Ketteline Pierre, a 19-year-old high school student and street vendor, text-messaging in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, months after the 2010 earthquake. Credit Natasha Fillion/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
By Melinda Gates
Here is what life is like for a woman with no bank account in a developing country. She keeps her savings hidden — in pots, under mattresses, in fields. She constantly worries about thieves. She may even worry about her husband taking cash she has budgeted for their children’s needs. Sending money to a family member in another village is risky and can take days. Obtaining a loan in an emergency is often impossible.
An unexpected expense can mean she has to pull a child out of school or sell a cow the family relies on for income. Or, worse, it can mean she must give birth at home without medical assistance because she doesn’t have the money for a ride to a clinic.
In ways big and small, life without access to financial services is more difficult, expensive and dangerous. It constrains a woman’s ability to plan for her family’s future. At the community level, it traps households in cycles of poverty. More broadly, it limits the economic growth potential of developing countries.
Dear COPASAH friends,
The March-2015 edition of the newsletter BUDGET BITES of Africa Health Budget Network(AHBN) is out.
COPASAH communication hub is sharing with you the Newsletter of AHBN on behalf of the coordinator of Africa Health Budget Network, Aminu Magashi Garba.
For further details on Africa Health Budget Network contact
Aminu Magashi Garba, MBBS, DLSHTM, MSc.PH (Lond)
Coordinator; Africa Health Budget Network
Publisher Health Reporters
Regards
Surekha
for COPASH Communication Hub.
Извор: COPASAH – 02.04.2015
Open Society Founder and Chairman George Soros has been a leader in supporting Roma causes throughout Europe.
Now his foundation is taking this work a step further.
Read his essay about how the Open Society Foundations are helping to create the first European institution that honors Romani arts, culture, and self-esteem.
Извор: Фондација Отворено Општество – 02.04.2015
OECD Report Says Aid Must Be Smarter to Fragile States to Stop Conflict & End Poverty
More focus needed on security and policing in fragile states, with nearly two-thirds likely to miss the millennium development goal of halving poverty by 2015
Report Quote: “Gender equality is not yet integrated in all areas of aid activities in fragile states. Nor is gender equality usually the primary object of DAC (OECD Development Assistance Committee) members’ aid activities in fragile states, according to the available data. Most Official Development Assistance (ODA) to gender equality areas in fragile situations goes to education and health; financing gaps remain in the peace and security sector and in the economic and productive sectors. Integrating a gender perspective in the peace and security sector does produce better peace building and state building outcomes. It makes state institutions more inclusive, enhances state legitimacy, fosters justice and security, and helps unlock women’s potential to contribute to economic recovery after conflict. Donors could also further invest in dedicated gender equality programmes.”
Photo: Stephan Bachenheimer/World Bank
March 20, 2015 – AWID - Two decades after the Fourth World Conference on Women, women and girls around the world deserve better than this year’s CSW outcomes. At this time of celebration and affirmation of Beijing and commitment to accelerated implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, what women don’t need is an outcome weakened by its lack of engagement with women on the ground and lacking in vision and commitment.
By Naureen Shameem
It’s been twenty years since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, a flashpoint moment for women’s rights activists around the world. Women’s rights are human rights: this oft-repeated phrase still holds power for many belonging to the generation after Beijing. It represents a moment of claiming and an affirmation that women’s rights, lived experience and human dignity are central and equal rather than marginal.
Yet on this twentieth anniversary and celebration of the Conference (Beijing +20), state missions came together to draft a Political Declaration weeks before nearly 9000 activists stepped away from their daily lives to attend the 59th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW59). There will be no outcome document at the end of CSW59, and women’s rights and feminist groups have been shut out of negotiations. As a result, the final version of the Declaration adopted last Monday is weak and general, and does not go far enough towards the kind of transformative change necessary to truly achieve the promises made in Beijing two decades ago on the indivisibility of human rights, gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The Commission also brought forward a resolution intended to review and enhance its methods of work this year, but again, civil society voices were largely excluded from the Working Methods process.
