Yesterday started with a wardrobe malfunction. Heavy snow was forecast and a day of sharp cold winds. As appeared out of my hotel room a neighboring Conference attendee said 'Honey, those shoes ain't gonna last an hour out there'. I put on my boots, my hat and my gloves and ventured into my first New York snow storm. In comparison to the recent weather at home it was, at best, a light flurry!
The morning NGO briefing began with a look at how women should be defined as 'women who live in rural area's and not as 'rural women'. There was a discussion about how women who live far from capital in rural areas find it difficult to organise and march. they are often dispersed, under resourced to organise and distant from seats of power. Discussion in both developed and developing regions explained that despite different stages of a country's development rural women in general earn less than men, they access fewer life long learning opportunities, they take a more significant part in unpaid care and domestic work and are very often trapped in poverty. These figures and statistics are more stark in all regions when women are the head of household - so widowed women, single parent families and families where men are sick, missing or imprisoned.
We heard from a variety of speakers that where women and girls are empowered through access to land ownership, access to healthcare, education and technology then the economic development of many rural regions is greatly improved.
Challenges in areas of conflict about the recognition of women's roles in building peace, in the reconstruction of regions and in the resolution of conflict really resonated with me given that NI still is not recognized as having experienced an armed conflict and as such we cannot use the UNSCR 1325 to ensure gender equality.
Conflict and the global experience of violence against women and girls is a recurring theme in many of the workshops. There is a recognition that many of these acts of gender based violence are under reported, suppressed and ignored as a natural consequence of war - but there is a growing feeling that campaigns such as the #metoo and #times up are beginning to reach across the world and present a challenge not only in corporate workplaces but into the farthest flung remote rural communities. Women have reported that they have used social media and mobile phone technologies to shame perpetrators and to provide early warning systems across regions where 'surprise attacks' have been a regular occurrence in more conflict and contested places.
Peace and security -
The use of UNSCR 1325 in Georgia Moldova and Czech Republic was discussed at one workshop and it was interesting to hear reports from those monitoring the National action Plans of these regions.
In Georgia women were forcibly displaced and suffered sexual violence. Through the introduction of a national action plan to support UNSCR1325 women's need for a system to address justice issues was recognized, women's need for psychological health care services for trauma support was recognized and actioned, and women played a central and active role in conflict resolution, reconciliation, reconstruction of communities and in planning and influencing budgets. Women were decision makers and they open dialogue with grass roots women's groups across the region and decision makers - keeping those lines of communication and dialogue open was and essential part of the restoration process in their post conflict society - could NI learn from that approach . I'm sure we could.
Lessons learned:
Strong leadership is required and that has to be a long term process of investment in current leaders but also in emerging leaders. Investment in women and women's groups was required to support women to remain engaged and animated to be a part of the solution. all plans were supported by budgets - they had adequate finance to enact them. they had a strong principled framework to measure progress and distanced travelled and to report on impact of actions. they didn't expect results right away but they did create a series of milestones to which they could review how and if things had to change or required more investment or indeed less investment.
Anything that was funded was enabled to be localized - they rolled out a series of broad actions which were taken to local women and groups and leaders to be 'localized' in the understanding that a blanket approach would not work.
Key to all that was done was a desire not to go back to violence so they creatred space to build confidence and diplomacy between people - they worked hard to create opportunities for people to people contact. they say this was a key element of the progamme.
The Ukraine experience was more fractious and difficult. They are the only nation to adopt UNSCR 1325 while still in the midst of a conflict. They sought to prevent gender based violent attacks on women during the conflict.
They rolled out a progamme of gender awareness among civil servant including teachers, social workers, healthcare workers. They had significant numbers of women in security forces, the defense sector and across the media and they made use of these natural advocates to roll out gender awareness training within their sectors. Their ambition was to put in place systems of support for those who were victims of gender based violence, prevention of further attacks and violence and training for those in social service and across sectors to reduce gender based violence. A lack of data and documentation was available to see what if any impact this adoption of UNSCR1325 has had on the conflict there.
Yesterday I spoke on the lack of UNSCR 1325 in NI. and how we have really missed an opportunity to embed gender equality across all areas of the aftermath of conflict in our society. It is worth noting NIWEP and others have done significant work to lobby on this issue but there is more work to be done and more awareness to be raised from areas like Georgia and the Ukraine of the possibility of the impact of in its introduction in our region and on our society. A work in progress.
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