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Civil Society, Food & Agriculture
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Special Issue on the contributions of non-governmental organisations and civil society
to agricultural and rural development
– Involving local communities in setting the agricultural development agenda
– Ten years of opportunities to improve the lives of family farmers
– BRAC’s contributions to agricultural development
– Updated data sets for more efficient investment strategies for family farms
– Can food production keep up with population increase in Malawi?
– Northern civil society in agriculture in the South: a failure?
– A systems approach to unlock the potential of African agriculture
– Promoting biodiversity and livelihoods through community forest restoration
– Introducing the new Chair of TAA
– Alternative livelihoods in an opium-based agricultural economy
– News from NGO institutional members
Source: ‘Agriculture for Development’ journal
Civil Society, Development & Aid, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Gender, Global, Global Governance, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, TerraViva United Nations
While women have come a long way since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action nearly 25 years ago, they still lag behind on virtually every Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Credit: UN Women, India
– When the United Nations was dominated by men, holding some of the highest positions in the staff hierarchy, women staffers were overwhelmingly administrative secretaries seen pounding on their Remington typewriters seated outside their bosses’ enclosed offices.
A legendary story circulating in the 1960s recounts the plight of a woman candidate being interviewed for a job. She had superlative credentials, including work experience as a political analyst, and was armed with a post-graduate degree from a prestigious university in the US.
The male UN director from human resources, however, had one final question at the end of the interview: “But can you type?”
Mercifully, that was a bygone era. But since then, the UN has made significant progress trying to conform to an age-old General Assembly resolution calling for gender parity system-wide.
As Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted last week: “The #COVID19 pandemic is demonstrating what we all know: millennia of patriarchy have resulted in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture which damages everyone – women, men, girls & boys.”
As the UN commemorates its 75th anniversary, the world body claims it has achieved 50:50 gender parity in the higher ranks of its administrative hierarchy.
But it still falls short of reaching “full parity at all levels” of the Organization —even as two recent staff surveys in New York and Geneva raised several lingering questions, including the largely system-wide absence of women of color, widespread racism in the Organization and the lack of equitable geographical representation of staffers from the developing world.
In a letter to staffers on September 2, Guterres singles out the efforts made shortly after he took office: ”Nearly four years into this effort, I can report that we have come a long way”.
In 2019, for the first time in United Nations history, he said; “we reached parity in the Senior Management Group and among Resident Coordinators. On 1 January 2020, and well ahead of schedule, we attained this milestone by reaching parity among all full-time senior leaders, comprising 90 women and 90 men at the level of Assistant and Under-Secretaries-General.”
“In addition to the commitment to reach parity and diversify in our senior leadership by 2021, I have committed to achieving parity at all levels of the Organization by 2028”.
“We are on track to meet this target, but progress is uneven and inconsistent. Our greatest challenge is in field missions, where the gap is the largest and the rate of change is slowest”, he added.
Prisca Chaoui, Executive Secretary of the 3,500-strong Staff Coordinating Council of the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG), told IPS that in the past, despite the existence of competent women in the UN, it has largely been the reality that when women do achieve career progression, it tends to be mostly women belonging to certain geographical groups or regions.
“There are concerns that implementation of the UN’s Gender Parity Strategy may follow a similar pattern. It is crucial that this important initiative ensures a diverse gender parity that includes women from the global South, women of colour, and women from developing and underrepresented countries,” she noted.
The Organization can do better at bringing the valuable and creative talents of diverse women together to help bridge the gender gap. This can only help the UN better deliver on its mandate – especially in these challenging times.
“Gender and geographic diversity should not be mutually exclusive. We can implement the Gender Parity Strategy while ensuring improved geographical representation and diversity,” Chaoui declared.
Meanwhile, the lack of geographical diversity is reflected in the absence of staffers from some 21 member states, according to the latest December 2017 figures released in a report to the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee.
The 21 “unrepresented” countries among staffers, mostly in the developing world, include Afghanistan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic Saint Lucia, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines., Angola, Marshall Islands, Sao Tome and Principe, Belize, Monaco, Timor-Leste, Equatorial Guinea, Nauru, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Palau United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Vanuatu.
Ian Richards, former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, and an economist at the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), told IPS that last year Guterres asked the UN’s member states at the General Assembly to let him change the staff regulations to allow the quotas and promotion and recruitment bans based on gender that he had been seeking for a while. But they refused his request.
“It seems they felt it went against Article 8 of the UN Charter on non-discrimination and Article 101 on merit”.
However, this year, while the pandemic and Covid-19 recovery efforts drew attention elsewhere, it seems he made the changes anyway, albeit through a type of executive order called an “administrative instruction”, complained Richards.
Firstly, is the executive order legal if it contradicts the staff regulations? he asked. Lawyers have apparently been looking at this. And, secondly, is it wise to provoke our member states by disregarding their instructions at a time when some are trying to cut our funding? There seems to be some disquiet.
“We all want to advance gender balance and we are all impatient. But I hope our efforts to do so doesn’t backfire because of this”.
A further question is why aren’t the General Service staff included?. They are staff like everyone else and form the backbone of our organization,” asked Richards.
Currently, the UN has a global staff of about 34,170, according to the latest figures from the Chief Executives Board for Coordination.
While the Secretariat staff in New York is estimated at over 3,000, the five largest UN agencies worldwide include the UN children’s agency UNICEF (12,806 staffers), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (9,740), the World Health Organization (8,049), the UN Development Programme (7,177) and the World Food Programme (6,091).
Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS it is indeed heartening to hear that the UN has reached gender parity among its senior leadership.
The Secretary-General further promises that steps will be taken to ensure parity at all levels of the organization by 2028 which is most welcome, she said.
“It is also heartening to note that there is attention to the reality that it is not just about numbers but also about a shift in organizational culture. There obviously needs to be transparency on what this shift implies in terms of its goals, how they will be achieved, and how success will be measured.”
While equitable recruitment is one way to measure gender parity, number of male and female staff obviously cannot be the sole measure of success in achieving gender equality, she argued.
“Parity in numbers is one, critical part of ensuring gender equality in the UN but it needs to be matched with efforts that address the quality of work life. Recognizing the demands on the lives of women and men today and building flexibility in work life policies is a key part of ensuring this quality and equality,” she added.
Attention will have to be paid to other critical areas of work life, such as parity in retention, rate of promotion, salary, benefit package including adequate and flexible work arrangements especially those related to maternity (and paternity) leave, and support and mentoring of women, Mane said.
Targets will not only need to be set for each of these areas but also reported on to ensure transparency and accountability that gender parity is successful in a comprehensive and meaningful way, in the long run, she declared.
Ben Phillips, author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’ and former Campaigns Director for Oxfam and for ActionAid, told IPS there is a growing unity amongst grassroots groups across the world fighting intersecting inequalities.
That is what ‘we the peoples‘ really means. It is that united push that is driving a long-overdue reckoning across institutions of every kind, said Phillips who co-founded the Fight Inequality Alliance.
Anjimile’s debut album, Giver Taker, is out Sept. 18. Courtesy of the artist hide caption
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Courtesy of the artist
Anjimile’s debut album, Giver Taker, is out Sept. 18.
Courtesy of the artist
“My partner tells me that apparently I only sing when I’m happy,” says Anjimile Chithambo, who performs and records music mononymously as Anjimile. It’s a slightly surprising admission. For one thing, the singer-songwriter’s new album, Giver Taker, is full of piercing self-knowledge; it seems like they don’t need anyone to explain their musical process to them. For another, the album is the product of some extremely trying situations: Anjimile wrote many of the songs while in treatment for alcoholism and while coming to terms with their identity as a trans and nonbinary person. Still, it’s a warm, beautiful album, full of moments of wonder and joy at having emerged on the other side of hardship.
Giver Taker, out Sept. 18, is being billed as their debut album, though Anjimile’s previous self-produced releases have steadily earned them attention in Boston, where they’re based. Their Tiny Desk Contest entry from 2018 earned them the title of WBUR’s favorite Massachusetts entry, and GBH named them a Slingshot Artist to Watch in 2019. Thanks in part to a grant from Live Arts Boston, Anjimile hired producers for the first time to record Giver Taker: their bandmate, Justine Bowe, and multi-instrumentalist Gabe Goodman. Anjimile says the trio brought a range of influences — from Bob Dylan to Kate Bush, from Radiohead to India.Arie — into the studio, which refract across the album’s nine tracks of introspective indie-folk. On songs like “1978” and “Not Another Word,” Anjimile’s fingerpicked guitar and choir-trained voice are reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens, filtered through the ’80s divas they grew up on; on “Ndimakukonda,” they sing in Chichewa, the language spoken in Malawi where their family is from.
Ahead of Giver Taker‘s release, Anjimile spoke to NPR Music about the process of healing that led to these songs, their deep love for The Lion King and their feelings about releasing their debut album in a time of great social upheaval.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Marissa Lorusso, NPR Music: There’s a real range of sounds across Giver Taker. What did you listen to growing up?
Anjimile: Growing up, I listened to what my parents listened to — and the older I get, the more I’ve been able to recognize how awesome their taste in music is. So there was always a lot of Bob Marley, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston. And there are also super into Celine Dion and Dolly Parton.
A lot of iconic singers.
Yeah. I was introduced at a very young age to some very epic and iconic singing.
You grew up singing in choirs, right?
Yes. I have two older sisters and they both grew up singing in the school choir. I would go with my family to see the performances, and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever to see middle school choir concerts; I was enamored. [Laughs.] So as soon as I was old enough — fifth grade — I joined the Plano Children’s Chorale and and it was on.
Did singing in choirs have an impact on the way that you write and sing your own music?
Definitely. I had a very imperious choir teacher in high school — he was all about long vowels and super-obsessed with tonality. We would do warm-ups, and we would be singing our pieces, and if you were sharp or flat, he would look you dead in the eye while conducting the chorus — it was very frightening and also super helpful. I didn’t I didn’t realize how much I learned from him until I started recording this album; I practiced the warm-ups I learned in school and I am very acutely aware of tonality.
I ask, too, because faith is something that comes up across your music — and you’ve said your song “Maker” is about the relationship between your gender identity and your spirituality. What do you mean by that?
As I’ve come to recognize that I am trans and non-binary, this realization has coincided with a deepening of my spiritual life. I have a deep-seated belief that if I do the next right thing, I’m going to be alright — and part of doing the next right thing, for me, was recognizing that I was trans and that I needed to come out to myself and to my loved ones and to my parents.
When I was growing up in Texas and I came out to my parents, it was not a positive reception. They were devastated; my sexuality — at the time I identified as a lesbian — felt like it was in direct conflict with their conservative Christian beliefs. That’s something that I held on to for a long time. When I wrote “Maker,” it was the beginning of the realization that just as I could build my own sense of spirituality and build my own faith and relate to a God of my understanding, I could do the same thing with my gender and my sexuality. And that’s what I did.
I know you were also dealing with some other mental health challenges when you were writing the album; you’ve said many of the songs were written when you were “literally in the process of improving [your] mental health.” What did that process look like for you?
For me, that was rehab. I’m a recovering alcoholic and my addiction reached a peak, or, I guess, a low point, at the end of 2015, and I went to rehab and at the beginning of 2016. I brought my guitar and I brought a plastic bag with some clothes and I went to Florida and I ended up staying there for a year; I think I brought my guitar because I reckoned I might be there for a while.
I was a mess, and I wrote a lot of this album in the process of becoming not a mess — or, I guess, in the process of healing. Up until that point, I kind of had just resigned myself to the fact that I was going to die an alcoholic — and so my subsequent sobriety and recovery feels like a huge plot twist to me, four and a half years later. And the more days I had sober, which turned into months, which turned into years, the more mental clarity I developed and the more emotional clarity I developed. And with that, my creative spark came back and I started writing and signing again.
This record was the first time that you worked with producers — all your previous recordings were made by you, and this feels like a real step forward in your production and songwriting. What was that like?
My bandmate Justine Bowe co-produced Giver Taker with Gabe Goodman, the principal producer. He’s an indie artist based in New York; he plays bass, he does arrangement stuff and programming and engineering. And Justine plays a variety of keys and does vocals and plays the clarinet, and also has an incredible ear for arrangements as well. It was inspiring for me to work with folks who were working at that level of musicianship.
Before working with them, I didn’t really know anything about what production means or what a producer does; I was just doing stuff DIY, but Giver Taker came with a budget because I got a grant from Live Arts Boston last year, so I was able to hire Justine and Gabe. I showed them demos of each song and they gave me their thoughts, like, “This one sounds good, maybe let’s take out that second chorus,” or “What if this had drums here? What if this had bass there?” They just presented so many ideas that I never would have thought of. … And every time they would suggest an idea, I would be like, “Please try it out,” and then we would listen to it and it would sound great.
[For example,] for the last song on the album, it’s called “To Meet Me There.” We had a hard time with it, figuring out where the peaks and valleys of the song should be, how it should rise and fall. There’s a bridge; in an older recording of the song, the bridge was a choral situation. Gabe had the idea to bring in like a conga sound to the bridge — and Justin was like, “Make it a filter sweep,” so it starts off muffled and then gets clearer and clearer. So this bridge went from being something that had a choral vibe to just like the funkiest, in my opinion, most interesting point in that song. It’s a folk tune, and then all of a sudden there’s this really smooth, sexy, African drumming. It was amazing.
The album cover for Giver Taker is a painting of you. Can you tell me a little bit about it? I feel like for artists who are marginalized in any way, the idea of representing yourself on your own terms can feel especially important or valuable.
Well, it’s a big old painting of my face. I’ve released DIY records in the past that have all been like some sort of portrait of me, and I started doing that basically I thought it was important to have to have a visual of a black queer person prominently featured.
You know, if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t do it — because the last thing I want to see is a picture of my own face. I know what my face looks like! I don’t need to see it. [Laughs.] But I think it’s an important statement about representation. And if another queer person, another queer black person, can be like, “Hey! That’s Anjimile on this album cover, like, that’s so sick,” then it’s totally worth it.
Did you do the painting?
It’s by Rebecca Larios. She is an incredible painter. My bandmate Justine Bowe took the photo that the painting is based on, and we wanted to incorporate — because I’m a hippie — some sort of greenery that relates to me. So there’s sugarcane in the back behind me; sugarcane is an indigenous crop to Malawi, where my family is from.
And then, behind that, there’s a river which is based upon The Lion King. There’s one scene in “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King,” which is one of my favorite songs of all time, where Zazu is standing on a log and he’s about to go down a waterfall. We sent Rebecca a bunch of stills from that and she literally painted me into the scene from The Lion King… I was really pumped.
Wait, tell me about your love for The Lion King!
It’s my favorite movie … When I was growing up, the first Disney movie with Black people that wasn’t, like, Uncle Remus was The Princess and the Frog. And that was years after I was a kid. And so, in my mind, as a kid, seeing The Lion King based in Africa, I was like, “Holy s***, my parents are from Africa, like, I’m in this movie!” [Laughs.] My parents were like, “Well, not exactly…” [Laughs.]
Just the fact that there was like an African language, Swahili, spoken in the songs and the fact that it was set in Africa, even though there were no people — it was a big deal for me as a young, African-American kid who had never seen representation like that in Disney. I just love everything about that movie; I love the singing, I love the animation, I love Mufasa and “I just can’t wait to be king” is more or less a mantra for my life.
When you think about everything that is going on in the world right now — the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the economic crisis, all of it — I imagine these aren’t exactly the circumstances that you were expecting to release your debut album into. How are you feeling?
I’m feeling like I just — all I can do is try to take good care of myself and show up for another day. Like, yeah, we have music coming out and there’s a pandemic, and there is also what appears to be an upsurge of Black death in the news. But I was thinking about it the other day and I realized that if I was to stop promoting stuff every time there is police violence or racist violence, I would never promote anything. Which is, you know, a pretty demoralizing thought. But, also, I don’t know what great circumstances are, so — it is what it is, and it’s a bright spot in my life right now. And my friends are a bright spot, and my family. Working with the record label is wonderful. And the fact that this album is coming out after so much work is a bright spot.
Is there anything else you think people should know about this record or about your music when they hear it?
So, I’ve got a tune on the record called “In Your Eyes.” And a lot of it has to do with the pain of me coming out to my parents and just how much it sucked. And I recently came out to my parents again as trans, and my dad was super supportive. He sent me the most kind, most loving email, and he was like, “I don’t want you to think that you can’t come home,” like, “I love you and accept you for who you are, and I believe that God created all folks, you know, even, especially trans folks, in his image. So feel free to come home any time.” And before that point, I hadn’t shared anything about the album with my parents. And now I get to show him everything. It’s really nice to be able to feel accepted within my family by someone who I really care about. I’m going to send him over some vinyl a little bit.
I was delighted to see Peter Mancall’s article on the Pilgrims (“Complicated legacy of the Pilgrims finally coming to light,” Sept. 5). I had intended to write a similar piece closer to the actual anniversary of the Pilgrim’s arrival, but Mancall beat me to it – and he has more authority as he is a historian. I will, however, add a few personal observations.
My background gives me a bias which, hopefully, I have overcome. My mother was the governor of the local chapter of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. She had proven ancestry going back to both William Bradford and William Brewster. We had always celebrated Thanksgiving as both a family and national holiday. I will never forget the meeting and luncheon we had out at Col. Allensworth State Park. Not only was this site steeped in Black American history, my sister had brought her adopted Micronesian son to the occasion. Although he was legally adopted, we were informed that he was not eligible to join in the society with his family! All of this led me to re-examine the “Pilgrim story.”
First of all, we need to answer the question put forward by Mancall as to why glory is heaped on the Pilgrims. A good part of the answer lies in the writings of Bradford. As part of my family’s inheritance, I have a copy of his rather weighty tome. A lot of history is made simply by there being a record of happenings. Unfortunately, however, any such reckoning is the opinion of the author and does not include opposing views.
The Mayflower compact may be considered a beginning on American democracy, but it was the basis of a racist and self-serving “democracy.” Although the Pilgrims, of necessity, formed an alliance with the Wampanoag, they continuously disrespected Native Americans and eventually joined most of the New England colonies in slaughtering them in a ruthless war.
It is interesting that the only New England colony which remained neutral in this war was Rhode Island, a colony founded by my father’s ancestor Roger Williams, who had been expelled from Salem because of his religious beliefs. It is an interesting footnote on history that he was hired as a translator by the New England colonies during the war. He had lived with the Narragansett after his exile and had learned their language and customs.
It is important to learn that American history contains both good and bad. Hopefully, by acknowledging mistakes, we can build a better future.
Bruce J. Hargreaves is a retired biologist with a bachelor’s degree in field biology, master’s degree in public health and a Ph.D. in parasitology. He taught parasitology at the University of Malawi, botany at the National University of Lesotho and was head of natural history at the National Museum of Botswana.
Civil Society, Featured, Gender, Global, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Poverty & SDGs, TerraViva United Nations, Women’s Health
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women
Women in Bangladesh stand up for gender equality. Credit: UNICEF/Jannatul Mawa
– Twenty-five years ago, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing set a path-breaking agenda for women’s rights. As a result of the two-week gathering with more than 30,000 activists, representatives from 189 nations unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
This historic blueprint articulated a vision of equal rights, freedom and opportunities for women – everywhere, no matter what their circumstances are – that continues to shape gender equality and women’s movements worldwide.
A quarter century on, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, calls for urgent action: “With nations around the world searching for solutions to the complex challenges of our age, the leading way for all of us to rebuild more equal, inclusive, and resilient societies, is to accelerate the implementation of women’s rights – the Beijing Platform for Action. That vision has been only partly realized. We still live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture, and this simply has to change”.
The Beijing Platform for Action imagined a world where every woman and girl can exercise her freedoms and choices, and realize her rights, such as to live free from violence, to go to school, to participate in decisions and to earn equal pay for work of equal value. As a defining framework for change, the Platform for Action made comprehensive commitments under 12 critical areas of concern.
Twenty-five years later, no country has fully delivered on the commitments of the Beijing Platform for Action, nor is close to it. A major stock-taking UN Women report published earlier this year showed that progress towards gender equality is faltering and hard-won advances are being reversed.
Women currently hold just one quarter of the seats at the tables of power across the board. Men are still 75 per cent of parliamentarians, hold 73 per cent of managerial positions, are 70 per cent of climate negotiators and almost all of the peacemakers.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
The anniversary is a wake-up call and comes at a time when the impact of the gender equality gaps is undeniable. Research shows the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating pre-existing inequalities and threatening to halt or reverse the gains of decades of collective effort – with just released new data revealing that the pandemic will push 47 million more women and girls below the poverty line.
We are also witnessing increased reports on violence against women throughout the world due to the lockdowns, and women losing their livelihoods faster because they are more exposed to hard-hit economic sectors.
While much works remains on fulfilling the promises of the Beijing Platform for Action, it continues to be a global framework and a powerful source of mobilization, civil society activism, guidance and inspiration 25 years later.
It was at the Fourth World Conference on Women, specifically at the Women & Health Security Colloquium, where Hillary Clinton coined the phrase, “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights”.
In a recent article in The Atlantic, she recalled her participation at the Conference as the Honorary Chairperson of the US delegation, and the significance of the Beijing Declaration: “A 270-page document might not lend itself to bumper stickers or coffee mugs, but it laid the groundwork for sweeping, necessary changes.”
Underlining the urgency for implementation, she added: “As the changes laid out in the Platform for Action have been implemented, what’s become clear is that simply embracing the concept of women’s rights, let alone enshrining those rights in laws and constitutions, is not the same as achieving full equality. Rights are important, but they are nothing without the power to claim them.”
Years after, global activists continue the hard work and those who participated at the 1995 Beijing Conference remain touched by this historic meeting. Zeliha Ünaldi, a long-standing gender advocate from Turkey, said it was a life-changing experience: “When I recall those days, mingling around the tents with thousands of women committing to a better world, two words immediately come to my mind: sisterhood and peace. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the subsequent five years helped me understand the power in us and of us as the global women’s movement.”
The upcoming UN General Assembly later this month will be a key opportunity to bring to the forefront the relevance of the Beijing Declaration and move the needle on implementation, with a High-Level Meeting attended by global leaders on “Accelerating the Realization of Gender Equality and the Empowerment of all Women and Girls” on 1 October.
The event will showcase how building equal and inclusive societies is more urgent than ever, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages lives and livelihoods.
Calling on world leaders to use their political power to accelerate robust action and resources for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls: “This is a re-set moment. On this important anniversary, let us reaffirm the promises the world made to women in 1995. Let us draw on the activist spirit of the Beijing Conference and commit to forging new alliances across generations and sectors to ensure we seize this opportunity for deep, systemic change for women and for the world.”
The anniversary will be further commemorated in the context of the Generation Equality Forum, a civil society–centred, global gathering for gender equality, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of France and Mexico, foreseen to take place in the first half of 2021.
Exactly 25 years after the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, its significance is undimmed. In that quarter century we have seen the strength and impact of collective activism grow and have been reminded of the importance of multilateralism and partnership to find common solutions to shared problems.
Back in 1995, the deliberations of the Conference resulted in the framing of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: a bold agenda for the change needed to realize the human rights of women and girls, articulated across 12 critical areas of concern.
The Platform for Action provided a blueprint for the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, adopted by 189 UN Member States and universally referenced.
The continued relevance of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action cannot be overstated today. The far-reaching social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the significant increases in violence against women, threaten to reverse many of the hard-won advances made in the last 25 years to empower women and girls.
At the same time, the outstanding value of women’s leadership through the COVID-19 pandemic is in plain sight, along with the recognition of just how much women’s work and women’s movements have sustained the world, from domestic life, the fight for human rights, to national economies.
We also know that by next year, 435 million women and girls are likely to have been reduced to extreme poverty. Governments, local administrations, businesses and enterprises of all sorts must not let this happen.
To tackle persistent systemic barriers to equality, we need transformative approaches and new alliances that engage the private sector alongside governments and civil society. This is a re-set moment. The economic and policy lifeboats for our struggling world must put women and children first.
The political will of leaders can make the difference. World leaders convening at this year’s United Nations General Assembly have the opportunity to use their power in action to accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and to support the role of civil society organizations and youth.
Our humanitarian responses to COVID-19, our economic stimulus packages, our reinventions of working life and our efforts to create solidarity across social and physical distance – these are all chances to build back better for women and girls.
For success, we need to work together on these transformative actions. In 2019, we launched a global campaign called Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights for an Equal Future, with a call for renewed commitment by governments in partnership with civil society, academia and the private sector.
It included clear timelines, responsibilities and resources towards realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an ambitious long-term framework that included goals to achieve universal gender equality.
On October 1, 2020, when a High-Level Meeting on the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action is convened by the President of the General Assembly, Member States can put into action their commitment toward a more gender-equal world.
On this important anniversary, let us reaffirm the promises the world made to women and girls in 1995. Let us draw on the activist spirit of the Beijing Conference and commit to forging new alliances across generations and sectors to ensure we seize this opportunity for deep, systemic change for women and for the world.
