WUNRN
International Disability Alliance Mission - To advance the human rights of persons with disabilities as a united voice of organizations of persons with disabilities utilizing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other human rights instruments.
International Disability Alliance Report on
the UN Commission on the Status of Women 56
New York, 26 March 2012 - The
fifty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women took place at the
United Nations Headquarters in
The
priority theme this year was ‘The empowerment of rural women and their role in
poverty and hunger eradication, development and current challenges’. This year the Commission failed to address
the situation of rural women by not adopting the agreed conclusions, which
is the principal output of the Commission on the
priority theme. The agreed conclusions contain an assessment of progress, as
well as of gaps and challenges, in particular contain a set of concrete
recommendations for action by Governments, intergovernmental bodies and other
institutions, civil society actors and other relevant stakeholders, to be
implemented at the international, national, regional and local level. The reason that the Commission failed to
agree on conclusions – for the first time since 2003 – was due to a number of
factors, the main controversial issues being sexual and reproductive health,
harmful traditional practices and forced and early marriages.
Originally
the zero draft of the agreed conclusions did not have any reference on
disability, but through advocacy work and continued friendly discussions with
Member States
The
Commission recognizes the need to eliminate all forms of discrimination against
rural women and girls, and in this regard stresses the need to address the
inequalities and multiple disadvantages that they face, and to promote equal
treatment of rural women, irrespective of their sex, age, marital status, race,
ethnicity, disability, religion and belief or because they are indigenous women
or are women living with HIV and AIDS.
Continue
to strengthen policies relevant for women’s empowerment aimed at addressing
inequalities affecting women and girls throughout the life-cycle, in particular
those related to age, poverty, geographical location, language, ethnicity,
disability, and race, or because they are indigenous people, or people living
with HIV and AIDS.
Improve
and systematize the collection, analysis and dissemination of sex-, age- and
disability-disaggregated data and, as appropriate, income level and rural/urban
areas; through international cooperation and other means, enhance capacity
development in this regard, including on measuring unpaid work; and develop
relevant gender-sensitive indicators to support legislative development and
policymaking that benefit rural women
Reduce
the unpaid work burden of women of all ages by inter alia, providing improved
access to infrastructure, including clean water, electricity, and time- and
labour-saving technologies, and promoting care services for children, older
persons and persons with disabilities in rural and remote areas, and taking
measures to increase the participation of men in caregiving both within
households and in care professions.
Develop,
promote and implement family-friendly legislation, policies and services,
including parental and other leave schemes, and affordable, accessible and
quality care services for children, persons with disabilities, older persons
and other dependent persons, in order to promote the reconciliation of work and
family responsibilities for rural women and men, recognizing that the unequal
sharing of responsibilities of daily life has a disproportionate impact on
women and girls, and on their economic empowerment
Promote the rights of rural women with
disabilities, including by ensuring their access on an equal basis to
productive employment and decent work, economic and financial resources and
disability-sensitive infrastructure and services, in particular in relation to
health and education, including through international cooperation, as well as
by ensuring that their priorities and needs are fully incorporated into
policies and programmes, inter alia, through their participation in
decision-making processes.
On the bright side, the
Commission adopted a resolution on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
in Natural Disaster,
introduced and facilitated by
The
disability references in this resolution were the following:
Bearing in mind that natural disasters affect
human lives and living conditions thereafter, and often have a more direct and
adverse impact on women, as well as vulnerable people within groups such as
children, older persons and persons with disabilities, and that natural
disasters often have different impacts on men and women in regards to the
associated risks and vulnerabilities, due to gender inequality, gender
stereotypes and discrimination against women, including the lack of equal
access to adequate information, economic opportunities, and poverty and social
exclusion, safety and different family responsibilities,
Stressing the importance of taking equally into
account the specific needs of women, as well as vulnerable people within groups
such as children, older persons, and persons with disabilities, in every
phase of disaster risk reduction, response and recovery, ensuring their equal
opportunities for participation in these processes, calling for a people-centered,
holistic approach, in order to build an inclusive society, supported by a
social bond among the people through community-based approaches, which promotes
gender equality and the empowerment of women, strengthens the resilience of the
communities and reduces social vulnerabilities for disasters,
(l) Systematically collect demographic and
socio-economic data and information disaggregated by sex, age and disability
and continue to develop gender indicators and analyze gender differences,
including through gender-sensitive needs assessment and planning processes, and
integrate this information into disaster risk reduction and management policies
and programs,
The Commission also
adopted a resolution on Eliminating maternal mortality and morbidity through
the empowerment of women,
introduced and facilitated by US. This biannual resolution already included
references to women and girls with disability, however some progress and
improvement was made to the language during this years negotiations.
The
relevant disability references are as follows:
Recalling the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights9 and the obligations of States parties to the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,10 the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,10 the Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination against Women,11 the Convention on the Rights of
the Child,12 the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,13
the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination14 and the International Convention on the Protection of the
Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families,15
21. Encourages Member States and the
international community to take measures to protect women and girls, including
indigenous and rural women and girls, those living in poverty and those with
disabilities, regardless of their immigration status, from gender-based
violence and from early and forced marriage, and to fully implement their
obligations under national and international law with respect to preventing
violence and investigating and punishing the perpetrators, and further
encourages Member States and the international community to provide victims
with access to appropriate quality, comprehensive, integrated and accessible
health-care services and counselling and to primary and secondary education,
and to scale up humanitarian and legal assistance to victims of rape and other
forms of sexual violence, including when used as a tactic of war, inter alia,
to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity;
28. Encourages Member States to
strengthen the collection of data disaggregated by sex, age, disability,
socio-economic status, geographic location and other factors that contribute to
maternal mortality and morbidity, and data on other categories needed for
monitoring in a timely fashion progress towards the achievement of Millennium
Development Goal 5, as well as to provide appropriate avenues for feedback from
women who received health services, and to share such data with the United
Nations system for better monitoring of progress towards the achievement of
Goal 5 and its targets;
* * *
The International Disability Alliance actively participated
at two side events: Rural Women and Girls with disabilities – economic
empowerment and political participation and at the side event organized by UN
Women and UNICEF Empowering rural girls: from invisibility to agency.
The International
Disability