Mercy Global Concern - 2002
46th Session of the UN Commission
on the Status of Women
During the 46 th Sessionof the UN Commission on the Status of
Women (CSW) held at UN Headquarters in New York, four Mercy women
participated. Mary Dennett (Australia), Tina Geiger (Americas),
Wendy Flannery( Australia and MGC team), and Deirdre Mullan (
Ireland and MGC team). Sister Marilee Howard from the Institute
of the Americas Justice Team and some Mercy Women and colleagues
from the New York Region joined for the Prayer Service at the
UN chapel hosted by Tina and Marilee to commemorate International
Women's Day.
Participation at a UN Conference
There are always two groups at any United Nations meeting. The
first is made up of governmental delegates from member countries
of the UN, who debate, amend, and ratify a platform for action
on a given focus area. The second group is made up of NGOs, non
governmental representatives from groups around the world, who
monitor and lobby the first group every step of the way.
NGOs are private and independent agencies who specialize in areas
such as women's health concerns, educational programs or social
issues, who bring expertise, experience, and passion to topics
which might otherwise be overlooked or misunderstood by governments.
As recently as 25 years ago at a UN conference held in Mexico
City, some governments were still not counting women in their
national census. Consequently, in 1975 parliaments and politicians
knew how many whales there were in the world but did not know
how many women there were in their country, much less the contribution
made by the women of that country! The meeting of the Commission
on the status of women, held in New York from March 4-15, 2002
was testimony to the determination of NGOs to demand action from
governments to "walk the talk." Position paper after
position paper, presentation after presentation gave visibility
to the current position of women and girls and the need for urgent
action to eradicate poverty and discrimination. The Millennium
Summit Declaration encourages countries to...
Promote gender equality and empowerment of women as effective
ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and stimulate development
that is truly sustainable.
Poverty is defined as a lack of access to, and control over,
productive resources, physical goods and income, which results
in individual and/or group deprivation, vulnerability and powerlessness.
Poverty has many manifestations, including hunger and malnutrition,
ill health, and limited or no access to education, health care,
safe housing or paid work environments. Women and men who live
in conditions of poverty also experience economic, political and
social discrimination.
Women and girls are more vulnerable to poverty because of gendered
inequalities in the distribution of income, access to productive
resources such as credit, command over property, control over
earned income and because of gender biases in labor markets, as
well as the marginalisation /exclusion that women experience in
a variety of economic and political institutions.
Women's empowerment has multiple meanings and is associated with
a diversity of strategies. In the 1970s, when the concept was
first evoked, it was explicitly used to frame and facilitate the
struggle for social justice and women's equality through a transformation
of economic, social and political structures at the national and
international levels. Women's empowerment is assumed to be attainable
through different points of departure, including political mobilization,
raising awareness, and education. Empowerment is both a process
and a goal. Empowerment strategies are informed by the reality
that women experience oppression differently that is, according
to their race, class, colonial history and their country's position
in the international economic order.
What is the significance of the meeting of the 46th
Commission on the Status of Women?
To the skeptics, perhaps nothing , but one thing I know for sure,
having attended my first CSW conference. Women want a commitment
from the governments of the world to allocate resources and create
structures designed to bring women into the world arena as equal
and participating partners in the decisions and programs that
affect women's lives everywhere. The world was at the CSW conference
and the face of the world was not white! It was not male. It was
and is black and white and brown. It comes in business suits and
sweeping capes, in silks and saris. It is intelligent and resourceful.
It is focused and determined.
What does this mean? It means that women are tired of being poor,
beaten, tired of being silenced, tired of being trafficked and
talked down to and discarded. And tired of bearing daughters destined
to do the same! (Deirdre Mullan rsm)
Trafficking
Sister Tina Geiger of the Institute of the Americas Justice
team attended the CSW caucus on Trafficking. Her report follows:
A 12 year old girl is kidnapped, smuggled into a country other
than her own, her identification papers are taken by her abductors
and she finds herself in a brothel "servicing" men with
sex-- twelve to fifteen customers a day. She is caught up in the
world's fastest growing crime, the sex industry, also known as
" sex slavery".
How is this possible?
Many factors intersect to create economic, social, cultural
and political realities that allow sex slavery. Social realities
that denigrate and devalue the girl child allow a climate where
abducting a girl child is not considered a crime. Political realities
where women are denied human rights promote a culture of acceptance
for sexual exploitation and abuse. Global economic policies that
value the rights of the few over the rights of the many cause
situations where desperate parents sell a child into sex slavery
to ‘save' their other children from starvation!
While at the UN during the week of March 5-8, 2002, I heard
the above story and realized that it is just one aspect of the
complex reality facing women and girls worldwide. I realized that
a first step along the way of eradicating poverty and disempowerment
is awareness.
I am not as overwhelmed by this situation as I used to be because
I now know that there are coalitions working to help women and
girls caught in this terrible situation. Yet, I am left with the
question. How can we in the Mercy world add our voice to this
growing awareness? How can the Mercy voice be heard in stakeholder
meetings of multinationals, making them aware that offering sex
tourism is abhorrent?
One way is to join the "Coalition against Trafficking in
Women" by signing their statement which recognizes that trafficking
is not based on the consent of the victim, but is "the recruitment
within or across borders, purchase, sale transfer, receipt or
harboring of a person for the purposes of prostitution, sexual
exploitation without the consent of the victim."
You can signal your willingness to sign this statement by emailing
jraymond@wost.umass.edu
or by writing to the Secretariat of the Special Committee for
the Convention Against Transnational Crime, United Nations, Vienna,
CICP, and PO BOX 500 A_1400 Vienna, Austria. Your efforts could
help to free the 1-2 million girls per year caught up in this
system. (T. Geiger rsm)
Global Economy:
Gender discrimination remains pervasive in many dimensions of
life-worldwide. The nature and extent of the discrimination vary
considerably across countries and regions. But the patterns are
striking. In no region of the developing world are women equal
to men in legal, social and economic rights. Gender gaps are widespread
in access to and control of resources, in economic opportunities,
in power, and political voice. Women and girls bear the largest
and most direct costs of these inequalities. In the current climate
of globalisation it is the women in the poorest countries whose
livelihoods are most threatened. Their contribution to local and
global economies is not recognized and acknowledged. Their needs
and rights are not represented at the decision-making tables.
Very often policies are made by "left-brain economists."
The result for these women is often that cheap imports forced
on a country are in direct competition to the goods they produce,
and they lose their livelihood. In countries where women have
been given access to education and wealth the whole economy has
improved. One way to resolve this is to pay attention to "gender
budgeting", which acknowledges the different but equally
important contributions of both men and women to the local and
global economies.
What I learned from my visit to the United Nations at the meeting
of the Commission on the Status of women is that it is no longer
possible to exploit the poor for profit and then give aid that
is sufficient only to keep them poor. Trade and Gender and Poverty
are interlinked. Governments need to know that women are not one
voice we are many. We are Northern. We are Southern. We come from
the East and from the West. We are inside negotiating. We are
outside on the streets. This is our strength, our diversity and
our flexibility. We want our voices to be heard. (Mary Dennett
rsm)
Mercy Global Concern and East Timor
During the first week of the meeting of the UN commission on
the Status of Women, MGC provided orientation and support for
two women from East Timor, one of who, Maria Domingas Fernandes,
will be advisor on gender equality issues to the Prime Minister
when East Timor becomes an independent country on 20th
May 2002. (W. Flannery rsm)
Announcement:
Proposed Multi-Year Programme For the Work of
the CSW 2003-2006
2003
Participation and access of women to the media, and information
and communication technologies and their impact on and use as
an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women.
Women's human rights, and the elimination of all forms of violence
against women and girls as defined in the Beijing Platform foe
Action and the outcome document of the twenty-third special session
of the General Assembly.
2004
The role of men and boys in achieving gender equality.
Women's equal participation in conflict prevention,
management and conflict resolution, and in post-conflict peace
building.
2005
Review of the Beijing Platform for Action and
the outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the
General Assembly.
Current challenges and forward-looking strategies
for the advancement and empowerment of women and girls.
2006
Enhanced participation of women in development;
an enabling environment for achieving gender equality and for
the advancement of women, taking into account, inter alia, the
fields of education, health and work.
Equal participation of women and men in decision-making
processes at all levels.
The CSW event usually takes place at the same
time each year around International Women's Day
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