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Via FEMNET
Link to Press Release – Nov. 17, 2014 - http://femnet.co/index.php/en/press/item/327-governments-must-re-dedicate-to-womens-girls-rights-commitments
AFRICA REGIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE 20-YEAR REVIEW OF THE
BEIJING DECLARATION & PLATFORM FOR ACTION (BDPfA) NGO FORUM DECLARATION
Preamble
African women have been at the forefront of shaping the
global agenda for women’s rights from the 3rd World
Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985 that resulted in the “Nairobi Forward
Looking Strategies”. The 4th World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 was chaired
by a prominent African woman, Mrs. Gertrude Mongella, who alongside other
African women ensured that the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action’s
(BDPfA) 12 critical areas of concern reflected priorities of African women and
girls.
Over the last two decades, Africa has made tremendous strides
in developing progressive frameworks to advance the rights of women on the
Continent. This is evident from the adoption of the gender equality principle
in the African Union’s (AU) Constitutive Act of 2002, the AU Protocol to the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa
of 2003, and the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa of 2004, to
mention a few. At national and regional levels, significant progress has been
made in such critical areas as: girls’ education, women’s political
participation, maternal health, adoption of action plans on UN Security Council
Resolution 1325, as well as laws and policies on violence against women,
amongst others.
Nevertheless, the 20 year review of the BDPfA comes within a
social, political and economic environment in which many of the gains made in
1995 are facing various threats. The following trends and challenges continue
to hinder the advancement of women and girls’ rights including, but not limited
to: widening inequalities between the rich and poor and between men and women
due to prioritization of macroeconomic policies that are driven by growth,
without equitable development and respect for human rights; HIV, maternal
mortality and morbidity continue to be amongst the leading causes of death for
women; increasing radical and extremist groups that pose threats to the safety,
security and advancement of women and girls, as indicated by on-going
abductions of girls; and the shrinking space and resources for civil society
particularly those working on women’s rights.
It is therefore incumbent upon us, as Africans, to
re-dedicate ourselves to the commitments made in the BDPfA and other
international and regional commitments on rights of women, recognizing women in
all their diversities. This includes ensuring on-going processes and
negotiations on Post 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Financing
for Development (FfD), the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference
(COP21), and the Africa Agenda 2063 do not erode these commitments and that
they consolidate the gains made. Reaffirming as well that the State remains the
principal duty bearer of human rights obligations and this responsibility
should not be shifted to other actors such as civil society, development
partners or the private sector.
We, 190 representatives of civil society in our diversity
from 34 countries in the 5 regions of Africa and the Diaspora, gathered in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from November, 14 -16 2014 for the NGO Forum on the
Beijing+20 Review, and building on the UNECA CSO 2
Technical Consultation on
Beijing+20 convened in October 2014, hereby recommend the following to African
governments, recognizing that each organ and department of government is
responsible and accountable for women’s rights falling within its mandate,
under coordination by the gender machineries:
1.Economy:
a. Design and implement
macroeconomic policies that ensure equitable growth, fair distribution of
opportunities and decent employment, labour standards and safe working
conditions for women; and tax systems that enhance women’s productivity, access
to basic services and commodities, and income distribution;
b. Recognize the contribution
of unpaid care work in the economy, which falls disproportionately on women as
compared to men, and invest in infrastructure and time saving technologies to
reduce and redistribute its burden on women;
c. Allocate resources for the
design, collection and analysis of gender disaggregated data to monitor
progress in the socio-economic development of women and girls;
d. Enact and revise existing
laws that accord women full and equal rights to land, property, technology and
other productive resources;
e. Review existing trade
agreements to remove restrictions that hinder transfer, development and
maintenance of technology, to enable Africa and women in particular to add more
value to commodities through processing and industry, and to increase women's income
in the value chain.
f. Develop laws and policies
that enhance women’s corporate leadership, investment, access to credit,
capacity building and information, and facilitate access to public procurement
contracts for women owners of small and medium enterprises with special
measures targeting women with disabilities, young women and other marginalized
groups.
g. Create
an enabling environment for African women cross border traders by ensuring free
movement of persons and goods, access to information and protection from
coercion, harassment and violence at border crossing points.
h. Ensure revenues generated
from Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in areas such as extractives are invested
in sectors such as health, agriculture, education and the elimination of
violence against women, that will greatly advance the achievement of women’s
and girls’ rights;
i. Put a stop to the
phenomenon of land leases or land grabs in the name of foreign direct
investment that violate human and women’s rights, and result in the
dispossession and displacement of populations;
j. Engage citizens in open governance to enhance transparency
and participation of citizens, including women, in the development and
implementation of policies in the extractives sector.
2. Agriculture:
a. Increase investment in agriculture at national level to 10
percent of gross domestic product (GDP), in line with the AU commitment in the
Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), with a focus
on enhancing the capacity and skills of women small holder farmers and
developing knowledge systems oriented to more productive technologies;
b. Institute open governance
measures to ensure transparency on bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements on
large-scale land deals and between governments and private sector that
adversely affect communal land rights that most rural women depend on;
c. Adopt measures that lead to food sovereignty by:
supporting women’s capacity to produce safe, nutritious and culturally
acceptable foods; promoting research in local seed systems and farming methods;
protection of indigenous seed and knowledge technologies; establishment of
local seed banks and ensuring access to natural resources by women farmers,
fishers and pastoralists.
3. Environment and Climate
Change:
a. Establish environmentally
friendly policies and programs for climate change mitigation and adaptation and
ensure women’s participation in decision-making as well as their access to
resources, services and knowledge, to enhance their adaptive capacities to
combat the impact of climate change;
b. Develop comprehensive
gender sensitive policies that address the environmental impact of large scale
mining on communities;
c. Invest in and promote the development of alternative safe
and clean energies (hydro and solar) in order to eliminate reliance on
non-sustainable energy sources (kerosene and firewood) that pose high risks to
people, in particular women in the home, and in the environment;
4. Women’s Health:
a. Commit to the achievement
of the right of citizens to the highest attainable standard of health, in
particular the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls;
b. Strengthen integrated and
comprehensive health services and infrastructure by ensuring services are available,
accessible, affordable, acceptable and of quality and upgrade the quality of
training for health workers at all levels,
c. Improve retention of health workers through competitive
remuneration to enable delivery of quality care and treatment for women and
girls’ in mental health, maternal health, reproductive cancers, comprehensive
and free sexual and reproductive health services.
5. Sexual and Reproductive
Rights:
a. Guarantee sexual and
reproductive health and rights for all women, including young women,
adolescents, and women with disability, women living with HIV and other
marginalized groups, by ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive
health services, information and comprehensive sexuality education;
b. Repeal laws that
criminalize the transmission of HIV, particularly those that single out women
and other marginalized groups living with HIV, and put an end to coercive HIV
testing of women, forced sterilization and abortion for women living with HIV;
c. Remove restrictive abortion laws that have led to the
deaths of over 600,000 African women and girls from unsafe abortion over the
last 20 years, meaning that unsafe abortion still constitutes one of the top
causes of maternal mortality in Africa;
d. Address factors and practices that contribute to the high
maternal mortality and morbidity rates in Africa such as child early and forced
marriage, female genital mutilation, unmet need for comprehensive family
planning; unsafe abortion and violence against women and girls.
6. Girl Child and Young Women:
a. Create or support existing
safe spaces for young women and adolescent girls, such as community based
networks and groups, and create access to information and comprehensive
services such as sexual and reproductive health services;
b. Develop and implement
comprehensive national legal frameworks on child early and forced marriage
including a legal minimum age of marriage of 18 years, disallow judicial
consent to marriage in sexual violence cases, and criminalize all forms of
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM);
c. Adopt and enforce International Labor Organisation (ILO)
Convention to protect girls against child labour.
7. Human Rights:
a. Accelerate measures to
tackle discrimination and inequalities based on gender, age, class, race,
ethnicity, and place of origin, cultural or religious background, sexual
orientation, gender identity, marital status, health status, and ability, which
disproportionately affect women;
b. In collaboration with women
and girls with disabilities; develop polices and structures that promote their
protection and rights and improve their social and economic conditions,
c. Act in a comprehensive and
holistic manner to recognize the linkages between development, violence against
women and girls; education, health, HIV and AIDS, poverty eradication, food
security, peace and security, humanitarian assistance, crime prevention, and
ensure access to justice for all women and girls and marginalized groups.
d. Protect all women human rights
defenders and guarantee their safety and non-persecution in line with
international human rights principles and norms;
e. Adopt and implement laws and programmes at national level
to combat trafficking in women and girls, based on accurate data, in line with
the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons and the
United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo
Protocol)
8. Women in Armed Conflict:
a. Fully include women’s
leadership and participation at all levels of decision-making in peace,
reconciliation and reconstruction processes and mechanisms, in efforts to
combat, reduce, and prevent armed conflict, violence and extremism;
b. End impunity for sexual and
gender-based violence through the investigation, prosecution and punishment of
perpetrators;
c. Improve women’s livelihoods
through promoting access to justice and psychosocial services, and the
establishment of compliant and reporting mechanisms in conflict and
post-conflict situations;
d. Strengthen the protection and agency of women by reducing
arms proliferation and military spending and reallocate military expenditure to
social development, including increased financing for gender equality, women’s
human rights and women’s economic empowerment;
e. Include refugee and
displaced women and girls in the design, delivery and evaluation of
humanitarian programmes, and strengthen their resilience by providing them with
access to education, health and economic opportunities;
f. Expand the definition of conflict to include internal
disturbances, protracted and low intensity civil strife, political strife,
ethnic and communal violence, state of emergency and suppression of mass
uprisings, and their impact on women’s security.
9. Women, Media and ICTs:
a. Ensure persistent and
concerted engagement of media owners to change their perception of how women’s
issues are covered;
b. Encourage media outreach to
communities to engage everybody, particularly women and marginalized
communities, in current and topical issues;
c. Create policies and
enabling environment that prevent the use of social media and other forms of
media as instruments of violence against women and girls;
d. Adopt or enforce policies
on freedom of information, freedom of expression and the existence of free and
independent media;
e. Invest and leverage the use of ICT as an alternative means
for the delivery of education and training particularly to women and girls.
12. Education:
a. Consolidate gains made in
gender parity at primary school level by providing incentives such as gender
responsive learning environment, including accessible and free secondary education,
subsidised higher and vocational education; to promote the retention and
transition of girls;
b. Provide bursaries and other
incentives to enhance girls’ participation in science, technology and
mathematics;
c. End impunity for
perpetrators of sexual harassment and abuse of girls in school;
d. Promote girls’ access to information and education through
e-education and e-health products especially through mobile telephony.
13. Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women:
A multi-sectoral approach is critical, to ensure that each
organ and department of government implements and is accountable for the
women’s rights that fall within its mandate, under coordination by the gender
machineries.
We,
the 190 representatives of civil society acknowledge the tireless efforts of
the Ministries of Gender and Women’s Affairs despite the limited resources and
overwhelming agenda. As Civil Society we re-affirm our commitment to working
alongside you and other line Ministries to ensure the full achievement of the
BPfA and women’s rights in general in the years ahead.
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