U N I T E D N A T I O N S N A T I O N S U N I E S
THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
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MESSAGE ON THE INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
25 November 2008
Across the world, in countries rich and poor, women are being beaten, trafficked, raped and killed. These human rights violations do more than harm individuals; they undermine the development, peace and security of entire societies.
Women everywhere are at risk, but those living in societies experiencing armed conflict face even graver danger. As conflicts have become more complex, the pattern of sexual violence has evolved. Women are no longer in jeopardy only during periods of actual fighting; they are just as likely to be assaulted when there is calm, by armies, militias, rebels, criminal gangs or even police.
We do not know the true number of victims, but we do know that there are far more crimes than ever get reported, and far fewer lead to arrests. In too many places, rape still carries a stigma that forces women to avoid the courts that should exist to protect them. In some countries, victims are brutalized twice: first during the crime itself, and then by the justice system, where they may face trumped-up charges of “adultery” and the possibility of subsequent punishment.
Even when perpetrators are identified, they often go unpunished, especially if they are working in the police or military. At times, these crimes are particularly shocking. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s troubled North Kivu province, where some 350 rape cases are reported every month, victims are also sometimes subjected to genital mutilation.
Even more disturbing is the age of many victims. In certain violent areas of Haiti, fifty per cent of the young women have been raped or sexually assaulted. Of the handful of courageous victims who do seek justice, one in three is under thirteen. During one particularly violent month earlier this year in Liberia, the majority of reported rapes were committed against girls under the age of twelve, some of whom were not even five years old.
These examples come from countries where the United Nations has a peacekeeping presence. Thanks to the Security Council’s groundbreaking resolution 1820, adopted in June, the use of sexual violence as a tactic of warfare is now recognized as a matter of international peace and security. According to the resolution, peacekeeping missions, in particular those with mandates to protect civilians, must now include the protection of women and children from all forms of violence in their reporting on conflict situations. Resolution 1820 also requested stronger efforts to implement the vital zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation by UN personnel, and urged troop and police contributing countries to ensure full accountability in cases of misconduct.
The adoption of resolution 1820 is part of a growing global trend to address this scourge. This past February’s Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking, and the continued leadership of the General Assembly, are additional signs of international momentum.
At the national level, more and more countries are meeting their obligations to protect women through comprehensive legislation, better services for victims, stronger partnerships and increased efforts to engage men and boys in addressing the problem.
This progress is welcome, but there are still gaps. We need to do more to enforce laws and counter impunity. We need to combat attitudes and behaviour that condone, tolerate, excuse or ignore violence committed against women. And we need to increase funding for services for victims and survivors.
I am determined to strengthen these efforts, including through my global campaign “UNiTE to end violence against women”, which aims to raise public awareness, increase political will and resources and create a supportive environment to make good on existing policy commitments.
All of us – men and women, soldiers and peacekeepers, citizens and leaders – have a responsibility to help end violence against women. States must honour their commitments to prevent violence, bring perpetrators to justice and provide redress to victims. And each of us must speak out in our families, workplaces and communities, so that acts of violence against women cease.
Keynote Address by
Joan Holmes, President of The Hunger Project
Introduction
The treatment of women and girls is the greatest violation of human rights in our world today.
Ninety-three million women and girls are “missing” from the world population because of sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, malnutrition, abuse and neglect of girl children. This is roughly equivalent to all the deaths in all the wars of the 20th century – the most violent century in human history. This is a holocaust many times over.
So why don’t we as citizens of the world hear of this tragedy?
What kind of world are we living in where 93 million lives can be extinguished just because they’re girls? Where’s our shame? Where’s our moral outrage?
Gender discrimination is the greatest moral challenge of our age. And, we will be judged by history on how we respond to this challenge.
Basic issues
The developing world faces problems that affect the entire global community: hunger, poverty, HIV/AIDS and population growth. The developing world also has the most severe discrimination of women and girls.
These facts are not unrelated. This severe discrimination of women and girls is a primary cause of the persistence of these problems.
Let’s look at the facts.
* The vast majority of the world’s poor are women and girls.
* Women and girls are 80% of the world’s refugees.
* Two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are female.
* And, of the millions of children kept out of school - 2/3 are girls.
India has the 12th largest economy in the world. Sixty million tons of grain in storage. And it has one of the highest rates of childhood malnutrition. When this inexplicable phenomenon was studied by UNICEF, it was found that “the exceptionally high rates of malnutrition in India are rooted deep in the soil of inequality between men and women.”
Africa has the highest rates of HIV/AIDS transmission in the world. This is a pandemic and there are two reasons for it: men have unsafe sex with multiple partners, and women lack the power to negotiate if or how sex takes place.
And, while it is well known that women and girls are the most affected by society’s problems, what is less well known is that the empowerment of girls and women has the greatest overall positive effect on the entire society.
Recent analysis by the World Bank and other institutions indicates that when women and girls are empowered, the overall health and well-being of a society is greatly improved:
* Decreased population growth
* Faster economic growth
* Less corruption in governance
* There is increased agricultural production
* More children go to school
* Health hazards are reduced
* And there is lower childhood malnutrition and lower child mortality
Today’s girls are tomorrow’s women. Girls cannot advance without the advancement of women. And no improvement in women’s lives will be sustained unless girls have education, good health and the opportunity to achieve their potential.
The Life of a Girl Child
As a human family, we are doing a really terrible job of taking care of our girl children.
While there are many countries where little girls are cherished, loved, and cared for, the vast majority of girls live in countries where this is not so. It is the condition of girls in these countries that is so critical to our future.
This is not to deny or diminish the desperate lives led by many of the world’s boys. Boys are conscripted as soldiers, trafficked in the sex trade and 40 million boys worldwide are without access to basic education. As appalling and unacceptable as these facts are, they in no way compare to the tragic conditions and mistreatment of our girls.
A little girl eats last and least and she is up to three times more likely than boys to suffer malnutrition.
She is often not taken to the doctor when she is sick and she is less likely to be immunized.
Girls are often kept out of school and put to work. Whether at home, in factories or in the field, little girls are at work. She starts work at a very young age, and works from dawn to dusk, proving the adage “A girl is never a child.”
If she does go to school, she’s still at risk. Rather than being a safe refuge and a source of empowerment, the school situation is often dangerous. A recent study showed that 32% of reported child rapes in South Africa were committed by school teachers.
This is the life of a girl in the developing world, if she is allowed to live at all. Each and every year, millions of sex-selective abortions are performed, virtually always on female fetuses.
If you go to one of the poorest states in India and take a car from the capital to the most remote village, you will not find health clinics, sanitation or clean water. What you will find is the latest technology to determine the sex of a fetus.
It is estimated that annually 1 million female fetuses are aborted in China and 5 million in India, even though laws have been passed to stop this despicable practice.
In addition to feticide, there is female infanticide – babies killed at birth – again, just because they are girls.
Infanticide occurs in 17 countries. In India alone, more than 10,000 girl babies are victims of infanticide each year. Many people feel that the actual number is much higher. This is nothing short of murder.
In China and India, there are growing disparities between the number of men and the number of women. In some areas, the disparity is as great as 710 women for every 1000 men.
If it doesn’t kill her by infancy, violence is an ever present danger throughout her girlhood and throughout the rest of her life.
If she is a girl in Africa, the Middle East or other parts of the world, she may be subjected to Female Genital Mutilation. Two million girls, usually between the ages of four and eight, fall victim to this practice each and every year.
Early in a girl’s life, she is often forced into sexual relations. 50% of all sexual assaults are committed against girls age 15 or younger.
She is married without her consent and becomes pregnant long before her body is ready. The leading cause of death for girls age 15-19 is complications from pregnancy.
Annually, two million girls between the ages of five and 15 are forced into the commercial sex market.
By the time she is 15, a girl is most likely malnourished, unhealthy, and has little or no education. She has worked the majority of her life. And she’s been mistreated, exploited and abused, probably by someone she knows.
And, with each new generation of girls who continue to be mistreated, those basic issues that face our human family continue to be perpetuated.
The time is now
It doesn’t need to be this way. And it can not continue to stay this way if we want a healthy, productive, just and peaceful world.
Kofi Annan has said: "There is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls. No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, improve nutrition and promote health – including helping to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
USAID has stated, “We know that girls' education is perhaps the single most important investment a developing country can make."
And from the World Food Program we hear "If we want to change the world – and we all do – there is one way to do that: educate girls."
The constraints and the shackles that have been put on girls’ lives for centuries are beginning — just beginning—to be removed.
* China launched a “Caring for Girls” program to combat sex-selective abortion.
* Over the past 30 years, the number of teenage girls who marry young has declined both in South Asia and in Africa.
* In Bangladesh, over the past 10 years, a scholarship program has resulted in doubling the number of girls in high school.
* Nigeria now has a law requiring girls to remain in school to complete their education.
* In Ghana, the Ministry of Education initiated a Math and Science clinic specifically for girls.
* February 9, 2004 marked the first International Zero Tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation Day. And ten African countries have recently criminalized this practice.
* Kenya has raised the penalty for child rape to a mandatory life sentence. Previously, this crime was rarely, if ever, punished.
* And in 2004, for the very first time, Afghan women and girls competed in the Olympics Games.
We’re at a moment in history when finally a girl’s value to society can be recognized and supported, enabled and empowered.
The Hunger Project
The Hunger Project has made the empowerment of women its highest priority. Through our commitment to women and the success of our work, the lives of girls are being transformed. Here’s how:
In Africa, in The Hunger Project’s HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop, adolescent girls and women learn to protect themselves from unsafe sex.
In our African Woman Food Farmer credit program, in order for a woman to receive a loan, her daughters must be in school.
In India, the women trained in our Women’s Leadership Workshop now stand up to their families to protect their daughters from being forced into early marriage.
Five years ago in Bangladesh, The Hunger Project created National Girl Child Day. Each year, even in the most remote corners of the country, hundreds of thousands of girls march and speak out. They are lauded in the media. The girl child is celebrated for who she is and what she means for the future of Bangladesh.
And in Latin America, at the Fourth Continental Meeting of Indigenous Women in Peru, women from 20 countries declared their commitment to train girls as tomorrow’s leaders.
We are making this issue known worldwide. I speak at international conferences, I have testified before the US Congress, and I am a member of the Hunger Task Force of the United Nations Millennium Project.
What needs to be done?
And it is clear to me that it is time for a new kind of action. It is time to change the way we do business.
Even if every country in the developing world increases its education budget, there is no assurance that girls will be educated.
If every country increases its health budget, there is no assurance that little girls will be healthier.
Unless a government takes specific actions on behalf of women and girls, increased funding will only perpetuate and widen the gender gap. And the world’s basic problems will persist.
And so I recommend the following actions to governments:
* I would mandate farm extension agents to actually show up and work with the women farmers to increase their incomes and reduce their drudgery, since it is the daughters who inevitably share and inherit their mother’s workload.
* I would expand the mandate of the health workers and midwives to teach mothers to breastfeed their girl babies as long as their boy babies. And ensure that their daughters are as well fed as their sons.
* I recommend that governments provide scholarships for girls through secondary school, and provide incentives to parents to keep their girls in schools.
* I would expand the mandate of school teachers to create equal opportunities for girls to learn and to become leaders. And there would be zero tolerance for violence against girls in school.
* It is essential for governments to provide farm extension agents, health workers and teachers with adequate supplies and sufficient training.
* It is also essential for governments to increase – and increase significantly the number of women in these professions.
* The developed world can express its partnership by increasing the amount of aid, and making all development aid conditional on countries improving the lives of women and girls.
Conclusion
We know what the world looks like with half of its population devalued – with half of its population treated as inferior and insignificant.
We truly don’t have a clue what the world would look like if girls and women could express themselves and be “everything they can be.”
At a minimum, we would live in a more peaceful and humane world: a world with greater social justice, economic progress, lower population growth and better health.
One thing is clear, and it is unequivocally clear – the world would be a lot better place than the one in which we are living today.
THE WICO AFRICA 2009-2019 ACTION PLAN
Joan Holmes, President of The Hunger Project
Introduction
The treatment of women and girls is the greatest violation of human rights in our world today.
Ninety-three million women and girls are “missing” from the world population because of sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, malnutrition, abuse and neglect of girl children. This is roughly equivalent to all the deaths in all the wars of the 20th century – the most violent century in human history. This is a holocaust many times over.
So why don’t we as citizens of the world hear of this tragedy?
What kind of world are we living in where 93 million lives can be extinguished just because they’re girls? Where’s our shame? Where’s our moral outrage?
Gender discrimination is the greatest moral challenge of our age. And, we will be judged by history on how we respond to this challenge.
Basic issues
The developing world faces problems that affect the entire global community: hunger, poverty, HIV/AIDS and population growth. The developing world also has the most severe discrimination of women and girls.
These facts are not unrelated. This severe discrimination of women and girls is a primary cause of the persistence of these problems.
Let’s look at the facts.
* The vast majority of the world’s poor are women and girls.
* Women and girls are 80% of the world’s refugees.
* Two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are female.
* And, of the millions of children kept out of school - 2/3 are girls.
India has the 12th largest economy in the world. Sixty million tons of grain in storage. And it has one of the highest rates of childhood malnutrition. When this inexplicable phenomenon was studied by UNICEF, it was found that “the exceptionally high rates of malnutrition in India are rooted deep in the soil of inequality between men and women.”
Africa has the highest rates of HIV/AIDS transmission in the world. This is a pandemic and there are two reasons for it: men have unsafe sex with multiple partners, and women lack the power to negotiate if or how sex takes place.
And, while it is well known that women and girls are the most affected by society’s problems, what is less well known is that the empowerment of girls and women has the greatest overall positive effect on the entire society.
Recent analysis by the World Bank and other institutions indicates that when women and girls are empowered, the overall health and well-being of a society is greatly improved:
* Decreased population growth
* Faster economic growth
* Less corruption in governance
* There is increased agricultural production
* More children go to school
* Health hazards are reduced
* And there is lower childhood malnutrition and lower child mortality
Today’s girls are tomorrow’s women. Girls cannot advance without the advancement of women. And no improvement in women’s lives will be sustained unless girls have education, good health and the opportunity to achieve their potential.
The Life of a Girl Child
As a human family, we are doing a really terrible job of taking care of our girl children.
While there are many countries where little girls are cherished, loved, and cared for, the vast majority of girls live in countries where this is not so. It is the condition of girls in these countries that is so critical to our future.
This is not to deny or diminish the desperate lives led by many of the world’s boys. Boys are conscripted as soldiers, trafficked in the sex trade and 40 million boys worldwide are without access to basic education. As appalling and unacceptable as these facts are, they in no way compare to the tragic conditions and mistreatment of our girls.
A little girl eats last and least and she is up to three times more likely than boys to suffer malnutrition.
She is often not taken to the doctor when she is sick and she is less likely to be immunized.
Girls are often kept out of school and put to work. Whether at home, in factories or in the field, little girls are at work. She starts work at a very young age, and works from dawn to dusk, proving the adage “A girl is never a child.”
If she does go to school, she’s still at risk. Rather than being a safe refuge and a source of empowerment, the school situation is often dangerous. A recent study showed that 32% of reported child rapes in South Africa were committed by school teachers.
This is the life of a girl in the developing world, if she is allowed to live at all. Each and every year, millions of sex-selective abortions are performed, virtually always on female fetuses.
If you go to one of the poorest states in India and take a car from the capital to the most remote village, you will not find health clinics, sanitation or clean water. What you will find is the latest technology to determine the sex of a fetus.
It is estimated that annually 1 million female fetuses are aborted in China and 5 million in India, even though laws have been passed to stop this despicable practice.
In addition to feticide, there is female infanticide – babies killed at birth – again, just because they are girls.
Infanticide occurs in 17 countries. In India alone, more than 10,000 girl babies are victims of infanticide each year. Many people feel that the actual number is much higher. This is nothing short of murder.
In China and India, there are growing disparities between the number of men and the number of women. In some areas, the disparity is as great as 710 women for every 1000 men.
If it doesn’t kill her by infancy, violence is an ever present danger throughout her girlhood and throughout the rest of her life.
If she is a girl in Africa, the Middle East or other parts of the world, she may be subjected to Female Genital Mutilation. Two million girls, usually between the ages of four and eight, fall victim to this practice each and every year.
Early in a girl’s life, she is often forced into sexual relations. 50% of all sexual assaults are committed against girls age 15 or younger.
She is married without her consent and becomes pregnant long before her body is ready. The leading cause of death for girls age 15-19 is complications from pregnancy.
Annually, two million girls between the ages of five and 15 are forced into the commercial sex market.
By the time she is 15, a girl is most likely malnourished, unhealthy, and has little or no education. She has worked the majority of her life. And she’s been mistreated, exploited and abused, probably by someone she knows.
And, with each new generation of girls who continue to be mistreated, those basic issues that face our human family continue to be perpetuated.
The time is now
It doesn’t need to be this way. And it can not continue to stay this way if we want a healthy, productive, just and peaceful world.
Kofi Annan has said: "There is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls. No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, improve nutrition and promote health – including helping to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
USAID has stated, “We know that girls' education is perhaps the single most important investment a developing country can make."
And from the World Food Program we hear "If we want to change the world – and we all do – there is one way to do that: educate girls."
The constraints and the shackles that have been put on girls’ lives for centuries are beginning — just beginning—to be removed.
* China launched a “Caring for Girls” program to combat sex-selective abortion.
* Over the past 30 years, the number of teenage girls who marry young has declined both in South Asia and in Africa.
* In Bangladesh, over the past 10 years, a scholarship program has resulted in doubling the number of girls in high school.
* Nigeria now has a law requiring girls to remain in school to complete their education.
* In Ghana, the Ministry of Education initiated a Math and Science clinic specifically for girls.
* February 9, 2004 marked the first International Zero Tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation Day. And ten African countries have recently criminalized this practice.
* Kenya has raised the penalty for child rape to a mandatory life sentence. Previously, this crime was rarely, if ever, punished.
* And in 2004, for the very first time, Afghan women and girls competed in the Olympics Games.
We’re at a moment in history when finally a girl’s value to society can be recognized and supported, enabled and empowered.
The Hunger Project
The Hunger Project has made the empowerment of women its highest priority. Through our commitment to women and the success of our work, the lives of girls are being transformed. Here’s how:
In Africa, in The Hunger Project’s HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop, adolescent girls and women learn to protect themselves from unsafe sex.
In our African Woman Food Farmer credit program, in order for a woman to receive a loan, her daughters must be in school.
In India, the women trained in our Women’s Leadership Workshop now stand up to their families to protect their daughters from being forced into early marriage.
Five years ago in Bangladesh, The Hunger Project created National Girl Child Day. Each year, even in the most remote corners of the country, hundreds of thousands of girls march and speak out. They are lauded in the media. The girl child is celebrated for who she is and what she means for the future of Bangladesh.
And in Latin America, at the Fourth Continental Meeting of Indigenous Women in Peru, women from 20 countries declared their commitment to train girls as tomorrow’s leaders.
We are making this issue known worldwide. I speak at international conferences, I have testified before the US Congress, and I am a member of the Hunger Task Force of the United Nations Millennium Project.
What needs to be done?
And it is clear to me that it is time for a new kind of action. It is time to change the way we do business.
Even if every country in the developing world increases its education budget, there is no assurance that girls will be educated.
If every country increases its health budget, there is no assurance that little girls will be healthier.
Unless a government takes specific actions on behalf of women and girls, increased funding will only perpetuate and widen the gender gap. And the world’s basic problems will persist.
And so I recommend the following actions to governments:
* I would mandate farm extension agents to actually show up and work with the women farmers to increase their incomes and reduce their drudgery, since it is the daughters who inevitably share and inherit their mother’s workload.
* I would expand the mandate of the health workers and midwives to teach mothers to breastfeed their girl babies as long as their boy babies. And ensure that their daughters are as well fed as their sons.
* I recommend that governments provide scholarships for girls through secondary school, and provide incentives to parents to keep their girls in schools.
* I would expand the mandate of school teachers to create equal opportunities for girls to learn and to become leaders. And there would be zero tolerance for violence against girls in school.
* It is essential for governments to provide farm extension agents, health workers and teachers with adequate supplies and sufficient training.
* It is also essential for governments to increase – and increase significantly the number of women in these professions.
* The developed world can express its partnership by increasing the amount of aid, and making all development aid conditional on countries improving the lives of women and girls.
Conclusion
We know what the world looks like with half of its population devalued – with half of its population treated as inferior and insignificant.
We truly don’t have a clue what the world would look like if girls and women could express themselves and be “everything they can be.”
At a minimum, we would live in a more peaceful and humane world: a world with greater social justice, economic progress, lower population growth and better health.
One thing is clear, and it is unequivocally clear – the world would be a lot better place than the one in which we are living today.
THE WICO AFRICA 2009-2019 ACTION PLAN
WICO Africa has set up several schmes and project as part of the Action Plan for 2009-2019 Program.
The Schmes include the following:
WICO AFRICA COMMUNICATION SCHEME
This scheme has been conceived to develop projects that would focus in training and mind and mass media communication, as a means to contribute to the achievement of the amis and objectives of WICO Africa Projects undet this scheme includes;
a) The Publication Project with the responsibility for the production of the Women's Combat (WC) Journal and the Gender Lens (GL) Magazine
b) The African Community Resource and Education (ACRE) Centre with the objective to build at an early stage of life the necessaryy tenets required to drive economic independence and finanical autonomy through education, job creation and income generation especially within rural areas of Africa.
WICO AFRICA INVESTMENT SCHEME:
The scheme has been conceived to develop projects that would focus on providing opportunities for members and the general public to build attitudes, valuses and virtues that would guarantee social and economic independence and financial autonomy. Projects under this scheme. These includes
:a) WICO Africa Recreational Centre. This project has been conceived to foster cross-cultural activities and promote recreation espcially in rural Africa as a means to contribute to social and economic development and finanxcial development of the community. It would also serve as a ground for trainees to gain hands-on experience in the various professional and vocational trainings
b) WICO Africa Credit Union. This project is designed to assist members and the general public especialy in the rural areas to realise investment through the saving and loans
MBANDO CULTURAL SCHEME
This scheme has been designed to organise activities that would help use our cutltural heritage and touristic capacity as a means to of promoting and bulding a culture of peace axross Africa, as its citizens work towards social and economic independence and financial autonomy. It shall include cross-cultural activities. Under this scheme is the MELODRAME (Melody, Drama and Arts Group a children and youth programme geared towards improving on their life style and discover their hidden talents.
WICO AFRICA SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL AND TOURISM AGENCY
This project has been thought out to orgnaise and promote sustainable tourism such as ecological, sports, cultural, education and other forms of tourism as a means to improve our cross-cultura; realtions and economic potential.
WICO AFRICA RURAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCY
This scheme has been designed to help realease the latent power in Africa Rural sector with special focus on women and youth development programmes as a means to create job and income generating opoetunities for the attaiment of social and economic independence and financial autonomy and curb rural-urban migration
WICO AFRICA ELITE HOUSING SCHEME
The scheme seeks to develop philosophies that would help provide sustainable and affordable housing to women, youths and other vulnerable groups especially for those in the rural areas and the urban poor as a means of attaining the amis and objectives of WICO Africa
WICO AFRICA PLUS PROJECTS:
COMMUNITY HEALTH EDUCATION AND SCHOOL SANITATION (CHESS) AFRICA PROJECT
This project has been designed to help schools and communities across Africa have access to clean and safe water and adequate sanitation as a means of preserving the health and promoting health environments acrss schools and communities in Africa
PAN AFRICA CONSERVATION AND ENVIRONMENT (PACE) CENTRE
This scheme geared towards education promotion, management, preservation and conservation of the total African environment
Under this project is the Water Education and Training (WET) Africa Project to promote water education across the continent of Africa in partnership with other stakeholders and the Society for Women Environmental Entrtepreneurs and Training (SWEET) Africa Project
28.10.08
WICO'S Water sector activities :
The Water Integrity Network (WIN) was formed in 2006 to stimulate anti-corruption activities in the water sector locally, nationally and globally. It promotes solutions-oriented action and coalition building between civil society, the private and public sector, media and the governments.
Corruption in the water sector both puts at risk the lives of billions of people and slows development. Yet, there are many individuals, organizations and initiatives worldwide that have developed creative and effective ways to enhance water integrity.
Women and children are some of the most affected persons due to corruption in the water sector. To help fight this vice WICO International joined the Water Integrity Network (WIN) to fight corruption in the water sector especially in developing countries and see that women and children have access to clean and safe water and adequate sanitation to improve their livelihoods, build peace and promote sustainable development in their communities.
Since 2003 WICO International and its partners worldwide have been active in taking part in and organizing international days and event. Hence our participation in the International AIDS and the Celebration of the International Women’s Day is just some of the yearly activities WICO International takes part in.
Just to name some few events. In March 2008 in London, UK –WICO International Participated in the Capital Women Event, organized by the Mayor of London, which is part of London’s International Women’s Day Celebration. In March 2008 in Cambridge, UK. WICO International also participated in a series of International Women’s Week Celebration organized by the Cambridge City Council, in Cambridge, UK.
In December 2007 in Cambridge, as part of the celebration for the international day for persons with disability, WICO International organized a lecture in collaboration with the Cambridge City Council to raise awareness about the development of Decent Jobs for persons with disability.
In San Francisco, California, USA, April 2008 WICO International made a presentation on Women and Water for Global Sustainable Development at the Eco City Summit.
In October 2008 in Barcelona, Spain WICO International participated in the International Women Environmental Entrepreneurship Fair, during the IUCN World Conservation Congress 5-14 October 2008.
In Poland, 1-12 December 2008, WICO International would be taking part in the Gender and Climate Change debate to make sure Women are not left out under the Leadership of Ms Rosemary Olive Mbone Enie, a Cameroonian Geologist and Gender Ambassador of the Gender and Water Alliance (GWA). Ms Enie has over 17 years experience working in the field of Water, Environment, Sanitation and Hygiene. She represents WICO International in many Water and Environmental networks including the Global Water Partnership (GWP), The Gender and Water Alliance (GWA), Global Water Sustainability Forum (GWSF) www.beta-pulsewire.net) , Women Earth Alliance (WEA) Member of the advisory board (www.womenearthallinace.org) etc.