Celebrating Women’s Day: What Does the UN Have to Say?

Asia-Pacific Human Development Report 2010 has been launched today (March 8, 2010) which coincided with the International Women’s Day. Quite well timed, the report on gender equality titled “Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning point for Gender Equality in Asia and The Pacific” depicts the status of women and the state of affairs across Asia pacific.

The report says, nearly 100 million women across Asia have disappeared because of a huge and growing gender gap that has fatally deprived them of access to health care and food and has led to widespread abortions of female fetuses. China and India each account for about 43 million of those “missing” women, while Pakistan accounts for 6.1 million and South Korea for 200,000.

South Asia often comes in second worst in the world in gender equality measures, just above sub-Saharan Africa, while East Asia often fares better in health, education, and employment. Almost half the adult women in South Asia are illiterate –the world’s worst performance–while East Asian and Pacific women’s literacy rates are above the global average.  South Asian women can expect to die five years earlier than their men. And more women die in childbirth there ―500 for every 100,000 live births— than in any other part of the world except sub-Saharan Africa.

Recommendations:
The following eight recommendations summarize broad directions for action across the three areas (Report focuses on three key areas — economic power, political decision-making and legal rights)  covered in the Report.

1. Make international commitments a reality.

Countries should ratify and use international conventions that promote human rights, respect for diversity and equality for all. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides a foundation that was made specific to gender equality in CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women). Particular attention should be paid to removing the region’s high number of reservations to CEDAW, paving the way for bringing domestic legislation in line with it. Both protective and empowering measures should be integrated into policies and practices.

2. Craft economic policies to support gender equality.

Too often, the gender-blind nature of economic policy-making results in choices that deny women opportunities, even if they are not intended to do so. A more deliberate focus on gender and how it affects women’s economic options is required—particularly in targeting poverty interventions to provide equal opportunities for women and men. Governments should ensure that fiscal and monetary policies help unleash women’s leadership and entrepreneurship. Monetary policy can be attuned to be more supportive of inclusive growth and human development—for example, through directed lending to poor women for productive purposes. Fiscal policy should include gender-based budgeting, covering revenues and expenditures across all budget categories.

3. Make the content of education more gender equal.

Because education systems still perpetuate gender stereotypes, national and local governments should develop awareness of gender in such systems, such as through teacher training. Civil society groups and gender experts can be brought in to guide the assessment and development of textbooks and question materials that overtly enforce stereotypes or do so by omission. Schools should promote female leadership and active decision-making, in part, to provide positive role models to girls.

4. Boost political participation.

Legislatures,political parties and political leaders should recognize the importance of women’s political participation to democracy and equal citizenship. Special actions to boost the number and quality of female representatives and women in upper echelons of government might include quotas, political party reform, gender-orientation and capacity development. All these measures need to be
approached in the spirit of genuine change, avoiding tokenism or manipulation for political gain. National and sub-national political leaders should assure better gender balance in leadership across all aspects of crisis management, whether involving natural disasters, conflicts or a sustained economic downturn.

5. Pursue gender-equitable laws.

Parliaments can benefit from reforming gender discriminatory laws and making new ones where needed. This should include ironing out discrepancies between customary and formal laws that perpetuate discrimination, as well as gaps between laws and constitutional principles. Countries should have gender-specific constitutional provisions on equality and nondiscrimination. This will narrow the wide latitude of interpretation currently enjoyed by courts and law enforcement agencies. Legal systems should be subjected to an overall gender equality review of national legislation, as some countries have done, including for CEDAW compliance.

6. Address legal discrimination and close gaps between laws and legal practice.

The justice system should ensure that legal practices are consistent with laws on the books and that access to justice is broadly available. Professional training for lawyers, judges, magistrates and police should include an orientation around the needs of marginalized groups. Crimes against women should not be treated lightly.

7. Collect better data and strengthen capacity for gender analysis.

National statistical systems should strengthen capacities to collect, report and analyze sex-disaggregated data, especially in overlooked areas such as the prevalence of gender based violence and male-female gaps in asset ownership. Systematic and ongoing assessments should feed into policy efforts to close disparities.

8. Foster new attitudes.

Civil society, the media, academic institutions, religious organizations, businesses and other groups involved in shaping social attitudes should be enlisted in influencing them to support gender equality. Concrete advocacy tools can be developed and new channels of advocacy and communication explored. A strong push should be made to include men in the understanding of gender equality and steps to achieve it, recognizing their transformative role.

For a complete overview, Read Here.

For Sectionwise (Chapters), See Here.

For full Text (Approx 230 pages of text), Read Here

Posted by Animesh Roul on March 8, 2010. Respond »

Chilean Earthquake Uncovers Fault Lines in the Asia-Pacific Community

Although the destruction was largely confined to Chile, the February 27 earthquake was clearly a Pacific phenomenon.  In anticipation of major waves, Japan evacuated over 300,000 people in coastal areas, and tsunami warnings were issued in Hawaii and Australia.  No substantial damage was done on the far side of the Pacific, but the Chilean quake was located solidly on the Pacific “ring of fire.”  The Asia-Pacific region is so vulnerable in this regard that 70% of the world’s natural disasters occur there.

And yet APEC,  the pre-eminent regional organization that encompasses the Asia-Pacific community, seemed not to notice the catastrophe in one of its members, despite the fact that the earthquake hit in the middle of a two-week series of senior officials meetings.  APEC’s public silence supports a common belief that although Asian regionalism is strengthening, the concept of an Asia-Pacific community is still in doubt.  Although APEC includes five Western Hemisphere members (the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru and Chile), and the “Pacific” quotient is further boosted by Australia and New Zealand, in reality it resembles an Asia-Plus-Two group, the “two” being the United States and Australia. 

Chile has not completed an assessment of the earthquake damage, and has not as yet determined how much external assistance it might need.  Certainly, much of that would come from the hemisphere, primarily the United States and Argentina.  But help from developed Asian countries would likely be useful, particularly since so much assistance is still required for Haiti.  In the longer term, developing an APEC early warning system for seismic events and their impacts is worth considering.

But apart from the apparent conceptual problems that the Chilean earthquake presents, APEC is not at present prepared to formulate a common disaster response.  After the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean that traumatized Aceh and parts of Thailand, APEC established a Task Force on Emergency Preparedness.  The need to strengthen the TFEP was reinforced in 2008, first by the earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province, and then by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar.  The primary activity of the Task Force to date has been a yearly meeting of disaster management officials in the APEC membership.  However, the mandate for the TFEP expired last December, and its status and direction are in limbo, pending consideration at the November APEC Summit in Yokohama.

If it has no other impact on APEC, the earthquake in Chile should move the issue of developing mechanisms for disaster response higher on the Yokohama agenda.  In this matter, APEC leaders would be well advised to pay less attention to the usual Asia-vs-Pacific dichotomy and more to the imperatives of geology.

Posted by Catharin Dalpino on March 1, 2010. Respond »

Podcast: The Lowy Institute and ANU on Asia’s Security Future

Download a podcast of a recent seminar by the Lowy Institute at the Australian National University on “Shaping Up: Order, Change and Discontent in Asia’s Security Future.”

Posted by Matthew Shannon Stumpf on March 1, 2010. Respond »

The Democratic Party of Japan’s Unheralded Realism

In the latest stop in his regional tour, Japanese Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya visited Australia for talks with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.

Most of the headlines have focused on the exchange of words over whaling — the polite phrasing seems to be that Okada and Rudd had a “frank discussion”, and Rudd has threatened to sue Japan if it does not halt whaling by November — but more important in the long term may be the agreement reached between the two governments to sign an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) in March, which would enable mutual logistical support on peacekeeping and disaster relief missions. The ACSA will be another small step in building an Australia-Japan security relationship following the joint security declaration signed in 2007 back when Abe Shinzo was prime minister.

Writing at The Interpreter (and from the Australian perspective), Graeme Dobell writes of Australia’s hedging by building up its relationship with Japan over the span of a decade, noting that “It is not grand enough to be called a strategy. It does not yet have the status or coherence of a policy. Yet it is much more than an inclination or intention. Call it low-level hedging.” One could very well say the same of Japan.

Despite the impression in some circles that the Hatoyama government is naive (due perhaps in part to Hatoyama’s talk of an East Asian community)  — and the irritating habit that some analysts have of dichotomizing Japan’s foreign policy choice as being either alliance with the US or partnership with China — the Hatoyama government is deliberately working to improve Japan’s bilateral ties throughout the region. In the span of weeks, Prime Minister Hatoyama has visited India to, among others, agree to regular bilateral security talks and Okada has visited South Korea and Australia to discuss how to bolster Japan’s relationships with both countries. What was notable about both Okada trips is that he did not hesitate to acknowledge the obstacles to closer bilateral ties even as he expressed his beliefs that the obstacles can be overcome. Before he had his discussion about whaling in Australia, on his visit to South Korea Okada acknowledged in strong terms Japan’s wrongdoing when it colonized Korea 1910-1945. In both cases, Okada is clearly trying to address the obstacles forthrightly while remaining focused on the goals of closer bilateral cooperation.

In bilateral relations with India, South Korea, and Australia (not to mention China), the Hatoyama government is building on the work of its LDP predecessors. What’s different, however, is that the Hatoyama government is for the most part building its new grand strategy on the sly. Unlike say the Abe government, which used grandiloquent rhetoric about democracy and shared values to announce its bilateral initiatives with Australia and India (and was none too subtle about the links between among these three democracies and the US), the Hatoyama government has been workmanlike in its efforts to improve Japan’s bilateral ties. There are few hints that it wants to link its bilateral ties with countries like Australia to its alliance with the US, which would in turn prompt talk of a grand alliance aimed at containing China. Instead, the Hatoyama government may be focusing on new bilateral relations as a hedge against the US. In the event that the US were to turn inward and weaken its commitment to Asia, Japan could use other friends in the region. Even with the US committed to the region, Japan’s interests are served by better bilateral ties, which have been underdeveloped for too long.

That there are significant obstacles — Australia’s threat of a lawsuit, for one — to overcome in nearly all of Japan’s bilateral relationships in the region should not detract from appreciation of the Hatoyama government’s efforts to overcome those obstacles. Its foreign policy initiatives may be quiet, but they will have implications for Japan’s position in the region for years to come.

Posted by Tobias Harris on February 25, 2010. Respond »

New Web Resources: GW Launches Rising Powers Program Website

The Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University has launched a new website to feature its “Rising Powers” Program, featuring research on both the evolving world views of aspiring powers and the interaction of power and identity in Asia. The site offers the project’s publications, as well as a growing research database.

Posted by Matthew Shannon Stumpf on January 13, 2010. Respond »