WUNRN
SUBMISSIONS TO
CEDAW REGARDING A GENERAL RECOMMENDATION ON WOMEN IN CONFLICT SITUATIONS
WIDOWS FOR PEACE THROUGH DEMOCRACY (WPD) strongly welcomes the development of a General Recommendation to Member States on addressing the specific needs of women in conflict and post-conflict environments.
The lack of data on widows, numbers, ages, numbers of dependents, needs, roles, coping strategies, support systems, legal status, access to justice, experience of widow-violence, discrimination and abuse and the failure of governments and other agencies to address widowhood issues severely frustrates other strategies and policies to resolve conflict, prevent future conflicts, promote equality and justice, and inhibits development, the Rule of Law, Good Government, and Peace.
Failure to identify the numbers, ages, needs, roles, life styles of widows is itself a form of discrimination under the CEDAW
WPD REQUESTS THAT THE COMMITTEE REFERS EXPRESSLY TO THE NEED TO ADDRESS WIDOWHOOD ISSUES, and that Governments:
- Use Mapping and Profiling projects to identify numbers
of widows, and gather information on their life-styles, needs, roles, and
impact of widowhood on their children, particularly their girl children.
- Ensure that the voices of widows and wives of the
missing are heard in all relevant decision-making committees, including
peace-tables, constitution redrafting, and law reform commissions
- Support widows to form their own associations so as to
be able to have a collective voice to articulate their needs
- Take all available actions to eliminate discrimination
against widows; criminalize acts that deprive widows’ of their fundamental
rights; modify public attitudes to widows so that negative stereotyping
ceases
- Protect widows from forced remarriage, and from
degrading and harmful traditional practices, including degrading and
life-threatening mourning and burial rites, and punish those who coerce
widows to participate in these practices
- Ensure that refugee and IDP widows are resettled and
rehabilitated through provision of land, housing, and appropriate training
and extension services so they can support their dependents.
- Provide appropriate health, education, training
services for widows and their children. Including counseling services for
widows who suffer post traumatic stress from witnessing crimes against
humanity, war crimes, and are victims of rape.
- Adopt, or adapt
the WPD MODEL WIDOWS CHARTER into the Domestic Laws.