United Nations and the Issue of Rural Women.

This week, our Director Kate Clifford, is addressing the  62nd session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of women, that is running from 12th-23rd March. Here are some of her thoughts.

The first morning in New York began with a  weather warning. Heavy snow is forecast for the coming days and a storm is making its was up the Coast. At the UN building it too feels like a huge storm is brewing but in a positive and constructive way. Women and men from around the world are working together at the 62nd Commission Special Status of Women  to address issues of gender inequality and putting a special focus on Rural Women.

There is an energy and expectation in the air that is infectious and a little daunting. This is the second time this priority theme has been addressed and participants are aware that the last conference session did not achieve its ambitions fully.

There is a dogged determination among many here that this will not come to pass this time around.

Opening the conference was Geraldine Byrne Nason of Ireland. Her focus was on setting out the ambitions of the conference and to use the work of the NGO sector/Civil Society and governments to directly address the inequality facing women and more specifically rural women around the world. She spoke about how taking time in this session to explore the real, and lived lives, of rural women and their stories, contributes so much more the development of good policy and implementation of policy across the world. But her general plea and that of subsequent speakers was that policy alone cannot change lives or address barriers to inequality only actions can do that.

A second speaker pointed out that across the world there are so many common issues that we can all agree are barriers to the inclusion of women but agreement is not enough - action to address these issues is what is required. He said ' we keep calling for things that we all agree on, but only some of us take the action to address them, that has to stop, we all need to take action. One speakers cited the #metoo campaign and the #timesup as ways in which a global coming together of women can achieve so much change. Sadly the speaker also reflected that only a handful of sexual abusers have been exposed through the campaign but she acknowledged the powerful lobby that had begun to publicly address the issue which empowered women.

So what are the asks for Rural women from this morning: Access to transport and basic infrastructure including digital broadband and mobile phone technology. Connecting rural women into urban support centers so they can articulate their needs. Acknowledgement of the role of women in building peace and reconciliation and the inclusion of women in the processes of building peaceful society.  The acknowledgement of the needs of victims of violence, in all its forms, in rural areas and supporting their voice in processes of reconciliation and justice.

An acknowledgement that rural women are half of the rural population and as such their empowerment and education lifts the economy and sustainability of rural areas long term. By building the human capital of all rural dwellers we sustain rural populations longer term.

Women in rural areas need to have access to basic health care support and reproductive rights - this helps them to take control over family sizes, who they marry, who they love this is still a critical issues in some parts of the UK not least NI where barriers to equal marriage, abortion rights still exist and  access to advice around crisis pregnancy is not readily available in rural regions.

Finally the call for gender specific data collection for rural populations caught my attention. As an agency Rural Community Network NI has worked hard to disaggregate statistics for rural regions from urban settlements, we have sought to paint a picture of the reality of rural poverty and disadvantage in NI today - to date we are still unclear as to how we can factually describe rural poverty using the data gathered at a regional level given that it is not readily available. We hold a lot of anecdotal evidence relating to rural poverty and disadvantage but we struggle to gain access to accurate statistics.  The problem is therefore compounded when  working to defining the rural gender deficit within those statistics.

Unless we can accurately define the poverty and disadvantage experience by rural women in our region we cannot hope to take account of the impact of a variety of  policies and actions once they are implemented. A call for rural specific data should be accompanied now for a demand for gender specific rural data.

Looking forward to hearing this afternoons talks on Women Peace and Security  and more specifically the UNSCR 1325 and how it is applied in the Czech Republic, Moldova and Ukraine.

Over and out,

Kate