Click here for more details on the historic vote.

Also, click here for an article by WEDO Board Member, Roberto Bissio entitled “El derecho humano al agua“, which outlines the importance of this resolution.

Information
Briefing on the MDGs and the Human Right to Water
Monday, July 26, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Conference Room 6
North Lawn Building, United Nations, New York

Speakers:
Pablo Solon, Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations
Catherine Ferguson, Coordinator, UNANIMA International
Maude Barlow, Chair of the Board of Food & Water Watch, Chair of The Council of Canadians, Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly

Facilitated by:
Anil Naidoo, Blue Planet Project, and Rachel Harris, Women’s Environment and Development Organization

“This is the first time the General Assembly has been asked directly to deal with this issue and presents a huge test for the world,” says Maude Barlow, who served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the UN General Assembly.

Gender and Water
The right and access to clean water is intrinsically linked to gender equality. In many cultures, women and girls are responsible for collecting water for cooking, cleaning, drinking, hygiene, and growing food. However, decisions made about water and sanitation services continue to neglect gendered needs and concerns – largely because women are regularly left out of those policy-making spheres.

Women often have to travel long distances to collect water for their communities. Studies show that women in developing countries on average carry 20 litres of water per day over 6 km. This adds an incredible burden to women, particularly limiting the amount of time they have to spend on education. Traveling to collect water, often to remote areas, also puts women at risk for physical and sexual violence, along with added strains on their physical health. 

Climate change and biodiversity loss have caused huge changes in our water resources with increased droughts and floods, while at the same time reducing water access and quality. This has put further stress on women’s role as resource managers and increased the time devoted to collecting and managing water.

Importantly though, women have shown strong leadership both in terms of advocacy towards the protection and conservation of natural resources as well as innovation in the water sector. For example, in India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a trade union of 250,000 poor self-employed women, launched a ten year campaign to revive water sources in drought prone districts of Gujarat, India which resulted in better irrigation for drinking water and decreased soil salinity.

ACT NOW
For the first time since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted 60 years ago, the UN General Assembly is finally poised to recognize the Human Right to Water and Sanitation.
To mark this event, international and community groups are kicking off a Global Week of Action for the Human Right to Water and Sanitation from July 21st until the historic vote on July 28th. Actions include: sign an open statement from elected representatives in support of the human right to water and sanitation, send letters directly to UN missions, and, perhaps most importantly, contact your government to urge them to support this historic Resolution.

To find resources for all the above action items and to get more information on how you can help, WEDO urges to you visit the website of our partner, Blue Planet Project

About Blue Planet Project
The Blue Planet Project is an international civil society movement begun by The Council of Canadians to protect the world’s fresh water from the growing threats of trade and privatization.

They work with organizations and activists in both South and North, and are affiliated with international networks including Friends of the Earth International, Red Vida (the Americas Network on the Right to Water) and the People’s Health Movement.

WEDO, along with our partners and allies, looks forward to working closely with Ms. Figueres and the UNFCCC to secure a just and gender-responsive climate agreement.

See the UNFCCC announcement, “Christiana Figueres takes the helm at UNFCCC” (http://unfccc.int/2860.php)

• Climate financing- establishing a finance mechanism for climate-related funding which allows effective and equitable access to both women and men and which reaches the most vulnerable communities.
• Gender sensitive research- conducting a systematic review of existing research on gender in relation to the Convention and implementing a mandatory inclusion of sex-disaggregated data into all research influencing the UNFCCC process.
• REDD- ensuring the direct engagement of women in REDD processes, particularly in terms of small-scale forestry activities, and respecting women’s rights to land, property, and information.

You can read the full text of these interventions by clicking below.

Intervention on Climate Financing (by Dorah Lebelo, GenderCC)
Intervention on Research Development (by Maira Zahur, GenderCC)
Intervention on REDD (by Rachel Harris, WEDO)

Civil Society requested and was granted the statement opportunity after an ironic moment on Tuesday June 1, when observer organizations were not allowed to take the floor in prepared statements on the matter of ‘civil society participation.’ Click here for a full article on this matter from ECO.

With examples of gender plans of action from different regions, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA) will convene partners from the Environmental Ministry of Mozambique, the Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana, and the Central American Initiative to highlight the importance of gender considerations in implementing national climate change plans.

The event will be held on Tuesday, 1 June 2010

Download the side event flyer.
Download detailed information about side event.

Panelists included representatives from USAID and the World Bank

WEDO made important inputs to the event with Program Director Cate Owren moderating the distinguished panel and Rachel Harris speaking about “What grass-roots women want: recommendations for action” in a presentation that highlighted WEDO advocacy campaigns and case studies on gender and climate change. The event organizer and WEDO board member, Soon-Young Yoon, made a presentation of “Women in decision making: CEDAW and the Beijing Platform for Action.”

In her opening remarks, Cate pointed to the importance of engaging in a dialogue around gender equality and climate change financing:

“Tomorrow, the Global Preparatory Meeting will focus on rural women as agents of change and champions of global food security, followed by a session on development cooperation, examining international aid in effectively implementing, for example, the Millennium Development Goals and national development plans. And for those of us who have been deeply involved in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations, Copenhagen is still fresh in our minds as we race toward Mexico.

In this context, there is perhaps no topic more relevant – nor more timely – than looking at the intersection of gender equality and women’s participation and leadership, with the potentially billions of dollars that will be (that must be) generated to deal with the urgent issue on our global agenda: climate change.”

Access the full text of Cate Owren’s Opening Remarks

Access the full Program Details of the April 21 event

The full article, “Famine Marriages” Just One Byproduct of Climate Change, is available through the Interpress News Agency (www.ipsnews.net).

Parties agreed to hold 2 more meetings of the working groups, after the upcoming SB32 session in Bonn (31 May – 11 June) and prior to the COP-16 in Cancun, Mexico (29 November – 10 December). Additionally, Parties agreed that the Chair of each working group would draft negotiating text to be used as the starting point in June. For the LCA, those two documents are:
a) Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention on its eighth session, held in Copenhagen from 7 to 15 December 2009
b) Work undertaken by the Conference of the Parties at its fifteenth session on the basis of the report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention