players, the project was able to take a more holistic approach and to create stronger alliances to boost its sustainability and impacts.

In particular, the local action plan was informed by cost analysis research that showed that this approach would pay for itself if it prevented violence for only 0.6 percent of the 80,000-plus women in VES who are at risk for violence every year.

Since the pilot’s launch, more than 15 other local governments have expressed interest in the model, and it has already been replicated in three.

3. We need to finance

Less than 1 percent of bilateral official development assistance (ODA) and philanthropic funding is given to prevent and address GBV, despite the fact that roughly a third of women have experienced physical or sexual violence.

The “Imperative to Invest” study, funded by the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative and presented at the SVRI Forum, shows just what can be achieved with a US$500 million investment. The study highlights that Spotlight’s efforts will have prevented 21 million women and girls from experiencing violence by 2025.

The Ending GBV and Achieving the SDGs project also finds positive results when financing local plans. Through pilot initiatives in Peru, Moldova and Indonesia, it was possible to mobilize funds when different municipal governments take ownership of participatory planning processes at an early stage.

The local level is a key, yet an often overlooked, entry point to identifying community needs and, through participatory, multi-sectoral partnerships, to translate them into funded solutions.

In Moldova the regional government of Gagauzia assigned funds to create the region’s first safe space, with the support of the community.

The SVRI Forum was living proof that a better future is possible. It offered profound moments for thoughtful exchange, learning with partners and peers, and deepened our own reflections on the outcomes and next steps for this global project.

As we approach the final countdown to meeting the SDGs, including SDG5.2 on eliminating violence against women and girls, it has never been more urgent to take all this evidence and turn it into action against gender-based violence. Let’s act today.

Jacqui Stevenson is Research Consultant UNU International Institute for Global Health, Jessica Zimerman is Project Specialist, Gender-based Violence, UNDP, and Diego Antoni is Policy Specialist Gender, Governance and Recovery, UNDP.

Source: UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Yomira Cuadros faced motherhood at an early age, as well as the obstacles of a sexist society like Peru’s, regarding her reproductive decisions. In the apartment where she lives with her family in Lima, she expresses faith in the future, now that she has finally started attending university, after having two children as a result of unplanned pregnancies. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

No woman in Peru should have to die, have her physical or mental health affected, be treated as a criminal or have an unwanted pregnancy because she does not have access to abortion, said Dr. Rocío Gutiérrez, an obstetrician who is the deputy director of the Manuela Ramos Movement, a non-governmental feminist center that works for gender rights in this South American country.

In this Andean nation of 33 million people, abortion is illegal even in cases of rape or fetal malformation. It is only legal for two therapeutic reasons: to save the life of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious and permanent health problem.

Peru thus goes against the current of the advances achieved by the “green wave”. Green is the color that symbolizes the changes that the women’s rights movement has achieved in the legislation of neighboring countries such as Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina and some states in Mexico, where early abortion has been decriminalized. These countries have joined the ranks of Cuba, where it has been legal for decades."I didn't tell my parents because they are very Catholic and would have forced me to go through with the pregnancy, they always instilled in me that abortion was a bad thing. But I started to think about how pregnancy would change my life and I didn't feel capable of raising a child at that moment." -- Fatima Guevara

But Latin America remains one of the most punitive regions in terms of abortion, with several countries that do not recognize women’s right to make decisions about their pregnancies under any circumstances. In El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Haiti it is illegal under all circumstances, and in some cases draconian penalties are handed down.

In the case of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela, meanwhile, abortion is allowed under very few conditions, while there are more circumstances under which it is legal in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador.

“In Peru an estimated 50,000 women a year are treated for abortion-related complications in public health facilities,” Dr. Gutiérrez told IPS. “This is not the total number of abortions in the country, but rather the number of women who reach public health services due to emergencies or complications.”

The obstetrician spoke to IPS from Buenos Aires, where she participated in the XV Regional Conference on Women, held Nov. 7-11 in the Argentine capital.

Gutiérrez explained that the cases attended are just the tip of the iceberg, because for every abortion complicated by hemorrhage or infection treated at a health center, at least seven have been performed that did not present difficulties.

Multiplying by seven the 50,000 cases treated due to complications provides the shocking figure of 350,000 unsafe clandestine abortions performed annually in Peru.

The doctor regretted the lack of official statistics about a phenomenon that affects the lives and rights of women “irreversibly, with damage to health, and death.”

Gutiérrez said that another of the major impacts is the criminalization of women who undergo abortions, due to mistreatment by health personnel who not only judge and blame them, but also report them to the police.

Obstetrician Rocío Gutiérrez (C), deputy director of the feminist Manuela Ramos Movement, stands with two fellow activists holding green scarves – representing the struggle for reproductive rights – during the XV Regional Conference on Women held this month in the city of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Courtesy of Rocío Gutiérrez

Under article 30 of Peru’s General Health Law, No. 26842, a physician who attends a case of presumed illegal abortion is required to file a police report.

Gutiérrez also referred to the fact that unwanted pregnancies have numerous consequences for the lives of women, especially girls and adolescents, in a sexist country like Peru, where women often do not have the right to make decisions on their sexuality and reproductive health.

Healing the wounds of unwanted motherhood

By the age of 19, Yomira Cuadros was already the mother of two children. She did not plan either of the pregnancies and only went ahead with them because of pressure from her partner.

In 2020, according to official data, 8.3 percent of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 were already mothers or had become pregnant in Peru.

Cuadros, whose parents are both physicians and who lives in a middle-class family, said she never imagined that her life would turn out so differently than what she had planned.

“The first time was because I didn’t know about contraceptives, I was 17 years old. The second time the birth control method failed and I thought about getting an abortion, but I couldn’t do it,” Cuadros told IPS.

At the time, she was in a relationship with an older boyfriend on whom she felt very emotionally dependent. “I had made a decision (to terminate the pregnancy), but he didn’t want to, he told me not to, the pressure was like blackmail and out of fear I went ahead with the pregnancy,” she said.

Making that decision under coercion hurt her mental health. Today, at the age of 26, she reflects on the importance of women being guaranteed the conditions to freely decide whether they want to be mothers or not.

Peruvian activists go topless to demand the right to legal abortion, during a demonstration in the streets of the capital on Mar. 8, 2018. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

In her case, although she had the support of her mother to get a safe abortion, the power of her then-partner over her was stronger.

“Becoming a mother when you haven’t planned to is a shock, you feel so alone, it is very difficult. I didn’t feel that motherhood was something beautiful and I didn’t want to experience the same thing with my second pregnancy, so I considered terminating it,” she said.

Finding herself in that unwanted situation, she fell into a deep depression and was on medication, and is still in therapy today.

“I went from being a teenager to an adult with responsibilities that I never imagined. It’s as if I have never really gone through the proper mourning process because of everything I had to take on, and I know that it will continue to affect me because I will never stop being a mother,” she said.

She clarified that “it’s not that I don’t want to be a mother or that I hate my children,” and added that “as I continue to learn to cope, I will get better, it’s just that it wasn’t the right time.”

She and her two children, ages nine and seven, live with her parents and brother in an apartment in the municipality of Pueblo Libre, in the Peruvian capital. She has enrolled at university to study psychology and accepts the fact that she will only see her dreams come true little by little.

“Things are not how I thought they would be, but it’s okay,” she remarked with a newfound confidence that she is proud of.

Gutiérrez said more than 60 percent of women in Peru have an unplanned pregnancy at some point in their lives, and argued that the government’s family planning policies fall far short.

The National Institute of Statistics and Informatics reported that the total fertility rate in Peru in 2021 would have been 1.3 children on average if all unwanted births had been prevented, compared to the actual rate of 2.0 children – almost 54 percent higher than the desired fertility rate.

“There are a set of factors that lead to unwanted pregnancies, such as the lack of comprehensive sex education in schools, and the lack of birth control methods and timely family planning for women in all their diversity, which worsened during the pandemic. And of course, the correlate is access to legal and safe abortion,” said Gutiérrez.

She lamented that little or no progress has been made in Peru in relation to the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe and free legal abortion, despite the struggle of feminist organizations and movements in the country that have been demanding decriminalization in cases of rape, artificial insemination without consent, non-consensual egg transfer, or malformations incompatible with life.

University student Fátima Guevara decided to terminate an unwanted pregnancy when she was 19 years old. Four years later, she is sure that it was the right decision, in terms of her plans for her life. The young woman told her story at a friend’s home, where she was able to talk about it openly, in Lima, Peru. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The obscurity of illegal abortion

The obscurity surrounding abortion led Fátima Guevara, when she faced an unwanted pregnancy at the age of 19, to decide to use Misoprostol, a safe medication that is included in the methods accepted by the World Health Organization for the termination of pregnancies.

“I didn’t tell my parents because they are very Catholic and would have forced me to go through with the pregnancy, they always instilled in me that abortion was a bad thing. But I started to think about how pregnancy would change my life and I didn’t feel capable of raising a child at that moment,” she told IPS in a meeting at a friend’s home in Lima.

She said that she and her partner lacked adequate information and obtained the medication through a third party, but that she used it incorrectly. She turned to her brother who took her to have an ultrasound first. “Hearing the fetal heartbeat shook me, it made me feel guilty, but I followed through with my decision,” she added.

After receiving proper instructions, she was able to complete the abortion. And today, at the age of 23, about to finish her psychology degree, she has no doubt that it was the right thing to do.

Adolescent girls collecting water, Luweero, Uganda. Credit: Esther Nsapu/Education Development Center (EDC)
 
On December 19, 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/170 declaring October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child.

By Amy West and Sharon Iwachu
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 5 2022 (IPS)

This year commemorates the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl Child. While the last decade has seen greater attention on the positive development needs of girls, we must move beyond documenting the barriers that girls face to investing in and prioritizing girl-centered solutions to the critical development challenges of our world.

In light of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, air pollution and biodiversity highlighted in UN Common Agenda consultations in August, the vital role adolescent girls can play in climate-responsive solutions should not be underestimated.

Adolescent girls are among the most vulnerable to climate stress, natural disasters, and environmental degradation. With women, they are an estimated 80% of those displaced by climate-related disaster and represent 60% of the global population facing chronic hunger due to food insecurity.

Recent UNFPA studies have established the links between climate change, reduced and lost access to resources, and the pressures that result on households to survive. Families affected by climate change often have limited resources to begin with and even less after an acute weather-related disaster.

For those dependent on the environment for nutrition, health and household resources, this pressure results in early marriage or trafficking of girls for the sake of generating a source of income and/or reducing a household burden.

When climate change exacerbates existing inequities or the exclusion of girls – including their protection and access to functional, soft, life and technical skills development – household, community, and national level health and education outcomes are negatively affected; sometimes even for generations.

But what if we could change this harmful dynamic? What if we could effectively link the resilience, optimism, and resourcefulness of adolescent girls to new ways of investing in climate-related mitigation strategies?

Credit: UNICEF

What if we could turn existing environmental threats into “tipping-point” opportunities for better approaches to and investments in adolescent girls’ social and economic development?

With the most to lose from the harmful effects of climate change, girls and women also have the most to gain from climate-friendly development strategies that allow them to be active participants in and key contributors to community-led responses.

Adolescent girls can be the strongest catalysts for behavior and systems change if we understand their existing assets, the spaces they occupy, and the influence – invisible or otherwise – they have within households and communities.

Findings from an econometric study spanning four decades from the 1960s to early 2000s showed that adolescent girls’ rates of enrollment and retention in school significantly reduced weather-related death, injury and displacement at community level.

This is because with every year of education or skills training, adolescent girls’ self-confidence, leadership, communication, life and livelihoods skills increased.

As these more educated and skilled girls enter adulthood, they have greater decision-making power and create demonstrably healthier, safer, and more productive households.

There is a clear opportunity to connect the dots for those who occupy and are best placed to protect the land and its resources, as well as reinforce the health and safety of their households. In rural areas, especially, adolescent girls will become the next generation’s agricultural labor force.

If women worldwide are 40% of the agricultural labor force and responsible for more than half the world’s food production, and if education and skills training are prioritized for them, households will move beyond subsistence level farming to engage more as micro-businesses supporting farm-to-table supply and value chains.

This strengthens women-led engagement in diversifying agricultural approaches, through aquaculture and apiculture, and the connection of these innovations to economic development, as well as better health and nutrition outcomes.

To this end, climate-adaptive food systems can have a virtuous relationship, sustaining local suppliers and reinforcing local food security, and effectively weather-proofing communities by ensuring that everyone – in particular women and girls – has access to the knowledge and skills to save lives and sustain livelihoods.

We can take steps to harness the strength and resilience of adolescent girls everywhere even as we act urgently to mitigate the deleterious effects of climate-risk.

First, we must invest more in secondary education where the highest rates of dropout for girls occurs between lower and upper secondary level. This investment should include building context-relevant climate-smart skills for the resilience of households and communities.

Second, we must support the start-up of environmentally-friendly and climate-adaptive small businesses as part of workforce development and smart-financing strategies inclusive of adolescent girls and young women, especially in rural areas where green jobs can strengthen rural to urban supply chains and overall food security.

And finally, we must build community development plans that include ways young people, in particular adolescent girls, can support conservation and climate-risk reduction efforts as part of civic engagement – which will continue to reduce death, injury and displacement.

Without these forward-thinking investments in adolescent girls as key stakeholders in community development, harmful social and cultural attitudes that pit a woman’s role as a mother or wife against learning and livelihoods (and dismiss her right to own land) will continue, continuing a trend of lost opportunity on the grandest of scales.

Amy West of Education Development Center and Sharon Iwachu, Global G.L.O.W., Girl Advocacy Committee Alumni with Art of a Child in Uganda. EDC and Global G.L.O.W. are active members in the Coalition for Adolescent Girls (CAG), a member-led and driven organization dedicated to supporting, investing in, and improving the lives of adolescent girls.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Ricksani Alice, 19, who was married at a young age but is now back in school hoping to complete her education thanks to the Spotlight Initiative talks with UNFPA Gender Programme Officer Beatrice Kumwenda at Tilimbike Safe Community Space in Chiludzi village, Dowa, Malawi on November 2, 2020. Credit: UNFPA ESARO

By Cecilia Russell
Johannesburg, Sep 29 2022 (IPS)

Child marriage continues to be a scourge in many African countries – despite legislation and efforts of many, including parliamentarians, to keep girls in school and create brighter futures for them. This was the view of participants in a recent webinar held under the auspices of the African Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (FPA) and UNFPA East and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO).

The webinar, supported by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the Japan Trust Fund, heard how progressive legislation prohibiting marriage for adolescents under 18, and in one case, 21, was not enough to stop the practice.

Dr Kiyoko Ikegami, Executive Director, and Secretary General, APDA, noted in her opening address that the COVID-19 pandemic had affected child marriage prevention programmes and increased poverty and inequality, which was a driving force in child marriages.

Chinwe Ogbonna, UNFPA ESARO Regional Director a.i, said while there had been considerable achievements since the 1994 ICPD conference in Egypt – the work was not yet done.

She encouraged the parliamentarians to commit themselves to actions they agreed to at a regional meeting in Addis Ababa in June, which included “amplifying evidence-based advocacy.” In Africa, she said, teenage pregnancy and HIV prevalence are high. Gender-based violence was on the rise, and femicide and the harmful practices of child marriage, and female genital mutilation continued.

The webinar heard from members of parliament in various countries across the African continent.

Fredrick Outa, from Kenya, FPA Vice-President, told the delegates that while Kenya had made ambitious commitments, FGM was an area of concern. Kenya was committed to strengthening coordination in legislation and policy framework, communication and advocacy, integration and support, and cross-border cooperation to eliminate FGM.

Kenya aimed to eliminate GBV and child and forced marriages by “addressing social and cultural norms that propagate the practice while providing support to affected women and girls.”

An MP from Zambia, Princess Kasune, said it was of concern that the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS) of 2018 indicated that 29 percent of women aged 20-24 reported being married before 18. The country had various programmes to address this, including partnering with traditional rulers and civil society to fight early child marriage.

“Chiefs and headmen have made commitments in the fight against child marriage …. Traditional rulers are themselves champions in the fight against child marriage,” Kasune said.

She said the practice continues even though the Marriage Act prescribes 21 as the minimum age for marriage.

However, customary law differed, and there needed to be consistency in legislation.

The other crucial campaign against early marriages was to keep children in school. While the government had employed 30 000 teachers in rural areas, more was needed.

“Keeping children in school was critical to lowering the incidence of child marriage,” Kasune said.

Muwuma Milton, MP Uganda, agreed that culture played a part in eliminating harmful practices like child marriage. The country was applying a multifaceted approach to eliminating this – including school feeding schemes, providing sanitary packs for girls, and encouraging young mothers to return to school after delivery.

“A challenge is that the country has unmet needs for family planning services, which stands at 30%, and there is a culture that believes that once a girl reaches menstruation age, they are old enough to get married,” Milton said.

Matthew Ngwale, an MP from Malawi, noted that his country adhered to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) protocol that condemns the marriage of people under 18. The Malawian constitution, Marriage, Divorce, the Family Relations Act (2015), and the Childcare Justice and Protection Act all reinforce this policy.

But, Ngwale said, despite “progressive legislation, Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, where approximately 42% of girls get married before the age of 18, and 9% are below the age of 15. Approximately 7% of boys marry before the age of 18.”

He also noted that child marriage is higher in rural than urban areas. Rural girls are 1.6 times more likely to marry early than their urban counterparts.

Poverty is a clear driver, with women in the predominantly ‘poor’ south marrying at a slightly lower age than those in the ‘wealthier’ north and central regions.

“In Malawi, children from more impoverished families are twice as likely to marry early than those from wealthier families,” Ngwale said, and in a country where data shows that 51.5% of the people live below the poverty line, which is higher in rural areas at 60% compared to urban areas at 18%.

Traditional initiation practices, done as part of a rite of passage when a girl reaches puberty, encouraged early sexual activity, Ngwale said, and the prevalence of child marriage is higher among matrilineal than patrilineal groups.

“Due to food insecurity, child marriage often becomes a more likely coping mechanism as families seek to reduce the burden of feeding the family,” he said.

Climatic challenges, such as droughts and floods, have become more frequent and catastrophic.

Child marriage impacts secondary school completion rates. In Malawi, only 45% of girls stay in school beyond 8th grade.

“Most young girls who leave school due to child marriage have few opportunities to earn a living, making them more vulnerable to GBV. Child marriage lowers women’s expected earnings in adulthood by between 1.4% and 15.6%,” he said.

However, the Malawi government had created a conducive environment for civil society organizations to work with the government to end child marriage – including the official Girls Not Brides National Partnership.

Pamela Majodina, MP Republic of South Africa, told the webinar the country was committed to the objectives of ICPD25. It has passed laws, including the Domestic Violence Act, Children’s Act, Sexual Offences Act, and Child Justice Act, where it is a criminal offense to have sex with a child under 16 – regardless of consent.

Goodlucky Kwaramba, MP Zimbabwe, said her country was committed to reducing teenage pregnancies from 21.6% to 12% by 2030 and delivering comprehensive Family Planning services by 2030.

An MP from Eswatini, Sylvia Mthethwa, said her country, with 73 percent of the population below 35 and youth unemployment at 47 percent, was committed to ensuring that youth was front of mind. While senators were mobilizing financial resources, the National Youth Policy and National Youth Operational Plan had been developed.

Meanwhile, in Tanzania, some successes were already recorded Dr Thea Ntara, MP Tanzania, said rural areas were fully supported in the rollout of free ARVs, and adolescent and youth-friendly SRH services have been available in more than 63% of all health facilities since 2017.

Note: The webinar series is based on a recommendation of the African and Asian Parliamentarians’ meeting to Follow-Up on ICPD25 Commitments held in June 2022 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A community health volunteer informs community members about various methods of family planning. Photo Credit: UNFPA Kenya

By Stephanie Musho and Ritah Anindo Obonyo
NAIROBI, Sep 22 2022 (IPS)

Fatuma is a 24 year old girl from Korogocho, an informal settlement in Nairobi. She died in December 2021, from complications arising from an unsafe abortion. Her friend and a few of her neighbors found her bleeding profusely and unable to move. They rushed her to the hospital. Unfortunately, she died before she could see the doctor.

Unfortunately, Fatuma’s story is common for girls and women in Kenya. In fact, at least 7 of them die every day from complications arising from unsafe abortion. Worse still, is that with current trends – where 700 girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are getting pregnant daily; the harrowing statistics on abortions are likely to be worse. If Fatuma knew where she could access safe abortion services, she would not have died.

The Constitution operates a robust Bill of Rights that are legally binding - and not mere suggestions. In addition to expanding the right to safe abortion in Article 26(4), it explicitly provides for the right to the highest attainable standard of reproductive health in Article 43

Despite the Constitution of Kenya providing for three instances where safe abortion is permitted, the right to choose if and when to become pregnant as well as terminate pregnancies continues to be one of the most contested debates across the world. In Kenya, there has been considerable progress in promoting reproductive justice with the judicial arm of the government advancing the law. An example is the Malindi case (Petition E009 of 2020) that re-affirmed that abortion is a fundamental right as provided for in the Constitution.

Additionally, the court outlawed arbitrary arrests of trained healthcare providers and people seeking safe abortion within Constitutional limits. Nonetheless, these gains are under attack in what Kenyans are calling the new cold war. That is, the fight between pro-gender and reproductive justice proponents, against anti-choice subscribers.

In the past few years, there have been a series of events affecting both the social, political and legal environment for access to life-saving safe abortion services. Firstly, was the arbitrary withdrawal of the National Standards and Guidelines for Reducing Maternal Mortality and Morbidity in 2013. A year after they were reinstated by the High Court, the Ministry of Health suspended all training of medical abortion providers.

In July this year, the Ministry of Health launched the National Reproductive Health Policy(2022-2032), an unjust policy that did not follow due process in its enactment including the need for representative public participation as provided by Article 118 of the Constitution. The policy also leaves out a section of the population in access to reproductive health as it enforces parental consent and does not consider deaths and complications from unsafe abortion as a public health issue despite the statistics.

Additionally, consider the sustained attack on women’s health rights by opposition groups led by far-right extremist organization CitizenGO. They work to negate human rights under the guise of Christianity. They pay hungry and unsuspecting Kenyan youth to trend hashtags that intentionally amplify lies and half-truths about sexual and reproductive health and rights issues, especially abortion, LGBTI+ rights and sexuality education.

They continue to influence public opinion; and regressive laws and policies the world over, including in Kenya. Ironically, the organization which is headquartered in Madrid, is heavily funded by institutions in and individuals from the global north, yet maintain that sexual and reproductive health and rights is a foreign agenda to Africa – and must be rejected.

CitizenGO has in the past run smear campaigns against reproductive justice. These have included Hon. Susan Kihika (former Senator – and now Governor of Nakuru County) for sponsoring the Reproductive Health Bill 2019 in the Senate. This Bill would have provided a much needed legal framework on a wide range of reproductive issues such as assisted reproduction – which continue to operate in a vacuum.

Further, they have bullied Hon. Esther Passaris on social media for hosting a Christmas party for sex workers. Recently, they trolled Hon. Mukulia the sponsor of the East East Africa Community Sexual Reproductive Health Bill and called for his dismissal from the East Africa Legislative Assembly.

Critics could advance religious arguments to counter safe abortion and the rights of gender minorities. However, it is worth noting that these beliefs are subjective. Moreover, Kenya is a secular state that operates the doctrine of church-state separation. This principle creates distance between the two; recognizing that morality and religion are subjective.

Besides, the Constitution operates a robust Bill of Rights that are legally binding – and not mere suggestions. In addition to expanding the right to safe abortion in Article 26(4), it explicitly provides for the right to the highest attainable standard of reproductive health in Article 43. Additionally, it protects the right to privacy and human dignity. CitizenGO and such like organizations must therefore operate within the ambit of the laws of the Republic.

While the outcomes of these fights are denial of information and services for marginalized groups; this fight is not just about access to services and information. It is about unequal power relations. There are people who are giving big monies towards initiatives that work to curtail human rights and freedoms; permeating government, media and other key sectors against progress.

It is therefore dire that as supporters of sexual and reproductive health and rights, we invest time and resources studying the ever-changing strategies and tactics opponents use to undermine these rights and re-strategize for the war at hand. We must prioritize movement building and reproductive rights resilience. Until then, girls and women in Kenya – and beyond, will continue to die preventable deaths.

Stepanie is a human rights lawyer and a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Ritah is the Youth Project Coordinator at Reproductive Health Network, Kenya.

A man is tested for HIV at a health centre in Odienné, Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: UNICEF/Frank Dejongh

By Suki Beavers
MONTREAL, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

This week, the global HIV response community is gathering in Montreal to address the crisis of stalling progress that is putting millions of people in danger.

Delegates here are clear on two things: first, the world is not on track to end AIDS, second, the world can still get on track and end AIDS as a public health crisis by 2030, but only if leaders are bold. This includes removing laws which are perpetuating the pandemic.

Punitive and criminalizing approaches to law have been catastrophic for the AIDS response. They need urgently to be repealed.

When people are targeted by punitive laws, they fear the government, and many hide from it. And this lack of trust spills quickly over into responding to a pandemic: a government that proposes to lock a person up one day is unlikely to be trusted when it sends them to an HIV test the next. When people fear public shaming, many try not to be seen. Too often, this means people miss out on HIV prevention, treatment, and care.

The evidence is clear: punitive laws that push people into the shadows are continuing to drive HIV.

In countries that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual activity, the evidence is clear that the risk of acquiring HIV is higher, access to HIV testing is lower and populations remain hidden, underground.

We know that men who have sex with men living in countries where they are not criminalized are half as likely to be living with HIV compared to countries where they are criminalized, and eight times less likely to be living with HIV compared to countries with extreme forms of criminalization.

Gay men and other men who have sex with men are three times more likely to know their HIV status if they live in a country that does not criminalize same-sex sexual behaviour. Population size estimates for gay men and other men who have sex with men are also more likely to be implausibly low where such criminal laws exist.

So too, laws which criminalize gender identity, HIV status, drug use, and sex work, discourage and obstruct people from accessing vital health services: the costs of these laws remaining on statute books would include millions of lives lost and the perpetuation of the AIDS pandemic.

The laws described above that criminalize same-sex sexual conduct have also been utilized to target trans people in many countries, alongside laws prohibiting cross-dressing or “impersonating the opposite sex” as well as petty offence laws.

The use of these criminal laws perpetuates transphobia, discrimination, hate crimes, police abuse, torture, ill-treatment and family and community violence. It obstructs trans people from access to HIV prevention, treatment and care.

In 36% of countries with available data, more than 10% of transgender people reported avoiding healthcare in the last 12 months due to stigma and discrimination. Studies show that transgender people who have experienced stigma in health care settings are three times more likely to avoid health care than transgender people who have not experienced stigma.

Criminalization of HIV non-disclosure, exposure or transmission undermines effective HIV prevention, treatment, care and support because fear of prosecution discourages people from seeking testing and treatment, and deters people living with HIV – and those most at risk of HIV infection – from talking openly to their medical providers, disclosing their HIV status or accessing available treatment services.

Criminalization of drug possession for personal use propels new HIV cases. The presence of criminal laws and associated enforcement has been associated with higher rates of needle sharing, increased HIV risk behaviours, reduced access to HIV services and increased prevalence of HIV.

Where sex work is criminalized, HIV rates are seven times higher than in countries where it is partially legalized. In jurisdictions with enabling legal environments, prevalence of HIV among sex workers is similar to the rest of the population, indicating it is not involvement in sex work that creates HIV risk, but the lack of an environment that enables sex workers to protect their health and wellbeing.

Criminal laws prevent sex workers from being able to screen clients, negotiate condom use, or access the protection of law enforcement if they are in danger of, or experience, physical and sexual violence. Fear of stigma or arrest can also prevent sex workers from being able to access HIV services on an equal basis with others.

Studies have long shown that decriminalization of sex work could avert between 33-46% of new HIV infections among sex workers and their partners.

The criminal law is one of the harshest tools that governments wield, and one of the most blunt. Punitive approaches are harm where help is needed. They ferment stigma, fear and hatred and are perpetuating a health disaster.

We have powerful reasons to hope, however, that with a strong push, punitive approaches to HIV can end.

We have the high-level political declaration agreed last year at the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on AIDS. One of the critical commitments that countries made was to reform laws that create barriers to accessing HIV services or increase stigma and discrimination, in order to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

We have support available on how to most effectively reform laws so they support rather than undermine the HIV response. The Global Partnership for Action to Eliminate all forms of HIV Related Stigma and Discrimination, is bringing together governments, civil society and the United Nations, to exchange learning on what works.

One key lesson is that for law reform to have maximum success, changes should be shaped by the communities most affected, from the start through to implementation.

We are seeing that law reform is not only possible, it is happening across all continents. In recent years sparked, by court judgements and law reform efforts, punitive laws are continuing to disappear.

Last year the Bhutanese Parliament passed a reform which ended the criminalization of same sex relationships, Botswana’s Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that decriminalized same-sex relationships, and Angola began implementing their new criminal code which no longer criminalizes same-sex relationships.

This year already both Belgium and Victoria, Australia have removed laws criminalizing sex work, and Zimbabwe has decriminalized HIV exposure, non-disclosure and transmission.

We have the evidence of what works. It is no coincidence that the government of New South Wales, Australia, a jurisdiction that does not criminalize sexual orientation, gender identity, HIV status, or sex work, recently announced it is on track to eliminate new HIV infections by 2025.

Decriminalization is happening, but it is too slow. In 2022, of the countries reporting to UNAIDS: 14% criminalize gender expression, 36% criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations, 62% criminalize HIV exposure, non-disclosure and transmission, 90% criminalize possession of drugs for personal use and all reporting countries criminalize some aspect of sex work.

In 2021, 70% of new HIV infections were among groups who are affected by these laws. Eastern Europe and central Asia, Middle East and North Africa and Latin America have all seen increases in annual HIV infections over several years.

In Asia and the Pacific UNAIDS data now shows new HIV infections are rising where they had been falling. Without movement on societal enablers, and on criminal laws in particular, we will struggle to reverse this trend, let alone end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

We can end AIDS, but to do so we must end the punitive laws perpetuating the pandemic. Now.

Suki Beavers is UNAIDS Director of the Equality and Rights for All Global Practice.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt: