Gender Mainstreaming
More Effective Programmes Needed

By Khilendra Basnyat

TODAY, development has been a catchword in many countries. However for the successful implementation of any development programmes, the strategies must spring from both men’s and women’s needs.

The need for gender maintaining has been gaining popularity for various kinds of development. Of course, gender mainstreaming helps bridge the gap between the two levels of distant geographical areas by decision-making, enhancing local leadership and encouraging responsive and conscienous areas.

In Nepal, women outnumber men. As far as their socio-economic and decision-making power is concerned, they are farther behind the men. The women who are a great force are often relegated to the background in the conservative and male dominated society. Apart from this, there is a general tendency to pay more heed to sons rather than to daughters. Such discrimination starting from infancy and childhood onwards creates psychological handicap in women than in men.

The snail’s pace of development of our country is attributed, among others, to the failure to enlist all women into the mainstream of various development programmes.

Different studies carried out on women’s participation in the economic sector have shown that the household chores are the major work of the Nepalese women, and, in general, they begin to work at the age of six. Their job is especially labour-intensive and time consuming and limit their access to other economic opportunities.

Despite more than our decades of planned development, gender gap in politics and administration in Nepal is very wide. Although the provision made in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1990 provides that at least five per cent of the candidates should be women in the parliamentary election to the House of Representatives and at least three women should be nominated to the National Council (Upper House). In 1991 general election as well as in 1995 mid-term election, women parliamentarians were represented by three per cent to the House of Representatives which comprises two hundred and five members. The proportion of women’s representatives is so low that their voice is hardly heard.

Women’s participation in District Development and Village Development Committee is not satisfactory.

Likewise, women’s participation in general administration is also low. In 1993, according to the Civil Records Office, women civil servants occupy only four per cent posts in the officer level as against sixty per cent male members of the total number of officers.

The percentage of women bureaucrats increased to eight per cent from five per cent some year ago. However, their percentage in the higher level has decreased recently.

No doubt, Nepal has made some progress in education since the past few decades. The literacy rate has increased from about fourteen to forty per cent. Also, the female literacy rate has increased from about four to twenty-five per cent. However, there is still a great inequality between male and female literacy and also in the primary and secondary school enrollment.

Despite the fact that there is no legal limitation for women’s access to education, the socio-cultural and economic reasons have acted as obstacles.

The net enrollment of boys has been found twice the ratio of girls, especially in rural areas. The gap has been wider at the secondary and higher education.

Although the health status of the Nepalese people has been improviding since the past few years, it is low compared to other developing countries. The health status of women is still low which is testified by their life expectancy. In 1991, for example, the wife expectancy for males was 55.4 years and it was 52.6 years for females.

Really speaking, Nepal entered into the development era only after the advent of democracy in 1951. However, development in real sense started especially in 1956 when the first plan was introduced and implemented.

The programmes such as girls education, female teachers training and maternal and child health programmes were a few visible women targetted programmes upto 1975. However, women’s participation in these programmes was insignificant.

In many countries, specially in the developing ones, women’s participation in planning and decision-making process of social, economic and political aspects is still minimum. This is why the gender and development approach has brought some issues about social roles and responsibilities of women and men and their access to control over resources. In this regard, participatory processes are largely based on collective learning and shared ownerable of knowledge.

In many countries including Nepal, gender maintaining has been hampered by social inequality rooted in women’s lack of economic power. They are disadvantaged in the process of making a living. In reality, the reluctance to see women’s work in the family as economic activities rather than a natural responsibility has developed a process of maintaining livelihood.

Women’s participation in the development activities of a country at par with men is essential if its progress and prosperity is to be achieved in short time.

Education is absolutely essential for gender mainstreaming because women’s education brings about improvement in society by ending gender disparity and economic development in future. Apart from this, more effective and result-oriented programmes should be conducted in this regards.

On Children Without Nationality

By Prakash Dahal

HARI Maya Ale Magar 28, of Uma Prempur Village Development Committee(VDC), Dhanusha, can not send her 7 years old daughter to school. Not, because she is crippled nor because she can’t pay the fees.

Yet, the girl is denied the right to sit in the classroom. Because, she doesnít have a ‘piece of paper’ that guarantees her right to name and nationality. Her husband abandoned her when the girl had just passed two autumns. Now, the girl is 7 and it already is time she went to school. The school authorities demand birth certificate to enroll her. She doesn’t have one. She approached the VDC secretary for it. And, the man in the office asked her to produce her husband’s citizenship certificate.

Shanti Nepali, 17, is a married Baadi (women from the Baadi community usually earn their living by offering themselves for sex) women from Banghusari village, Bardiya, and a mother of two children. She bore her first child while still unmarried at the age of 15. She doesn’t know who fathered her first child. The child is not only ‘illegitimate’, but officially non-existent too. They refuse to register her first child because she doesn’t know who the biological father was.

Suntali Tamang, 19, is the second wife of Harka Tamang, a resident of Bhalche VDC, Nuwakot. She is the mother of a son and a daughter. Since Suntali was not officially married, the community refuses to recognise her as Harka Tamang’s wife. The VDC official demands marriage certificate to register her children. Polygamy, punishable by laws, remains her insurmountable barrier.

Hari Maya, Shanti Nepali and Suntali Tamang are not exceptions. They are only the tip of the iceberg. Its not only their sons and daughters who cease to officially exist and therefore lack legal access to the privileges and protection of the nation, but a two-thirds of children in Nepal are likely to be denied the rights to the privileges and services that a nation must offer its people. They will probably be missed out when the state where they live plan to decide how many doses of vaccine to buy or how many school rooms to build.

Not all women are stoic. A few fight back. Unity Dow, the first female High Court Judge in Botswana, herself was a plaintiff in a ground-breaking legal case that overturned Botswana’s nationality law and led to passage of legislation allowing women to pass on their nationality to their children.

When her children from her expatriate husband were forced to live as expatriates on the very soil of their birth, preventing them from obtaining the full range of services a citizen of the country enjoyed, she challenged the law. After a long legal battle, she won the case in 1992 on the grounds that it violated a women’s right to pass her nationality to her children. Three years later, Botswana changed its nationality laws.

A woman’s right to pass on her nationality to her children is protected by Article 9 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which states that women shall be granted " equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children".

Since CEDAW came into force in 1981, at least 10 countries have changed their citizenship laws to give women the right to pass on their nationality to their children.

Nepal too, remains the signatory of CEDAW. Unfortunately, back home, hundreds of Hari Maya, Shanti Nepali and Sunita Tamang have been denied the ‘first right’ of their children because
they can’t pass on their nationality
to their children. They need their husband’s nationality- the citizenship certificate.

Nepal also remains signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which in Article 7 states " The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name (and) the right to nationality."

Similarly, international human rights law says, " children have right to nationality. It can be acquired either from their parents or from the country of their birth. Likewise, Convention of the Reduction of Statelessness mandates that children acquire nationality from the country of their birth if they do not acquire it from another country.

The ‘piece of paper’ may not look as important unless one undergoes the ordeals in absence of it. A girl without paper may be more vulnerable at the hands of traffickers because she is less likely to run away. They look for victims in remote villages where poverty is high and registration rate is low.

A juvenile may be convicted and face the hangman’s noose because he cannot prove that he was under 18 at the time the crime was committed. For them, birth registration is of paramount importance.

Back home, birth registration scenario in Nepal is as gloomy as they are in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and East Europe.

An NGO advocating for the ‘first right’ of children, carried out a sample survey in 28 backward and relatively remote VDCs of Dhanusha district. The findings indicated that 67 percent of children are not registered and 9.9 percent of children were not enrolled in school for lack of birth certificate.

Among the causes for their failing to register are lack of awareness, lack of fatherís citizenship certificate, bureaucratic hurdles and high registration costs.

The down-trodden folks live under constant sense of insecurity. Even if they make some fortunes by becoming seasonal migrants to India, they canít save it for future. They canít buy land, indulge in trade or deposit the money in bank in absence of the ‘piece of paper’.

Badri Pd. Parajuli, Registrar, Local Development Ministry, doesn’t agree to it that citizenship certificate is a hurdle. He says, the provision is there in the form but it is not obligatory."

Be that as it may, the government doesnít seem to have done enough to drive the importance of birth registration down their minds.

The government’s claim notwithstanding, hundreds of Hari Maya, Shanti Nepali and Suntali Tamang have children denied of the civil rights despite HMG’s commitment to CEDAW, CRC and other human rights charters. Efforts are to be made to reach and recognise these children.

Uncommon Issue Of Common Salt

By BT

DISTANCE is always a disadvantage (that is probably why decentralisation is demanded). Geographically far flung areas, sadly, are equally far removed from the good notice of the centre. The need for the good attention of the government is felt when the deprivation or disasters hit in remote parts in such a way that it is simply not possible to take care of the problems locally.

The deprived denizens of these inaccessible areas are not able to enjoy the pride that they are in the cosy lap of the government which means one does not have to undergo the extreme form of sufferings- chiefly that of hunger, disease and domicile. It is a matter of grave concern that news reports hit the media that people in Achham are suffering shortage of so common, yet essential, ingredient as salt in their daily diet. This is an ugly development news that carries a grave message worth reckoning by all concerned quarters. The most vexing fact is that these kinds of phenomena repeat on in the absence of permanent measures of solution. Solution may call an uphill effort but the problems are not unconquerable.

At a time when their brothers in some parts of the globe are vying for a car as a necessity, these unfortunate people’s supreme hope and struggle are narrowly focussed on how to manage the common salt. This is humanity’s potential demoted to the lowest. This is the face of misery at its worst. Though highly privileged lot may take this tiding with a pinch of salt, for people of Achham, it is a hard reality of life. And this is not the first time that stories of the miseries of people in outlying areas have become news. The tales keep coming in different forms- this time it is the scarcity of salt, next time it may be the lack of food grains outbreak of encephalitis or gastroenteritis.

When little things like salt and rice take a fiendish form and pose threats to precious lives, there appears to be a serious flaw in the system what we call food security. And our repeated slogans on self-sufficiency sound shamefully hollow. Despite the too oft repeated rhetoric of ensuring basic human needs such as food, health, clothing and shelter, ugly development like that of Achham keeps coming in the news.

Common things of life have greater significance and consequences. Gravity of our problems can be measured in the ordinariness of the things that cause our headache. In fact, it is the problems of the commonplace that have taken us hostage with browbeating effects. Be it salt in Achham, foodgrains in Humla or drinking water in Kathmandu, the challenge posed by little things of life is ubiquitous.

Opposition parties in Parliament may not notice the trivial issue such as that of common salt since they are always out for bigger issues to ripe handsome political scores. But it is these little things that really and deeply prick the hearts of the common people placed in hapless positions. It is the uncertainty of the commodities like salt, sugar and water that give birth to wide discontent and disillusion that might have debilitating upshots on the foundation of the democratic institution itself.

Scarcity of common salt is probably the most sardonic of situations in which people have to live. It is time to perceive a profound meaning out of it. If left unaddressed, the jabo nun issue may grow graver and more pervasive.