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DAWN Press Release on the UNIFEM
appointment
We are dismayed by the way in which the UN has made the
appointment of a new Executive Director for UNIFEM. We
feel that the selection process has been deeply flawed
and its integrity violated.
For a professional UN appointment the most important
part is the panel interview – a rigorous process to
ensure that the selected candidate is the best possible
in terms of competence and experience. For a post like
this, strong background and knowledge of development
issues as well as management experience are critical. In
addition, the panel looks for the person’s leadership
qualities including strategic vision and the ability to
enthuse and mobilize multiple partners including
governments, civil society and other UN agencies.
We understand that the interview panel, which carefully
looked at the qualifications of the six short listed
candidates, identified one person, Dr. Gita Sen, as
outstanding and recommended her for the position. None
of the others were ranked as appropriate for this post.
However, because of the UN’s concerns over funding, and
significant and open political pressure from the
Government of Spain, other names from the shortlist were
brought back into consideration. A decision that should
have been completed last November was delayed and
increasingly politicized in the worst possible way. This
is a tragedy for the UN in terms of its ability to draw
competent candidates, transparency and fairness, and its
credibility with women’s movements and development
organizations.
The UNIFEM appointment has attracted great concern among
civil society and governments about the seriousness of
the Secretary General’s commitment to advance the UN’s
work on gender equality and women’s rights. This
decision could do serious damage at a time when there is
a lot of talk of strengthening the gender architecture
of the UN and making sure it delivers for women.
DAWN Steering Committee:
Bene Madunagu (General Coordinator), Girls Power
Initiative – Nigeria
Sonia Correa (Focus: Sexual and Reproductive Rights),
Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association, Sexuality
Policy Watch – Brazil
Celita Eccher (Latin America), International Council for
Adult Education – Uruguay
Gigi Francisco (South East Asia), International Gender
and Trade Network-Asia, Women and Gender Institute
Miriam College – Philippines
Afua Hesse (Africa), African Public Health Rights
Alliance; Multidisciplinary African Women's Health
Network; NETRIGHT – Ghana
Anita Nayar (Focus: Political Ecology and
Sustainability), University of Sussex – India/USA
Kumudini Samuel (South Asia), Women and Media Collective
– Sri Lanka
Maggie Schmeitz (Caribbean), Stitching Ultimate Purpose
– Suriname
Claire Slatter (Past General Coordinator), Pacific
Network on Globalisation – Fiji
Viviene Taylor (Focus: Political Restructuring & Social
Transformation), Southern African Development Education
Programme, University of Cape Town – South Africa
Yvonne Underhill-Sem (Pacific), University of Auckland –
Cook Islands/New Zealand
Mariama Williams (Focus: Political Economy of
Globalisation-Trade), International Gender and Trade
Network, Institute of Law and Economics – Jamaica/USA
Women activists arrested in
Tehran
Iran-Emrooz,Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 04, 2007
http://www.iran-emrooz.net/index.php?/news1/12208/
50 of the women's rights movement activists were
arrested in front of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran.
The security police forces attacked a peaceful gathering
of women's rights activists that had taken place at 8:30
am in front of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran in
objection to the recent governmental oppressions and the
summoning of some of these activists. The police forces
who used violence to scatter the crowd,
arrested at least 21 of the protesters. According to the
report published by Advar News, the list of the arrested
is as follows:
Asieh Amini, Jila Bani Yaghoub, Mahboubeb
Abbasgholizadeh, Mahboubeh Hosseinzadeh,
Sara Loghmani, Zara Amjadian, Mariam Hossein Khah,
Jelveh Javaheri, Niloofar
Golkar, Parastoo Dokoohaki, Zeinab Peyghambarzadeh,
Maryam Mirza, Saghar Laghayee,
Khadijeh Moghaddam, Saghie Laghayee, Nahid Keshavarz,
Mahnaz Mohammadi, Nasrin
Afzali, Tal'at Taghinia, Fakhri Shadfar, Maryam Shadfar,
Elnaz Ansari, Fatemeh
Govarayee, Azadeh Forghani, Sommayeh Farid, Minoo
Mortezayee, Sara Imanian.
Nooshin Amhadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Shahla
Entesari and Susan Tahmasebi - fiveprominent members of
the women's rights movement—who had to attend their
court hearing left the court session in support of their
fellow activists. They, too, got arrested upon their
departure from the court.
The police officers hit Nahid Jafari's head to the
police van and as a result of such violent actions, her
teeth broke and the officers are currently refusing to
take her to the emergency room.
DAWN
Steering Committee News
DAWN is
pleased to announce that Kumudini Samuel is the new
Regional Coordinator for South Asia, succeeding Vanita
Mukherjee, while Judith Wedderburn is standing in as the
Regional Coordinator for the Caribbean following the
exit of Joan Grant-Cummings due to the pressures of her
new employment.
We are also very pleased to announce that Anita Nayar
will join the DAWN Steering Committee as Research
Coordinator of our emerging political ecology theme.
From the outset DAWN's analysis has included an
understanding of sustainable livelihood concerns of
women in the global South. More recently as the margins
of ecological survival are shrinking particularly for
impoverished communities, and in many places nature is
already 'answering back,' we recognize the need to pay
greater attention to the health of the planet alongside
our human rights. However, ecological issues cannot be
disassociated from women's rights, including the adverse
effects on their sexual and reproductive health, or from
political and economic concerns over the inequitable
allocation of natural resources. Our intention therefore
is to develop DAWN's political ecology analysis from a
southern feminist perspective, conceptually linked to
our continuing critique of global trends in the body
politics, governance, and political economy arenas.
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Policy, Politics and Women's Reproductive Health
In 2001 the
DAWN Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (S&R H&R)
Program designed a new global policy research effort to
examine the ways in which health reform processes affect
national responses to maternal mortality and
post-abortion care and the debate regarding the
legalization of abortion. This initiative aimed at
re-visiting policy implementation in a group of
countries that had been the object of a DAWN policy
assessment in 1999–2000 (Weighing-up Cairo), 2000). It
was also an opportunity to articulate research and
activism in the period leading to 10th anniversary of
the International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD), in 2004. Twelve countries were
examined in this new research cycle: Argentina, Brazil,
Bolivia, Mexico and Uruguay in Latin America; Ghana and
Nigeria in Africa; the Philippines in Asia; Barbados,
Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago in the
Caribbean. In 2006 the final cross country analysis
resulting from this new effort was completed.
The twelve countries reports as well as the
global report -
Policy, politics and women’s reproductive health – A
study of health sector reform, maternal mortality and
abortion in selected countries of the South are now
posted in the
DAWN webpage.
Good reading
Bene Madunagu and Sonia Corrêa
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African Feminist Forum
The
launching of the
Charter of Feminists Principles for African
Feminists at the 3rd International Feminist Dialogue
mark a major contribution by the African Feminist Forum
(AFF) and the larger feminist movement to the on-going
world social forum. The AFF took place last year in
Ghana and this space was created as an autonomous space
in which African feminists from all walks of life and at
different levels including local levels and the
academia, could reflect on a collective basis and chart
ways to strengthen and grow the feminists movement on
the continent.
Spanish version
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Presentations by panelists at the DAWN panel held during
the World Social Forum 2007, Nairobi, Kenya themed
"Citizenship: Democracy, Retribution and Rights"
Other
presentations:
Back to top
DAWN condemns the killing of the Director of Women's Affairs in
Kandahar
,
Afghanistan
DAWN joins
other women's rights and human rights organizations in
condemning the killing of the Safia Amajan, the Director
of the Department of Women's Affairs in Kandahar ,
Afghanistan by gunmen outside her home on the morning of
September 25, 2006. This unpleasant incident highlights
the urgent need to seriously address the situation of
insecurity, intimidation and gross violations of women's
human rights that remain a daily occurrence in
Afghanistan . It also speaks to the escalation of gender
based persecution faced by women's rights defenders and
activists particularly when their work empowers women or
challenges traditional gender roles.
It is imperative that this murder is not allowed to go
by with impunity but that it is fully investigated and
the perpetrators are brought to face justice. We are
deeply outraged and saddened by this loss and would like
to extend our solidarity and condolences to Safia
Amajan's family, friends and colleagues in this
difficult time.
We encourage human rights defenders in Afghanistan to
continue with the work of Safia Amejan. DAWN sees this
as a serious challenge to be taken on as priority in the
agenda of the newly created Human Rights Council.
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