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advance | achieve | women's rights
Every
Woman, Every Right, Every Minute
Everyone
is Responsible. The Time is Now.
UNECE
Geneva NGO Forum on Beijing +20
DECLARATION
AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5
November, 2014
We, the 700 participants in
our diversity from around 350 groups, networks, and institutions and 56
countries of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe region, gathered
in Geneva from 3-5 November 2014 for the NGO Forum review of the Beijing
Platform for Action (BPA) and recommendations for the future.
We recognise and celebrate the
significant achievements made in this region impacting women’s lives, as well
as at policy and institutional levels.
However, the ECE region is
economically and socially diverse, and many changes over the last 20 years
raise deep concerns for sustainability, women’s and human rights. We are
at a tipping point as a region with convergence of multiple crises: financial,
energy, climate and food. The austerity measure response to the economic and
financial crises has resulted in unprecedented unemployment, drastic cuts to
public expenditures, and household level social and economic insecurity,
disproportionately impacting women and girls. We recognize the global
demographic shift to an aging population - particularly relevant to our ECE
Region. The global gap between rich and poor grows daily.
We face myriad threats to the
Beijing commitments. Women experience time poverty; overburdened by
unrecognised unpaid work. In addition to gender mainstreaming, we must urgently
address the root causes of inequality. Violations of and threats to girls and
women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights call for protection and advancement
of the BPA and prior commitments, ICPD and CEDAW in the post 2015 agenda.
Transformation requires addressing the structural and macro issues that
perpetuate inequalities, discrimination and exclusion.
The increase in violent
extremism, bio-politics, and wide range of population phobias, has resulted in
gross violations of human rights of women and girls. Militarization is
increasingly used as the answer to conflict, leading to skyrocketing military
and arms expenditures at the expense of social and human rights protections.
The approach to development
cooperation has been shifting, inextricably linking development, aid, trade,
investment and foreign policy; reducing women’s rights to a sub-text of global
capitalism rather than central to achievement of peace and sustainable
development. Financing for civil society and women’s organising has been
reduced to government subcontracting, jeopardizing fundamental civil society
self-organizing and partnership.
We are especially appalled by
the situation of women in specific regions on particular issues. Increasing
unemployment in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, and complacency toward women’s
issues in Western Europe and North America, reinforce and compound one another.
Violence against women and girls remains pervasive, and is further perpetuated
through technology and social media. Racial discrimination, especially against
migrants who are often undocumented and have no public voice, results in gross
violations of women’s rights. Women in vulnerable situations, including
Indigenous women and women with disabilities, experience disproportionate
rights violations; while girls and older women lack social protections.
Therefore, we call for:
1.
Fulfilment of the Beijing commitments to all human
rights and systematic implementation of a women’s rights approach delivered
through and monitored by strong well-funded Institutional Mechanisms for the
Advancement of Women; buttressed by an accountability, resourcing, tax and
public fiscal and revenue framework capable of sustainably financing
progressive realization of women’s human rights.
2.
Women are at the heart of sustainable development; the
post-2015 SDG agenda must include a clear and stand-alone goal on gender
equality and women’s rights with clearly articulated means of
implementation for women’s rights and empowerment. Girls and women’s rights
must be recognized throughout the other SDG goals and specific strategies.
3.
CEDAW must remain the framework for monitoring and
accountability of BPA commitments.
4.
Demand women’s equal access to resources including
land, credit and funding towards intergenerational social, cultural,
development, environmental, economic, civil and political rights and justice;
5.
Robust and sustained investment in women and girls’
rights including Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights; ending violence
against all women and girls; and particularly ending child, early and forced
marriage as well as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM);
6.
Urgent and systematic focus on women of all ages as
users, shapers and leaders of new technologies.
7.
Sharing power with young women and girls as leaders
and agents of change and ensure responsibility and accountability of men and
boys for gender equality.
Our
recommendations
1. Women’s
Rights are Human Rights : Accountability and Resources
a) Resource
full commitment and implementation of CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action,
UN Resolution 1325 and all human rights instruments as the global policy
framework for women’s rights, empowerment, and gender equality and ensure
mainstreaming across all post-2015 SDGs and frame as a stand-alone goal.
b) Adequately
fund women’s organizations and civil society for advancing and implementing the
commitments of the Beijing Platform for Action and the post-2015 agenda.
c) Implement
and enforce existing laws and policies that protect human rights for all women,
every minute and everywhere, especially for girls, young women and older women,
ethnic minorities, indigenous women, Roma women and girls, women with
disabilities, rural women, and LGBTI persons.
d) Ensure
access to justice redress and remedial actions in cases of violations of
women’s human rights, including by developing and fully funding legal aid
systems, accessible to all women especially in rural areas and vulnerable
situations, and supporting the legal literacy of all women and girls.
e) Ensure
the collection of comprehensive gender, age and disability disaggregated data
in all statistical fields.
f) Ensure
full civil and birth registration for all.
2. Violence
Against Women and Conflict : Building a Culture of Peace
i.
Violence Against Women
a) Prevent
and eliminate, through effective implementation, all forms of
violence against women of all ages, Indigenous women, women with disabilities,
widows, single mothers, women in conflict and post-conflict settings, LGBTI
women, and rural women.
b) Eradicate
harmful practices including discrimination against widows, FGM, sexualisation,
and child, early and forced marriage.
c) Grant
migrant women and undocumented women who are victims of forced prostitution and
trafficking with residence permits, and develop prevention policies in
countries of origin.
d) Sign,
ratify and effectively implement the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against
Women.
e) Ensure
national laws criminalize non-State torture perpetrated by non-State actors and
hold perpetrators accountable for gender-based non-State torture crimes.
f) Transform
gender stereotypes that normalize and trivialise violence against women and
girls.
g) Redefine
masculinities and increase participation and accountability of men and boys in
violence prevention and gender equality.
h) End
criminalisation of victims and impunity of perpetrators through effective
gender justice systems, and acting in solidarity with women and girls
experiencing conflict, forced prostitution, occupation, violations of sexual
and reproductive rights, and situations of crisis including in Ukraine and
Palestine.
i)
Partner with faith based communities and cultural
leaders to prevent violence against women and girls.
j)
Establish non-discriminatory reporting systems and
support victims during legal processes including through gender sensitivity
training of police and legal professionals.
k) Provide
One-Stop Centres with medical/legal/social supports for victims, and fully
resource short term shelters and permanent affordable housing for women and
children as well as vocational training for survivors.
l)
Address new and emerging forms of violence against
women and girls, including violence as a consequence of new technologies, and
ensure cyber safety for girls.
ii.
Women and Conflict
a) Reduce
military expenditure by a minimum of 2% per annum and robustly resource
development to ensure progressive realisation of social and economic rights
from a gender perspective.
b) Ensure
conflict prevention by transforming the gendered power structures that
facilitate and encourage violence, conflict and occupation.
c) Resource
implementation of Resolution 1325 through applying affirmative action/quota
systems for decision-making in conflict prevention, peace negotiations,
peace-making and peace building.
d) Ensure
the equal participation of women in peace processes by providing financial
support to organise during and post-conflict and under occupation, and engage in
meaningful consultations.
e) Prioritise
support for women in situations of displacement to end their invisibility;
address issues such as sexual violence, murders under the discourse of honour,
civil status and statelessness, and trafficking and sexual exploitation.
f) Grant
asylum to women and children on the basis of sexual and gender-based violence
and conflict.
3. Poverty,
Economics and Social Development : Money Matters
a) Develop
an alternative macro-economic framework, based on women’s human rights
approaches, that institutionalizes feminist economics at all levels and in all
policy domains. Facilitate monitoring by women’s organizations.
b) Institutionalise
and implement gender responsive budgeting at all levels and in all policy
domains, including in government procurement policies.
c) Reform
all national tax and other fiscal systems to provide progressive redistributive
tax revenues that generate annual revenues sufficient to finance the
progressive realization of women's rights, and eliminate all gender
discrimination and sex role stereotypes embedded in tax and spending measures.
d) Eliminate
the gender pay-gap and take necessary steps to ensure equal pay for work of
equal value.
e) Ensure
labour market policies and practices recognise and value motherhood and family
care work, ensure support to balance these responsibilities with flexible work
and careers and take effective measures to close the gender pension gap.
f) Recognise
the social and economic value of unpaid care work, and reduce the negative
gendered impacts on women through redistribution of care services within and
between households and adequate government services.
g) Address
women’s time poverty by resourcing and ensuring access to high-quality public
services and infrastructure including clean water, energy, transportation,
ICTs, health care and childcare.
h) Adopt,
implement and enforce laws on social protection and against all forms of
gender-based discrimination in the labour market and within the economy,
including the informal economy.
i)
Ensure women’s access to safe, secure and adequately
paid work, free of intimidation, harassment and violence.
j)
Promote women’s entrepreneurship and economic autonomy
through equal access to education, training, resources and innovation; with
special focus on women in vulnerable situations.
k) Austerity
measures have had a disproportionate negative impact on women, increasing
women’s precarious and unpaid care work. Ensure and extend the provision of
social protection in times of economic crisis, especially for part-time
workers, unpaid care givers, and women working in informal sectors or
precarious jobs.
l)
Implement a broad-based program of study and knowledge
mobilization on the causes of poverty in response to the unacceptable rates of
people living under and around the poverty line in ECE countries.
m) Regulate
and hold companies based in ECE countries accountable for women’s rights and
abuses, including banks and multi-nationals, especially in extractive
industries in countries around the world. Use the UN guiding principle for
Business and Human Rights as a basis for legal frameworks.
n) Introduce
disability-responsive budgeting; invest in programmes to address lack of
education and unemployment among women and girls with disabilities; ensure
lifelong protection of human rights.
4. Participation
and Decision-Making: Shifting Power
a) Implement
measures to achieve an equal distribution of decision-making power between
women and men, including parity/quotas in political leadership, economic
governance and all other sectors, and ensure leadership that advances women’s
rights.
b) Adopt
proportional representation or mixed systems as preferred electoral systems to
achieve gender parity in decision making.
c) Ensure
adequate financial, moral, social support and opportunities for all women’s
effective participation and decision-making in political and public life
d) Strengthen
mechanisms for young women’s participation in political leadership.
e) Support
civic dialogue and protect human rights activists/defenders.
f) Deliver
a Fifth World Conference on Women to address emerging gender equality issues
and women’s access to power and decision-making.
g) Ensure
strong and robustly funded institutional mechanisms, national and international
human rights machineries, independent human rights institutions, ombudspersons
and comprehensive monitoring frameworks to protect achievements from being
eroded and to further advocate and advance gender equality and women’s rights.
h) Ensure
public sector and parliamentary accountability to women’s rights and
empowerment through gender-responsive policy, budgeting and programmes.
5. Environment
and Climate Justice : People and Planet
a) Systematically
include a women’s rights and gender equality perspective in all aspects of
domestic and development environmental, climate, water, forest, biodiversity,
transport and energy policy, research and data collection at all levels.
b) Incorporate
intergenerational and gender equality perspectives in climate and environmental
decision-making, policy and programmes.
c) Ensure
legal and policy protection of Indigenous and women’s access, control and
ownership rights in land and natural resources, extraction and pollution
prevention, especially from private interests and transnational corporations
including in post-conflict, post-disaster and post-displacement situations.
d) Invest
in innovative alternative technologies and recognise and value indigenous-owned
knowledge for environmental and climate justice.
e) Prevent
and monitor the trafficking of women and girls following environmental and
climate-related disasters.
f) Hold
ECE-based corporations accountable for women’s rights violations, including
gender-based and sexual violence, in all communities where industries are
located, including outside of this region.
g) Ensure
adequate resourcing for environmental and climate justice, including for
eliminating reliance on high risk energy sources such as fossil fuels and
nuclear energy, especially for communities at risk and for women’s networks and
organisations as partners for change.
6. Human
Rights and Migrant Women : Together in Solidarity
a) Uphold
and promote equality and non-discrimination for all migrant women, recognizing
first and foremost their humanity and dignity.
b) Extend
the Beijing Platform for Action with specific reference to the inclusion of all
migrant women and girls, regardless of status.
c) Ratify
and fully implement all international conventions on migration as well as
international labour standards to strengthen the protection of migrant women.
d) Empower
migrant women to self-organize, and support migrant women’s organizations
including networking and advocacy.
e) Recognize
and regularize all migrant women and their children; extend social protection,
social security, and full health care, including covering sexual and
reproductive health and rights, to all migrant women and girls.
f) Support
migrant family unity and integrity by family reunification policies and an
immediate end to deportation practices that separate families.
g) Provide
equal treatment for refugees, asylum seekers and displaced women.
h) Provide
quality secondary, vocational, and tertiary education and lifelong learning for
migrant girls and women, particularly to support integration and access to
employment.
i)
Allocate robust financial, political, diplomatic and
legislative resources and efforts to prevent trafficking of girls and women,
recognizing the lifelong impacts of displacement, lack of legal protection, and
associated trauma.
7. Women
and Health: Wellbeing for All
a) Protect
women’s rights and freedom of choice to control their body, fertility and
sexuality.
b) Ensure
political will, commitment to and investment in making sexual and reproductive
health and rights a reality for all, including ensuring access to
age-appropriate evidence-based comprehensive sexuality and HIV education, as
well as women’s and girls’ access to legal, safe, modern and free contraception,
abortion services and family planning to end preventable maternal mortality and
morbidity.
c) Urgently
address the emerging incidence of sex selection and foetal abortion in some ECE
countries.
d) Ensure
accessible, affordable and quality health care services for all to ensure
health for women and reduce women’s unpaid care burden.
e) Ensure
women’s equal access to health care services throughout their life course,
including women’s shelters, without discrimination based on legal or migration
status, disability, sex work, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity,
age or religion.
f) Ensure
gender specific health research and medical practices.
g) Provide
comprehensive mental health care services and support for all women of all
ages.
h) Provide
effective health care services targeted at non-communicable diseases, including
diabetes , heart disease
i)
Support and promote nutrition for holistic health and
well-being.
j)
Ensure every woman has access to a clean and healthy
environment, especially water, sanitation, and clean cooking technologies.
8. Girls,
Ageing and Intergenerational Justice : Building a Common Future
a) Adopt
an intergenerational justice approach to women’s human rights and empowerment,
recognising the specific priorities, needs and circumstances of women at
different of stages of their life course, especially girls and older women, and
mothers.
b) Eliminate
age-based stereotypes which undermine the full potential and effective
participation and leadership of women and girls of all ages.
c) Develop
an international convention on the rights of older persons, incorporating
rights articulated in CEDAW.
d) Raise
and implement the legal minimum age of marriage to 18, as part of full
implementation of CRC and CEDAW, in all countries where this has not yet been
done.
e) Recognize
young women as a critical population group in achieving development and ensure
young women’s effective participation in leadership and decision-making at all
levels.
f) Ensure
older women adequate income to live in dignity and implement social protection
laws and policies that enable older women to be autonomous, full participants
in the development of society.
g) Recognize
and address the intergenerational and intersectional dimensions of all forms of
violence, abuse and neglect.
h) Collect,
analyse, report and utilize data disaggregated by sex, age, disability and
marital status.
i)
Enable age-friendly rural and urban physical and
social environments, structures and services accessible to and inclusive of
older women with varying capacities, and women with disabilities.
j)
Ensure mutual respect and equal partnership between
girls and boys and among women and girls of all ages.
9. Education,
Science, Technology and Innovation : Transformation for All
a) Fulfil
every woman’s and girl’s right to safe, quality free education including
primary, secondary, tertiary, vocational and non-formal education.
b) Promote
the importance of girls’ education, providing incentives to encourage
communities in vulnerable situations to send their daughters to school, and
eliminate discrimination against children from minority ethnic and social
groups.
c)
Include human rights education in school curricula at
all levels to promote of culture of peace, inclusion, respect for diversity and
women’s rights.
d) Use
Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) to increase access to quality
education and build platforms for cooperation and networking to facilitate
advancement of women.
e)
Ensure use of ICTs in schools, include STI in
curricula, enhance girls' awareness and involvement in STI, hence increasing
the digital and scientific literacy of women and girls.
10. Media
and Communications : Breaking Stereotypes
a) Develop
effective legislation and gender-responsive policy that prohibits sex/gender
discrimination in all forms of media and communications, and establish
regulatory and monitoring mechanisms..
b) Ensure
media regulation to stop the proliferation of negative and violent images,
videos and stereotypes that degrade and undermine the dignity of women, and
violate their rights and privacy.
c) Develop
and regularize training on women’s rights and gender stereotypes for all media
professionals.
d) Support,
develop and finance alternative media, created and owned by women, that
portrays women as leaders and positive role models working for development and
peace.
e) Ensure
protection for women journalists and human rights defenders, especially in
politically sensitive environments including conflict situations.
f) Harness
the potential of social media to advance women’s human rights and empowerment
while ensuring adequate protection, privacy and safety of women.
The Geneva
NGO Forum appreciates the extensive volunteer support and contributions of
women’s and feminist organizations and individuals, as well as all the partners
that supported the Beijing+20 NGO Review especially the Governments of
Switzerland, the State of Geneva, the City of Geneva, Canada, the Netherlands,
and the USA, among others. We deeply extend our gratitude to the UN Economic
Commission for Europe, the United Nations Office in Geneva (UNOG) and UN Women
for their collaboration. The forum was convened by the NGO Committee on the
Status of Women (CSW), Geneva. Further information is available on http://beijing20.ngocsw-geneva.ch/.