Saturday, November 26, 2011
Pacific women suffering in terrible silence “EVERYONE wept!” Penny Williams, Australia’s new Global Ambassador for Women and Girls, had eyes the size of saucers as she described the scene at a recent Australia-US discussion about violence against women in the Pacific. “They were loud tears too, and I mean really loud. We were all crying.” [...]
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Empowering Women Powers Nations Imagine if a city of almost four million people disappeared every year. A Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Yokohama. It would be hard to miss. Yet it goes largely unnoticed that almost four million girls and women “go missing” each year in developing countries when compared to their female counterparts in developed countries. [...]
Friday, November 18, 2011
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has released a report on the climate change challenges that children face in East Asia and the Pacific. The report indicates that climate change will exacerbate the living conditions of millions of children in the region, who already suffer from a lack of access to clean water and proper sanitation [...]
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Asia Pacific Women’s Watch APWW has circulated the Rio+20 Women’s Major Group submission summary which was presented on November 1st in response to the request for input by the Secretariat for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio+20, will take place in Brazil in [...]
Friday, November 11, 2011
Australia is second best ‐ almost but not quite the greatest place in which to live, according to the latest United Nations human development index. Norway pips us by a flared nostril. Australia scores 0.93 on a scale of 0 to 1, where 1 is the highest score possible. At 0.94, Norway’s margin over Australia [...]
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The 2011-2012 UN Women Report “Progress of the World’s Women: In Pursuit of Justice” analyzes women’s access to justice, from legal frameworks to justice for women during and after conflict. Women often face barriers in accessing justice. Their multiple productive and reproductive roles mean that they often do not have enough time to spare to [...]
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
We, the Women’s Major Group representatives at the Asia Pacific Regional Preparatory Meeting for Rio+20 call on governments to reaffirm their commitments to Agenda 21 and the Beijing Platform for Action, and fulfill their obligations to the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Economic, [...]
Sunday, October 30, 2011
The world is in danger of missing a golden opportunity for development and economic growth, a “demographic dividend”, as the largest cohort of young people ever known see their most economically productive years wasted, a major UN population report warned last week. The potential economic benefits of having such a large global population of young [...]
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Civil society representatives gathered in Perth today for the start of the three-day Commonwealth People’s Forum to discuss and debate key issues facing Commonwealth People. The Forum was officially opened by the Hon. Julia Gillard MP, Prime Minister of Australia in a ceremony also addressed by Premier of Western Australia, The Hon. Colin Barnett MLA, [...]
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Rwanda Government’s continued commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment are yielding fruit daily. Women’s experience in leadership, gained through the political will of President Paul Kagame and his Cabinet, and because of the operation since 2003 of the Constitutional quota that 30 percent of all positions in leadership and decision making should be [...]