WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS: Keynote address by Ms. Mehr Khan Williams, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights

International Conference: Gender Mainstreaming and the MDGs
Islamabad, Pakistan, 28 March 2005

It is an honor and a privilege to be here for this conference on gender mainstreaming and the Millennium Development Goals. It is also a great pleasure to see so many friends and mentors present here. I single out only two to demonstrate that commitment and passion can make a difference to changing our world. APWA’s history shows that volunteerism is very important. Equally, professional engagement in larger causes is critical. So I pay tribute to Meher Kirmani, whose compassion for the poorest women has led to a lifetime of volunteer work in Pakistan, including with APWA, and has touched so many lives. On a different level, I want to mention Dr Nafis Sadik, whose clear and firm advocacy and support for women on the national and international stage, has made her a formidable force for change not only in Pakistan but also globally. Their work has been an inspiration for me over the years.

As a very young journalist, I once interviewed Begum Liaquat and learned from her about the emergence of social work and the beginning of the emancipation of women in Pakistan. She told me that the struggle for Pakistan, its subsequent turbulent birth and the vast needs for rehabilitation and support for millions of people affected by partition, had brought down deeply entrenched barriers to the active involvement of women in society.
At that time of great national need, middle class women who had rarely worked outside their homes came out for the first time to help bereft and needy women. And so, under Begum Liaquat’s inspiring leadership, APWA was born.

Since then, there has been phenomenal growth in the involvement of women in public life in Pakistan. And women’s solidarity with other women has moved beyond social welfare to hard-core activism including through efforts to remove restrictive laws and to provide support for victims of rape, violence and other criminal abuse. Pakistani women have a proud history of activism working for women less fortunate than themselves. But we must also acknowledge that while we have come a long way, for the majority of women to get to where we in this room are, would seem unimaginable. Of course, while this may be true for women in many countries, the gap is greater here than in most. Thus, the long-term success of this conference will have to be measured by the extent to which it contributes to improving their lives.

The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs as they are called, originated in the Millennium Declaration which represents a clear international consensus on human rights and global development. They have the potential of dramatically improving the lives of millions of people who are currently denied dignity and opportunity. Most of them are women. And so, they are also the most likely to benefit. In fact, it is safe to say that unless urgent action is taken on addressing gender issues, the MDGs will not be achieved. The advancement of women is not only a Millennium Development Goal in itself; it is crucial to reaching all other goals.

Today I am going to focus on why a human rights framework is essential for tackling gender issues and for achieving the MDGs. There is a natural fit between each of the MDGs and a number of human rights norms. The goals cover areas of central concern to many human rights: poverty, housing, food, health, education, the environment, and international assistance.

It is now almost sixty years since the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights affirmed the equal and inalienable rights of all people. Since then, it has also become very clear that the achievement of women’s rights will benefit not just women but society as a whole. This recognition has led to the elaboration of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) adopted in 1979 and now accepted by 179 States, including a vast majority in Asia.

The Convention sets out legal obligations aimed at ensuring that women are equal with men in the enjoyment of their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. The Beijing Platform of Action sets out practical programmes to advance the goals of the Convention.

It states, “the advancement of women and the achievement of equality between women and men are a matter of human rights and a condition of social justice.” It goes on to add that “they are the only way to build a sustainable, just and developed society.”

For us in the United Nations human rights programme, the only measure of the effectiveness of our collective will and of our efforts is an improvement in the lives of people. The MDGs represent an unprecedented opportunity to bring about such improvement and so to realize human rights.

Realizing Women’s Rights

Moving from human rights on paper to the enjoyment of rights in people’s lives is a challenge for all, but it is a very real obstacle for most women. A recent sampling of 45 countries by the human rights group Equality Now found that few governments had kept the pledges they made at Beijing to revoke discriminatory legislation.

So the legal and political commitments in place continue to support a minority of women who today enjoy their rights. They vote, they exercise political power, they run businesses, they learn, they earn decent wages, they have access to good health care, their work in the home is recognized and valued, they have autonomy in decisions relating to reproductive health, they are safe, and they are respected. Most of us in this room would recognize these achievements in our own lives.

But for the vast majority of women, this reality is very different. Many women are denied the right to education. They are married young and often against their will; they have little choice but to bear many children; they often suffer abuse and violence at home; they are discriminated against in access to health care; they are vastly more susceptible to HIV infection, and they die more often from preventable causes. Financial autonomy is denied to them.

We do know how to address these issues. Strategies for realizing the rights to which women are entitled have been well identified. Areas of concern are increasingly clear. But implementation is unacceptably slow. The reasons are many and complex, but one critical factor is an insufficient application of the rights-based framework.

So why is a rights-based approach essential to achieving the MDGs?

A human rights framework means that we fully understand that rights must be respected because they are legally binding. It is an obligation that States have voluntarily undertaken and as such women and girls relate to the state not from a perspective of needs but to one of strength based on entitlements.

The plans and policies developed have to be based on situation of women. For women and girls this means adopting the framework of CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as programme context of the Beijing Platform of Action. CEDAW provides a clear understanding of non-discrimination and equality and so a framework within which issues can be identified and actions prioritized.

Thus, affirming equal access for women is not enough. Enabling conditions need to be created so that women also have equal access to opportunity and to equality of results. A human rights approach allows us to identify the disadvantages and discriminations faced by women as human rights violations. For example, how will we achieve goal 5 of the MDGs on reducing maternal mortality? Resources and strategies will have to be found on a priority basis because maternal mortality will have to be addressed not only as an unaddressed health problem but as a serious violation of the human right to life.

How will MDG 1, which calls for the massive reduction of poverty, be achieved if women are discriminated against in terms of property ownership, inheritance, access to credit and so forth?

How will countries achieve the education goal of MDG 3? We must ask why so many girls never go to school at all or drop out early. The reasons are many. Girls’ education is often not valued, schooling is of poor quality or too costly, parents send them to work instead or make them marry early. All of these must be addressed with the clear recognition that it is not for parents to decide whether girls go to school or not. This is their right. Community attitudes must change, and they can. A recent UNICEF and AusAid study of ethnic minority communities in Viet Nam found that in the communities surveyed the attitude of community leaders was the most important factor in determining whether girls went to school or not. Pressure points to change community attitudes must then be found.

The Task Force on Gender Equality of the Millennium Project, in its recent report on the MDGs, provides a detailed critique of key areas which impede progress. I commend them to you in your work over the next two days. It identifies seven inter-dependent priorities which are necessary to empower women and to alter the historical legacy of female disadvantage. They include providing education – both primary and secondary; assuring sexual and reproductive health rights; reducing the burden of women’s work; ensuring equal access to property and inheritance rights; eliminating gender inequality in employment and increasing women’s participation in public and political life.

The prescriptions of the Task Force are clear and detailed. For example, on poverty reduction, it states that the larger focus must be on the poorest women because gender inequalities are greater among the poor. On education, it says that while we must continue to push for primary education, secondary and higher education for women, which has lagged behind, plays a critical role in empowering women in terms of their income earning potential, better access to household resources, decision making autonomy, control over their own fertility and their participation in public life.

Let me pursue two of the issues largely relating to attitudes towards women that are a real obstacle to their empowerment.

One of them is violence against women. Violence against women is a gross violation of human rights. It is prevalent in every State but in some it exists in epidemic proportions. Violence and conflict result in physical and psychological harm. It is estimated that it is as serious a cause of death and incapacity in women of reproductive age as cancer. Violence against girls and women at home often aims at, and I quote, “keeping them in their place”. It is also a measure of their powerlessness. Research in Kerala found that 49 per cent of women with no property reported physical violence, whereas only 7 per cent of women with property reported it. Women all over the world continue to demonstrate against this grave infringement and it is their activism, not least in Pakistan, which has begun to result in action against it.

Many of the obstacles to overcoming violence against women are rooted in culture. Thus, they will not be overcome unless a very deliberate attempt is made to address them. A comprehensive approach includes legislation, policies and programmes as well as human rights education and awareness raising. Just having knowledge of their rights has a very empowering and mobilizing effect. Laws enhance accountability, and the availability of court procedures allows women to access their rights. We have excellent examples of this in the Asia. In the Indian State of Rajasthan in 1997 a woman civil servant campaigning to eliminate child marriages was gang-raped. The Supreme Court upheld her complaint that the government had failed to protect her, noting that the Government had ratified the 1979 Convention.

Political commitment at the highest levels is also a key requirement. The President of Pakistan recently condemned the practice of so-called “honour” killing of women by calling it by its real name, murder. A bill was introduced to Parliament to ban such killings by law. It must be forcefully implemented and there must be no impunity for anyone.
Equality of opportunity in politics is a human right. Yet recently we had the example of an Asian country in which women were not allowed to vote in the first limited elections held in 40 years. But while this denial of a fundamental right was described as a result of a cultural obstacle, in fact, it was discrimination pure and simple and one that all cultures have imposed on women and many have overcome, some only recently. In this context it is useful to remember that women gained the right to vote in Federal elections in Switzerland only in 1971. The High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, often reminds us that in her own country Canada, women in Quebec only got the right to vote 7 years before she was born. And when she was in law school women were not allowed to serve as jurors in court cases. These changes in Canada and Switzerland have come about very recently and only when pressure was applied to eliminate discrimination.

We must not allow the argument that negative attitudes and traditional ill treatment of women is rooted in culture and so change will take a long time. Indeed, this is so if little is done about it. But change will come rapidly when negative attitudes are clearly acknowledged as discrimination and decisively addressed.

SEEKING COMMON AGENDAS
These are some important obstacles to the realization of women’s rights .The extent to which they are addressed will also determine the success of the MDGs. There are many practical steps that can reduce gender inequalities and there are also many positive actions that can be taken to empower women. We must not under estimate the power of people working together to change even the most intractable situations. I am impressed by the examples of sex workers in Bangladesh and in Calcutta who drastically reduced their rates of infection with HIV by mobilizing as a group to do so. These extremely marginalized and stigmatized women recognized the deadly problem they faced and organized themselves to overcome it.

There are many practical steps that can reduce inequalities based on gender which increase poverty and injustice. There are also many positive actions that can be taken to empower women. Since gender inequality is deeply rooted in entrenched attitudes, societal institutions, and market forces, political commitments at the highest national level and national and international partnerships are needed to bring about social change and find the resources to address them. The challenge for women is to ensure that their rights are fully recognized and appropriately included in the MDG strategies.

I wish you well in your discussions in the coming three days.
Thank you