Gender

“WOMEN’S RIGHTSTOTAKECEN­TRESTAGEIN​”¹

The year 2020 was a land­mark year for gen­der equal­i­ty, for many rea­sons. Five years after the launch of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), 20 years after the his­toric res­o­lu­tion of the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on women, peace and secu­ri­ty, 25 years after the Bei­jing Dec­la­ra­tion and Plat­form for Action, 2020 is an impor­tant year for reflec­tion, com­mit­ment and action.

Launched at the end of 2020, the EU’s third action plan to pro­mote gen­der equal­i­ty reaf­firms that gen­der equal­i­ty and the empow­er­ment of women and girls (GAPIII) con­tin­ues to be a key polit­i­cal aim in EU exter­nal action.

Since then, the world has made con­sid­er­able progress, but there is still a long way to go to achieve gen­der equal­i­ty. Hard-won advances have been fun­da­men­tal­ly ques­tioned and new chal­lenges have emerged.

Three quar­ters of the world’s coun­tries today have laws on domes­tic vio­lence, but glob­al­ly 137 women are killed each day by a mem­ber of their own fam­i­ly; in the Euro­pean Union, one woman in ten says that they have been the vic­tim of cyber-harass­ment after the age of 15.

More women and girls can access edu­ca­tion, but the gap between the gen­ders in rela­tion to par­tic­i­pa­tion in the labour mar­ket remains unchanged. Every­where, it is women that take on the greater share of non-remu­ner­at­ed care and domes­tic work, often to the detri­ment of their careers and their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the econ­o­my. And while glob­al pover­ty has fall­en, it remains a sig­nif­i­cant­ly female issue: women aged between 25 and 34 are 25% more like­ly than men to be liv­ing in extreme poverty.

THECORO­N­AVIRUSCRI­SIS: A NEWGEN­DER GAP?

The stakes have become even high­er since the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has been rav­aging the plan­et, as peri­ods of great cri­sis often put women on the front line. They take cru­cial deci­sions on how to tack­le the effects of the cri­sis on pub­lic health, soci­ety and the econ­o­my, but at the same time they are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by the pan­dem­ic. Employ­ment and work­ing con­di­tions have been turned upside down, rais­ing the ques­tion of a pos­si­ble rever­sal of the progress made on gen­der equal­i­ty. Increased par­tic­i­pa­tion by women in the ongo­ing recov­ery from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic will be cru­cial in rebuild­ing more inclu­sive, fair­er and more eco­log­i­cal societies.

At the cur­rent pace, it will take anoth­er 100 years to achieve par­i­ty between the gen­ders in the areas of pol­i­tics, the econ­o­my, health and edu­ca­tion, accord­ing to the con­clu­sion of the Glob­al Gen­der Gap Report 2020. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The report also points to the areas where progress can be made in gen­der equal­i­ty, such as: an increase in polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women, the estab­lish­ment of afford­able care infra­struc­ture and the fair shar­ing of domes­tic tasks and care activ­i­ties, as well as teach­ing young women and girls the skills they need to suc­ceed in their future jobs.

Lux­em­bourg reaf­firms its unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to the Bei­jing Plat­form for Action and all the actions to pro­mote gen­der equal­i­ty described in it. The strength­en­ing of women’s and girls’ rights is a key ele­ment of the over­all aim in Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Cooperation’s gen­er­al strat­e­gy, and one of the three cross-cut­ting issues on which its actions focus. Thus, in 2020 Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion pur­sued its main­stream­ing approach to the issue through its coop­er­a­tion projects and pro­grammes, aim­ing to achieve con­sis­ten­cy. The actu­al­i­sa­tion of women’s rights as fun­da­men­tal human rights and of gen­der equal­i­ty requires a coor­di­nat­ed and mul­ti-sec­toral approach that involves all stake­hold­ers, includ­ing civ­il soci­ety and women’s organ­i­sa­tions, as well as the busi­ness world.

In line with the aim of adopt­ing a sen­si­tive approach to gen­der, in 2020 Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion revised its for­mer gen­der strat­e­gy on the basis of polit­i­cal and strate­gic guide­lines devel­oped at inter­na­tion­al, Euro­pean and nation­al lev­els. This was designed to inte­grate the dimen­sion of gen­der and gen­der equal­i­ty into all the projects and pro­grammes sup­port­ed by offi­cial devel­op­ment assis­tance, as well as into our insti­tu­tion­al structure.

Lux­em­bourg sub­mit­ted its response to the EU’s 2019 Report on the Gen­der Action Plan (GAP). It also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the tar­get­ed con­sul­ta­tion in prepa­ra­tion for the third action plan for the 2021 – 25 peri­od. At the meet­ing of the For­eign Affairs Coun­cil in its devel­op­ment con­fig­u­ra­tion in Novem­ber 2020, Min­is­ter Franz Fay­ot sup­port­ed the imple­men­ta­tion of GAPIII for gen­der equal­i­ty through­out the world. He also urged the Coun­cil to adopt ambi­tious tar­gets (includ­ing 85% of actions linked to gen­der in exter­nal action) and the main­te­nance of ambi­tious lan­guage (gen­der equal­i­ty instead of equal­i­ty between men and women).

Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion pur­sues a zero-tol­er­ance approach to sex­u­al and gen­der-based vio­lence in its pro­grammes and also with­in the insti­tu­tion itself. In line with this approach, since the start of 2020 any NGDO request­ing financ­ing from the MFA must first have sub­scribed to a Char­ter against sex­u­al harass­ment, exploita­tion and abuse, put for­ward by the OECD’s Devel­op­ment Aid Com­mit­tee (DAC) in 2019. By sub­scrib­ing to this Char­ter, every NGDO sub­scribes to a set of min­i­mum com­mit­ments to com­bat any form of sex­u­al exploita­tion and abuse and sex­u­al harass­ment (SEAH).

Lux­em­bourg has argued vig­or­ous­ly for the strongest pos­si­ble lan­guage regard­ing women’s and girls’ human rights in all inter­na­tion­al forums. With­in this con­text, in 2020 Lux­em­bourg was one of the sig­na­to­ries of a joint let­ter from donors to the Sec­re­tari­at of the Unit­ed Nations Exec­u­tive Board on the inclu­sion of SEAH aligned lan­guage for mul­ti­lat­er­al organisations.

To sup­port the fight against sex­u­al and gen­der-based vio­lence, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion was the first inter­na­tion­al donor to con­firm its sup­port to the Dr Mukwege’s Panzi hos­pi­tal for women and chil­dren in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go, with a bud­get of EUR5 mil­lion. The project’s par­tic­u­lar point of dif­fer­ence is that it pro­vides holis­tic sup­port for the treat­ment of rape vic­tims while facil­i­tat­ing their access to justice.