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by Lan Mercado

Oxfam Advisor to the ASEAN for Partnership and Resource Mobilisation for ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response and former Oxfam Country Director for the Philippines and former Regional Programme Manager for East and South Asia

Disasters have started to make big headlines, mainly for the drama that it evokes. While the attention that all kinds of media puts on the scale of a disaster’s impact and the suffering that people caught in one go through is welcome, this kind of focus excludes many other aspects of disasters.

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Call for Action

Isis International has endorsed the following letter of the Women Human Rights Defenders calling for the immediate release of Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, a well-known and highly respected human rights defender who has been a strong and peaceful advocate for the rights of women in Bahrain and throughout the Middle East; and the letter of Nazra for Feminist Studies, Egypt also calling for his release and for the Government of Bahrain to respect the human rights of his daughters, Maryam Al-Khawaja and Zainab Al-Khawaja.

We encourage you and your organizations to write similar letters.

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DECLARATION
International Women's Network Against Militarism
8th Gathering: "Forging Nets for Demilitarization and Genuine Security"
February 19-25, 2012 – Puerto Rico

8thGathering2The 8th Gathering of the International Women's Network Against Militarism, that occurred on February 19-25, 2012, reunited 26 women representing 8 countries gathered in Puerto Rico. Delegates from the Philippines, Guahan (Guam), Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, Hawaii, and the United States joined their counterparts in Puerto Rico to evaluate the growing military threat and develop strategies to counter the impact of militarism, military contamination, imperialism and systems of oppression and exploitation based on gender, race, class, nationality and sexual orientation.

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Afghan women making the news - © UNESCOUNESCO, once again, calls on its media partners to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment remain on the forefront of their agenda, through its Women Make the News (WMN) 2012 initiative. Launched annually on the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March), WMN is a global policy advocacy initiative aimed at promoting gender equality in and through the media.

Much has been achieved since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995). Yet the Global Media Monitoring Project (2010) finds that still only 24% of the people questioned, heard, seen or read about in the written and audiovisual media are women; 76% are men. Only 16% of stories focus specifically on women.

The UNESCO-supported Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media (2011) reveals that women are underrepresented in the media operations in 73%, 50% and 46% of the countries surveyed in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Oceana, and the Americas, respectively. This is indicative that there is much more to be done.As the UNESCO Director-General notes, “The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is a reference for assessing progress towards equal rights and opportunities in all spheres [including in media] and identifying the significant challenges that still remain. The battle for gender equality is far from won…”

The theme for this year, Rural women’s access to media and information, seeks to underscore and stimulate knowledge exchange on:

  • the importance of policies and programmes in favour of access to media and information in rural communities, particularly for rural women; and
  • good practices and successes in this area as undertaken by public service broadcasters, commercial and community media and NGOs working to improve rural women’s access to media and information.

Access to media and information by rural women and men has many important dimensions or entry points. Within the framework of the function of the media to provide information needed by rural women to enhance their economic empowerment and political participation, WMN 2012 focuses on two of these entry points. Firstly, can and how are rural women and men actually accessing (listen to, read or watch) radio, newspaper and television in their communities, and how are community media and new media/technologies helping?  Secondly, are rural women actually in charge of the programming, production and broadcast of media content?

It is unequivocal that public service broadcasters, commercial media and community media can be key forces to drive the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which calls on all stakeholders to combat for “…women’s access to and participation in all communication systems, especially media”. International, regional and local NGOs and other social actors are also critical nodes in the network of stakeholders. But do the necessary policies and programmes exist in these different forms of media and ownership structures?Therefore, the theme for WMN 2012, Rural women’s access to media and information, is equally important to national and international media organizations and civil society organizations concerned with gender issues.

Please click here to learn more about how you can join this initiative.http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/crosscutting-priorities/gender/women-make-the-news/

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Afghan women making the news - © UNESCOUNESCO, once again, calls on its media partners to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment remain on the forefront of their agenda, through its Women Make the News (WMN) 2012 initiative. Launched annually on the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March), WMN is a global policy advocacy initiative aimed at promoting gender equality in and through the media.

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Sign on to Say NO to safeguarding “traditional values” over women’s human rights!
Deadline: 5 April 2012

This month the UN Commission on the Status of Women failed to adopt agreed conclusions at its 56th session on the basis of safeguarding "traditional values" at the expense of human rights and fundamental freedoms of women. Together with our partner feminist and women's rights organisations, we say NO to any re-opening of negotiations on the already established international agreements on women’s human rights and call on all governments to demonstrate their commitments to promote, protect and fulfill human rights and fundamental freedoms of women.