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European Commission
Brussels 8.3.2007
Gender Equality and Women Empowerment in Development
_______________________________________________________________________
European
Union 'Half-Hearted' in Backing Gender Equality
By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Mar 13 (IPS) - The European Union's efforts to
promote gender equality in poor countries have been dubbed
"half-hearted" by the bloc's only directly elected institution.
Around 17 billion euros (26 billion dollars) has been
allocated to the EU's Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI) -- aid for Asia,
Latin America, the Middle East and South Africa -- in the 2007-13 period. But
though EU governments first declared in 1995 that advancement of women should
be a core objective of the Union's development aid policy, gender issues are
largely absent in the plans for spending the DCI's funds.
A new European Parliament report bemoans how most of the DCI
plans for helping individual countries contain no specific targets for
improving the lot of women, or recommend supporting projects tailored to
address the situation that poor women and girls find themselves in.
The report assesses a strategy titled 'Gender Equality and
Women Empowerment in Development Countries', that was proposed by the EU's
executive, the European Commission, during 2007.
While members of Parliament (MEPs) welcomed on Thursday
(Mar. 13) how the strategy suggests practical measures for addressing such
issues as employment, education, health, and violence against women, they
argued that the paper is superficial in its treatment of fundamental questions.
Felekans Uca, the German left-wing MEP who drafted the
report, said that trade issues have not been properly addressed.
Even though the strategy notes that trade liberalisation can
have "short-term negative consequences for vulnerable groups", it
makes no reference to the free trade deals -- or Economic Partnership
Agreements -- that the Commission is currently negotiating with African
governments.
Uca's report suggests that the use of trade to strengthen
the position of women in poor countries warrants closer examination than it has
been given by EU officials. In Africa, she noted, women comprise just over half
the population, yet perform three-quarters of all farm work and produce over 60
percent of food. Yet below the Sahara, women earn just one-tenth of the income,
and own just one percent of assets.
Her report prompted a lively debate over references to the
need for better family planning services in poor countries. Some centre-right
MEPs tried unsuccessfully to have calls for such improvements deleted.
But Uca insisted that sexual and reproductive health is an
issue of fundamental importance. In sub-Saharan Africa, she noted, women in the
15-24 age bracket are three times more likely to be infected with HIV than
their male peers. And most of the 536,000 maternal deaths in the world --
nearly all of which occur in Asia and Africa -- could be "easily
avoided" if there was global access to reproductive health services and
obstetric care.
"Every woman is entitled to decide in full freedom what
happens to her life and body," she said. "As long as these rights are
limited, other people will continue to decide on what happens to a woman's
body. This is not something we can accept."
Nirj Deva, a Sri Lanka-born MEP representing the British
Conservative Party, urged that a "gender analysis" of abortions
should be carried out. Deva argued that in Asia women frequently come under
pressure to abort if they are carrying female foetuses. "Why do we not
have the right to know how women are being aborted before they are born?" he
asked.
Yet his call failed to win support from a majority in the
Parliament. Avril Doyle, an Irish MEP whose party Fine Gael is part of a
political alliance with the Conservatives, suggested that Deva and a number of
his colleagues had a hidden motive of trying to reduce the availability of
family planning services. Doyle said she was "saddened" that every
time reproductive health is addressed in the Parliament, "it descends into
a very intolerant debate."
Louis Michel, the European commissioner for development aid,
said: "I completely agree with all those who think that reproductive
health is important. Fundamentally, we have to create the conditions where
people can make their own free choices."
Still, he refuted accusations that aid plans drawn up by
officials working for him overlook gender issues. The Commission, he said, has
a policy of gender 'mainstreaming', under which a wide range of the EU's
activities in different policy fields have to take account the impact they will
have on the situation of women.
This week the Parliament also discussed the development aid
policies of 10 ex-communist countries from central and eastern Europe that have
joined the Union since 2004.
While all these countries have undertaken to allocate more
than 0.1 percent of their gross national incomes to development aid by 2010,
MEPs heard that many are struggling to honour that pledge.
Polish MEP Filip Kaczamarek said that sub-Saharan Africa has
been "neglected" by the EU's newest entrants. He argued that an
education campaign is necessary to remedy the low level of public awareness
about EU development aid in these countries. "Otherwise, tax payers are
unlikely to go along with increasing aid," he said.
The 10 countries are Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Hungary. (END/2008)
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