women empowerment
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CSW66: ‘Violence against women continues at pandemic levels in the UK as elsewhere’
CIVICUS speaks about women’s participation and the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) with Zarin Hainsworth, director of the National Alliance of Women's Organisations (NAWO), a UK civil society network that works for women’s empowerment by advocating for women’s rights at the national and international levels.What do you see as the main women’s rights issues in the UK, and how does NAWO work to address them?
In the UK there is a lack of an institutional mechanism for the advancement of women’s rights. The Women’s National Commission, which used to be an independent advisory body that represented women and made sure their views were heard by the UK government, was closed by the Conservative government in December 2010.
The Government Equalities Office (GEO), established in 2007, is identified by the government as the institutional mechanism although the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee continues to question this. The GEO is a department of government, with employees who are civil servants and all communications must abide by the usual government codes with all reports agreed by ministers. It cannot therefore claim to be independent. Some civil society members have complained that there is a lack of consultation with them and this affects how women are included in the policy-making process. Furthermore, GEO does not have remit in devolved nations, meaning it does not cover Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. The CEDAW Committee has raised concerns about the UK not being compliant with the treaty, but the government responded that they are adequately provisioned by the GEO.
The UK Civil Society Women’s Alliance has a good relationship with the GEO, especially in regard to CSW, which we believe to be an example of best practice. However, many would argue that in light of the recommendations of CEDAW and the definition within the Beijing Platform for Action, there is still need for an independent body representing the voice of women and girls to government. NAWO would suggest that it is well placed to be such an organisation.
Violence against women continues at pandemic levels in the UK as elsewhere in the world. Sexism is institutionalised in the police force, but this is still a postcode lottery – how women are treated depends largely on where they live. Rape is still underreported and too few cases get to trial, and adolescent girls are not taught about gender-based violence. NAWO is part of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, which seeks to create awareness of these issues and urge the government to address them. Recently a number of members of Parliament have raised awareness on this issue and the government is keen to state it is in the process of effecting positive change in this regard.
We are aware that the UK has not ratified the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. The government says that the new Domestic Violence Bill covers the same ground as the Istanbul Conversion, but civil society groups working on women’s rights and gender-based violence claim that the Bill does not robustly cover all the areas of the Istanbul Convention. NAWO is part of IC Change, a campaign pushing the UK government to ratify the Istanbul Convention; in the past, we also participated in advocacy work towards legislation to implement the Istanbul Convention across the UK.
Regarding employment, occupational segregation continues to hinder women from progressing and becoming leaders in their workplaces. Despite efforts to increase the presence of girls in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), women still do not occupy equitable work positions because of pre-existing structures put in place to accommodate men rather than women.
Finally, there is evidence that women’s voices are not heard in the health sector and that women are suffering the most when services and budgets are cut. Health education is biased towards the male experience and female indicators of stroke or heart attack are only slowly starting to be taught in medical school. Most drug trials are based on male responses.
NAWO raises awareness of these issues through coalition-building and advocacy work. We also engage government stakeholders to ensure they are aware of these issues and put mechanisms in place to promote women’s equity and rights.
To address these issues at CSW, NAWO has helped establish and worked within the UK Civil Society Women’s Alliance, seeking ways of working with the government to promote equality and ensure that women’s rights are advocated for at CSW. As an organisation, we have understood the need to develop a good relationship with the GEO and we are developing relationships across the government to advance our advocacy work.
What issues did you try to bring to the CSW agenda this year?
We are aware that CSOs are not adequately involved in the decision-making process, and we highlighted a need to involve grassroots organisations in policy formulation stages because they are the ones that truly know what people’s needs are. We wanted to bring to attention the fact that many CSOs are restricted by their national governments and cannot carry out their work effectively. Governments and international bodies must support CSOs and integrate them into policy-making processes.
We have seen COVID-19 affect marginalised women and girls disproportionately, so this is an issue we emphasised at CSW this year. The pandemic revealed pre-existing gender gaps regardless of mechanisms put in place to promote women’s empowerment. Women from marginalised groups did not have access to proper healthcare and their employment chances have severely decreased. Pandemic recovery structures are not working for them because they are being put in place with little to no consultation with them.
We also raised the concern of women’s access to decent work. There is a need to promote the participation of women in the labour force, but this should be done in an inclusive manner and with respect for human dignity. Many women still struggle with sexual harassment at work and there are not enough measures in place to counter this. Women have much lower prospects of advancing at work than their male colleagues. We hope CSW will see the need to help women in the workforce and find sustainable and realistic ways to protect them.
As we have done every year since 2005, we enabled a youth delegation and we are keen to ensure the informed voice of young women is present at CSW.
What were your expectations, and to what degree were they met?
We wished to work and collaborate with other CSOs with the aim of bringing women’s issues to the forefront and promoting women’s empowerment. In our opinion, we were successful in that regard. We also wanted to reach out to UN member states, and to some extent we were successful in that regard as well.
We hosted side events that offered young people a space to talk about the issues they experience and how they affect them. In these side events we were able to discuss how women experience climate change and their views and demands concerning gender equality, sustainable development and women’s empowerment.
We participated virtually and faced some issues concerning broadband and connectivity issues. We believe there were challenges with the online platform and most CSOs had problems accessing it.
Do you think that international bodies, and specifically the UN, adequately integrate women in their decision-making processes?
We believe women are still not adequately integrated in decision-making processes both at the national and global levels. Many plans have been put in place to ensure women are in decision-making positions. These are always good in theory, but their implementation does not necessarily go accordingly. This could be due to lack of commitment and accountability from international bodies. Hopefully as time progresses, we will see real change. But for the time being we believe the UN system needs reforming.
Civic space in the UKis rated ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with NAWO through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@NAWOorg on Twitter. -
EUROPE: ‘Delays in dealing with gender-based violence cost women, children and LGBTQI+ people their lives’
As part of the #16DaysOfActivism campaign, CIVICUS speaks about civil society efforts to eradicate gender-based violence (GBV) with Eliana Jimeno and Charlotte Cramer of Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE).Founded in 1994, WAVE is a network of organisations from across Europe working to prevent GBV and protect women and children from violence.
The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign that kicks off on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day.
What work does WAVE do?
WAVE is a network of 160 women’s rights civil society organisations (CSOs) working against GBV in European countries. Most of these organisations provide specialised services such as shelters, rape crisis centres and helplines. Some are umbrella organisations that include among their membership groups delivering specialist services to women, while others focus more specifically on research and data collection, and yet others focus on advocacy and campaigning for better legislation at the national level and at the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN).
WAVE’s work focuses on three main areas: advocacy, capacity building and data collection. Regarding our advocacy work, we lobby and campaign for better legislation to help fight GBV against women. WAVE is pushing for women’s specialist services all over Europe to be better funded so more women have access to specialist support.
We also focus on capacity building. We provide training for our members so they are better equipped to support women and children exposed to violence. We do this through webinars, conferences and mutual learning exchanges.
We collect data on women’s specialist support services in the 46 countries we operate in and analyse it to identify gaps in the implementation of the Istanbul Convention – the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
What challenges have you faced?
We have faced several challenges. The main one has been dealing with the strong anti-gender movement pushing to block theaccession of the EU to the Istanbul Convention. Because of the backlash, we have seen governments trying to get away with implementing it only partially, as in the case of Poland, or just completelywalking out, as in the case of Turkey.
Anti-gender movements frame their narrative in ways that put feminist CSOs and institutions advancing women’s, children’s and LGBTQI+ people’s rights under threat. At a country level, they argue that women’s rights organisations challenge the ‘traditional values’ of the family, for example by demanding access to accessible contraception, or claim they are exposing kids to ‘harmful’ information – a reference to comprehensive sexuality education – in schools. There are also security challenges. Many of our members work in hostile environments and some have been threatened for challenging governments and holding them accountable.
We also face issues regarding data collection and systematisation. Data is collected and codified in different ways in different EU countries, so it is very difficult to collect and compare information regarding women support services, access to sexual and reproductive rights or education. There is no standardised way of tracking GBV cases in Europe – particularly femicide, for which there is no common definition – so we are constantly trying to adapt to collect the data required to advance the rights of women, girls and LGBTQI+ people more effectively.
A positive challenge is weaving our network together. We represent 160 organisations in 46 European countries, some of which are themselves umbrella organisations, which means we are talking about some 1,600 organisations. There is a lot of diversity within our membership, and this creates complexities when it comes to balancing what brings us together as feminist CSOs and our different perspectives due to our different national contexts.
What have you planned for the 16 Days of Activism campaign?
We have released astatement on femicides, one of the main topics of the campaign. We are also emphasising the need to adopt a standardised definition of femicide throughout Europe to better monitor the evolution of the phenomenon and push for the design and implementation of better policies to tackle it. We want to push key stakeholders to act right now, as every delay costs women, children and LGBTQI+ people their lives.
On 8 March,International Women’s Day 2022, the European Commission presented aproposal for a directive to combat violence against women and domestic violence. The draft that was put forward, which resulted from consultations with selected CSOs, is rooted in a criminal law approach and fails to recognise GBV and domestic violence as human rights violations. It is also reactive, focusing on how states should act when violence has already happened rather than on preventing it happening in the first place. During the 16 days of Activism, we will campaign for a directive that enables victims of GBV and domestic violence to exercise their human rights.
We also plan on having webinars and releasing podcasts to highlight the problem of GBV in Europe, the intersectional harm it causes and the need for better legislation and practices to fight it. Our expectation is that the podcast and webinars will help us reach a larger audience. We will also focus on how the media can tackle GBV through a more sensitive approach.
Additionally, WAVE has prepared a toolkit to make advocacy and campaigning more accessible to young people. The toolkit will serve as a resource to empower them and help them raise their own voices and run their own campaigns in a meaningful, sustainable and creative way.
What should international bodies, particularly the UN, do to contribute to eradicating GBV?
The UN has opened the space for specific conversations to take place on women’s rights, for example on the link between violence against women and child custody procedures. This has been really helpful because feminist CSOs all over the world run programmes and projects and provide specialist services for victims and survivors of violence with very limited resources. They seldom have the resources or logistics capacity to play such a global convening role. WAVE is one example of women’s grassroots organisations seeking to host conversations at a European level, but we are not a global network.
In contrast, the anti-gender movement has a lot of funding as well as a global footing. To be able to compete, we must work extra hard and are still at a disadvantage. So, by bringing in its resources for convening, supporting the work of feminist CSOs and data collection, the UN can to some extent help level the playing field.
In many countries the space for civil society is shrinking, and the UN can play a key role in creating the platforms where we, as feminist CSOs, can have these very important conversations, instead of just giving the space to national governments that are disseminating narratives not reflective of the experiences of survivors of GBV.
Further, we hope accountability will move at the centre of the UN’s work. The UN must hold perpetrators accountable to stop the culture of impunity, including UN staff, such as soldiers serving in UN peacekeeping operations. The UN must send a strong message that it does not tolerate GBV.
Finally, we hope that world leaders, governments, international institutions and CSOs will genuinely and meaningfully work together and take an intersectional approach to achieve the SDGs for world justice and leave no one behind.
Get in touch with WAVE through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@WAVE_europe on Twitter.
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MALTA: ‘People should be able to access abortions locally without the risk of criminalisation or stigmatisation’
CIVICUS speaks about the struggle for abortion rights and the anti-rights backlash in Malta with Break the Taboo Malta.Break the Taboo Malta is a storytelling platform that documents abortion experiences to highlight the lived reality and address abortion stigma in Malta.
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SOUTH AFRICA: ‘We want to live in an environment that respects women and recognises our human rights’
As part of the #16DaysOfActivism campaign, CIVICUS speaks with Amanda Nomnqa about civil society efforts to eradicate gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa.
Amanda is the founder of SheIsBrave, a South African civil society organisation that provides mentorship and empowers young girls and women to gain independence and overcome GBV.
The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign that kicks off on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day.
How big a problem is GBV South Africa?
GBV is the worst pandemic South Africa continues to face. The country exhibits very high rates of GBV that affect not only women but also children and LGBTQI+ people. The social, political and economic situation so many of them live in exposes them to GBV. This violence has robbed many of their lives, freedom, dignity and more. It is a human rights violation that has a huge impact on the social and development progression of survivors.
The criminal justice system doesn’t support victims and survivors. The national police systematically fails to help them: it doesn’t channel enough resources to help victims, and the available resources are misused due to lack of expertise in using them. Analysing DNA takes them too long and many police officers don’t know how to use a rape kit properly. All this perpetuates GBV and makes the fight against it even more difficult. And there is no political will to implement measures and policies to tackle the problem.
What work does your organisation do?
SheIsBrave is an organisation led by womxn and young people founded and registered in 2018, seeking to empower girls and young women by providing formal and non-formal skills so they can successfully compete in the job market and become independent. Most GBV victims become hopeless and we want to make sure they still feel valuable, can acquire skills and can use them to improve their lives. We want them to have access to socio-economic opportunities so they can overcome situations of GBV and escape their damaging consequences.
We also support survivors by helping them get counselling. Getting professional help is very important for mental wellbeing so we want to provide that kind of help.
We also have programmes for young girls and children to teach them about GBV. We provide activities for them to work on their talents and allow them a space to express themselves. Our aim is to show them that certain situations are not normal and are wrong, and empower them so they are confident enough to speak up if they are facing such situations. We also try to equip them so they can carry on the same kind of advocacy work in the future.
We also mobilise in protest to make noise and draw attention to the scourge of GBV in our communities so that those in power finally do something about it.
What challenges do you face?
Our main challenge is the lack of financial and material resources to work with our target communities. Lack of funding has limited the scope of our work because we are forced to focus mostly on zero-budget activities. We depend on fundraising and sometimes have to contribute funds from our own pockets.
There aren’t enough funds in place to support civil society in South Africa, and most of what’s available doesn’t reach the organisations doing the work due to mismanagement and corruption. During the pandemic we saw a rise in GBV cases but the government failed to provide enough funding for shelters, medical help and legal aid to victims and survivors. Lack of government funding affected most organisations that provide support to victims. Unfortunately, this is what most organisations including ours are still going through. Organisational growth has really been limited as a result.
What will you be doing for the 16 Days of Activism campaign?
This year we will be working on the ground. We are hosting public meetings with activists working on the same issues as us. We want to bring awareness about GBV in general and femicide in particular. SheIsBrave is based in a community that considered one of the top three biggest hotspots for GBV in South Africa. So we are taking advantage of this opportunity to share information among community members on how people experiencing abuse can report cases, seek medical attention and access shelters.
We hope that as a result more people will know what to do if they need help. We want them to know that help is available and they should never shy away from reaching out.
We also hope our work will inspire other organisations working on these issues to reach out so we can collaborate in the future. If we speak in one voice, we will be more consistent and more powerful and we stand a better chance of making the government and other stakeholders see that they must urgently address the problem.
We are aware that on this date many other organisations are mobilising to push the government to enact better laws and implement better policies to address GBV and we hope this year our voices will be heard. We want to live in an environment that respects women and recognises our human rights. Our government should commit to helping us in our struggle.
Civic space in the South Africais rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor
Get in touch with SheIsBrave through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@sheisbrave_za on Twitter.
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UK: ‘Women in ethnic minority communities are often treated like second-class citizens’
As part of the #16DaysOfActivism campaign, CIVICUS speaks about gender-based violence and civil society efforts to eradicate it with Halaleh Taheri, founder and Executive Director of the Middle Eastern Women and Society Organisation (MEWSo).Founded in 2010, MEWSo is a London-based civil society organisation (CSO) run by and for women from ethnic minority communities of mostly Middle Eastern, North African and Asian backgrounds.
The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign that kicks off on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day.
What work does MEWSo do?
MEWSo was founded with the aim of supporting women, especially those displaced from the Middle East, Asia and North Africa, in London. We help women who are vulnerable and have no access to resources that will help them. Our services include advice and support on issues of domestic abuse and violence. We offer women assistance to navigate court procedures and help them seek refuge. Over the past few years we have worked a lot with migrant women because their situation is very hard. When they are faced with domestic violence and want to leave their homes, we support them emotionally, with accommodation and with their status with Home Office.
We also offer free workshops to help improve women’s skills and empower them. We bring in specialists to give talks about mental and physical wellbeing so women can gain the confidence to leave the abusive spaces they find themselves in. Every year we tackle about 300 cases of domestic violence. We have five advisors working in different languages to accommodate those who struggle with English.
We have created three campaigns. One is Polygamy Matters, which we run jointly with Greenwich University. It is aimed at empowering women to be independent. Another one is End Virginity Myth. We first formed a coalition against virginity testing; now both virginity testing and hymenoplasty have been banned, but the reality is that communities still continue practising it, so the campaign continues.
A third campaign focused on the rights of LGBTQI+ people. LGBTQI+ issues are a big taboo in our communities and people suffer a lot of abuse from their families and community members. We have a range of projects to support them and ensure that they remain safe in their communities and live the life they deserve.
Finally, we are part of two coalitions,Solidarity Knows No Borders Network andStep Up Migrant Women, advocating for the rights of migrant women and providing protection to those in abusive situations.
What challenges have you faced in your work?
We have faced several challenges. One of them is that in our communities the government has for years left people in the hands of community leaders. These leaders do not have a proper connection with women and children because they are driven by patriarchal values. They tend to lead people based on the most oppressive traits of their culture and enforce religious practices that exclude women and children. Women are often treated like second-class citizens and find it difficult to exercise their freedom. We have seen women trying to get out of abusive marriages being denied their request by their communities’ leadership. Community leaders should not have that much power over people because they are misusing it.
Because of the nature of our work, community leaders have tried to make it difficult for us to reach certain vulnerable women and girls. They very rarely encounter someone who challenges them and if they see you as a threat, they immediately start making your work difficult. Nonetheless, we have been able to continue doing our work, finding ways to bring safety to women and children.
Another challenge is that some of the women we help end up going back to their abusive partners because they are under pressure or have been abandoned by family and community. Sometimes there is no support with accommodation available and they worry they may end up in the street. Despite all our efforts, loyalty to family and fear of punishment makes them want to stay in abusive relationships. When faced with these situations, we continue creating spaces so that women can gradually gain the confidence to be free.
Finally, we don’t have enough access to resources to help us carry out our work. Unfortunately, we can only offer limited support to women seeking safety.
What are you doing for the #16DaysOfActivism campaign?
This year, our efforts to raise awareness about women’s rights are focused on showing solidarity to the women’s liberation movement in Iran. Over the past two months Iranian women havespoken up andprotested against the oppression they face, sacrificing their life for freedom. I am originally a Kurdish freedom fighter from the 1979 revolution in Iran. I have lived four decades in exile and rebuilt my life in different countries. I am passionate about and active in the women’s liberation movement, following all the news and analysis of the recent uprising in Iran. For this reason, we have organised an international event,Raise Your Voice International Women's Conference, that will be held on 28 November and will feature speakers from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Palestine, where women face similar issues as a result of religious restrictions.
What should the international community do to contribute to eradicating gender-based violence?
Countless women around the world are being discriminated against socially, economically and politically. Cases of abuse and femicide are on the rise and there are few mechanisms in place to stop them. Unaddressed issues range from forced marriage and female genital mutilation to unemployment and lack of health and educational resources.
We cannot stand it anymore; we need governments and international bodies to take action. The United Nations has many member states who are mistreating their citizens. These states attend meetings and are given a global platform although they are doing a miserable job at home. They shouldn’t have such privileges when they are torturing and executing women.
The protests in Iran and the actions of resistance in Afghanistan and elsewhere are showing that people, and specifically women, are taking charge and fighting for their freedom. Women in many places are connected because they carry the same pain and so it is only natural for them to unite to fight against their common oppressor. Women’s liberation movements are making it globally known that freedom is women’s natural right and they are willing to claim it. They are fed up with the empty promises that governments and international bodies have repeatedly made to fight against gender-based violence. This year cannot be one of further promises – it has to be one of action.
Civic space in the UK is rated ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with MEWSo through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@MewsOrg on Twitter.
