UN gender equality conference to focus on rural women

NEW YORK

Kenyan women from various counties are among hundreds of delegates and representatives of governments and the civil society who have converged in New York for what is billed to be the biggest global meeting on gender equality.

Focus is expected to be on women and girls living in the rural areas, as this year’s Commission on the Status of Women (CWS62) kicks off Monday at the UN Headquarters in New York.

GENDER EQUALITY

The discussions at the two-week conference will centre on challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in the rural areas.

This year’s conference, which ends on March 23, has an unprecedented number of women delegates from Africa’s rural areas with most expected to address the forum mainly through side events, to raise what they see as critical issues affecting them and girls as well as suggest recommendations for actions by government.

The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (Femnet), a pan African organisation based in Nairobi, has facilitated participation of women from the continent including those from organisations based in the regions’ rural areas.

CONCERNS

Some of the issues they are expected to raise at the 62nd session of the commission include access to land, technology and media; education; health, with a spotlight on sexual and reproductive rights; food and nutritional security; and ending violence against women and girls including harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and child marriages.

Lots of activities have been taking place ahead of the conference, with key organisations working to strengthen African women’s participation and contribution to this year’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Femnet and the NGO-CSW, Africa, has convened strategy meetings for African women in an effort to strengthen their participation and contributions to the 62nd session.

“The key strategies mapped out are for comprehensive and substantive participation of women and girls living in the rural areas.

“Women’s rights activists on February 21-23 also met to lobby the African ministers in charge of gender equality and women’s affairs who were meeting in Addis Ababa to deliberate and agree on an AU members States Common Africa position the CSW62,’’ says Ms Dinah Musindarwezo, Femnet’s executive director.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The strategy meetings held in South Africa and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and which also included support from UN Women and participation by the NGO CSW-Africa made recommendations to be presented to the Commission on Status of Women.  

The women groups intend to present the recommendation to remove laws and policies that discriminate against women and girls in rural communities.

They also want the conference to adopt “effective’’ measures to deal with high illiteracy rates and violence against women and girls.

The organisations also resolved to lobby the commission to address overall inequality in distribution of health resources, increased access to comprehensive sexual reproductive health rights information and services for women and girls living in the rural areas.

“Women and girls living in rural areas face all forms of violations and abuses that go unreported due to lack of information, services, long distances travelled,” they observe in the recommendations, which also call for measures to reduce barriers to infrastructure.

“We call for member states to put in place adequate safeguarding mechanisms to end violence against women living in rural areas and marginalised communities.”

RIGHTS

On sexual reproductive health rights, Femnet and NGO CSW-Africa notes that it must be addressed given that it is “inextricably” linked to attainment of developmental goals as enshrined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

 The other key issue that is in the African Women’s Commission on the Status of Women as a priority is focus on access of women and girls living in rural communities to the media and technology, as a way of empowering them.

They want to push for the recognition of and address of the “disproportionate burden” of HIV and Aids among adolescent girls and women, which they say is “characterised by a feminised epidemic and sustained by gender inequalities and structural barriers to access to services.”

“We call for governments to accelerate gender-responsive HIV prevention, care and treatment programmes and policies that do not discriminate women and girls in their diversity and ensure that they are supported to achieve viral suppression.”

HOPE

The African women’s group is hopeful that with this year’s theme, a spotlight will be on thorny issues facing women and girls especially in the rural areas and the urban poor, who are mostly sidelined or denied the attention needed.

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was established in 1946 to promote, report on and monitor issues on political, economic, civil, social and education rights of women.

The commission is usually the UN's biggest meeting on gender equality and women's rights for member states, civil society and other international organisations seeking to build consensus and policy commitment on gender issues.

Ahead of the conference, in Africa, UN Women with other organisations such as Femnet organised regional consultations with ministers and civil society groups to help build consensus and draw up recommendations towards the empowerment of women and girls in rural areas.