PRESS BRIEFING ON POVERTY AND GENDER

 

Almost all the strategies aimed at eradicating poverty in Africa failed to address its root causes and to consult the most affected people at the grass roots, whom they were supposed to help, a spokesperson for the international network Social Watch said at a Headquarters press conference this morning.

Rehema Kerefu Sameji, spokesperson for Social Watch Tanzania, said that poverty in Africa was increasing every day and the gap between rich and poor was becoming wider despite national and international programmes and policies like the poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs), the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt Initiative, liberalization and privatization, which had all been designed to do eradicate poverty.

She was speaking during the presentation of the Advance Social Watch Report 2005 entitled “Unkept Promises -- What the numbers say about poverty and gender”, which will be launched officially at Headquarters tomorrow, 24 June.  It is available online at http://www.socialwatch.org.  Social Watch was created in the wake of the 1995 World Social Summit in Copenhagen and the Beijing Women’s Conference.  It is based on citizen coalitions in more than 60 countries and annually tracks progress and regression in the eradication of poverty and gender inequity.

Ms. Kerefu Sameji said it was regrettable that gender had never been placed at the centre in the design of poverty-eradication strategies and the gender equality and equity had never been considered as integral to the objective.  Women in Africa still faced myriad problems that hindered their economic empowerment and involvement in the political and other spheres.  Most African women were among the poorest of the poor and faced gender discrimination, as well as exclusion from economic participation and property ownership.  That, in turn, was due to such harmful customs and traditions as female genital mutilation, bride price, inheritance rituals, early and forced marriage, sexual exploitation, trafficking in women and domestic violence.

Those problems had caused women to remain poor because they could not engage fully in the economic or political spheres, she said.  African women were happy with affirmative action, but as a result of the patriarchal systems prevailing on the continent, even those women who were active in politics did not always represent the interests of the poorest women at the grass-roots level, who were consequently left out of the whole development process.  Poverty could not be eradicated without a specific targeting of women’s issues and a tackling of their problems, since women were the majority of those engaged in development activities.

Also attending the press conference was Karina Batthyány, Head of Research at Social Watch, who highlighted the report’s contents, saying that forecasts on the future evolution of poverty pointed to the absence of one single direction and the prevalence of regional differences.  While the targets set by the Millennium Development Goals might be met in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and perhaps Northern Africa, they were unattainable in Latin America, due to slow rate of poverty reduction, and the outlook for Africa was grim, given that poverty there affected 140 million people today.

She said there was also broad consensus on the importance of education as an indispensable tool for helping people out of poverty.  At the same time, over a billion people had no access to safe drinking water, while more than 40 per cent of the world’s population lacked basic sanitary services.  The situation became alarming in poor countries, where over 70 per cent of the human population lived in squatter settlements or slums, without such essential services as safe drinking water and sanitation.

Also present at the press conference was Social Watch International Coordinator Roberto Bissio, who said it was already known that at the present rate of progress around social indicators, more than 60 countries would not meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.  The Goals were not overambitious, but rather they were a projection of the trends of progress prevailing in the 1970s and 1980s.

He noted that there was now much less investment in health, education and other social services around the world than previously and at a time when the richest countries had an unprecedented technological capacity to eradicate poverty.  That trend was an expression of the growing inequality among nations, as well as within them and leaders must take urgent action in such key areas as aid, debt and trade.

Barbara Adams, Chief of Strategic Partnerships and Communications with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), moderated the press conference.

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