WUNRN
WOMEN - GLOBAL SOCIAL & ECONOMIC
OPPRESSION - UN
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50389
United Nations, Feb 18, 2010 (IPS) - The statistics
relating to the world's socially and economically-distressed women are
staggering.
By Thalif Deen
According to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), more than
8,000 women were raped by warring factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) last year while over three million young girls are at risk of undergoing
female genital mutilation (FGM) worldwide.
The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that out of
nearly 1,000 sexual abuse and over 1,500 domestic violence cases reported in
Sierra Leone last year, there wasn't a single conviction.
"By the end of her lifespan, nearly all Sierra Leonean
women will suffer some form of sexual or gender-based violence," says
UNDP's deputy country director Samuel Harbor.
At the same time, nearly 250,000 child soldiers have been
recruited in various conflicts worldwide, with girls at particular risk of
becoming sex slaves, says the U.N. children's agency UNICEF.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon complains that 30 years after
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW), "Women and girls are still suffering from the scourge."
"Violence against women and girls is found in all
countries," he says, pointing an accusing finger at all 192 U.N. member
states.
All of these issues - and more - will come up before the
45-member Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the U.N.'s primary
policy-making body on gender-related issues, at its two-week-long meeting in
New York.
The meeting, scheduled to take place Mar. 1-12, is billed as
one of the largest single gatherings of human rights activists, relating
specifically to rights of women.
A primary focus of the meeting will be the successes and
failures of the Platform for Action adopted in 1995 at the Fourth World
Conference on Women in Beijing.
The wide-ranging plan provided a global policy framework for
women's human rights, gender equality and empowerment of women.
It covered 12 critical areas of concern, including poverty;
education and training; health; violence against women; armed conflict; the
economy; power and decision-making; institutional mechanism; human rights;
media; the environment; and the girl child.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted at a U.N.
summit in 2000, reiterated gender equality and the empowerment of women as
effective ways to fight poverty, hunger and disease, and also to stimulate
sustainable development.
Marianne Mollmann, advocacy director of the Women's Rights
Division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS that unfortunately "there
is no strong U.N. body charged with the implementation" of the Beijing
Platform for Action.
She said that member states have been "dragging their
feet" over a proposal to set up a new gender entity, although there have
been rumours that an announcement will be made about the creation of such a
body during the CSW sessions.
Mollmann said HRW has been focusing primarily on the need
for a new U.N. gender architecture. "It's a structural issue," she
said.
Without such a structure, she argued, there is a lack of
accountability on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.
Meanwhile, a high-level round table meeting, with
participation by government ministers and senior U.N. officials, will be held
during the CSW sessions.
A paper that will be up for discussion at this meeting
points out there have been marked increases in hunger in all of the world's
major regions, and more than one billion people are now estimated to be
undernourished.
"Women are more likely to be undernourished than men as
they tend to have disproportionate access to food, especially when it is
scarce," it said.
Despite shrinking estimates of the number of girls out of
school, girls continue to account for the majority of children out of school,
and women remain a majority of those who are classified as illiterates.
The paper also says that access to labour markets and to
decent work remains particularly limited for women, with a large share of women
in vulnerable employment.
And every year, an estimated 210 million women suffer from
life-threatening complications of pregnancy, often leading to serious
disability, and a further half a million women die in pregnancy or at or
shortly after child birth - and nearly all of them in developing countries.
The paper also says that multiple global crises, including
the economic and financial crisis, the food and energy crises and the challenge
of climate change, have had an adverse impact on the achievement of
internationally-agreed development goals, including the MDGs.
"It is, therefore, an opportune time to rethink and
modify policy approaches, strategies and actions to ensure a more equitable,
gender-sensitive and sustainable pattern of growth and development."
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