Wednesday, June 29, 2005

The Danish Development Strategy:

The international Agenda: Status and Challenges in Relation to Gender and Development

The international debate concerning gender and equal relations between women and men is to a high degree characterized by the areas laid down in the Platform for Action from the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing as the critical areas of concern: women and poverty; education and training; health; violence against women; armed conflict; economy; power and decision-making processes; institutional mechanisms for the advance­ment of women; human rights of women; media; environment, and the girl child.

All these themes continue to be discussed but a number of them have been specifically domi­nating on the international agenda. The following is a brief outline of the status and trends in some of the areas that are centrally placed in the discussion about gender issues in Danish development policy.

Gender and poverty reduction:

Reducing poverty is officially placed high on the agenda in most developing countries, but in

many cases poverty policies, strategies and programmes have not been designed to take account of the different positions, conditions, opportunities and problems of women and men. Whereas the concept of poverty was formerly closely linked to the economic conditions and income levels of individuals, today there is a broader conception of the poverty concept internationally encompassing life conditions of individuals and groups at a more general level: their access to resources, knowledge and rights and the extent to which they are exposed to violations of rights and crises situations. Factors such as gender, age, class, caste, ethnicity and regional differences all contribute to defining the poverty situation of individuals and groups in the various countries. In addition, rising urbanization means that an increasing pro­portion of the poor live in cities.

The UN and the World Bank estimate that women comprise the largest share (60-70%) of the poor, and the poorest group among the poor. It is also clear that female poverty is directly related to limitations in their access to economic resources and opportunities, including their lack of access to credit facilities, ownership of land and inheritance, education and their limited participation in decision-making processes. Time studies and gender analyses show that in male-headed households, women are often the group with the fewest resources.

However, the feminization of poverty is also connected with the fact that the number of female headed households are rising.

Studies also show that a close connection exists between gender equality, social development, poverty reduction and economic growth. Most recently, the World Bank has pointed out that reducing the inequality between women and men - including the advancement of women - have a positive impact on economic growth.

The Danish strategy for poverty reduction is mainly based on three elements: (i) sustainable, socially balanced growth; (ii) development of the social sectors as a precondition for the devel­opment of human resources; and (iii) promoting popular participation and development. The strategy emphasizes the vital significance of gender relations for poverty reduction. Correspondingly, advancing the human rights of women and the acknowledgement of the different reasons for women's and men's poverty, inter alia at the 4th UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, have been recognized as central aspects of poverty reduction.

The Beijing Platform for Action selected four concrete strategies for gender-specific poverty reduction: (i) revision of economic and political strategies with a view to mainstreaming gender; (ii) revision of legislation and administrative practice to safeguard women's equal rights and access to economic resources; (iii) safeguarding women's access to savings and credit institutions; and (iv) the development of gender-based methods and implementation of research that includes the feminization of poverty. However, the implementation of these strategic areas leaves much to be desired. For example, gender-specific macroeconomic strate­gies remain largely on the drawing board, and review of legislation that ensures equal access by women and control of economic resources is making but little progress. On the other hand, a number of institutions have been established that promote women's access to credit although they are far from covering the need.

All in all, there is increasing recognition in many countries of the fact that gender equality can serve to promote economic growth and poverty reduction. However, this recognition is far from being reflected in practical policies and priorities at national and international level. It is crucial that new international initiatives to combat poverty fully include the connection between gender, growth and poverty.

The human rights of women

As is well known, human rights encompass civil, political, cultural, economic and social rights and equal rights for women and men are explicitly mentioned in the preamble to the 1947 UN Charter. The 1979 UN Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (the CEDAW Convention) constituted the first international judicially binding basis for enforcing the human rights of women, and with the Vienna Declaration from the UN World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 the human rights of women were recognized on an equal footing with men's. Nonetheless, it is only in recent years that women's rights have seriously been placed on the international agenda, and a number of conferences (for example, the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, the Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995 and the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing) have helped to maintain awareness of the need to promote women's human rights and conditions.

Today efforts are being made to ensure the human rights of women, inter alia by giving support to dissemination of information and by urging ratification of the CEDAW Convention in countries which have not yet ratified it. Efforts to achieve this are also being made by safeguarding gender equality in legislation and practice, and not least by spreading knowledge of their own rights among women, but also within the legal system, the police, the military, the prison service and the civil service. In 1999 the CEDAW Convention was further strengthened by the adoption of a voluntary supplementary protocol that safeguards the right to appeal alleged violations of the Convention and the possibility for the monitoring commit­tee of the Convention to conduct investigations on its own initiative in connection with potential violations of the Convention. Denmark is expected to be one of the first states to ratify the protocol and Denmark is encouraging other countries to follow suit as soon as possible.

International trafficking in women is a special human rights problem that is high on the international agenda. Poverty or women's wish to improve their financial situation are consid­ered to be among the most important reasons why women are exposed to trafficking, with the purpose of prostitution. Gender-specific development assistance, by promoting women's financial possibilities and by reducing poverty, plays quite a significant role in the long-term endeavour to limit trafficking in women. Other instruments are possible in the short term: punishing the traffickers, protecting the victims, and international co-operation on investiga­tion. Under the auspices of the UN another important human rights instrument is being prepared: a protocol on trafficking in human beings, which is linked to a new Convention on international organized crime.