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GLOBAL ACTION ON WIDOWHOOD and WIDOWS FOR PEACE THROUGH DEMOCRACY

 

Include Marital Status and Widowhood in the MDGs

 

Essential Yet Overlooked Component for Achieving the MDGs by 2015:

 

 

It is not an accident that it is the Millennium Development Goals dealing with women and girls that are most off track. Gender is too large a demographic (at least half of the world's population and approximately 70% of the world's poor) for meaningful design of programs and tracking of outcomes without further disaggregation of women within vulnerable sub-populations.

 

The largest vulnerability for women and their children everywhere in the world is Marital Status. We know that female headed households are disproportionately poor, under educated, under employed, with more disease, more likely to live in slums or be internally displaced, in every society and every sub-segment of every society around the world. And widow headed households in certain cultures experience severe additional discrimination and maltreatment stemming specifically from their status as widows, leading to perpetuation of a repeating cycle of extreme poverty leading to forced early marriage followed by Widowhood upon their daughters.

 

This demographic - female headed households and their children - comprises more than one sixth of the world's population.  A study released at the end of June 2010 stated that there are 245 million widows and approximately half of them - 115 million widows and their 500 million children or one tenth of the world's population - are living in significant poverty. We know this to be an under-counting, since the study consolidated existing data on Widowhood, and we know that existing data on Widowhood is neither comprehensive nor up-to-date. In addition, there are estimated to be several hundred thousand women with "missing" husbands in various regions around the world, and more than an additional 200 million women in the world who are divorced or abandoned. Obtaining comprehensive data on female headed families is further complicated by differences in country definitions of "head of household" allowing national census-taking to identify extended families as one household unit, significantly undercounting adult or under age women without husbands.

 

Yet the draft MDGs Summit Outcome Document does not yet directly address this important and disadvantaged demographic even once.

 

We urge inclusion of the following in KEEPING THE PROMISE – UNITED TO ACHIEVE THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS, the MDGs Summit Outcome Document:

 

1.       Disaggregate Gender in data collection and program design

 

a.      Disaggregate Gender by age and marital status, and identify gender within other marginalized groups

 

b.       Commit to building and funding national statistical systems capable of tracking outcomes for these marginalized sub-populations across all of the MDGs, including disaggregation of existing data and collection of additional data as needed

 

c.       Commit to analyzing disaggregated data to develop policies and programmes and set separate targets within national targets, specifically based on the outcomes, conditions and concerns of marginalized sub-populations of women and other groups facing discrimination

 

2.       Commit to launching new initiatives to address the special needs of Heretofore Overlooked Marginalized Populations

 

a.      Heretofore Overlooked Marginalized Populations include child brides; wives in marriages with at least one partner infected with HIV; widows; the children of widows, particularly the daughters; female heads of household; older women; and targets of gender-based violence, particularly within ethnic and other conflict situations.

 

b.      In particular, commit to designing, funding and implementing initiatives to combat heretofore overlooked sources of poverty, such as early and forced marriage; social marginalization that leads to poverty, such as Widowhood, abandonment or divorce, and HIV infection; and lack of inheritance, land and property rights and other components of the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

 

c.       In particular, commit to designing, finding and implementing initiatives to combat heretofore overlooked sources of HIV infection and transmission, and Child and Maternal Mortality, such as the feminization of poverty, early and forced marriage; marriages in which at least one partner is infected with HIV; forced marriages to the male relatives of deceased husbands; and gender-based violence, particularly in conflict settings.

 

d.      Commit to designing, funding and implementing outreach to Heretofore Overlooked Marginalized Populations informing them of all policies and programmes to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and about their human rights; such outreach to include:  

 

                                                               i.      Supplementing school based outreach with additional outreach not based in schools, to reach children out of school, homeless, and/or on the move, including refugees, migrants, or internally displaced

                                                             ii.      Supplementing outreach based on the written word with additional outreach based on word of mouth and/or radio, to reach those who are illiterate

                                                            iii.      Supplementing education for students with education of parents, including life skills and gender education

 

e.       Commit to designing, funding and implementing public attitude campaigns to combat discrimination and stigmatization of marginalized populations

 

3.      Commit to designing, implementing and funding establishment of a legal framework to eliminate discriminatory laws and practices, legally redress such discrimination, and enforce accountability in achievement of the MDGs. This framework must ensure access of all marginalized populations to justice, and must ensure all MDG strategies are in accordance with international human rights instruments, including CEDAW, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, and the Beijing Platform for Action, the Cairo Programme of Action, and SCRs 1325, 1820, 1888 and 1889.

 

4.       Commit to ensuring that women are equal participants and that the participation of women includes participation of marginalized sub-populations of women in the design, development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all policies and programmes to achieve the MDGs by 2015.

 

5.       Commit to funding local and national women's organizations and local and national organizations of marginalized sub-populations of women to work on achieving the MDGs by 2015, and formation of such organizations where they do not yet exist.

 

 

We urge addition of Marital Status and Widowhood in the MDGs Summit Outcome Document and are in full support of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty's (G-CAP) Consolidated Response. GCAP is a coalition representing the consolidated efforts of nongovernmental organizations in over 100 countries.

 

Attached is the full draft zero Outcomes Document as of May 31, 2010, incorporating the G-CAP Consolidated Response as well as the additional language drafted to reflect the Proposals in this petition.

 

Signatories are on subsequent pages below.

 

 

Contacts:

Margaret Owen                        Widows for Peace Through Democracy               director.wpd@googlemail.com

 

 

Lauren Gibbs                            Global Action on Widowhood                              ladarelkg@verizon.net 

 





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