OneWorld.net (U.S.)

New Delhi: 2005 being the year for the Beijing +10 and MDGs + 5, is a year for reflection and moving forward. IFAD, UNIFEM and IDRC collaborated to organize a three day regional conference on 'Development Effectiveness through Gender Mainstreaming'.

Over 120 representatives from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Fiji, India, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka attended the conference.

Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director, UNIFEM, delivered the keynote address. Highlighting the importance of gender equality, she stated, "By not addressing gender inequality, we are re-generating poverty …Development effectiveness is an act of transformation to end violence, poverty and discrimination", she said.

Govind Kelkar, in her overview paper, suggested the integration of two goals of advancing gender equality and halving world poverty. She recommended improving the conditions of women's work, improving women's access to markets, unmediated control and ownership of income and resources, going beyond microfinance to empower women economically, socially and politically, mobility and the right to safe migration, and increasing women's risk-taking ability.

Naila Kabeer, in her presentation on microfinance and its impact on women, stated that microfinance does make important contributions to poverty reduction, and to several of the MDGs like education, health, malnutrition etc. But generalized claims about its transformative effects do not always hold in practice.

Microfinance cannot automatically empower women, any more than education, or political quotas or access to wages. It can act as an entry point into the larger project of social change, although with potential for transformation, that can only be tapped by the strategies and commitment of the organizations.

Radhika Coomaraswamy noted that the activism of civil society and the women's NGOs had influenced actions of governments, national commissions and others to combat violence against women. But to combat violence against women, we need partnerships between women's groups and state apparatus.

There is a need to move beyond 'law and order feminism' and to ensure human rights, protecting the rights and dignity of the woman survivor while ensuring a fair trial for the perpetrator. Indeed, law is an important tool, but it is one of the many strategies available, and other approaches promoting equality between men and women, encouraging non-violent ways of resolving conflict need to be taken as well.

Gail Omvedt noted that the countries of South Asia have taken up seriously the question of increasing the participation of women in governance. This has been done through the provision of quotas, with associated training and awareness building programs. The results have been good. But severe problems remain, and while reservations can increase the number of women, the removal of traditional obstacles to equality and capacity building needs to be addressed.

On the issue of conflict resolution, peace building and post conflict reconstruction, Rita Manchanda pointed out that gender should not be an add on, but gender advisors should be part of reconstruction teams, peace processes should have structures in place to incorporate civil society organizations and women's groups' concerns. The leadership capacities that women show during conflict, should be recognized and tapped for political leadership and participation in the critical development interventions.

In the present context, assets need to encompass all productive assets including land, common resources such as water and forests and also financial assets, skills, training and knowledge. Nitya Rao contended that in the context of structural reform, attention needs to be paid to interests of women and men and to shifts in gender relations on account of contextual changes.

Breakout sessions incorporated inputs from the papers and the varied experiences of delegates to come up with some policy recommendations. Key recommendations sought policies to help build lives free from want, fear and discrimination. Some of them are listed below:

• Expand the existing indicators of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to capture the different dimensions of gender equality, such as poverty reduction.
• Address women's land, property and inheritance rights in the context of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
• Provide conditions of 'decent work' for women in the formal and informal sectors by reducing women's vulnerabilities especially structural violence against women and enhancing women's individual and collective empowerment, political voice and representation.
• Provide health, education and other public facilities, particularly, in remote and marginal areas.
• Ensure access of women to empowering tools, including all technologies and ICTs.
• Promote women's human security through diverse partnerships, including with men to address masculinity and its links to violence.
• Increase investment in capacity building, referral services and support structures for women affected by violence and reducing risks to forced migration, trafficking and HIV/AIDS.
• Promote affirmative action on the basis of substantive equality for gender responsive governance.
• Strengthen access and benefit sharing rights of indigenous peoples, especially women of bio-diverse resources.
• Recognize and implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325.
• Ensure that women remain integral to peace negotiations, building, and reconstruction processes.