February 2006 – In This Issue:
Nicole Kidman – UNIFEM's New Goodwill Ambassador
 Academy Award–winning actress Nicole Kidman was appointed a UNIFEM Goodwill Ambassador on 26 January 2006. Ms Kidman's efforts will be geared towards raising visibility for women's human rights around the world. A particular focus will lie on putting a spotlight on violence against women, one of the most pervasive human rights violations that affects as many as one in three women globally.
"This year, I am committed to educating myself further by travelling with Noeleen to meet with women, hear their stories and understand first-hand the issues they face. ... I am especially interested in helping to give visibility to the pandemic of violence against women. UNIFEM manages a UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, and as I travel, I will be visiting many of the projects to see the effective strategies that have been put in place."
—Nicole Kidman
Related News and Documents
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50th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will hold its 50th session from 27 February to 10 March 2006 at UN headquarters in New York. The Commission will focus on two thematic issues:
- Enhanced participation of women in development: an enabling environment for achieving gender equality and the advancement of women, taking into account, inter alia, the fields of education, health and work; and
- Equal participation of women and men in decision-making processes at all levels.
For more information on sessions, roundtable discussions and parallel events taking place during the CSW, visit the CSW 2006 website.
The theme for International Women's Day 2006 on 8 March is "Women in decision-making: meeting challenges, creating change." To read more about the day, visit the IWD web page.
UNIFEM, and its partners, will be organizing a number of parallel events during the CSW. Events being planned include:
- A panel on "Promoting Gender Equality in the New Aid Architecture" – This follows a conference jointly organized by UNIFEM and the European Commission in Brussels in November 2005, which discussed strategies and mechanisms to ensure that gender equality imperatives are central to development cooperation as the aid architecture evolves. The conference report summarizing the discussions and conclusions will be available on the UNIFEM website.
- A panel/workshop "From Numbers to Influence: Women in Politics Making Economic Policy" – Organized together with UNDP, the National Democratic Institute and the Initiative for Inclusive Security, this half-day session will explore means of building women's capacity to advance a gender agenda in economic policy-making. Women in public office in many countries tend to be concentrated in gender-stereotyped areas of governance, notably the social sectors. This session will focus in particular on the engagement of women politicians in a more non-traditional area of decision-making: economic policy and rights.
- A screening of "Sisters in Law" followed by a panel discussion "Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Advancing Women's Rights in Customary and Statutory Legal Forums" – In this documentary from Women Make Movies, Kim Longinotto and co-director Florence Ayisi capture a Cameroon courtroom where a female judge and prosecutor dispense justice with equal parts wit, wisdom and wisecracks. Extraordinary stories unfold as defendants admit their guilt under cross-examination. The movie reveals cultural mores at a pivotal cross-roads, when brutal traditions collide with 21st-century justice. The film will be followed by a panel discussion on legal and judicial reform in Africa.
To get updates on events and information on the CSW, visit UNIFEM's CSW 2006 web corner.
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UNIFEM Around the World
UNIFEM Congratulates New Liberian President and Pledges US$500,000 to Support Gender Ministry
The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) presented its congratulations to Liberia's new President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, at her official inauguration ceremony in Monrovia on 16 January 2006, pledging US$500,000 to support the Ministry of Gender and Development, and women's organizations to promote gender equality and peace in the country.
"UNIFEM is proud to have supported the Ministry of Gender and Development, and women's organizing throughout Liberia to reach this truly historic achievement," said Noeleen Heyzer, UNIFEM's executive director, who attended the inauguration. Vabah Gayflor, Minister of Gender and Development, pointed to UNIFEM's long history of working with Liberian women — "They stood with us when we were mobilizing to support women's candidacy and leadership in the parliamentary and presidential elections."
President Johnson Sirleaf is the first elected female president in Liberia, and the first elected woman head of state on the African continent. In her inaugural speech, she acknowledged the invaluable role women played in the elections, saying "They stood with me. They defended me. They prayed for me." She pledged to "empower Liberian women in all areas of national life," and to deliver on her government's commitments and targets to promote peace and gender equality.
Following the inauguration ceremony, Heyzer met with the President, Minister of Gender and Development and over 200 women from all the counties of Liberia to discuss the development of a national programme to empower women. As the women's fund of the United Nations, UNIFEM will be mobilizing the UN system to respond to the priorities identified by the women's strategic action plan. UNIFEM, together with UNDP, will also soon conduct a gender assessment that will feed into UN development assistance frameworks. (News Release, 23.01.06)
Women's Vote Tilts Balance in DRC's Constitutional Referendum
The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) voted a resounding "yes" at their Constitutional Referendum held in December 2005. The referendum was the first time in decades that Congolese went to the polls to decide on their country's future.
The results of the referendum, announced by the President of the Independent Electoral Commission in January this year, showed that women had turned out in significant numbers to cast their votes. 60% of all voters were women, and 72% of the more than 9 million women registered as voters chose to endorse their Constitution.
The strength of the female vote, and the increased participation of women during the constitutional process, points to the importance of taking into account the specific needs of women during electoral and constitutional processes. It highlights the value of creating favourable conditions for equal access of women and men to electoral mandates and electoral offices, thereby improving governance structures and providing widely accepted and more sustainable solutions to the country's peaceful development.
UNIFEM partnered with UNDP and MONUC to provide technical and financial support to the DRC's Independent Electoral Commission to ensure women's participation in the referendum. An outreach and education strategy included dissemination of the Constitution, training and information sessions, and raising media awareness of gender issues within the constitutional context. Women were encouraged to conduct "sensitization and mobilization" activities where they went door to door on foot and in "caravans" of cars, motorcycles and bicycles to speak directly to people in their various communities and neighbourhoods. The UN agencies estimated that at least 50,500 women were reached directly and many thousands more indirectly.
The Constitution includes key gender equality principles among other fundamental principles. The major challenge now is the successful adoption by parliament of an electoral law that will guarantee equal opportunities for men and women to claim their civic rights and participate in their country's development. UNIFEM is continuing to work with Congolese women by supporting a critical mass of women and men parliamentarians, and supporting women's mobilizing and advocacy activities with the media and the public in the lead-up to the adoption of the electoral law. UNIFEM is also assisting women in preparing to participate as candidates, voters, mobilizers and observers in the upcoming elections in less than six months' time, when Congolese will go to the polls again to choose their leaders. For more information, please contact Miranda Tabifor, Gender Advisor, UNIFEM DRC, miranda.tabifor[at]undp.org (News, 20.01.06)
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Gender Database
After much discussion and planning, a comprehensive gender database complete with sex-disaggregated data and gender-sensitive data analysis is poised to become reality in South Asia. The Islamabad Declaration of the Fifth South Asia Ministerial Conference, held in Islamabad in May 2005, called for the establishment of a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Gender Database at the SAARC Secretariat — a database that would address the full range of challenges surrounding sex-disaggregated data, and be a tool to share best practices from across the region on gender equality.
UNIFEM, who has been involved in this process in consultation with all seven SAARC member countries, supported an Expert Group Meeting in Kathmandu in December 2005, to discuss the modalities of setting up the database. A core committee to oversee the project was established, and a prototype is currently under development. All SAARC countries have committed to identifying a national agency and setting up a national committee to take forward the initiative in their respective countries. For more information, please contact Geetha Balasubramanian, geetha.balasubramanian[at]undp.org
Regional Gender Budgets Programme Launched in Quito, Ecuador
UNIFEM and UNV launched a new Regional Gender Budgets Programme in Quito in December 2005, which recognizes the voluntary participation of women in national participatory processes within the region. It will be implemented through alliances with local governments and NGOs in five municipalities of five different countries in Latin America.
At the local level, the programme includes activities to promote women's participation in governmental planning and budgeting processes, to promote women's inclusion in the monitoring of governmental commitments on gender equality and their corresponding budget allocations, and to support the mobilization of civil society to generate gender budget initiatives.
At the regional level, the programme will organize seminars, exchanges of experiencies, and dissemination of best practices across the region. For more information, contact Andrea Balzano, andrea.balzano[at]undp.org
Bolivian Ministry of Finance Promotes Gender Equity at Local Level
New guidelines under a new article passed by the Bolivian Finance Ministry for its 2006 municipal budgets include, for the first time, an obligation for local authorities to allocate resources for the promotion and development of programmes directed to achieving gender equity.
This achievement results from ongoing efforts, with UNIFEM support, of a coalition of governmental and nongovernmental organizations to urge for greater gender equality in national budgeting processes. Cecilia Estrada, executive director Instituto Femenino de Formación Integral (IFFI), a member of the coalition, said: "We are very pleased with this achievement, but the main challenge is to make this article effective. This will demand continuous lobbying from women's organizations."
UNIFEM, in partnership with the Belgian Government and recently with the United Nations Volunteers Programme (UNV), has been supporting IFFI since 2002 to promote monitoring of national budget processes from gender perspectives. For more information, contact Andrea Balzano, andrea.balzano[at]undp.org
A Portrait of Race and Gender Inequalities in Brazil
In December 2005, UNIFEM and IPEA (Institute for Applied Economic Research) released a study titled "Portrait of Inequalities," showing the social situation of men and women in Brazil through indicators on race and gender, based on National Household Sample Surveys carried out by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) from 1993 to 2003. The research is the result of a partnership between UNIFEM's Gender and Race Equity Programme in the Southern Cone, supported by the UK Department for International Development (DfID), and IPEA.
The study found that significant inequalities exist between Afro-Brazilian and white Brazilians, and between men and women in many fields, such as education, work, health, income, and access to services. Afro-Brazilian women represented a particularly disadvantaged group that suffered, in almost all categories, "double discrimination" for both their race and gender.
The study also revealed that, although both black and white Brazilian women in the labour market have a schooling average higher than that of men, women's salaries tended to be lower than men's. "Black women receive only 30% of what white men are paid," said IPEA's researcher Luana Pinheiro. Black women's monthly income averages about R$ 279.70, while white women's averages about R$ 554.60. In contrast, black men's monthly income averages R$ 428.30 and white men's about R$ 931.10.
UNIFEM's Programme Coordinator, Vera Soares, called attention to findings in the study that suggested that "income differences were due to racial discrimination, not to schooling levels."
The study is available on CD-ROM (order through unifemgeneroraca[at]undp.org.br). Considering that the results of the study "don't wear out the possibilities of information and analysis," UNIFEM and IPEA is inviting every person and institution involved in these issues to discuss the data and share ideas to remove gender and race inequalities. For more information, write unifemgeneroraca[at]undp.org.br
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Other News
Michelle Bachelet Elected First Woman President in Chile
"My being here, and being a woman president in this country, is proof that Chile has lost its fears. Who would imagine a woman here, twenty, ten or even five years ago?" said Michelle Bachelet, the first woman president to be elected in Chile, on hearing her election results.
Part of the ruling party for 16 years, Bachelet received 53.3 per cent of the vote in the presidential elections in January 2006, in a country where women received the right to vote only in 1949. Of a total of 8.2 million voters in Chile, women represent slightly more than half or 4.3 million.
In a generally conservative-leaning country such as Chile, Bachelet presents an unorthodox profile — she is a successful physician, she is divorced and the mother of three children from two different fathers, and she is agnostic. In an attempt to change old patriarchal ways of governing, her first step was to nominate a gender-balanced cabinet, with women in key posts such as the Ministry of Economy, Mining and Defence.
Who Makes the News? Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media
From 16 February to 8 March 2006, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) is organizing a campaign called "Who Makes the News? Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media." Endorsed by both UNIFEM and UNESCO, the campaign aims to promote gender equality in the media by challenging the news media to take substantial and immediate action to ensure that they represent women and men in a fair and balanced way.
The Who Makes the News? campaign begins on 16 February 2006, exactly one year to the day since hundreds of gender and media groups in 76 countries joined in an effort of solidarity to monitor the representation of women and men in their news media as part of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2005. The GMMP 2005 results, unfortunately, show that the marginalization of women in the news media is still very much a reality. The campaign will end on 8 March 2006, International Women's Day.
During the three weeks of the campaign, hundreds of gender and media activists around the world will organize activities using the global, regional and national results of GMMP 2005 to establish a dialogue with news media on their representation of women and men and to explore ways to ensure that women are no longer marginalized in the news media. For further information about the campaign, visit the website; to receive a "Take Action Pack" in English, Spanish or French, please contact at[at]wacc.org.uk
CEDAW to Hold Three Sessions Instead of Two in 2006
The first session took place from 16 January to 3 February 2006, and current plans indicate that the 2nd session will be held in May and the third session in August. The countries reporting at the May session are posted on the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) website, and include: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Malaysia, Saint Lucia, Turkmenistan, Malawi, Guatemala, and Romania. For more details on dates and reporting countries visit the CEDAW website.
World Health Organization Multi-Country Study on Violence against Women
WHO's landmark "Multi-Country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women," released in November 2005, documents the horrifying extent of violence against women by their intimate partners. It also clearly shows that violence against women demands a public health response, because the impact of such violence goes beyond the immediate harm caused.
This report presents the initial results based on evidence collected from more than 24,000 women from 15 sites in 10 countries representing diverse cultural settings: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Japan, Peru, Namibia, Samoa, Serbia and Montenegro, Thailand and the United Republic of Tanzania. The study used carefully trained teams of interviewers and a standardized and robust method to collect data, which allows the results to be analyzed across settings and internationally. Focusing on the prevalence of violence by intimate partners and the associations between such violence and women's physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health, the report also deals with non-partner violence, sexual abuse during childhood and forced first sexual experience.
The report culminates in 15 recommendations to strengthen national commitment and action on violence against women by promoting primary education, harnessing education systems, strengthening the health system's response, supporting women living with violence, sensitizing criminal justice systems, undertaking research and enhancing collaboration.
The full report, summary report and individual fact sheets highlighting country-specific findings are available on the WHO's Department of Gender, Women and Health website. French and Spanish translations of the summary report and country fact sheets are also available. For more information on the report, please contact Dr Claudia Garcia Moreno, Study Coordinator (garciamorenoc[at]who.int) or Melissa Rendler-Garcia, Communications Officer, Department of Gender, Women and Health (rendlergarciam[at]who.int).
NGO Information Sharing on UN Commission on Human Rights
An NGO information and coordination mechanism (NGOIC) has been established to facilitate NGO information sharing in the run-up to the next (and final) session of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights. The dates of the Commission will be announced in the coming days on the OHCHR website. All NGOs interested in joining the mechanism should contact ngoic2006[at]gmail.com, or by fax at +41 22 301-2000.
Call for Nominations for the Perdita Huston Human Rights Award for 2006
Perdita Huston (1936-2001), author and journalist, was committed to giving voice to women in developing countries. She focused her writing on the often-overlooked role of rural women. Through her writing and activism, Perdita demonstrated a life-long commitment to improving the status of women everywhere. Within hours of her death, the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (Washington, DC) decided to establish the Perdita Huston Human Rights Award to celebrate Perdita Huston and to recognize the life and work of others who are outstanding advocates for women's rights in the Third World.
Nominations must be received in the Office of the Secretariat of the Perdita Huston Human Rights Award no later than 22 February 2005. Nominations can be sent electronically to contact[at]perditahustonaward.com, or mailed to Perdita Huston Human Rights Award, c/o Mulhauser and Associates, 1730 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, Suite 712, Washington, DC 20036. Fax: +1 202 463-0182. For more information, visit the website.
New Study on Patriarchal Violence by Government of Sweden
The Government of Sweden has commissioned a new survey on measures to combat patriarchal violence and oppression, particularly acts committed in the name of honour, and acts directed at women, homosexuals, bisexuals and transgender persons. The report is available on the Government of Sweden website.
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