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Anastassia Zinke interviews Rev. Joyce Kariuki, acting general secretary of the Anglican Councils of Africa.
Was this your first time attending the Conference on the Status of Women (CSW)?
I have been here several times before. The last one I attended was the CSW focused on the Girl Child. I think this is the fourth time that I have attended a CSW. This year I was requested by the archbishop to come. They send someone yearly, but some years for personal reasons I have been unable to serve as the delegate.
What have you learned or taken away from this year’s CSW?
We cannot let the Beijing Platform for Action to be eclipsed by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), or be dropped as a tool in addressing women’s rights. We are far from achieving our goal. It is a struggle to keep this movement going, to achieve the empowerment of women. The Beijing Platform is useful to us though, because it reminds us and equips us to keep this struggle going. It helps articulate women’s issues. We can refer to it and make sure – through the use of the right language – that others understand.
What are the pressing issues that you see in Kenya? In the church?
Also, gender equity in the church needs to be addressed. We are far behind the governments in terms of gender equity. This will not do. The church ought to be the model for society. We also have to acknowledge the huge reach that we have. We reach everyone: girls, women, men, and boys. We have the ability to ensure that the message is being heard.
This can be complicated however. There is a debate that the girl-child has been promoted so much that the boy-child has been left behind. So now I include the boy-child, so that it is about holistic participation in change. However, we have not forgotten that that the child-girl has been in a difficult situation. We all have become involved, and help them become and stay students.
Another significant issue is domestic violence against women. When there is violence, a woman is reduced to nothing. We need to change this. The church has not been able to address this yet. During this conference, however, I heard a South African man talk about his work of leading men to address violence against women. Men themselves condemning the violence. They see that it is their issue. This is powerful and a model that I would like to see adopted in Kenya, so that men don’t push the issue aside.
In Kenya, we are changing the constitution. This presents a great possibility for women. We need to finish this process. Though we can critique the government, we cannot let this opportunity pass. We must recognize that we all function under the government, so we need to partner with the government to get the constitution to its the best stage.
by Sonali Salgado, Inter Press Service (IPS)
The United Nations has realised that if it wants to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, it will have to partner with like-minded faith-based organisations (FBOs).
“It is important to invite religious leaders and faith-based organisations and other secular organisations and work together. It’s the only way,” Gladys Melo-Pinzon of the FBO Catholics for Choice told IPS. “The U.N. and the other international agencies understand that it’s true,” Melo-Pinzon said. In recent years, the United Nations has tried to work more closely with faith-based organisations (FBOs). “We’ve been working with the U.N. and hope to continue working with them,” Yousseff Abdullah told IPS on behalf of the FBO Islamic Relief. For the past few years, Islamic Relief has worked with UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP). A joint Islamic Relief-UNFPA effort has led to the establishment of women’s centres in Sudan.
From August 3-4, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) gathered representatives of 41 FBOs -including Islamic Relief and Catholics for Choice - and numerous international agencies ranging from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to the WFP for a meeting in New York. Since Dec. 2007, UNFPA has asked FBOs working in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean: “What should we do better? What should we do more? What projects should we work on, and in what particular ways?” At the New York meeting, Azza Karam of UNFPA told IPS, FBOs were presented the “shopping list of recommendations.” According to Karam, they were told to select the areas that FBOs and international agencies would “work on together for the next three years.” “UNFPA is hosting this meeting because it is part of the culmination of the vision of its Executive Director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid,” Abubakar Dungus of UNFPA told IPS. Since she became director of the UNFPA in 2000, Obaid has been leading the drive to collaborate with FBOs. “She has said that development work would be more strategic and sustainable when such actors – already among the world’s largest basic health-care providers – were engaged in common efforts on the MDGs,” according to Dungus. Obaid stresses that FBOs are key players in health care services. “In most developing countries, anywhere between 30 to 60 percent of basic health is being served through faith-based organisations,” Karam told IPS. “In Latin Ameica, 70 percent of hospitals are still run through or by the Catholic Church.” Moreover, the World Bank has noted that, in some countries, health services offered by FBOs are better than those of the government.
At the two-day conference here, FBOs and international agencies identified reaching gender equality and improving reproductive health as the goals on which they would collaborate. “Partnerships between faith-based organisations and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, are critical to enhancing efforts to reduce maternal deaths and end violence against women,” UNFPA said in a press release. Maternal health and female empowerment are two of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in September 2000. The MDGs also include eradicating hunger and poverty; achieving universal primary education; reducing child mortality; combating HIV/AIDS malaria, and other diseases; ensuring environmental stability; and developing a global partnership for development.
The maternal health goal is “at the heart of the MDGs but lags behind the most,” Dungus said. “This is the 21st century and yet women are dying because they’re giving birth or trying to give birth,” Melo-Pinzon stressed. According to the UNFPA, FBOs can assist in reproductive health not only because of their significant role in the health care industry, but also because of their position in individual communities themselves. There is “a critical personal and community-based connection between the people and the faith-based organization centres providing services,” Obaid said. Melo-Pinzon concurred. “The main actors who can approach grassroots and communities in general are people who are related to faith,” she told IPS. “When you’re in conflict,” she continued, “faith gives comfort.” Obaid noted, “the profound moral authority that religious leaders have” and “the fact that religious organisations are the oldest social service providers humankind has known.”
But, quite ironically, as some FBOs strive to improve reproductive health and gender equality, they are betraying the edicts of their church. In their efforts to develop reproductive health, Catholics for Choice, for instance, promotes access to contraception despite the Vatican’s strong opposition to contraceptives. “We are challenging the wrong policies of the Catholic Church, which is misunderstanding the principles of compassion,” Melo-Pinzon said. “We’re saying ‘you’re wrong! You’re wrong!’”
Note: this prayer was used on September 25, 2008 at an Interfaith Service of Recommitment and Witness to the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, at The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City, NY.
Prayers for the Millennium Development Goals
In the spirit of the Millennium Development Goals, let us pray that god’s justice and peace will prevail in the World.
Leader: Let us pray for the poor, hungry, and neglected all over the world, that their cries for daily bread may inspire woks of compassion and mercy among those to whom much has been given.
People: Give us the will to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
Leader: Let us pray for schools and centers of learning throughout the world, for those who lack access to basic education, and for the light of knowledge to blossom and shine in the lives of all God’s people.
People: Give us the will to achieve universal primary education. Read the rest of this entry »
At the opening session of the United Nations High-Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals in New York last Thursday, the founder of India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association told the assembled heads of state that
Poverty is powerlessness. Poverty cannot be removed unless the poor have power to make decisions that affect their lives… Let us remind ourselves that in committing to the Millennium Development Goals, we are in fact pledging to become partners with the poor.
Ela Bhatt is a member of the Elders, an “independent group who offer their skills and experience to support peaceful resolution to conflicts, to articulate new approaches to global issues that cause human suffering, and to share wisdom by helping to connect voices all over the world.”
UNIFEM released yesterday its biannual global report, Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009, “Who Answers To Women: Gender and Accountability”.
From the press release:
The new report is being published at the halfway point to the 2015 deadline for achieving the MDG’s and six days before the Secretary-General of the UN will convene a High Level Meeting to examine the world’s progress towards meeting the MDG’s.
“Progress” presents new data providing clear evidence that women’s empowerment and gender equality are drivers for reducing poverty, building food security, reducing maternal mortality, strengthening justice, and enhancing the effectiveness of aid.
Download the report, or learn what it says by checking out the interactive feature on their website. Either way, you’ll be gaining valuable material.
