ActionAid: Inequality will prevent UN hitting development goals
LONDON, 7 March: Systematic discrimination against girls and women in the worlds poorest countries will prevent the UN meeting its goals to reduce poverty, according to a report published Friday by the British charity network ActionAid.
The report says gender inequality must be put at the heart of the development agenda if those aims are to be met.
ActionAid said girls and women were more likely to be poor, hungry, illiterate or sick than boys and men, and called on governments to tackle the disparities.
Amid growing concern that the millennium development goals set by the UN for 2015 will not be met, the charity said a focus on women was vital to put the international community back on track.
The report found that women and girls formed the majority of the poor and hungry, and, in south Asia, women are getting a shrinking share of income as the economy continues to grow. Ten million more girls than boys miss out on primary school, while African women accounted for 75per cent of all young people living with HIV/Aids.
ActionAid said the aim of universal primary education was being hampered in Africa by the 40 billion hours spent by women and children collecting water each year – equivalent to a years labour for the entire workforce of France.
A special session of the UN will be held in September to discuss ways of making speedier progress, with discussions centred on four areas: health and education; climate change and the environment; the role of business; and trade and growth.
ActionAid said discussions at the UN and at this years meeting of the G8 industrial nations in Japan would only succeed if they started with the recognition that the “development emergency is first and foremost an emergency for women and girls”.
The report added: “The disproportionate impact of poverty on girls is not an accident, but the result of systematic discrimination.”
On current trends, the goal of halving hunger would not be met until 2035, 40 countries would not have equal enrolments for boys and girls until after 2025 and current progress in cutting maternal mortality rates was less than one-fifth of what was needed to meet the goal.
The total number of HIV/Aids infections in 2007 was 33 million – the highest ever.
Laura Turquet, the womens rights policy officer of ActionAid, said: – Getting the goals back on track is about more than governments saving face. Fundamentally it is about women realising their basic human rights. As the lack of progress on maternal health shows, peoples lives are at stake.
Se også www.actionaid.org.uk
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