WUNRN
GENDER SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IS
VITAL FOR IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS - RESOLUTIONS, DECLARATIONS, TREATIES +
OFFICIAL LANGUAGE for GENDER
EQUALITY and WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT is so very important in texts at the
international, national, regional, and local level.
Women's advocates lobby long and
hard to have gender specificity in document language, only often to see the
gender wordage removed at the end. Further, it is not enough to be told
"Not to worry, we will get to gender on the issue" as in the Climate
Change Conference. It is very hard to return to serious documents that are
essentially "gender blind" and then advocate for the human rights,
the inclusion of gender in programs, processes, legal actions, budgets, and
accountability.
We can learn from past experiences
how absolutely vital it is to include GENDER in codifying documents, and
including at the United Nations. Women were a very serious force in the
drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The CEDAW Convention, as
international law for countries ratifying, is exceedingly important to the
women's movement.
The accountability dimension is so
often lacking in laws, resolutions, declarations, even reports of Missions of
Special Rapporteurs. Further, there are often "Reservations" to
country sign-on's to treaties.
So often documents are created for
policy impact, even laws, but not with gender specificity in implementation,
funding, monitoring. For laws and policies affecting women and human rights to
have force, they must provide for infrastructure and financial
sustainability.
Now we are approaching the
finalization of the Post-2015 Development Agenda; and it is so very significant
to have clearly defined, "stand-alone" gender equality/rights
goals, including key targets and indicators.
As we move forward, WUNRN hopes that
we as women will continue to be pro-active, highly attentive, skilled, and
creative, to have our gender language specific in documents and follow up
actions.
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