During the event, “Empowering Women Through Evidence in Africa,” held on October 12th, four economists and one legal expert working with the World Bank Africa’s Gender Innovation Lab quickly presented their research and heard feedback on their work from African Ministers of Finance, leaders of NGOs and others. The Gender Lab is using impact evaluations to measure how projects are improving the lives of African women.

“Our commitment to gender equality in Africa is evident in our agenda,” said Makhtar Diop, World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region, who kicked off the event.

“In 2010,” Diop said, “70% of our projects were gender informed and that has risen to 94% in 2013. We want to make our programs gender smart and that means using cutting edge research and evidence to do the right thing to achieve gender equality.”

There is a lot of advocacy these days about empowering adolescent girls that hasn’t been backed up by the kind of hard evidence that we should be looking for,” said Shubha Chakravarty, a World Bank Economist in the Africa Region.

Chakravarty showed encouraging results from two projects focused on adolescent girls entering the labor market with varying emphases on vocational and life skills training.

In Liberia, after participating in a club where participants discussed life skills, especially focused on reproductive health, girl’s employment rates rose to 47% and their earnings were increased by about $32 dollars a month, or 80%, she said.

In Uganda, for girls in a similar club, motherhood decreased by 26% and the number of girls who reported having had sex against their will dropped by 76% over the past year, Chakravarty added.

“The programs were also cost effective,” she said, citing a $1,500 investment per year per girl in the project in Liberia, which was recouped within two years. “These were two very different models of empowering girls, but both are a good investment,” Chakravarty said.

After hearing all five presentations, Claver Gatete, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning for Rwanda, said he agreed with all of the research findings.

“But what matters, first of all, is a belief by the country and the leadership that this is necessary. If you don’t believe in it as country and own it, then it won’t work,” he said about taking steps to promote gender equality.

Following Rwanda’s genocide, according to Gatete, women were heading many of the households for the first time.“The country leadership discussed this, and we decided that if we are going to have development it has to be inclusive for everybody,” he said.

As a result, Rwanda has established an agenda to support women that includes a Ministry in charge of promoting families, programs that support women farmers, and specific budget items to provide resources for these gender equality measures. “It doesn’t matter if you have goodwill, you must have laws in place to spread gender equality,” Gatete said.  According to Gatete, in Rwanda the state constitution supports gender equality.

Tazeen Hasan, World Bank Legal Specialist for Gender and Development, presented the findings of a project on legal rights for women. Cultural constraints such as allowing or encouraging girls to marry at a very young age, land laws that restrict women from land ownership, or even family law that require women to obtain permission from their husbands to start a business, keep women out of the labor force, Hasan said.

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International, agreed that these cultural norms are powerful obstacles for girls and women seeking ways to earn their own incomes.

“ Whose work is it to sensitize a country about the cultural constraints that keep women out of the labor force?” Byanyima asked. “Often it is the job of the NGO,” she said. “I think there is a need for everyone to be involved in this awareness raising. There is a role the government, and even for the private sector.”

The World Bank’s Diop praised the work of the Gender Innovation Lab.

“I believe that the World Bank Gender group is the leading agency in the world in bringing rigorous analysis of the evidence on gender issues to light,” he said. “We believe that the World Bank and the work done by the General Lab have the largest body of work available on gender equality in Africa.”

Diop concluded by saying that it’s critical to spread this knowledge developed by the Gender Lab.  “This team is always on the move,” he said. “And is ready to travel to any of your countries, to talk to your parliamentarians, or anyone in society and explain that things are happening on gender in Africa.”

Republished from HRW.org

This week, reality struck home for Afghanistan over the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Ratified by Afghanistan in 2003 during the early heady post-Taliban days when it seemed like a bright future for women was inevitable, CEDAW is a treaty that requires/demands gender equality in access to education, health care, and political participation. It is the basis for global efforts to end violence against women. The Afghan government is failing in many ways to live up to the commitment it made by signing on to CEDAW.

When you ratify a convention you don’t just get a pat on the back and then a pass on your obligations. CEDAW compliance is overseen by a committee of 23 experts, who spent hours Wednesday grilling the Afghan government delegation who showed up in Geneva to defend the government’s efforts on women’s rights. Committee members pointed out many of the issues Human Rights Watch highlighted in our written statement including that now, 10 years after CEDAW was ratified, numerous Afghan laws explicitly discriminate against women, including in one case a law passed since CEDAW was ratified – the Shia Personal Status Law. They also pointed out that even where the laws on the books are good, there are major failings in their implementation, including a majority of girls not in school, physical assaults including murder against women in public life, lack of accountability for violence against women, and on and on. Not to mention a real risk of backsliding as international support and interest dries up as the end-2014 international troop deadline approaches.

The Afghan government delegation answered some questions but dodged and downplayed many others (including refusing to address question of why the marriage age is lower for girls than boys, and rebutting the suggestion that women have no meaningful access to divorce by saying women can divorce husbands “for bad breath” ). The Afghan chair, Dr. Mohammad Hashimzai, a longtime senior member of the Ministry of Justice, said there is a real commitment across the government to implementing CEDAW. “Afghanistan faces so many challenges,” Dr. Hashimzai said. “But with the continued help of the international community and the help of this [CEDAW] Committee, we will succeed.”

Human Rights Watch will be watching closely to see how deep that government commitment really is – and whether the international community still cares about Afghan women after the military pull-out in 2014.

“We are concerned at the persistence of loopholes and ambiguities in the current draft of the constitution which, if not removed, might undermine the protection of women’s rights and the principle of gender equality,” said the head of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women in law and in practice, Kamala Chandrakirana.

Tunisia’s new constitution is seen as a vehicle to further advance justice, democracy and human rights, including the rights of women. However, the Working Group warned that the current draft fails to refer to the international human rights obligations to which Tunisia is bound.

“While equality between men and women is recognized, the prohibition of discrimination, including on the ground of sex, is not articulated in the second draft constitution, and there is a lack of provision on the right to remedy,” Ms. Chandrakirana said.

The Working Group, which just finished a five-day visit to the country, said it was also concerned that the draft does not specify the spheres of life – public and private – in which the right to equality is guaranteed. It also fails to specify women’s civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

They called for the constitution to provide temporary special measures to accelerate women’s participation in all aspects of society and to create a mechanism to monitor compliance with women’s equality and non-discrimination.

In that regard, it recommended the adoption of explicit requirements of gender balance and gender responsiveness in every constitutional authority, as well as establishing a specialized constitutional authority on gender equality.

In particular, the Working Group urged Tunisian authorities as well as civil society organizations to reach out to rural women to improve their capacities as equal citizens entitled to fully participate in the public and political life of their country. “Rural women need to be an integral part of the historic reforms the country is undergoing,” the Group said.

During their visit to the country, Ms. Chandrakirana and Eleonora Zielinska, who represented the Working Group, met in Tunis and Jendouba with Government officials and local authorities, the national human rights institution, civil society organizations, religious institutions, academics and representatives of UN agencies.

The Working Group is scheduled to present its final conclusions and recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council in June.

Beham met with representatives of the Portuguese Foreign Ministry, civil society, academia, members of the Portuguese Commission for Citizenship and Equality and the interministerial working group on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security. She also visited a shelter for women victims of violence.

“There is a particular need to uphold women’s rights now when the economic crisis is hitting women harder than men,” Beham said. “This is a matter for the security and stability of the whole society.”

She underlined that Portugal was among the first countries in the world to develop a National Action Plan on the implementation of UNSCR 1325 and has in place a comprehensive legal framework on gender equality issues.

Beham said that the discussions on the implementation of UNSCR 1325, combating violence against women, gender budgeting and other related issues were constructive and result-oriented. The meetings showed that there is a lot of common ground for expanding co-operation between the OSCE and Portugal in the promotion of gender equality, she emphasized.

The OSCE assists participating States in the implementation of gender-related commitments. In 2012 it has been focusing specifically on the implementation of UNSCR 1325.

“I have always argued that the UN and the G20 can and must work in mutually supportive ways,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has participated in every summit held by the group of leading economies since he took office, beginning with the meeting held Washington, D.C., in 2008.

Ban welcomed the Los Cabos Action Plan for Growth and Jobs, including its measures to address the urgent issue of youth unemployment, and was pleased that the summit acknowledged the importance of ensuring the full participation of women in the labour force.

While at the summit, Ban repeated his call to donor countries to honour all their commitments to the developing world, especially to help them achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The eight MDGs, which world leaders have agreed to achieve by 2015, set specific targets on poverty alleviation, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, environmental stability, HIV/AIDS reduction, and a ‘Global Partnership for Development.’

Noting that official development assistance fell last year for the first time in more than a decade, the Secretary-General stressed that fiscal austerity must not be allowed to undermine support for poverty reduction and development.

He also thanked G20 leaders for supporting the Scaling Up Nutrition movement, as well as their efforts to address commodity price volatility and enhance transparency in agricultural markets. In addition, he encouraged further progress towards reviving the Doha round of trade talks, and warned against the disturbing rise in protectionist measures.

Ban added that the synergies between the Los Cabos summit and the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in Brazil in June, benefited both and advanced the cause of sustainable development. “Looking forward, I encourage G20 countries to align their work programme with the outcome of Rio+20,” he stated. “We must also all work together to define a post-2015 development agenda.”

To that end, Ban announced the full membership of the High-level Panel of Eminent Persons to advise on planning for post-2015 that he set up in May. The panel – co-chaired by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom – will hold its first meeting at the end of September in the margins of the General Assembly’s annual General Debate.

Addressing the same meeting, the President of the Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, said that the Los Cabos Summit had particular significance for the UN, especially given that it was held back-to-back with Rio+20.

“Inevitably, those two high-level meetings were mutually influential. This is how it should be – there should always be an intense exchange of information, coordination and cooperation between the G20 and the United Nations,” he stated.

Al-Nasser noted that important progress was made on several fronts, including galvanizing international support for the Euro Zone; advancing the reform of the International Monetary Fund; and improving the Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth.

“However, as the aftermath of the international economic crisis continues, challenges remain in the coming months,” he added.

Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), noted in a statement that recent weeks have witnessed cases of “extreme abuse and appalling violence against women.”

They include the torture and rape of a young woman, Lal Bibi, by Afghan Local Police and the public execution of a young woman, Najiba.

“These cases have once again focused attention on the continuing and urgent need to protect women’s and girls’ rights as the world redefines its role in Afghanistan, and as the Government of Afghanistan moves forward in [its] transition,” she stated.

Ms. Bachelet said such brutality is “intolerable” and called on the Government to respond urgently to these crimes, bring the perpetrators to justice, put an end to a culture of impunity and create a culture of zero tolerance of violence and discrimination against women and girls.

It is vital, stressed the Executive Director, that the important gains made for and with women over the past decade are advanced and sustained and that women are fully engaged in charting the future of Afghanistan.

“If Afghan women and girls continue to be ignored within the major decision-making processes affecting their country, the vision of a more secure, prosperous and stable Afghanistan cannot be realized,” she stated.

“To ensure progress for Afghanistan, we must act in solidarity to prioritize women’s rights, equality and accountability, and in ending impunity for violence against women and girls,” she added. “UN Women remains committed to working with the Government and people of Afghanistan to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality.”

“The fashion industry in the past several years has redefined how to market, how to brand, how to raise awareness and how to inspire others,” said Ray Chambers, a Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Advocate, at a news conference at UN Headquarters in New York.

F4D is a global platform to advance the MDGs, which are a set of targets on poverty alleviation, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, environmental stability, and HIV/AIDS reduction with a 2015 deadline.

The initiative was founded in 1996 by former supermodel Bibi Russell with the support of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and seeks to assist women in the developing world with creating new businesses and entrepreneurial opportunities in the fashion industry.

Chambers noted that F4D is also working to reduce tariffs on threads and fabric, and to raise capital for new factories, train local people and enlist established designers to get involved in these initiatives, many of whom are based in Africa.

“I think the fashion industry will lead the emergence of so many of the developing economies,” Mr. Chambers said. “So the leadership of the fashion industry could not have come along at a better time.”

Among the supporters of the partnership are Franca Sozzani, Editor-In-Chief of Vogue Italia and F4D Goodwill Ambassador, and Evie Evangelou, co-founder and Global Chair of F4D.

Mr. Chambers, who is also the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria, said the UN is exploring other opportunities to build close partnerships with the fashion industry.

“In September the UN General Assembly week generally follows Fashion Week in New York so we are hoping to bring them together to do a lot of cross-promoting and media coverage. We are also looking to people in social media to take up the support of what the fashion industry can do to help.”

Sozzani spoke of the F4D projects with women in Africa and the challenges that they face when working in the fashion industry, from production and fabric prices to their working conditions.

“Africa can really produce great things,” she said. “They have the best raw materials and the talent to succeed, but the raw materials are not treated there so we have to find and fund the textile industry in the continent.”