CEDAW Nepal: Government must ensure disadvantaged women’s access to employment and decision-making
New recommendations by the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) call on the government of Nepal to ensure that women, especially those belonging to disadvantaged groups, have access to adequate social and economic benefits, economic empowerment and social protection schemes.
Women and girls in Nepal, in particularly those belonging to marginalized communities, like rural and indigenous women, are more likely to be poor than males, despite the significant contribution they make to the economy.
In Nepal land, forest and river resources play a vital role in rural women's day-to-day livelihood. Most of them sustain their livelihoods and supplement their income from resources in forests, rivers and wetlands. FIAN Nepal in its parallel report to the CEDAW highlights how marginalized Dalit and indigenous women are denied employment with equal and living wages and lack of access to agricultural land and social security.
“In FIAN Nepal’s experience, women farmers, indigenous and Dalit women are facing extreme food insecurity when they are working full time as farmers,” says Tilak Adhikari, FIAN Nepal Programme Manager.
“The local government operating programs have a focus on farmers, however, women farmers, especially from marginalized indigenous and Dalit communities, are not able to access the programs due to not being able to follow the complicated procedure adopted by government, and due to nepotism and widespread corruption.”
The parallel report further sheds light on the impact of industrial destruction and pollution on women’s right to safe drinking water and a clean and healthy environment. It also highlights the negative impact of declining agriculture production, deteriorating health of livestock, landslides and other environmental challenges. It shows how women and girls disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change and environmental destruction due to their greater reliance on natural resources and primary roles in securing food, water and fuel.
The CEDAW Committee, in its concluding remarks, expressed concerns, that in particular, rural women, indigenous women, migrant women, women with disabilities and women living in poverty, are disproportionately affected by climate change related impacts including natural disasters and the loss of biodiversity. It regreted the lack of consultations with rural and Indigenous women on construction projects by foreign investors and private enterprises.
The committee recommended the government of Nepal to enable women’s active participation in the creation and operation of new funding arrangements for responding to environmental loss and damage and to ensure that women are equally represented in the development, adoption and implementation of legislation, policies and programmes on climate change, disaster response and disaster risk reduction.
“The government must apply special gender-sensitive support mechanisms to eliminate poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and the lack of enjoyment of the right to adequate food and nutrition among women and girls particularly of those groups who belong to underprivileged and marginalized communities,” says Laxmi Gurung, Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator at FIAN Nepal.
“This includes climate and environmental justice for women and girls and the support of the transition to agroecology and other traditional ways of livelihood including fishing”.
Download the FIAN Nepal parallel report here
For more information, please contact Sabine Pabst pabst@fian.org
