https://www.citiesalliance.org/Global%20Programme-gender
Women’s Inclusion & Engagement in City Planning & Operations Is a Global Priority
Women experience and use the urban environment in different ways from men; they have different priorities in terms of services and infrastructure, for example regarding transport, housing and public spaces. Such priorities rarely feature in urban policy or investments. While cities have been a place of liberation for women in comparison to their rural counterparts, they are still designed around men. In areas where resources of all kinds are more limited, these disparities become especially acute, affecting women’s safety, health and income. This is particularly true in parts of the global south, where urban planning struggles to provide basic services – much less promotes gender equality.
By Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, CEO, Plan International & Stefania Giannini, Assistant Deputy Director, UNESCO
31 MARCH 2020 - As COVID-19 forces school closures in 185 countries, Plan International and UNESCO warn of the potential for increased drop-out rates which will disproportionately affect adolescent girls.
Sierra Leone was one of the worst affected countries during the Ebola crisis. There are lessons to be learned for the global COVID-19 response.
Out of the total population of students enrolled in education globally, UNESCO estimates that over 89% are currently out of school because of COVID-19 closures. This represents 1.54 billion children and youth enrolled in school or university, including nearly 743 million girls.
Over 111 million of these girls are living in the world’s least developed countries where getting an education is already a struggle. These are contexts of extreme poverty, economic vulnerability and crisis where gender disparities in education are highest. In Mali, Niger and South Sudan — 3 countries with some of the lowest enrolment and completion rates for girls — closures have forced over 4 million girls out of school.
OSCE – Organization for Security & Co-Operation in Europe
Statement by OSCE Special Representative for Combating Human Trafficking
Although the COVID-19 threat is universal, the negative consequences of this crisis will be disproportionally carried by the most vulnerable in our societies. Firstly, victims of trafficking face exceptional danger as entrenched systems of exploitation are thrown into disarray and traffickers seek to maintain their revenue through greater violence or new forms of exploitation.
Human trafficking feeds off vulnerability —in particular, gender and economic inequality — and it is a symptom of frailty in our society.
VIENNA, 3 April 2020 – Valiant Richey, OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, today issued the following statement, in co-ordination with Albania’s OSCE Chairmanship, to the OSCE participating States on the COVID-19 pandemic. He urged that, “it is precisely when our global community is convulsed by a crisis of this magnitude that our obligation to combat the exploitation of vulnerable people becomes most acute”. His full statement read:
“With the spread of COVID-19, the world faces an unprecedented threat to public health, which, in turn, poses extraordinary challenges to the economic and social cohesion of all our communities. In the fight against this common enemy, many governments have taken strong preventive measures, often combined with public interventions aimed at alleviating some of the economic losses that those measures inevitably create.
March 2, 2020 - On February 11, Xiao Li received a distressing call from a 12-year-old crying for help.
The child was wandering the deserted streets of their hometown in the central Henan province with his mother and 7-year-old sister. Their father had physically abused their mother and then kicked them out of the house at a time when many cities, including theirs, were on lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Their mother, surnamed Wang, had already divorced the man, but he had coerced her and the children into spending the Lunar New Year with his family.
Xiao told Sixth Tone that Wang — a distant relative — had wanted to escape her abusive ex-husband and make the 50-kilometer trip to see Xiao. But it was extremely difficult to get a permit from the police to leave a city under lockdown.
After much fruitless discussion, Xiao said she finally managed to convince the police to give her a driving permit. Xiao said she met Wang and the children at her town’s border — which they had walked five hours toward before Wang’s ex-husband picked them up and drove them the rest of the way.
“We were super worried about how easy it was for the abuser to beat her during the lockdown,” Xiao said. “There were no restaurants open, no transportation allowed. They (Wang and her children) hadn’t eaten in so long.”
