UN News Centre – Women, Children, Population
I’ve been looking for and experimenting with internet applications that make it possible to work collaboratively with others.
Today I used Thinkature to map out a new website that I’m designing. I liked being able to move the elements around as my ideas evolved.
The coolest thing about Thinkature is that you can invite others into your workspace over the internet to work collaboratively.
I just watched an excellent film on PBS about how the nation of Mozambique is combating its high maternal mortality rate by training nurses and midwives to perform cesarean sections. These midwife-surgeons will practice in rural areas where people have little or no access to modern health care and women rely on family members and traditional birth attendants to see them through childbirth. In these places any complication can result in the death of the child and often the mother. This innovative program of providing surgical training for midwives could help Mozambique to achieve MDG #5, “Reduce the maternal mortality rate by 75% by 2015.”
I was inspired by the courage and commitment of the midwives featured in the film and learned a lot about the realities of life for women in Sub-Saharan Africa. You can read more about this film by following the link below.
Today I learned that old women in some parts of Africa, and by old women I mean women about my age which is 52, who have red eyes from years of cooking and tending the fire in poorly ventilated houses are often accused of witchcraft. These women, who are nearly always widows, are at the very least turned out of their homes by those who want to take away their meager possessions, and at worst burned alive.
When I heard this I wondered if the women accused of witchcraft in Europe and colonial America in the 17th century had red eyes too. Probably they did.
How women look has always affected their self-worth and how well they do in the world. Beauty is an advantage and aging is hard. Lately, it seems that every decision I make about how to spend my time and energy directly impacts how I look and feel, physically and psychologically. When I was younger my body took care of itself and I never had to do anything special to live up to the expectations of those who had expectations concerning my appearence. Now I think a lot about how to appropriately deal with my 52 year old body. I’d like to write about what I’ve been thinking here, and am not sure about how self-revelatory I want to be.
I am not very happy with my body these days and I hate the way I look. I have gained some weight. My feet hurt all the time and so do my knees. I have lupus, SLE, so I cannot rely on my body to get me through what I want to do on any given day. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself and think and wonder why other women can walk all around NYC in flip flops without a second thought and I envy them. But I also think about women who suffer so much more than I do, and my concerns about body image seem trivial even though I cannot seem to let them go. I would like my experience to help me in a little way to stand with my sister who has red eyes, but that seems too much to hope for. I guess the real question is, can I accept the/my body that is a product of the way I choose to spend my time and energy and can I make sure that I spend my time and energy on what is really important.
I’ve been attending the 41st session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) at the UN. During this session Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Nigeria, Slovakia, United Kingdom and Yemen are reporting on their progress toward full implementation of the convention.
Each of these countries has already submitted a nation report. These reports along with shadow reports can be found at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/cedaws41.htm. A day is devoted to each country. It begins with an opening statement by the head of the country’s delegation to CEDAW. This is followed by a dialogue between the CEDAW Committee and the delegation. The Committee compares what is written in the country report with information from the shadow reports and from their own research and closely questions the delegations with the purpose of getting a true picture of what’s happening so that constructive recommendations can be made for further progress.
Attending CEDAW as an American feels odd because the United States along with Iran, Sudan, and Somalia are among only seven member nations of the UN that have not ratified CEDAW. How can we, how can I, be critical of practices that hurt and discriminate against women and girls in other countries when my country has not ratified a treaty that is often called the international bill of rights for women?
Those opposed to ratification have supported their position by saying that it would violate national sovereignty, result in frivolous lawsuits, threaten the family, support abortion, prohibit single sex schools, sanction single-sex marriage, and legalize prostitution.
In fact, international treaties signed by the United States are not self-executing. This means that the only way that treaty provisions can become law is if they come before Congress as bills. As it is, the Constitution and most US law is already in agreement with CEDAW. Where differences do exist the Treaty calls on states to take action to promote the principles of non-discrimination. The Treaty contains no language granting enforcement authority to the UN.
Some might say, “If CEDAW is not enforceable, what good is it?” The answer is that it is the best international instrument we have to protect the human rights of women. It provides both a standard with which to measure and a forum through which to call nations to account concerning rights for women in politics, health care, education, economics, employment, law, property, and marriage and family relations.
By ratifying the treaty the United States would show that it is serious about promoting and protecting women’s rights. It would also be able to nominate experts to the CEDAW Committee. This is important because this group, through its interactions with and recommendations to states, interprets the Treaty and strongly influences the way it is implemented.
Read CEDAW and make up your own mind.
Visit Human Rights Watch for information about how to advocate for ratification.
Today I was at the UN attending the 41st session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and it was the turn of Yemen to report and be examined. According to the government of Yemen’s own report there is no minimum age for marriage in that country. Girls as young as eight are routinely married to much older men. Temporary marriage is also common. Wealthy male tourists marry little girls while visiting Yeman and divorce them when they leave.
Girls who marry before the age of 18 are more likely than unmarried girls to die younger, suffer from health problems, live in poverty and remain illiterate. They usually bear children before they are physically or emotionally ready and are thus nearly five times more likely to die during child birth and even more likely to lose the baby. They are more likely to contract STDs, including HIV/AIDS, than unmarried girls.
Yemen is a signatory to both the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Woman and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Forced early marriage and the temporary marriage of little girls to adult men are violations of these conventions, but there seems to be a lack of political will to end these practices. Instead religion is used to cloak them with respectability.
