Dispatches - March
Culture Sessions Demonstrate Growing Swiss Commitment to Issue
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BERN — UNFPA’s work on culture was the highlight of two back-to-back meetings in the Swiss capital. Strong support from Switzerland for UNFPA’s pioneering work in the area of culture is underscored by its recent funding of a series of case studies and its continuing interest in the issue.
A morning meeting updated the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) on UNFPA’s work in the area of culture, while the afternoon meeting was organized by Cairo+, a group of Swiss Parliamentarians dedicated to the follow-up and implementation of the ICPD.
The morning meeting examined UNFPA’s decision to dedicate its 2008 State of the World Population to the issue, introduced an upcoming publication about engaging faith-based organizations, and discussed the training of UN country teams on culturally sensitive approaches to reproductive health issues.
The afternoon meeting focused on violence against women and on UNFPA’s work in this culturally sensitive area, especially its human rights and economic development dimensions. UNFPA highlighted a numbers of ‘lessons learned’ from its work, including:
- culture is dynamic
- no single standard solution can be applied to tackling violence against women
- solutions should evolve from below rather than being imposed from above
- men’s involvement is essential
- the health sector is an effective entry point into programming on violence against women
- advocacy is crucial
- better data is needed
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Faith-Based Organizations Play an Integral Role in Development
GENEVA — A meeting of NGOs, academics and religious leaders in Geneva has highlighted the growing attention to the cultural dimensions of population, gender and development issues.
The meeting, entitled Culture: A Missing Link in Development Practice, brought together NGOs, academics and religious experts to examine the importance of working with faith-based organizations (FBO) in development practice and programming.
“We must accept that in some developing countries, 70 per cent of all services are provided by FBOs [faith-based organizations],” said Azza Karam, UNFPA Senior Culture Adviser. “If we don’t engage with them, we will be marginalized, not the other way around.”
Religious institutions and FBOs are agents of change in countries, just as much as the media, so working with them is essential, she said. However, not all faith groups are alike, she cautioned, and partnering must take these differences into account.
This thought was echoed by Reverend William A. McCormish, Dean of the Geneva Cathedral. “Not only is it important to be selective of which religious aid organizations one deals with, but we need a framework for differentiating how they work,” he said. He added that religion was once a more private issue, but that it now plays a far greater role in public policy and civil society. He also noted modern-day religion is a male-dominated power structure.
The third speaker was Shahra Razavi, Research Coordinator of the Gender and Development Programme of the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). She called attention to the diversity within broader civil society. “We must keep in mind that non-FBOs are also fighting for these issue. Many secularist groups are also struggling for space and legitimacy on these issues,” she said, warning that secular groups ran the risk of greater marginalization, a factor which could imperil the gender equality agenda.
The meeting came at a time when culture is rising up the agenda both in Switzerland and among the international community. In 2008, the State of the World Population, published yearly by UNFPA, will take up the subject.
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Panel Discusses Women’s Vulnerability in Darfur
 Photo: Jon Nicholson/UNFPA |
GENEVA — Women and girls in Darfur remain very vulnerable to violence.
“Women are vulnerable to attack everywhere, both inside and outside refugee camps,” said Halima Yagoub Mohammed, who works on gender-based violence in North Darfur for UNFPA. “Outside the camps, they feel insecure when they go out to collect wood or fodder.” Increasingly, women have to travel further to search for wood to use as fuel and to sell for income for their families. Greater travel distances make them highly vulnerable to attack, especially since they tend to forage on their own to find for scarce resources.
The lack of secondary schools inside the camps means that girls who want to study must walk long distances, often returning at dusk.
“Inside the camps, there is also a growing feel of insecurity. Livelihoods in camps have been destroyed, so women have to leave camp to work in town as domestic servants. This exposes them not only to exploitation but to harassment and violence as well. Armed men inside the camps also contribute to the general feeling of insecurity,” she said.
Ms. Mohammed was speaking at a panel organized in Geneva by the World YWCA and Femmes Afrique Solidarite, a women’s human rights organization. She first became interested in women and violence at the age of 12, when witnessing domestic violence at the home of a neighbour in Darfur. A few years later, a distant relative committed suicide when she was forced to marry someone she didn’t love.
“These things stayed with me,” said Ms. Mohammed, “So I read about them, even explored them in religious texts, until I finally joined women’s empowerment groups and studied the traditional image of women in Sudanese culture.”
Today, Ms. Mohammed is part of the UNFPA team that coordinates prevention and care for victims of gender-based violence and works with all UN partners. Local authorities in Darfur have received awareness training on GBV, and federal and state units have been established to help combat the violence.
There have been enough documented cases of rape, abductions and other forms of sexual violence against women to make them fear each time they leave home. The lack of female police patrols and insufficient psycho-social support for victims of violence exacerbates the problem.
“The culture makes it easier for women to open up to other women, yet most of the police here are men,” said Ms. Mohammed. “As a result, many of the victims stay silent. Even when they do speak up, they need women investigators and prosecutors to take up their cases. This doesn’t happen either.
“There have been many advances,” she added. “But women continue to be vulnerable to attack, and there is a need to end impunity by strengthening legal systems and the rule of law.”
In addition to responding to gender-based violence, UNFPA works with the State Ministry of Health and international as well as local NGOs to provide reproductive health care for women, young people and girls. This includes post-rape care for survivors, but it is critical that it is provided within 72 hours to prevent the spread of disease and other potential outcomes of rape. The obstacles women face,including both social taboos and security concerns that restrict reporting and travel, make it difficult for survivors to receive timely care.
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Dispatches from Darfur |
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Images from Darfur (multimedia) |
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Situation update |
First German Prize for Population Journalism Awarded
 Sietske Steneker delivers her keynote speech. |
BERLIN — The first-ever German prize for excellence in population journalism has been awarded to three journalists writing on themes as diverse as national population policies and AIDS orphans.
The prizes, worth €2,500, €1,500 and €1,000 were awarded by the German Foundation for World Population (DSW) at the KfW Development Bank in Berlin to journalists Marc Engelhardt, Harro Albrecht and Charlotte Wiedemann.
Addressing population and reproductive health issues is key for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), said German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul at the awards ceremony. In order to reduce the unacceptably high levels of maternal mortality, the rights of women and girls as well as national health systems in developing countries need to be strengthened, she said.
In her keynote speech Sietske Steneker, Director of the UNFPA Brussels Office, said it is crucial to invest now in the MDGs. “One of the best investments we can make is the investment in sexual and reproductive health services, in particular for youth and women,” said Ms. Steneker. “Access to family planning alone could reduce maternal mortality by 20 to 35 per cent.”
The award jury was comprised of experts of media and population, including TV journalist Rolf Seelmann-Eggebert; talk show host Sandra Maischberger; President of the Association of the German Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) Helmut Heinen; Parliamentary State Secretary for Development Cooperation Karin Kortmann; Gabriele Doblhammer-Reiter, Executive Director of the Rostock Centre for Research on Demographic Change; Jörg Maas, Executive Director of DSW; and Karin Heisecke of UNFPA Brussels Office.
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Family Care International (FCI) Win 2008 UN Population Award |
UK’s Prime Minister’s Wife Pledges Her Support to Reduce Maternal Deaths
LONDON – Ms. Sarah Brown, wife of the UK Prime Minister, has lent her support to the Millennium Development Goal target of reducing maternal mortality by 2015. Speaking at a one-day conference on 6 March organized by Women and Children First, a British NGO, Sarah Brown said: "What always surprises me is how few people are aware of the scale of the maternity mortality around the world. Maternal mortality must not be the forgotten target in the Millennium Development Goals. It needs to be addressed in the same way as other major health problems, such as malaria, and should have its own global plan of action.”
Speaking at the same meeting, Dr. Francisco Songane, Director of the World Health Organization’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, of which UNFPA is a member, noted that an additional $10 billion a year is needed if the Millennium Development Goals on maternal and child health are to be met by 2015.
Last year the British government strongly committed itself to reducing global deaths in childbirth worldwide and earlier this month, UK’s Under-Secretary of State for International Development, Gillian Merron, stressed that the time is right to build on momentum, especially ahead of the G8 summit in Japan in July. “I am pleased that some progress has been made towards reducing child deaths in the developing world, but it is not acceptable that a woman in a country such as Sierra Leone is still 600 times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth than a woman in the UK,” she said.
“The UK Government's spending on maternal health is increasing year on year,” she added. “But much more needs to be done with governments, the United Nations and non governmental organizations if the global community is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.”
Official figures indicate that 536,000 women die in childbirth every year but the number of deaths could be as high as 872,000. One of the targets within MDG 5 (improving maternal health) is to reduce the level of maternal mortality by 75 per cent, but there has been little progress in this area.
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UK Pledges £100 Million to UNFPA to Make Childbirth Safer and Promote Reproductive Health |
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UNFPA Deputy Executive Director Joins Women World Leaders to Strategize on Women and Security
BRUSSELS – A high-level women’s conference in Brussels has calledfor renewed vigor in implementinginternationally agreed human rights standards and instruments.
Conference participants reiterated that “women’s security is human security.” They also committed themselves to ensuring that women are actively engaged in local, national and international decision-making and called upon leaders everywhere, male and female, to do the same.
The conference, entitled Women Stabilizing an Insecure World, brought together more than 50 female heads of states, ministers, heads of international organizations, business leaders, and civil society activists to discuss how women's talents can be better deployed to contribute to human security, and in particular, conflict prevention and resolution.
Participants included the President of the Republic of Finland, Prime Minister of Ukraine, First Lady of Egypt, the US Secretary of State, European Commissioners Wallström, Hübner and Kroes, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Asha-Rose Migiro, the heads of UNIFEM, UNRWA and WFP, and UNFPA Deputy Executive Director Mari Simonen.
“We have agreed what to do, we know what to do, and it is now time for the implementation of existing commitments, such as the Brussels Call to Action to Address Sexual Violence in Conflict and Beyond, and UN Security Council Resolution 1325,” said Ms. Simonen. “We also have to use the power of networking, and to harness the strength and expertise of each and everyone.”
UNFPA has called for increased investments in girls’ education, women’s empowerment, the elimination of violence against women, and sexual and reproductive health. Today the insecurity faced by millions of women prevents them from fully contributing to national and global security.
The conference, which took place on the eve of International Women’s Day, was organized by the European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
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International Women’s Day |
