Introduction to NCWC

INTRODUCTION: The National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC) is an accredited NGO (Non Government Organization) with the United Nations. The NCWC has a long history of working internationally. NCWC has been a member of the International Council of Women (ICW) since 1897, and has consultative status at the United Nations, Category II. Each year we send a delegation to the meetings of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Ever wondered about who is on the ECOSOC list?


21 December: Official list of ECOSOC NGOs, 2011-2012
An updated list of all 3,536 organizations in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council has been published late last year. This important reference document determines eligibility for non-governmental organizations to attend meetings of the Council, its subsidiary bodies and a range of other intergovernmental bodies of the United Nations. Click on the link below for the document. The list will be valid until July 2012.
http://www.csonet.org/content/documents/E2011INF4.pdf 

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Recommendations from Grass Roots women to deal with Disasters

Recommendations

Grassroots women's short-term recommendations include involving women-led task forces in overseeing relief and rehabilitation and replanting lost trees, organizing health camps, distributing relief according to their needs assessment and increasing house compensation, compensating farmers for lost crops, providing basic sanitation in temporary shelters, and addressing drinking water issues. These recommendations coincide with the longer-term goals of providing livelihood support for affected community members, handing over management of the early warning system, building permanent houses for affected people, and ultimately forming and strengthening disaster task forces in all coastal villages

Women organizing to deal with disasters

Learning from past disasters
Following the 2004 tsunami and Cyclone Nisha in 2006, groups of grassroots women participated in training programs offered by Huairou Commission member organizations SSP and GROOTS International, focused on disaster risk reduction. Through these trainings, women gained skills and experience in understanding community needs, negotiating with government, and preparing their communities in search, rescue, warning and rehabilitation techniques. SSP facilitated the formation of disaster task forces in many villages, starting with Keelamoovarkarai village, Nagapattinam.

Recognizing the ongoing need for such knowledge, groups of grassroots women then decided to continue their relief work on a more long-term basis. They organized Women's Federations in Cuddalore and Nagapattinam. Since successfully intervening in Cyclone Nisha, these Women's Federations have begun to provide training to other village communities. As Cyclone Thane approached in late December 2011, organized grassroots women were prepared to respond.
The delegation of Women's Federation members was headed by Chitra, the leader of Nagapattinam Women's Federation, along with B. Gouri, Rani, Maheshwari, Padmavathi and Annalakshimi, all nominated from the Nagapattinam Women's Federation. Mohana and A. Vijaya represented Cuddalore Women's Federation. The groups visited the villages of Nochikadu, Singarathoppu, Kandankadu, Tsunami Nagar and Thazhankuda.

The calls before the storm
In the days leading up to Cyclone Thane, Women's Federation leaders from Cuddalore used an early warning system to reach out to local villages likely to be affected. According to Mohana, leader of the Cuddalore Women's Federation, "We sent SMS messages and made phone calls to many [of] our group leaders to alert their communities on the cyclone." This strategy helped to save several lives.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Not sure who will be there on February 2nd....

      NOTICE FOR NGOS ATTENDING CSW 56

 Ambassador Kamara (Liberia), Chair , Bureau of the UN Commission on the Status of Women will convene a briefing for NGOs in preparation for CSW 56. This briefing will be held on Thursday,  February 2, 2012, from 1:15 to 2:30 PM in Conference Room 7 in the North Lawn Building. 

 Please forward questions you wish to ask the Chair to Christina Brautigam <Christine.Brautigam@unwomen.org> before  Friday January 27th.

                                                                                          

Women's Learning Partnership

 I have always got a lot out of programs offered by the WLP during the CSW. Here are some of the events coming up for CSW 56.

We actually have a few exciting events planned during CSW, and will be sending out event announcements in early February. First, on Wednesday, February 29, from 6-8pm, WLP will be premiering our new documentary on the global fight to combat violence against women at the New School's Tishman Auditorium. The premiere will be followed by a panel discussion during which leading experts from across the world will discuss the relationship between fighting gender-based violence and forming stable democracies, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Thursday morning, WLP Lebanon/CRTD-A will be holding an event on rural women's economic rights and empowerment in the Middle East, from 10:30-12:00. Then, WLP Morocco/ADFM will be having an event from 4:30-6:00pm at the Church Center focusing on women's rural land rights, using their advocacy work with Soulaliyate Women (women of tribal lands) in Morocco as a case study.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Official Delegates for NCWC

The official delegates for the National Council of Women of Canada include: 

Mary Scott
Rosemary Mallory
Rashmi Bhat
Nayyar Javed
Celina Becker-Henderson

Monday, January 23, 2012

Upcoming events at the CSW, sponsored by the Centre for Women's Global Leadership

Facilitating Human Rights from a Feminist Perspective, scheduled for February 28, is a panel discussion with experts and activists in the areas of feminist economics and economic and social rights. CWGL will also host an Open Forum on the 16 Days Campaign, scheduled for February 27, and sponsor a panel of experts to discuss the links between the perpetuation of militarism and its consequences for the safety and security of all, on February 29. For up-to-date information about CWGL’s events at the CSW please visit CSW webpage.

CWGL Events

  • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2012 (12:30-2pm), CCUN Hardin Room, 11th Floor: Open Forum on the 16 Days Campaign
  • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012 (10:30am-12pm), CCUN Hardin Room, 11th Floor: Facilitating Human Rights from a Feminist Perspective Panel
  • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012 (12:30-2pm), CCUN, 2nd Floor: Intersections of Violence Against Women and Militarism Panel, sponsored by CWGL & MADRE
  • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012, V E R M I L L I O N, 480 Lexington Ave: International Women's Day Reception & Dance Party

Co-sponsored Events

  • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012 (5:30-7pm): Rural Women's Speak-out, sponsored by NGO CSW & Huariou
  • THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012 (12:30-2pm), CCUN Chapel, 1st Floor: Thousands of Miles Apart, Rural Women Stand United Panel, sponsored by MADRE, CWGL, United Methodist Women, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies & International Women's Human Rights Clinic, CUNY
  • THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012 (8:30-10am), CCUN, 10th Floor: Development and Women's Human Rights: Interlinkages Between Macroeconomic Policies and Trends, sponsored by AWID
  • FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012 (10-11:15am), North Lawn Building, Conference Room B: Rural Women, Poverty, Crises, Rights, sponsored by WUNRN, CWGL, DAWN & Huairou Commission
  • FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012 (2:30-4pm), Salvation Army: Rural Women and the Right to Water, sponsored by CWGL & WUNRN

The Green Economy, Boon or Menace?

MEXICO CITY, Jan 20 (Tierramérica) (IPS) - The development of the green economy is the subject of pitched debate among specialists. While some believe it will deepen social inequalities and increase corporate control over natural and biological resources, others highlight its potential role in protecting the environment and creating employment.

In its study "Who Will Control the Green Economy?", published Dec. 15, 2011, the ETC Group argues that the development of a green economy will primarily benefit large corporations, unless changes are made to the current models of production and consumption of goods and services and international governance.

It reveals that large transnational corporations in the energy, pharmaceutical, food and chemical industries are already forming alliances to exploit biomass and grab control of natural resources like land and water.

The study takes a specific look at a range of different sectors, including synthetic biology, bioinformatics and genome data generation, marine and other aquatic biomass, seeds and pesticides, plant gene banks, fertiliser and mining industries, forestry and paper, the animal pharmaceutical industry and livestock genetics. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) defines the green economy as "a system of economic activities related to the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services that result in improved human wellbeing over the long term, while not exposing future generations to significant environmental risks and ecological scarcities."

The green economy will be a central theme at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20 ), taking place Jun. 20- 22 in the southern Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, 20 years after the first Earth Summit held in the same city in 1992.

The objective of the conference is to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development, and address new and emerging challenges Rio+20 will focus specifically on two themes: a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and the institutional framework for sustainable development. (END/2012)

Progress Towards a Food-Secure Africa

NAIROBI, Jan 20 (IPS) - A growing number of African countries are making significant progress towards eradicating extreme hunger and poverty. Ghana, Liberia, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and South Africa are some of the countries that have made tremendous achievements towards achieving these goals.

This has been reflected in a hunger-free score card geared towards measuring food security in Africa by ActionAid International , a non-governmental organisation that works towards a world without poverty and also in research by ACORD, the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development, which is an authority on food security in Africa.

In Ghana over the last 15 years the number of food insecure people has significantly decreased from 34 percent to eight percent. The country’s school feeding programme reaches one million children, according to data from this West African nation’s Ministry of Agriculture.

Since the decade-long civil war ended in 2002, Sierra Leone has dramatically increased its arable land to nearly 1.8 million hectares, consequently reducing the number of people going hungry by nearly 10 percent, also according to data by the country’s Ministry of Agriculture.

Agriculture, in many African countries, is the bedrock of Rwanda’s economy. According to the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources, the sector generates 45 percent of export revenue and accounts for an estimated 90 percent of all food consumed.

George Nderi, a market analyst in Nairobi, explained: "In the last five years, Rwanda’s agricultural sector has been growing at an average of 4.5 percent, contributing an estimated 36 percent to the overall GDP, the highest in East Africa." He said that both Kenya and Uganda’s agricultural sectors contributed an estimated 24 percent to the country’s GDP, with Tanzania contributing 25 percent.

According to the World Bank, Rwanda’s economy is growing at a healthy rate of 7.8 percent, at least two points ahead of the East African Community. "It is imperative to note that some drought-prone countries have also reduced their number of food insecure people. In Ethiopia, for instance, in the last year the number of food insecure people has decreased from 5.2 to 3.2 million, reducing nationwide malnutrition by 32 percent," Nderi said.

According to the 2011 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey, deaths of children under the age of five stood at 20 percent in 1990 but have fallen to 8.8 percent. Malnutrition accounts for at least half of these deaths according to the World Health Organization.

Amos Kiptanui, a small-scale farmer in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province, which is also known as the country’s breadbasket, said that these positive steps have been as a result of financial and political commitment to eradicate hunger and malnutrition. "Rwanda was the first country in Africa to sign on to the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP). The country has also doubled its expenditure on agriculture to the current 10 percent meeting the CAADP policy framework," he said. (END/2012)

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Oral Statements invitation

This is to inform you that the sign-up forms for oral statements are now available online:


Sign up form for general discussion

Subject to time availability, oral statements by NGOs may be delivered during the general discussion.

Preference will be given to NGOs speaking about the CSW56 priority theme, and on behalf of rural women's and grassroots women's organizations, as well as groups of organizations, caucuses, or coalitions.


Oral statements should not exceed three minutes. (i.e., about two pages double-spaced using font size 12).


The sign-up form for the general discussion is available at: http://www.unwomen.org/how-we-work/csw/csw56-general-discussion-sign-up/


Sign up form for Interactive expert panels

A limited number of NGOs will be able to make an oral intervention during the interactive expert panels. Interventions must be focused on the theme of the panel. Preference will be given to rural women's and grassroots women's' organizations.


The sign-up forms for interactive expert panels are available at: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw56/signup-ep/


Please share this information with your CSW56 representatives.


Please be sure to note the closing date of 17 February 2012.


Best regards,


Civil Society Section

UN Women

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Right to Food, Gender Equality and Economic Policy

Excellent Resources announced by the Center for Women's Global Leadership

New CWGL Resources!

The Right to Food, Gender Equality and Economic Policy
Report & Video
Report
Workshop Rapporteur and Writer: Alexandra Spieldoch
Editor: Savi Bisnath

This report is the culmination of a two-day experts meeting, “The Right to Food, Gender Equality and Economic Policy,” which took place on September 16-17, 2011 at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL). The meeting was organized as a means to contribute to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food’s work on gender equality, including a final report for the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2013. To this end CWGL brought together economists, researchers and advocates, working from a feminist perspective on various aspects of the food system, to offer analysis and recommendations. Click here to read the report.

VideoInterviews: Genevieve Cato and Ria DasGupta
Editing: Ria DasGupta

The intention in this informative video is to provide policy-makers, activists and academics working on gender equality, the right to food and economic policy with information on key issues related to the intersections of food rights, economic policy and feminismThis video highlights key discussion points of a two-day expert meeting. Click here to view video.

Friday, January 13, 2012

EL SALVADOR Pesticides Fill Graveyards in Rural Villages

NUEVA ESPERANZA, El Salvador, Jan 12 (IPS) - Sitting in the shade under a tree at a careful distance, Francisco Sosa watches his son prepare the land for planting by spraying the weeds with an herbicide from a tank carried on his back. 

The 60-year-old Salvadoran farmer would like to help his son Saúl, 25, but on doctor's orders, he can't. Like many other peasant farmers in this rural community in the southeast of El Salvador, he suffers from chronic renal insufficiency.

"The doctors told me not to spray poison anymore, that it could complicate my illness further," Sosa told IPS on his farm in Nueva Esperanza, a rural community of around 500 people that was settled in the 1990s in the Bajo Lempa region in the province of Usulután on El Salvador’s Pacific coast.

For years, local residents and the media have denounced the alarming increase in cases of kidney failure in the Bajo Lempa region, which for over a century was a cotton-growing area where pesticides and herbicides were heavily used.

Although cotton gave way to other crops in the 1970s, highly toxic agrochemicals continue to be used by the local farmers, who take no safety measures, on their corn, beans and vegetable crops. In some communities in the Bajo Lempa region, like Ciudad Romero, over 20 percent of the population suffers from chronic kidney disease, with the proportion rising to one out of four among adult men.

This prevalence rate is alarmingly higher than those found in other countries, says a health ministry study titled Nefrolempa, which began to be carried out in 2009, when moderate left-wing President Mauricio Funes took power with the backing of the insurgency-turned-political party Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

The prevalence of chronic kidney disease found by similar epidemiological studies in other countries in Latin America and in other regions ranged between 1.4 and 6.3 percent, the Nefrolempa study says.

The report, whose final results were released in October, does not conclusively establish a cause-effect relationship between the wide use of pesticides and herbicides and the high incidence of renal failure. But the data it provides backs up the argument of local farmers and environmentalists that there is a link.

Among the risk factors, the study points out that 82.5 percent of local men in the area are in contact with agrochemicals. "The disease has to do with all of the chemicals contaminating the area, especially the agricultural zone along the coast," Health Minister María Isabel Rodríguez told IPS. "We have appalling statistics that are not found anywhere else in the world," she said, explaining that among those with kidney disease, "there is an occupational factor, with farmers between the ages of 18 and 60 most heavily affected."

Environmentalist Mauricio Sermeño with the Unidad Ecológica Salvadoreña (Salvadoran Ecological Unit), a local NGO, told IPS that "When all of these people with renal insufficiency started to appear, it became clear that there was a direct link between the disease and the extensive use of chemical insecticides." Sermeño was referring to the heavy exposure to pesticides and herbicides in this area during the cotton boom period, when chemicals like DDT – an insecticide that has now been widely banned - were heavily used.

But other highly toxic chemicals like gramoxone or hedonal continue to be sold in El Salvador, he pointed out. Most of the pesticides are sold by foreign companies like the Germany-based Bayer AG, which Sermeño largely blames for the high levels of toxicity in the Bajo Lempa region. IPS received no response to repeated requests for a comment on this question from the offices of Bayer in El Salvador.

In the communities of the Bajo Lempa region, virtually everyone has a family member or friend who died of renal failure, activists and peasant farmers say. "Just over there lived Chunguito, that’s what we called him. And Isidro also died from that, so did Lidia Sorto, and Toñón too, and Neftalí and Abrahán – so many people have died of that," said Donato Santos, who years ago was hospitalised for pesticide poisoning after spraying his corn field.

Rosa María Colindres, a nurse in the first public health clinic for kidney patients opened in this area, told IPS that 95 percent of the graves in the Nueva Esperanza cemetery are of people who have died of renal failure. The clinic offers treatment for patients at all five stages of kidney disease. The patients with end-stage renal disease must go to a nearby hospital to receive training in how to do hemodialysis at home, including how to insert the needles and operate a home dialysis machine.

"If I didn’t get dialysis, I would be dead by now," Wilfredo Ordoño, another local farmer, told IPS. He remembers how, years ago, the pesticide he carried in a backpack sprayer "would run all down my back. I think that’s what did me in," he says. The Bajo Lempa region is a broad flood plain where the Lempa river - Central America’s longest - runs into the Pacific Ocean. Every year, the area has been hit harder and harder by floods that destroy the crops and force local residents, mainly poor farmers, to evacuate to shelters.

After El Salvador's bloody 12-year civil war came to an end in 1992, the land in this area, which once belonged to large landholders who grew cotton and sugar cane, was parcelled out to former guerrillas and their families, to help them settle back into civilian life, as farmers.

The local population is markedly leftist, and for that reason some believe that previous governments, of the right- wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) - which governed the country from 1989 to 2009 - were not interested in detecting or combating the epidemic or in establishing legal mechanisms to ensure that agrochemicals were properly sold and handled. A 2004 executive order established regulations to control the use of agrochemicals. But they are not enforced. (END/2012)

Bumper 2011 Grain Harvest Fails to Rebuild Global Stocks

Analysis by Janet Larsen* - IPS/Earth Policy Institute

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (IPS) - The world's farmers produced more grain in 2011 than ever before. Estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show the global grain harvest coming in at 2,295 million tonnes, up 53 million tonnes from the previous record in 2009.

Consumption grew by 90 million tonnes over the same period to 2,280 million tonnes. Yet with global grain production actually falling short of consumption in seven of the past 12 years, stocks remain worryingly low, leaving the world vulnerable to food price shocks.

Nearly half the calories consumed around the world come directly from grain, with grain-fed animal products making up part of the remainder. Three grains dominate the world harvest: wheat and rice, which are primarily eaten directly as food, and corn, which is largely used as a feedgrain for livestock.

Wheat was the largest of the world's grain harvests until the mid- 1990s. Then corn production surged ahead in response to growing demand for grain-fed animal products and, more recently, for fuel ethanol. Despite a drop in the important U.S. harvest due mostly to high summer temperatures, global corn production hit 868 million tonnes in 2011, an all-time high. The harvests of wheat (689 million tonnes) and rice (461 million tonnes) were also records.

Carryover grain stocks - the amount left in the world's grain elevators when the new harvest begins -now stand at 469 million tonnes, enough to cover 75 days of consumption at current levels. Between 1984 and 2001 grain stocks hovered around the more comfortable level of 100 days.

In 2002, however, grain production fell 88 million tonnes short of demand, and since then annual carryover stocks have averaged 72 days of use, close to the bare minimum for basic food security. In 2006, stocks bottomed out at 62 days, setting the stage for the 2007–08 food price spike when international grain prices doubled or tripled in a short amount of time.

For poor families in developing countries who spend half or more of their incomes on food, often grain staples, this led to empty plates and frustration. Protests erupted in some 35 countries as the number of hungry people in the world climbed above one billion.

Following several strong harvests, global stocks were again pushed downward in 2010 when drought, wildfires, and a scorching heat wave decimated wheat crops in Russia and neighbouring countries. Exports were banned. Food prices again started to rise, prompting warnings of a second food price crisis in three years.

Ultimately the higher food prices between June 2010 and December 2010 pushed an additional 44 million people down the economic ladder into extreme poverty, according to the World Bank. The prospects for the world's poorest remain grim, as even the record production in 2011 failed to outpace consumption enough to rebuild stocks sufficiently.

The tight stocks and food price volatility are occurring against a backdrop of a shrinking area available to feed each person and of slowing crop yield growth. Worldwide, grain is grown on close to 700 million hectares (1.7 billion acres). With the global population hitting the seven billion milestone in 2011, this leaves 0.1 hectare (a quarter of an acre) planted in grain per person, half as much as in the early 1960s.

While the total grain area is down from the peak of 732 million hectares in 1981, largely from the retiring of marginal and eroded land, production is more than 50 percent higher thanks to improved yields. In 1950, farmers could expect to harvest on average one tonne of grain per hectare. Now yields are three times as high.

The problem for world food prospects is that the proverbial "low- hanging fruit" have been picked, with much of the world (notably excepting sub-Saharan Africa) having already adopted higher yielding crop varieties and yield-boosting fertilizer and irrigation practices. Furthermore, yields may be leveling off or even shrinking in some countries. Global grain yields increased by an average 2.2 percent each year from 1970 to 1990. But between 1990 and 2010, the annual gains were just half as large.

Three countries produced nearly half the world's grain in 2011: China at 456 million tonnes, the United States at 384 million tonnes, and India at 226 million tonnes. Together the 27 European Union countries harvested 286 million tonnes of grain.

A growing number of countries are relying on imported grain to meet their needs, pushing the share of the world grain harvest entering international trade to 12 percent. The United States is far and away the world's top grain exporter, sending 73 million tonnes abroad in 2011. This is a quarter of all grain trade. It is followed by Argentina exporting 32 million tonnes of grain; Australia and the Ukraine, each at 24 million tonnes; and Russia and Canada, each topping 20 million tonnes.

For corn in particular, the United States dominates the world market, with U.S. corn accounting for over 40 percent of all international corn movement. For this reason, importing countries are concerned about the growing share of the U.S. crop - 40 percent in 2011 - being turned into fuel ethanol.

Japan continues to be the world's largest grain importer, buying more than 25 million tonnes of grain from abroad in 2011, much of it to be used as animal feed. Egypt, Mexico, South Korea and Saudi Arabia round out the list of countries importing more than 10 million tonnes of grain. International grain market dependence is high across the arid Middle East; for instance, Saudi Arabia now relies on imports for 90 percent of its grain consumption. As the country has nearly pumped dry its underground water stores, it is abandoning its desert wheat farms.

China imported a net five million tonnes of grain in 2011, the most significant inflow since the country declared a national grain self- sufficiency policy in the mid-1990s. Though still a tiny fraction of the country's 451-million-tonne consumption, the potential for China to import increasing amounts of grain is a concern to those who watch grain markets and prices.

China's grain imports would be far higher had it not ratcheted up imports of another key field crop, the soybean. Climbing from almost nothing through the mid-1990s, China's soybean imports hit 56 million tonnes in 2011, close to 80 percent of the country's total soybean consumption and nearly 60 percent of all the soy traded internationally. Most of the high-protein soy is used in livestock and poultry feed.

As more people in China are moving up the food chain and eating more meat, milk, and eggs, the country's feedgrain use has risen dramatically, surpassing that of the United States (where use is falling) for the first time in 2010. China now leads the world in the amount of grain fed to animals, standing at 149 million tonnes in 2011. Still, as the average meat intake in China is less than half that of the United States, the total grain consumption per person is far lower.

With little arable land around the world left unfarmed and with ever more mouths to feed, farmers face an uphill climb in their efforts to feed the world's people. The animal protein and food-based biofuel production systems are two areas where fields could be re- appropriated to grow food directly for people instead of for livestock or cars.

But as water shortages spread and rising global temperatures bring more unpredictable weather - replete with heat waves, droughts, floods, and other crop-damaging extreme events - a higher level of grain reserves is needed to help cushion against harvest failures. Otherwise, preventing major food price shocks will require bumper harvests year after year, something that is far from guaranteed.

*This article was originally published by the Earth Policy Institute. Data and additional resources at www.earth- policy.org.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Report from International Council of Women

I wanted to share this report sent to me by Jane Pritchard, Board Member ICW and chair of  the Regional Seminar and Training Workshop for the Asia Pacific Region held November 14 - 18, 2011, in  Nadi, Fiji.

Dr Monthip Sriratana Tabucanon, who prepared the report, is an ICW Board member and Vice-President of NCW Thailand. She was elected President of the ICW-CIF Asia Pacific Regional Council at this meeting, for the next 3 year.

ICW-CIF-ASIA-PACIFIC REGIONAL SEMINAR AND TRAINING WORKSHOP (APRC V)
Monday 14th November –Friday November 18, 2011

“Progress for Women is Progress for All”

The working committee of THE NATIONAL COUNCIL WOMEN FIJI have done themselves pround in organising the very successful SEMINAR & TRAINING WORKSHOP held in Nadi, Fiji, from 14th November to 18th November 2011.

A measure of their success was the attendance Dr. Jiko Luveni, Minister for Social Welfare, & Poverty Alleviation Fiji, at all the sessions of the Seminar.

Further confirmation of their success was the heartening presence of many young women from different parts of the world attending the Seminar. A few of these young women presented research papers from their PhD studies.

The result was an even balance of serious work, where outcomes were formulated, and social activities, where friendships were renewed and new friendships formed.

It was their respectful and tone-setting practice to open each day’s Seminars with a prayer.

Speakers from overseas and Fiji inspired the 35 women from 15 countries, in addition to the 70 women from  Fiji, who  attended this Seminar and Training Workshop

The workshops during the four days were lively with, at times, robust but good-mannered debates.     The underlining  theme was helping, guiding, teaching and creating strategies for empowering women to seek ways to better themselves and their family.

Speakers from overseas as well as local experts spoke on the following topics:

·         Assisting Women in Agriculture as Change makers and Entrepreneurs. MDGs, Women Contributing to Sustainable Global Economy- World Reports.  Recognising and Putting Value on Women’s Contributions to Economic Production.

·         Women from different countries presented reports on issues ranging from:  Women and Sustainable Economy, (Thailand) Women in Fisheries and Constraints to Development – Environmental Sustainability, (Papua New Guinea), Enhancing Sustainable Economy( Korea), and Environmental Protection ( Taiwan)

Other speakers spoke on Women, Agriculture & Business, Climate Change, Science & Technology

Christine Knock and Elizabeth Newman gave a very clear explanation of  the role of ICW Standing Committees.

Group discussions agreed that the common link was women helping women to better themselves.  The Adoption of the Seminar Statement  was well received.

Also at this Seminar The Installation of ICW-CIF APRC Board of Officers 2011-2014 was carried out.

STATEMENT SUMMARY FROM THE SEMINAR & TRAINING WORKSHOP

Theme:                Progress for Women Progress for All

SubTheme:                   Women in Agriculture- Building a Sustainable Future 

          Workshop Title: Women, Food Security and Health

                             Statement: Women need a Strong Voice.

Women from 20 countries worldwide attended the ICW-CIF Asia –Pacific Regional Seminar in Nadi, Fiji exchanged experiences in both traditional and modern ways of making progress for women as agricultural producers.

Within the theme “ Women in Agriculture- Building a sustainable Future” it was agreed that women’s organizations need more financial support to set up communication through websites and social media like Facebook. A “Young Women’s Asia-Pacific Network will be formed to involve more young women in taking an interest in assisting women to increase food production in the face of the rise in global population.

Training and leadership workshops with possibilities for more networking should be funded to ensure more women are in political positions and on business boards

Women must play a key role in ensuring sustainability in food security and economic production. The importance of recognizing and putting value on women’s economic contribution to agriculture and entrepreneurial activity will be essential to maintaining rural women’s livelihoods.

Women farmers in the region are suffering major impacts from climate changes especially through prolonged droughts, unseasonable rainfall and severe weather events. Rises in sea level threaten several Pacific Island nations where the area available for crop cultivation is already diminished.

Challenges to the empowerment of women in agriculture are the lack of funding for resources, training programmes, educational workshops as the local level and leadership training for women to be included in decision making level of marketing and policy development.

Because many farmers in Asia-Pacific region are older women mentoring to build an interest in young women will be essential. Developing stronger linkages for women to Ministries of agriculture, partnerships with agencies and other organizations is necessary.

Sharing micro-financing and greater availability of small loans will enable women farmers to increase their productivity. Coastal fishing has much potential to raise the productivity of women in remote areas. The role of women in stimulating tourism through traditional cooking is encouraged

The result of this Seminar can be the start for further cooperation of women and men in agriculture agencies, national and regional organizations in daily life in the Asia-Pacific Region and worldwide.

More information: Mrs. Jane Prichard ( chair of conference)