WUNRN
Development: 'Aid
From New EU Members Disregards Women'
By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Jun 25 (IPS) - Foreign aid budgets administered
by the European Union's most recent entrants do not pay sufficient heed to the
needs of women in poor countries, a series of new studies has found.
Since 2004, 12 new countries have joined the EU, most of
which were formerly under communist rule. As part of the terms of their
accession, they undertook to adhere to the EU's policies on development aid.
Yet while the Union's latest official statements on the
fight against poverty emphasise a commitment to promoting gender equality, the
activities of its central and eastern European members in this field have been
dubbed 'gender-blind' in reports published by an alliance of campaign groups
June 24.
The Czech Republic, for example, has undertaken to allocate
0.33 percent of its gross national income to development aid. Not only has it
failed so far to deliver on this promise -- a projected aid budget for the
2008-2010 period would put the allocation at just 0.02 percent of national
income -- there has been little targeting of women's needs in its planning for
how the aid will be used.
According to the International Gender Policy Network (IGPN),
which reviewed Prague's performance on aid, gender is mentioned as a
'cross-cutting' issue -- which is supposed to be taken into consideration in
all related activities -- in key policy documents for Czech-financed aid. Yet
the network found that only a small number of projects that focused
specifically on women were administered in 2006. These included a project
aiming to help women who are HIV-positive in Namibia and to support AIDS tests
for prostitutes in Ukraine.
Similar conclusions were drawn up for Hungary and Bulgaria.
In the latter, it was found that there has been no public debate on such
matters as the quality of the development assistance offered by the country and
on how it should relate to gender issues.
Tania Tisheva from the Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation
argued that the Sofia government has missed an opportunity to show leadership
in supporting the world's poorest countries. "As an Eastern European with
a shared history of destitution with many people in the South (of the globe), I
am ashamed by this appalling lack of solidarity", said Tisheva, author of
the study on Bulgarian aid.
Monika Landmanová, a spokeswoman for the IGPN, noted that
promoting gender equality in poor countries is one of the United Nations'
Millennium Development Goals, which all of the EU's 27 countries nominally
support.
There was explicit recognition during the UN's summit in
2000, where the goals were formally adopted, that a majority of people
suffering hardship in the world are female. "All agreed in 2000 that there
is a high feminisation of poverty and that without integrating women's equality
into aid, it wouldn't be possible to reach the goal of cutting poverty by half
by 2015," she added. "This is something the new (EU) member states
agreed to, so it is very unsatisfactory that we can't see any commitment to
fulfil that commitment."
The series of reports also examined the situation facing
women in several former Soviet countries, including Ukraine, Armenia and
Georgia. While none of these have been given the status of candidate for EU
membership, they receive significant funding from the Union under the European
Neighbourhood Programme.
Nearly 2.4 billion euros (3.7 billion dollars) has been
given by the EU to Ukraine since 1991. Although this makes the Union the
largest donor to the country, only a tiny part of this sum appears to have gone
on women-specific projects. In 2006, just 0.11 percent of EU aid to Ukraine
went on schemes in which gender equality was the main objective.
Oksana Kisselyova from the Liberal Society Institute in Kiev
said the lack of focus on women is especially problematic given that
"women are marginalised in our society."
Women have a higher rate of unemployment than men and are
overrepresented in the industrial sectors paying the lowest wages. In addition,
women seeking promotion tend to face a "glass ceiling", she added, with
female candidates in job interviews often questioned about their private lives.
In some cases, women have only been given employment on the condition that they
promise not to become pregnant.
Kisselyova contended that mechanisms are needed to ensure that
aid is channelled directly into schemes tailored to help women.
Corinne André, a European Commission official dealing with
foreign aid, said that her institution screens programmes to ascertain if they
will benefit women. Asked, however, if the results of such monitoring is
published, she claimed that "I don't think we are equipped" to do so.
"We are perfectly aware of the fact that we need to do
better," she added. "Achieving gender equality is not an easy
task."