Labour and Co-operative Member of
Parliament for Kemptown and Peacehaven

A Massive Conference Centre but not so massive turn out – Gender Equality part 1

by Lloyd on 23.08.10
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Well the World Youth Conference starts tomorrow and things haven’t been looking so good today. Out of 400 youth participants that were meant to attend it looks like less than 200 will be able to get here. This is not to say that the other 200 didn’t try, many of them got Visas, travelled and are still waiting at airports around the world but the Mexican organisation has meant that they still don’t have tickets and now will not be able to get here in time so will not be able to come. This is the story of hundrands of young peole that we know about because they are part of the local NOGs of a bigger international organisation but we don’t have contact with many young people from small local projects who may or may not be able to come!

After arriving 5am this morning, I went down for Breakfast at 9am. There I was told that I wasn’t allowed to eat in the hotel so instead had to go into town and get food – in the end the food was better than the hotel, but it gives you an idea of the level or organisation of this thing – things like that happen all the time.

I have agreed to facilitate one of topics with a co-facilitator from the Girl Guides of America I am coving the Gender Equality area. Building on the 3rd MDG

Promote gender equality and empower women

    Target 3a: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
  • 3.1 Ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education
  • 3.2 Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector
  • 3.3 Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament

We will be looking at the draft government deceleration The government deceleration currently states:

“GENDER EQUALITY
20. Guarantee gender equality, the empowerment of young women and their full enjoyment of all human rights and strengthen our efforts to achieve MDG 3 on gender equality and the empowerment of women as well as the objectives encompassed within the gender equality-related dimensions of all the other MDGs;
21. Mainstream a gender perspective in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all public policies and programmes relating to young people in order to overcome discrimination against young women;
22. Guarantee the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value, and equal treatment for all young people in the workplace;
23. Develop or strengthen laws, policies and programmes with a holistic approach to address, prevent, and eradicate all forms of discrimination and violence against young women and girls, in particular gender-based violence;
24. Promote the greater involvement of men, young men and boys in measures aimed to prevent all forms of discrimination and violence against women and achieve gender equality and the empowerment women, especially young women;
25. Adopt effective measures to combat and prevent the sexual exploitation and trafficking of persons, especially involving minors and young people;
26. Promote the participation of young women in political, social and economic activities and the elimination of barriers that limit their full contribution to society;”

We will be looking at this and trying to create a youth document to be presented along side the government delegations with this.

UNIFEM is holding a number of side events here particularly one on Tuesday for Women delegates http://www.unifem.org/news_events/event_detail.php?EventID=349. This is open to all women here at the event but the website has some great statistics that are focused on the year on youth and how young women are effected by gender inequality.

After reading above, what do you think that we should comment on with the government declaration? How do you think we can tangibly achieve the MDG3 and are there any other burning issues about Gender Equality and young people? please comment and Ill try and feed it in.

Comments

  • Mmm.. I think I would define both the word gender and the word equality a lot more ambitious, but i guess you’ll have to stick to the established UN defenitions. Guess that with 3 million girls being at risk of FGM every year the struggle against FGM could be mentioned as part of paragraph 23.

    Anyway, that’s my tuppence worth.

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Labour and Co-operative Member of
Parliament for Kemptown and Peacehaven

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