South American women chart their priorities for the new global development agenda
April 27, AP – As the year 2015 approaches — the deadline for meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has called for maximum effort to be dedicated to their achievement within the timeframe. Simultaneously, the United Nations is supporting Member States to define the next process, the “post-2015″ agenda, as it is being called, which will define the development framework for the period beyond the MDGs.
“A seed, a new era that will chart new pathways for women,” said Ana Laynes, indigenous leader and Mayor of Nebaj, Huehuetenango, a municipality in the highlands of western Guatemala, as she performed a Mayan ritual to open the Post-2015 Consultation with Indigenous Women in Guatemala, on 8 April.
To ensure that everyone’s voice is heard in this process, national and regional consultations are being held globally, including in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of a world-wide mobilization aimed at charting the new post-2015 development agenda. These consultations are defining the priorities, efforts and resources to confront the existing development challenges, which include achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Across the world, gender equality and women’s rights remains a distant reality, an unfinished business. This includes the unfinished business of the MDGs, not only MDG3 on women’s empowerment and MDG5 on maternal mortality, but gender equality across other Goals. Experts say that gender equality and women’s rights must be reaffirmed and become central to the post-2015 agenda.
UN Women recognizes that the new global development agenda must not only address specific gender gaps but also seek to transform the structural factors that increase gender inequalities, such as discrimination and violence against women and unequal access between men and women to social, economic and environmental development assets.
Colombian academic Magdalena León took part in the consultation organized by UN Women in Colombia on 21 March, along with artists, Congresswomen, women community leaders and rural, indigenous and Afro-Colombian women.
“There is currently no development agenda recognizing the rights of women to decide on their bodies and their actions. There is no goal in this regard and this could be an integral goal that would allow for true parity in every aspect of life, in politics and in public life,” she said, speaking about the MDGs and the future post-2015 agenda.
Associated press writer for human rights observers – contributed to this report.
Category: Women Rights
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