Advancing Gender Equality and Women`s Empowerment: Key to Ending Violence against Women.
Women in Africa are operating in a cultural setting where women are to be seen and not heard. They suffer social exclusion, and are denied the right to inheritance, land, and habitat, due to customary laws and traditions, despite United Nations Resolutions and Conventions, African Union Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), which is one of the most progressive legal instruments providing a comprehensive set of human rights for African women.
Article 14 (2)(h) of the CEDaW calls upon Member States to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women, to ensure on a basis of equality of men and women, that they participate in and benefit from development and to ensure that women…(h) enjoy adequate living conditions, particularly in relation to housing, sanitation, electricity and water supply, transportation and communication. Violence against women must end if we must achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and leave no woman behind by 2030.
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action reflect the commitment of states to: “Enact and/or reinforce penal, civil, labour and administrative sanctions in domestic legislation to punish and redress the wrongs done to women and girls who are subjected to any form of violence, whether in the home, the workplace, the community or society” (¶ 124(c)).
The Beijing Platform recognizes that “Women and children constitute some 80 per cent of the world’s millions of refugees and other displaced persons, including internally displaced persons. They are threatened by deprivation of property, goods and services and deprivation of their right to return to their homes of origin as well as by violence and insecurity. Particular attention should be paid to sexual violence against uprooted women and girls employed as a method of persecution in systematic campaigns of terror and intimidation and forcing members of a particular ethnic, cultural or religious group to flee their homes” (¶ 136).
Join us at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 69 parallel event on 18 March 2025, at 11:15am, Suite 120, 866 United Nations Plaza, on First Avenue, New York.
To secure your seat, email your name to: worldwidenetwork92@gmail.com by 13 March 2025.
The parallel event will be presenting key issues and strategies toward ending violence against women.
The panel of experts, advocates and practitioners, will highlight cultural and structural barriers to gender equality and steps to tackle them. They will be presenting effective strategies and partnerships needed to dismantle barriers to ending violence against women for the transformational changes we desire. The intersection between violence against women, gender inequality and homelessness will also be discussed.
Co-sponsors:
1. Ministry of Women Affairs, Osun state, Nigeria.
2. WorldWIDE Network Nigeria: Women in Development and Environment.
3. HIC- Women and Habitat African Working Group.
4. UNANIMA International
