A report from Womens eNews today highlights criticisms of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by women's advocacy groups.
MDGs are eight key targets for 2015, relating to international development in a range of areas, including poverty, and improving maternal health. Goal No. 5, to improve maternal health, is way off track compared to the other 7, and critics say that the disparity shows that women's rights are being given less consideration. Maternal deaths dropped by less than 1 percent between 1990 and 2005 globally, according to the U.N.'s 2008 MDGs report, making the goal of a three-quarters reduction of 1990 figures in five years appear remote.
The criticisms are highlighted in a 15 page report from women's groups in advance of the Millennium Development Goals Summit in September to assess progress of the goals over the past 10 years. Advocates are lobbying for gendered language and gender-specific commitments to be imbedded throughout the summit's outcome document, not bracketed into women-specific sections.
I'm with the women's groups on this one: women's rights are human rights.
We're not just half the population, we're the majority of it and bracketing women's rights as a 'specialist' issue only acts to perpetuate and not to address the sidelining of women all over the world in public and private life. But this isn't an either/or issue - women's projects must continue to address the specific problems of women, particularly in relation to reproductive health and its impact on women's lives and choices, but should be centre-stage as a human rights issue, not sidelined as a 'women's issue'.
The position of women in global society not only underpins our evolving humanity as a species, it reflects it. And as long as we continue to refuse women the same fundamental freedoms and autonomy as men, we demean and lessen our very humanity.
