United Nations Nations Unies Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Assistant Under-Secretary-General Kyung-wha Kang As delivered FAWA 21st Convention and International Symposium Wednesday, 15 October, 2014, Seoul Korea I am honoured and delighted to have this opportunity to participate in the 21st Convention and International Symposium of the Federation of Asia-Pacific Women s Associations. I thank President Kim Jun-sook and the organizing committee for inviting me to add my voice to your discussion on eliminating discrimination and violence against women in this region. My voice, of course, reflects my experience and current work in the United Nations. So I would like to start by looking at the global context from my area of expertise, which is human rights and humanitarian affairs, two of the most vital areas of the work of the United Nations, especially for people in need around the world. And I do so with a heavy heart. For looking at the world from the UN HQ in New York, there are too many crises and too much human suffering around the world today. Just a few weeks ago, the leaders of the world gathered in NY for the high-level segment of the 69th session of the General Assembly, to discuss the most pressing challenges facing the global community. Climate change, the rise of the so-called ISIL in Syria and Iraq, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa were at the top of their agenda. But there were many other pressing matters on their plate. Indeed, our world is faced with an unprecedented number of countries and regions in crisis due to violence and armed conflicts. Meanwhile, climate change is an existential threat to all humanity. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been steadfastly leading the charge to bring governments to agree on binding obligations to cut greenhouse gases so as to arrest global warming. The summit meeting he hosted in NY in September was a great success for all the commitments won from the private sector, development actors and civil society. But government leaders did not make any commitments toward a binding agreement. The ardent hope is that the mounting pressure, as evident in peoples marches all around the world in the lead up to the summit, will impress upon key government leaders the imperative of producing a meaningful agreement before the 70th GA at the end of 2015. Meanwhile, the armed conflict in Syria is now into its 4th year, with the extremist group that calls itself ISIL raising the level of brutality against civilians and aid workers to new levels. ISIL has also swept through large parts of Iraq, committing horrendous atrocities against civilians and displacing tens of thousands, the majority of them women and children. The newest independent country in the world South Sudan plunged into deadly violence in December last year as the rivalry among its political leaders exploded into the open. The Central African Republic is still rife with violent ethnic and sectarian clashes, even after the dispatch of the UN peacekeeping mission. There are other protracted crises
in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mali. In Libya and Yemen, militias and armed groups hold sway, forcing people to flee their homes. In Ukraine, the volatile cease-fire agreement with the rebels in the eastern part of the country has yet to promise a return to peace. In Gaza, the third war between Palestinian armed groups and Israel has left the narrow strip of land under Israeli blockade in utter destruction. These crises have been accompanied by wide-spread violations of human rights and the basic norms of warfare and generated massive humanitarian needs. And the ability of the UN entities and partners to provide life-saving and livelihood assistance to those in need is being stretched to the limit. Indeed, the euphoria of the Arab Spring of early 2011, when the world was inspired by the oppressed peoples of many countries in the Middle East and North Africa rising up to claim their human rights and freedom, has turned into a harsh winter of violent conflict in many countries and the entrenchment of repression in others of the region. In particular, where there were high expectations that the Arab Spring would lead to an acceleration of liberal reforms in traditional societies where women and girls have lived as second-class beings, the hopes have been dashed and the backlash against women s rights and gender equality has been severe, in particular in countries where women s advancement had been promoted by the dictate of authoritarian rulers rather than as the result of societal consensus-building. Add to this the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which continues to spread, and the international community is indeed in a unprecedented, trying period. The spread of the deadly disease has become so alarming that the Secretary-General has taken charge and dispatched a high-level operational leadership to the ground to facilitate and coordinate the international assistance in support of the three national governments which are extremely weak. But the disease is still spreading at a faster pace than the actions to contain it. And where there is human suffering, women and girls suffer more. It has been observed time after time: where there is war or generalized violence, where there is social unrest and the social fabric is frayed, where societies are in crises of one form or another, gender inequalities and the vulnerabilities of women and girls tend to deepen. In times of economic or financial difficulty, women are the first to be affected by the hardship, and the societal tension often plays out in heightened level of violence and abuses against women, in the home and the workplace. Even in the response to the Ebola outbreak in the three West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, women s role as the primary caregivers in the home and as the majority of the first-line responders in the health sectors have placed them in much higher risk of contagion and death from this disease with a very high mortality rate with no proven vaccine or cure available so far. Indeed, global challenges such as climate change, natural disasters, conflicts and complex and protracted emergencies have had deep impacts on women and girls. Increasingly, armed conflicts have come to be characterized by appalling levels of sexual violence, used as a weapon of warfare. Most cases go unreported, and when reported go unpunished. The risk of sexual violence is also high in camps for refugees and displaced people, where women and girls are trafficked or sold into marriage, and transactional sex can be the only means of survival for women who head households. In natural disasters, while the disasters themselves don t discriminate as to whom they strike, the impact is
most devastating on the most vulnerable and the burden of coping falls disproportionately on women due to their gender roles. Study after study show that women are more likely than men to lack food and access to basic services, physically violated or displaced or killed in crisis and disaster situations. Girls are more likely than boys to be pulled out of schooling to help their families cope with the emergency, many never returning to school even after crisis. Thus, emergencies expose and reinforce existing gender discriminatory practices and deepen the vulnerabilities of women and girls in societies. But they can also become opportunities to redefine gender roles and empower women and girls. Some of the brightest smiles I ve seen in my travels to refugees and IDPs camps are those of young girls, who were going to schools set up in the camps, for the first time in their lives. Indeed, it has become a key norm of UN-led humanitarian action to integrate the gender dimension in all programming to assist victims and affected communities, to protect women and girls from harm, to bring visibility to their unique needs, to ensure that they are not discriminated against, and to empower them to exercise greater control of their lives. But the implementation of the norm still lags far behind. For example, the operational reviews of three of the largest humanitarian operations in recent years in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Philippines in the aftermath of mega-typhoon Haiyan at the end of 2013 - revealed that gender integration remains one of the weakest points in humanitarian action. The gap between the norm and implementation is not unique to humanitarian action. It is indeed the perennial challenge to achieving gender equality in all fields peace and security, development, human rights, and humanitarian action - at the national and global levels. Thus, twenty years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and 35 years after CEDAW was adopted by the UN General Assembly, nondiscrimination and gender equality and a life free from violence are still more an aspiration than a living reality for too many women and girls around the world. The Asia-Pacific region is no exception, where discrimination and violence against women and girls remains wide-spread. The region is largely characterized by the exclusion of women in political spaces, leadership and decision making and livelihood opportunities. According to the latest World Women s Trends and Statistics (2010), the average proportion of women in the lower houses of parliament range from 14% in East Asia to 20% in South East Asia. The smaller countries in the pacific region, excluding New Zealand and Australia have the lowest representation with an average of 3%. Women in this region still have limited access to the labour market, the majority are engaged in unstable and vulnerable employments and women still account for a high proportion of unpaid care workers. The prevalence of violence against women is a serious issue in East and South East Asia. Domestic violence, rape, child marriages and trafficking of women and girls remain critical. Son preference, honour killings, acid attacks, caste based discrimination, early, child and forced marriages, dowry, remarriage of widows and bonded labour are examples of common harmful tradition practices in Asia and Pacific region.
There have been considerable efforts on policies and programs over the years, but the key, as always, is implementation. And that requires steadfast advocacy and leadership by member associations of FAWA to press for accountability on the part of government authorities, for their renewed commitment to realizing the promises made in Beijing 20 years ago. And in all sectors, at all levels, it requires transformative and inclusive leadership that embraces and builds upon the aspirations of new generations or women and girls, and men and boys, as agents of change toward societies free of discrimination and violence against vulnerable groups and minorities, against women and girls. At the United Nations, there are several critical discussions taking place that will shape the normative policy, action frameworks and UN s agenda beyond 2015 that will be a profound impact on the future for women and girls. As you know, at the 2010 Millennium Development Goals (MDG s) Summit, the Secretary General was requested to initiate thinking on the global development agenda beyond the MDG s. In June 2012, in Rio de Janeiro, Member States agreed to launch an inclusive process to develop a set of global Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) to succeed the MDGs. Since then, an Open Working Group of member states, with broad participation of NGOs, the private sector and UN agencies, worked for many months to produce an outcome document that identifies 17 goals and 161 targets. Women s rights advocates and UNWomen worked intensely to influence the negotiations among governments in the OWG, with good results. Among the 17 SDGs proposed in the outcome document to be achieved by 2030, Goal number 5 is specifically dedicated to gender equality and empowerment of women and girls. This goal has targets to end discrimination, violence against women, eliminate harmful practices and increase women s full participation in economies, land ownership, property rights and public life. The goal also encompasses targets on gender responsive policies and legislations to promote gender equality and empowerment of women at all levels. Moreover, there have a great deal of advocacy efforts to ensure that gender equality concerns are also mainstreamed throughout all of the other 16 goals, including poverty eradication, which is seen as the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement to attain the SDG s. The outcome document with the 17 goals has been transmitted to the General Assembly. The Secretary-General will also send his synthesis report to the General Assembly in November. These two documents will serve as the basis of the GA s negotiations toward the adoption of the next generation of development goals at the end of 2015. The United Nations is also facilitating the global discussion to mark the 20th anniversary of the BDPoA. While it is acknowledged that some progress has been made in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action, many challenges and gaps still remain. The 59th Commission for the Status of Women in March 2015 will aim to galvanize support from the Member States to reaffirm the political will and commitment to the realization of gender equality and women s empowerment.
2015 will also be the year of the 3rd UN Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and Response in March in Sendai, Japan, which will review and adopt a successor to the 2005 Hyogo Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. This discussion is particularly relevant to the Asia-Pacific region, which is the most disaster prone region in the world. And climate change is amplifying the magnitude and frequency of natural disasters, as we have seen with Typhoon Haiyan. Accelerated urbanization in many countries of the region also adds to the magnitude of the destruction and human consequences should disasters strike. As mentioned, emergencies can exacerbate existing discrimination against and vulnerabilities of women and girls in affected communities. Thus, it is vitally important that national legislation, policies and structures for disaster preparedness and response fully integrates the gender dimension. This is an area calling for concerted advocacy by women s organizations in countries that are at high risk of natural disasters. Finally, the Secretary General will convene the first global dialogue on the future of humanitarian action in May 2016, in Istanbul, Turkey. The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) will seek to set the future agenda for global humanitarian action. The WHS is more a process than an event. It is designed around inclusive regional consultations that bring together governments, humanitarian organizations, civil society actors, businesses, and affected communities to identify the key challenges to humanitarian action and to identify solution and innovative ways to chart its future course. The North and South East Asia consultations were held in July 2014 in Tokyo. These consultations highlighted the need to robustly address barriers to gender equality and exclusion of women in humanitarian action. In 2015, similar consultations will be held in South and Central Asia and the Pacific and other regions around the world. The results of these consultations will be consolidated into a report that the Secretary-General will present to the summit in May 2016. These discussions offer critical platforms for women at national, regional and international levels to influence and shape the global agenda and the future of humanity. I count on FAWA and its member organizations to actively contribute and participate in these processes. Thank you.