Wed, Mar 10, 2021 page6

• UN laments retreat of women’s rights

  MALE-DOMINATED WORLD: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women, with violence on the rise and gender discrimination entrenched

  • AP, UNITED NATIONS
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  UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on International Women’s Day on Monday that the COVID-19 pandemic has seen “a rollback in hard-won advances in women’s rights” even as calls for women’s empowerment echoed around the globe, from Myanmar and Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia and the US.

  Guterres paid tribute to female leaders whose countries have suffered fewer deaths during the pandemic, to the 70 percent of frontline health and care workers who are women — “many from racially and ethnically marginalized groups” — and to women’s organizations that have provided local services and information on COVID-19.

  However, the pandemic has shown that “this is still a male-dominated world with a male-

  dominated culture,” Guterres said in a video message. “But it has also forced a reckoning with global inequalities, fragilities and entrenched gender discrimination.”

  All those issues, as well as the increase in violence against women are certain to be on the agenda at two major upcoming events that are part of the delayed 25th anniversary of the 1995 Beijing women’s conference that adopted a 150-page road map to achieve gender equality.

  The events, centered on civil society and meant “to catapult” gender equality, is to start with a virtual global gathering in Mexico City from March 29 to 31. That is to be followed by a meeting in Paris from June 30 to July 2, announced on Monday, called the Generation Equality Forum.

  “We stand at a crossroads as we ponder the recovery from a pandemic that has had a disproportionate impact on women and girls,” UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said at the UN observance of International Women’s Day.

  She said the world faces the challenge of the underrepresentation of women in institutions, some that are critical for the recovery from COVID-19, adding that just 12 percent of parliaments are gender balanced, 119 countries have never had a female leader and just 13 Cabinets in the world have gender equality.

  Mlambo-Ngcuka called the exclusion of women from decisions affecting their lives “bad corporate governance” and said the Generation Equality Forum would help take steps toward recovery.

  Around the world, there were expressions of concern at the state of women’s rights.

  In Afghanistan, Sima Samar, who has been fighting for women’s rights for 40 years, said much has been gained in the two decades since the Taliban were ousted, with schools for girls open and women now in the workforce, politics and working as judges.

  They are even at the negotiating table where the Taliban and the Afghan government are struggling to find a way to end war, she said.

  However, Samar said the gains are fragile, violence is on the rise, warlords have gained prominence and the US is mulling a departure from Afghanistan in May.

  Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission said that 65 women were killed and 95 wounded in targeted attacks last year.

  Afghanistan is second only to Yemen as the worst place in the world to be a woman, according to a 2019 Index compiled by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security in Washington and the Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

  The illiteracy rate among Afghan women is 82 percent and most of the women in Afghan prisons are jailed for so-called “moral” crimes like seeking a divorce.

  In Myanmar, five umbrella women’s rights organizations said in a joint letter that the number of women in mass protests against the Feb. 1 military coup is estimated at 60 percent, at least six women and girls have been killed, and many others have been detained and are “at high risks of violence, harassment and sexual assault with limited to no legal protections.”

  They urged “globally prominent women leaders” to issue a joint statement urging the UN Security Council and ASEAN to “take immediate action against the military coup and in support of the protection of civilians by all possible means.”

  In Europe, 158 lawmakers from the EU and the UK signed a joint statement urging authorities in Saudi Arabia to end discrimination against women and “fully dismantle the male guardianship system,” which was loosened in 2019 to allow women to travel freely without a man’s consent.

  The lawmakers also urged Saudi authorities to “immediately and unconditionally release all women human rights defenders detained for their peaceful human rights advocacy, and drop the charges against them.”
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