VOICES RISING
YEAR III - VOL 3. Nº129
March 08, 2005
5.- CONSULTATION PROCESS FOR UNESCO / EFA GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT
6.- HOW TO CREATE A NETWORK FOR SYSTEMATIZING, INTERCHANGING EXPERIENCES AND QUALIFYING THE ALTER- WORLD LEADERS?
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1.- WOMEN FROM LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN GREET WOMEN OF THE WORLD ON MARCH 8TH
New York
MADAME CHAIR, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN DELEGATES, COLLEAGUES:
THE SUN CAN NOT BE COVERED BY A FINGER
During this 49th CSW session some people have said that the Beijing Platform for Action can not generate new rights, as if rights were a manufactured product, as if one could say this machine is able to produce bottles of this particular kind only and now there is no more space for new models, as if the sun could be covered by a finger and –based on the political decision of a few, dreams and projects of all human beings could be shelved.
Eleanor Roosevelt and all those who wrote the Universal Declaration on Human Rights knew it. While being not legally binding, the Declaration has generated the positive human rights law, translated into instruments, mechanisms and the Constitutions of our countries.
Building rights is an irreversible and unstoppable process, based on social and citizen struggles undertook by people all over the world. FOR THAT REASON, the Vienna, Cairo and Beijing Conferences build upon CEDAW and the International Covenants on Civil and Political; Social, Cultural and Economic Rights, and upon other instruments and mechanisms from which observations and resolutions recognizing sexual rights and reproductive rights at the regional and national level have emanated.
HOWEVER, multiple forms of discrimination and inequality are reflected in the extreme concentration of wealth and the power of the current economic global order that creates poverty, racism, ethnocentrism and exclusion affecting most women. It is an unfair order that makes development impossible and is still based on unpaid female reproductive labor, on violence against women, on migrations that favor rich countries while depriving migrants of all their rights, and on laws that by suppressing and denying reproductive rights and sexual rights cause the death of thousand and thousand of women.
In Cairo and Beijing, abortion was acknowledged as a public health problem. That is a principle that shall be translated into decriminalizing of abortion and there is NO DOUBT that it will then become the right of women to decide about their bodies. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE NEW RIGHTS, EVEN IF THE POWERFUL OF THE WORLD WANT TO PREVENT IT.
THE SUN WILL ALWAYS BE THERE, IN SPITE OF THOSE WHO KEEP CREATING SHADOWS WITH THEIR FINGER.
HAPPY MARCH 8, WOMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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2.- INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
8 March 2005
Embargoed until 8 March 2005
Celebrating Our Gains, Accelerating Change
International Women’s Day 2005 marks a crossroads for women. In the decade since Beijing, the signs of progress are many. There is growing recognition that gender equality is a prerequisite for eradicating poverty and promoting sustainable development, as stated in the Millennium Declaration. The spread of HIV/AIDS has been recognized as a gender issue, as well as a health issue, and the impact of war on women and women’s role in peace-building is recognized and validated by Security Council resolution 1325. Women’s human rights—monitored and upheld by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), now ratified by 179 countries—are now on every major agenda, national, regional and international.
Legislation is being drafted to strengthen women’s economic security in such vital areas as land, property and inheritance rights, decent employment, and access to credit and markets. At least 45 countries today have laws against domestic violence, while over 20 more are drafting new legislation or amending criminal assault laws to include domestic violence. Governments are beginning to adopt gender-sensitive laws and policies on HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care. And quotas or other affirmative measures have been adopted to increase women’s representation in political decision-making in countries in all regions, including many countries emerging from conflict who are striving to build peaceful and more democratic societies.
At the heart of all these gains are women’s rights and gender equality advocates. On International Women’s Day, we honour these women, who tirelessly advocate, organize and mobilize to keep gender equality on the table.
And yet, while we celebrate progress, we know that it has been too slow. Thirty years after the beginning of the Decade on Women, and ten years after Beijing, it is still a woman’s face we see when we speak of poverty, of HIV/AIDS, of violent conflict and social upheaval, of trafficking in human beings. Violence against women, already horrific in times of peace, intensifies during armed conflict with sexual violence now routinely used as a weapon of war. And women are everywhere disproportionately concentrated in poorly paid, unsafe and insecure jobs, struggling to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
To break the cycles of poverty, violence and gender discrimination, we need to accelerate progress, and expand its reach. What will it take?
Above all, it takes determined implementation and greater accountability. In the area of violence against women, to take one example, we have learned how to make this happen. Since its establishment in 1997, the UNIFEM Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence Against Women has brought UN agencies and women’s networks together to support 175 initiatives in 96 countries. The Trust Fund is now focusing specifically on securing implementation of the vast array of laws and policies instituted to address the multiple forms of violence that women face. Trust Fund strategies work because they address multiple levels and multiple sectors simultaneously, transforming power relationships and strengthening women’s organizing to address the social and economic causes of gender violence; they focus on community ownership and they include men as partners. Each year the Trust Fund receives far more requests than it can meet: last year again, the Fund received more than $15 million in project requests. However, it currently has only $1 million to give each year. This work must be supported and fully resourced.
In addition, mainstream institutions must be transformed to make gender concerns integral parts of their policies, programmes and practices. Too often gender is included in the programme prologue or policy statement and ignored in mechanisms of implementation or monitoring of results. Women have recognized that if you want to see how governments are implementing their commitments to women, follow the money and make the money work. UNIFEM is working in over 30 countries to support national and local initiatives to include gender perspectives in budgeting processes, and to collect and use sex-disaggregated data in public policy formulation. Our programmes show that change can happen—but it takes money as well as commitment.
Finally, strengthening the institutional architecture of gender equality within the multilateral system means investing in a stronger institutional advocate for gender. It is not just a matter of placing gender experts within these institutions. Increasing gender expertise or other technical measures cannot in itself replace a lack of political will or authority to close the implementation gap. We know what works—but without a strong gender advocate with sufficient status, authority and resources, this knowledge and expertise will not be used. This is a waste that we cannot afford.
Women cannot wait another 30 years. In September, the world’s governments will meet to review progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, adopted at the Millennium Summit in 2000. The Millennium Declaration makes clear that gender equality is important not only as a goal in itself, but for achieving all the other goals. If we are to find sustainable solutions to the challenges identified in the Declaration, including both human development and human security, the world’s women – one half of its population – must be empowered to contribute their knowledge and insights to the process.
It has taken 30 years to get this far. We must now urgently move forward on implementation, accountability and adequate resources to bring about a world in which people live lives that are free of want and free of fear. We owe this to the next generation.
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For further information, please contact UNIFEM, Caribbean Office, UN House, Marine Gardens, Hastings, Christ Church, Tel: 246-467-6000, Fax: 246-437-6596, E-mail: unifemcar.bb@undp.org
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WOMEN! STAND UP FOR PEACE AND PROGRESS
SALUTE TO OUR SISTERS
Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day and we as members of ‘Women Working For Progress in 2001 and Beyond’ and Women’s Resource & Outreach Centre, WROC, salute all women of
Over the years , the majority of us women have been treated as ‘underdogs’, but more and more of us are standing up now for peace and progress in our homes, community and country.
Women Facing Pressure
Many of us here in Jamaica are standing up daily to problems and pressures like abuse from men, poverty and unemployment, low wages, poor education and health care, poor conditions of water and sanitation, bad roads, and especially the violence and crime which seem never ending. These conditions rob our youth of their childhood days. Our girl children face rape, incest and many other abuses; too many of our boy children are learning gunmanship and robbery and are dying in their young age at the hands of guns and gang war instead of being in school getting a quality education.
Today as women, we must stand up against all these conditions that bring pressure on the lives of the majority of us as women and men, whether we live in the city or in rural
Taking Responsibility
We are doing our part and we urge more of us as parents to take responsibility for what is happening to our children. We must stop shielding and upholding their wrongs. We must stop pushing them to be street warriors. We must become better parents, give them a listening ear, encourage and love them and teach them respect for themselves and others. This is also part of the foundation for peace and progress that we stand for.
Take Action, Build Peace
Today as we march for IWD with our Sisters from Women’s Resource & Outreach Centre (WROC) and from the Coalition for Community Participation in Governance (CCPG) and other organisations, we urge all Jamaican women to:
· Stand up for peace and progress
· Improve our education , for example, by attending evening classes
· Call on the government and the private sector to help us expand self-employment in our communities
· Work with an organisation to improve opportunities for ourselves and promote peace and progress in our communities
· Try harder to keep our children in schools. We must join the WROC campaign to get their birth registration done so they can go to school.
· Teach our children about proper sanitation and hygiene and protect them from diseases like meningitis; make sure the babies are immunized.
· Use the services available in and near to our communities; for example at WROC attend or ask about:-
-the medical clinic any Wednesday 12 noon- 4:00pm
-the monthly pap smear clinic
- the Youth Empowerment Club programme
- the Elderly Programme
- the Beechwood Home Accessories self-development project
· JOIN WOMEN WORKING FOR PROGRESS- come to meetings every Friday from 4:00pm at 47 Beechwood Avenue
Celebrate IWD with Women Working for Progress
-Tuesday March 8- Women’s March for Peace & Celebration
-Wednesday March 9- Special Women’s & Family Clinic
- Saturday March 12- Market Day : Welcome Women and Development, Trinityville, St. Thomas and come buy food and craft from 8:oo am to 3:oopm at WROC.
Published by Women Working for Progress in 2001 and Beyond, c/o 47 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5: Tel. 929-8873.
Social Watch
Roberto Bissio
rbissio@chasque.net
Current donor approaches towards inequalities between women and men make international targets on reducing poverty by 2015 being achievable. This is the conclusion of two reports published today that look at how gender equality policies are being put into practice.
Both reports found a stark gap between legal and political commitments to promote equality between men and women and their actual implementation on the ground. “Neither the comprehensive promises made 10 years ago in Beijing, nor the legal obligations of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action or the Millennium Declaration, are reflected in development budgets, programming and evaluation,” stated Mirjam van Reisen, the author of the two reports. “Less than 0.1% of total development aid was spent on women specific projects in 2003 in the countries analysed” she continued.
The reports also conclude that gender mainstreaming has actually de-prioritised the needs of women in the planning and implementation of development strategies. “Gender mainstreaming only works when affirmative action is also taken to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women” insisted Paddy Maguinness, Chair of Eurostep. “Mainstreaming is too often seen as replacing the objective of gender equality” he continued, “leaving no effective focus on gender issues at all.”
The move towards providing aid through Budget Support and Sector Wide Approaches was also analysed in the reports. While promoted as a means to give greater ownership by recipient countries, it poses great challenges for the promotion of gender equality in development. “The concept of partnership lets donor’s duck their responsibility towards the role of women in the development process” said Sylvia Borren, Director or Novib/Oxfam Netherlands. “New ways of measuring impact need to be developed such as the Gender Equality Index developed by Social Watch and presented in these reports” she continued. “Women are the key to ending poverty. Unless women are empowered and involved equally in all aspects of development, poverty cannot be eradicated”.
For further information contact:
Simon Stocker, Eurostep sstocker@eurostep.org, +32 479 489 147
Background Information
1. The two reports have been produced as a contribution to assessment of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action adopted in 1995 at the Fourth UN Conference on Women. The 10 year review on the implementation of the Commitments made in Beijing, taking place at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, will provide an important input into the five year review of the Millennium Summit and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The two reports are:
To the farthest frontiers. Women’s empowerment in an expanding Europe, published by Eurostep, Social Watch, Wide and Karat, focuses specifically on the promotion of gender equality in the EU’s assistance to Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States;
Accountability upside down: Gender equality in a partnership for poverty eradication published by Eurostep and Social Watch looks at the promotion of gender equality in the administration and allocation of development aid in a sample of OECD/DAC donors.
2. The reports make a number of recommendations including:
Þ A Ministerial group should be convened to follow up the Beijing + 10 review in preparation of the Millennium Summit + 5 review. The group should identify how the obligation to promote gender equality can be advanced within the context of new aid modalities and with MDG8. Specifically a gender architecture should be identified for implementation of goal 8 – recognizing the failure of past and present strategies on gender.
Þ A compact should be established between donors and their partners with a target to allocate 10% of resources specifically dedicated to promoting gender equality and in support of specific activities to promote women’s empowerment.
Þ The Millennium Summit + 5 review must address how civil society organizations, including women’s organizations, are supported in their actions to eradicate poverty.
Þ Promoting greater use of local gender expertise to ensure that gender equality issues are addressed in the new aid architecture.
Þ A DAC checklist should be developed to ensure gender mainstreaming throughout the programming process.
Þ Consistent use be made of a Gender Equality Index, such as developed by Social Watch, to measure progress or regression in implementation of gender equality policies.
Specific recommendations to the EU include:
Þ Gender equality, the empowerment of women, and the promotion of women’s human rights must be recognized as explicit objectives of EU policies with the wider world.
Þ Gender mainstreaming must be clearly recognized as a strategy for achieving gender equality and not as an objective itself.
Þ Financial resources allocated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women should be clearly identified.
Þ The EU should establish structures for ongoing civil society participation in the programming phase where the country analysis is undertaken and priorities for action identified.
Þ The European Commission should establish six permanent positions for gender experts in external relations Directorates.
Þ The Commission should develop indicators to monitor whether EC aid is having an impact on promoting gender equality goals. Civil society, including Women’s Rights organizations, could play a role in monitoring these goals.
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5.- CONSULTATION PROCESS FOR UNESCO / EFA GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT
David Archer
David.Archer@actionaid.org
This process should take about 10 minutes of your time - depending on the extent of your comments.
If at all posible please respond immediately - or at the latest by the new deadline - 11th March
An Urgent Request for your Help from the Global Campaign for Education / ActionAid International
CONSULTATION PROCESS FOR UNESCO / EFA GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT
In most countries youth and adult literacy have suffered from years of under-investment. Yet there is growing recognition that the realization of a wide range of poverty reduction and development goals depends on countries making significant progress towards adult literacy of all.
The benchmarks that are set out below are designed to facilitate a more rigorous policy debate about literacy, especially with governments, funding agencies and practitioners. They have been developed by experts in adult literacy from around the world and are based on responses to a global survey of effective adult literacy programmes. We expect them to have a significant global impact on future policy and practice in adult literacy.
Now we need your help as one of a select group of respondents. Please type agree or disagree after each of the 20 proposed benchmarks below (which are organized under 7 headings). Please also add your personal comments / amendments. If at all possible please press reply to this e-mail immediately and respond instantly. If that is not possible please respond at the latest by 11th March. Please forward this message immediately to anyone else you feel would be in a good position to respond.
This process should take between 10 and 20 minutes depending on the extent of your comments.
Your organisation ...................................................
Your country ...........................................................
1: Understanding Literacy
Literacy is about the acquisition and use of reading, writing and numeracy skills, and thereby the development of active citizenship, improved livelihoods and gender equality. The goals of literacy programmes should reflect this understanding.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Literacy should be seen as a continuous process that requires sustained learning and practice. There are no magic lines to cross from illiteracy into literacy. All policies and programmes should be designed to encourage sustained participation and celebrate progressive achievement rather than focusing on one-off provision with a single end point.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
2: Governing Literacy
Governments have the lead responsibility in meeting the right to literacy and in providing leadership and resources for adult literacy.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Governments should ensure cross-ministerial collaboration on adult literacy, linking the budgets and programmes of different sectors and relevant government agencies.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Governments should work in systematic collaboration with experienced civil society organizations at all stages from strategic planning to implementation and evaluation.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Governments should ensure linkages between all these governmental and non governmental agencies at all administrative levels (from national to local), prioritizing strong coordination at the local level through empowered and transparent inter-agency committees.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Governments should promote the decentralisation of budgets and decision-making for activities such as adapting the curricula, methods and materials (to ensure they are relevant to local issues / contexts), and linking literacy with other development programmes etc.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
3: Organizing and Evaluating Literacy Programmes
The most successful adult literacy programmes are ones where timetables flexibly respond to the daily lives of learners but which provide contact at least twice a week for at least two years, with opportunities for further learning accessible to everyone.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Literacy programmes should invest in developing ongoing internal feedback and evaluation mechanisms, involving all stakeholders, in order to closely track implementation, generate learning and improve practice. This should be complemented by the continuous systematization of data, external evaluation and strategic research.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
The focus of all evaluations should be on the practical application of what has been learnt and the impact on active citizenship, improved livelihoods and gender equality. Any assessment of graduated progress in reading, writing and numeracy skills should always be linked to assessing the effective use of these skills in peoples daily lives.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
4: Facilitators, Supervisors and Trainers
Facilitators should be local people from a similar socio-economic background as the learners, with strong commitment and a reasonable level of literacy themselves. They should be recruited in a collaborative process between the implementing organisation and the local community.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
To retain facilitators it is important that they should be paid at least the equivalent of the minimum wage of a primary school teacher for all hours worked (including time for training, preparation and follow-up). They should also receive public recognition and certification for their work.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Governments should put in place a framework for the professional development of the adult literacy sector, especially for trainers / supervisors - with opportunities for facilitators to access this through distance education.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Facilitators should receive at least 14 days initial training and regular refresher training, as well as having ongoing opportunities for exchanges with other facilitators.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
The roles of training and supervision should be integrated into one person and reflected in training curricula. There should be a ratio of one trainer/ supervisor to 15 learner groups (1 to 10 in remote areas), ensuring a minimum of one support visit per month.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
5: Teaching and Learning
In multi-lingual contexts it is important at all stages to balance the use of the mother tongue (as this accelerates initial learning and respects the dignity/identity of learners) and the use of the official / national language (which is often key to sustaining motivation and the practical use of literacy). Active efforts are needed to sustain bilingual learning so that the mother tongue is not just exploited as an entry point.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
A wide range of participatory methods should be used in the learning process to ensure active engagement of learners and relevance to their lives. These same participatory methods and processes should be used at all levels of training of trainers and facilitators.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
6: Creating relevant texts and a literate environment
Governments should take responsibility to stimulate the production and distribution of a wide variety of materials suitable for new readers, for example working with publishers / newspaper producers. They should balance this with funding for local production of materials, especially by learners, facilitators and trainer-supervisors.
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
7: Financing Literacy
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Agree / Disagree:
Comment:
Overall Comments:
Thank you for your response! Please send to yaikah.jeng@actionaid.org
ActionAid
www.actionaid.org.uk
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6.- HOW TO CREATE A NETWORK FOR SYSTEMATIZING, INTERCHANGING EXPERIENCES AND QUALIFYING THE ALTER- WORLD LEADERS?
The presentation was made at the World Social Forum session on Social Movements/ Knowledge Network Popular University, on January 28, 2005, Porto Allegre,
I will not attempt to answer this question directly, at least not as it is, because it assumes too much. It is almost leading considering that many of us are just coming into the debate and are yet to agree on the basics. This caution is confirmed after listening to the preceding presentations and the vision they articulate. I thus ask myself, in creating this university and knowledge are we thinking traditional or out of the box? Many presentations seem to suggest the tradition way of conceiving universities and networks too. I think in the context of social movements we ought to think out of the box.
Creating the network is not what is difficult, but defining its form and content is. This is crucial in so far as institutionalizing the idea in theory, in a physical sense, and in spirit.
Already there exist a number of networks, all focusing on development interventions and people’s empowerment. The question is, therefore, how to connect with these at the ideological level; spatially to allow them to communicate given the diversity in location, language and levels; and in outreach and delivery.
Additionally, a criteria needs to be defined as to why we are taking on board some of them and not others. Equally key to determine is whether we are creating something new within existing networks or reinforcing what there is, since all this will have an application on the willingness and the extent others will want to be involved? More fundamental, in my opinion as a woman and an activist working with marginalized women, youths and groups is defining the constituency. Who is our audience and how do we identify and include them as an important site for developing new, people based actors thereby integrating the theories of popular resistance into action?
Why is this important? Mainly, because the formal education system upon which we depend on to get our recruits, excludes many. In
Likewise, many students who pass their primary school examinations do not continue with their secondary education because of the shortage of secondary schools in their locality and generally in the country. Many potential leaders are not caught in the formal education system. Instead they join the general citizenry where they are not looked at as resources but viewed, at best as vagrants who need not be consulted nor engaged in issues of civic importance.
This reality signals another problem as we try to conceptualize this network, one of hierarchization. If the system, and structure, we use to identify our constituents are commonly vertical and exclusionary, how can we be more inclusive of the local initiatives and actors that may not meet traditional standards and qualification but are certainly situated within the rubric of actors and arena of transformative politics? For example, commonly, we assume that leadership is a position. Thus, if you ask for leaders in my context, women and youths will not be included. Also those who did not go through formal structures of education and authority will be exempted.
Rather, we should view leadership as the exercise of responsibilities with political implications. For our purpose, transformative leadership we want to promote should challenges power structures and the dominant way of being articulated in academic and development culture, discourse and ideology. Since by our concern we envisage a relationship with those others, who in all respects are defined as “the deprived” or “backward” power is at play and is communicated in many forms, both in intent and engagement. How can we then communicate open values in our relations? How can we allow each player to determine, recognize and offer or extract it from the collaboration?
The mainstream prepares citizens to take their place in society by focusing on the service or utility aspect of their citizenship. Accordingly, most of the investment in people’s capacities such as cultivating leadership skills, has been through the formal system, be it in education or politics. In both systems, women and youth are marginalized. Moreover, we can hardly talk of thinking outside the box, since potential leaders are indoctrinated to fit in their “new” spheres of influence, the systems and structures that define and use them. If this is the case, are what is our motive and interest in setting up this network or do we similarly have a utilitarian aim?
This poses the question of relevance. How is this concept and goal relevant to our constituencies and partners? Similarly how can we move from valuing the formal to also consider the non-formal and informal and therefore resist replicating dominant forms and cultures in new spaces for organizing? Indeed, we seek a better world for all, alternative forms to what we currently know. If that is so, how do we make people’s ability to live a dignified existence the focus es of “our product” in content, form and method? After years of colonialization and dominant, how can we prize the local way of knowing and doing but in a manner that does not allow conformism? Rather, it should invite critical engagement of ways of being and living, as well as doing.
To conclude, I believe to agree on how to proceed with this attractive idea, of forming and systematizing a network for nurturing the alter-world leaders, we first have to visualize and consolidate a collective vision that also includes those we hope to serve so as to appreciate what aspects need to be considered and amplified. Next, we have to locate what we have come up within contexts of location, communication, organization, interaction and experience. We have to challenge ourselves to think differently in order to create a difference. Otherwise, we will be but embarking on a futile exercise that replicates dominant, not transformative, cultures and structures.
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The International Gender and Education Office (GEO) of ICAE creates
VOICES RISING
Email: voicesrising@icae.org.uy
Web: www.icae.org.uy
Tel/fax: 00 5982 401 00 06
Address: Acevedo Diaz 1600 / 1002.
11200 Montevideo, Uruguay