Gender and trade

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a harmful practice experienced by an estimated 200 million women and girls throughout the world today. The practice, which involves the cutting or removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs, has no known health benefits, but many known short- and long- term health consequences. While the age at which girls are cut can vary from infancy to adolescence, most girls are cut between the ages of 5-14. This whitepaper examines the connections between FGM/C and education and highlights some programs and policies that have been implemented around the world to tackle this human rights violation.

This inventory gives an overview of past and ongoing activities on violence against women by the entities of the United Nations system, including those which will contribute to the achievement of the five key outcomes of the Secretary-Generalʼs Campaign by 2015. It is compiled by the Division for the Advancement of Women, now part of UN Women, as a contribution to the work of the Task Force on violence against women of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality. It is intended to further the objective of the Task Force to pursue systematic and timely information exchange among entities of the United Nations system about existing and planned strategies, programmes and activities on violence against women, at global, regional and national level.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the influence of social effects on the decision to practice excision in Burkina Faso households. We are particularly interested in social determinants, and make use of the heterogeneity of behaviors according to area of residence, ethnicity and religion. We believe that understanding the reasons that allow this plague to propagate may help identify means of combating it. To implement our trials, we use data from the Burkina Faso Enquête Démographique et de Santé 2003 (EDS), which supplies information on the prevalence of FGM and on the characteristics of Burkina Faso households. This paper’s main contribution is that it takes into account the impact of social variables on the decision to practice excision on girls. In addition, the methodology used allows us to get around certain problems arising from the omission of variables during the estimate of network impacts. Our results show that social pressure is strongly correlated to the decision to practice excision in Burkina Faso households.

Climate change is raising temperature in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region at a faster rate than the global average,1 increasing the frequency and the intensity of extreme weather events like droughts and floods, changing water cycles and causing sea level rise. Key weather-related hazards for children in MENA include heatwaves, floods, epidemics and disease outbreaks, storms, sandstorms, wildfires and droughts.2 There are 48.7 million adolescent girls across the MENA region3 and today, more adolescent girls than ever before live in droughtimpacted communities; fearing walks to school during rainy season; and migrating to seek refuge from floods, fires, or water- or foodscarcity. These adolescent girls bear a double burden: restricted not only by their age, but also by gender norms that prevent far too many from becoming educated, healthy, informed, skilled and empowered as fully active citizens.4

In addition to documenting the experience of women from six countries in Africa and the Arab region, the publication includes contributions from further afield, adding global perspective. Its keynote comes from Radhika Coomaraswamy, senior diplomat and academic who served as lead author of the Global Study on the Implementation of Resolution 1325 published in 2015. The document makes clear that the reality of women, peace and security has not matched the rhetoric of members states since the passage of UNSCR 1325 over 20 years ago.