UNIFEM Projects Around the Globe
|
Since 1994, UNIFEM has supported dialogue between Sudanese women from the North and the South to assist in developing a women's agenda.
When AIDS enters the household, almost without exception it is women and girls who care for the sick family members - a task that makes it impossible for them to pursue paid work.
Women participate in a tailoring class at the Parwan Province Women's Center in Afghanistan. Twenty-six percent of women attending classes have participated in training programs for income generation.
In Croatia, 2,800 teenage girls and boys participated in role-plays, lectures and group discussions aimed at combating violence in teen dating. Since 1994, UNIFEM has supported dialogue between Sudanese women from the North and the South to assist in developing a women's agenda.
|
YOU CAN HELP women achieve gender equality, halt the spread of HIV/AIDS, reduce feminized poverty and end violence against women. Join UNIFEM/USA today to support our efforts to create a world where women live free from poverty, violence and inequality.
UNIFEM's Projects Around the GlobeAchieving Gender Equality A Sudanese woman is more likely to die in childbirth than to finish eight years of school.She is fortunate when she is one of 16 young women who can read and write. Her income is on average 68 percent lower than that of men and she is more likely than a man to beamong the millions of Sudanese who had to flee their homes during the internal armed conflict that has ravaged the country for decades. Yet, as in so many other countries, her needs were largely ignored when peace was negotiated to end the fighting between the North and the South.To provide Sudanese women the opportunity to make their voices heard, UNIFEM organized a gender symposium in Oslo, where women from the North and South agreed on a unified Declaration to highlight women's involvement in the reconstruction process. UNIFEM's assistance has helped bridge the gap, but this is only the beginning. Halting the spread of HIV/AIDS Currently, there are more than 2 million people between the ages of 15 and 49 living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean. Of all infected adults in the Caribbean, 49 percentare women, with young women 2.5 times more likely to be infected than young men. In Brazil and Honduras, UNIFEM assisted gender advocates in assessing HIV/AIDS legislation as a first step toward improving national policies. In Porto Alegre, Brazil, UNIFEM supported an organization of Afro-Brazilian women to monitor access to HIV/AIDS-related public services. In Honduras, two of the largest women's groups are tracking national progress on international commitments on HIV/AIDS and highlighting the connections between HIV/AIDS and violence. With UNIFEM's support, progress is being made, but more needs to be done. Reducing Feminized Poverty In a war-torn region like Afghanistan, poverty among women and children has become vast and devastating. To reduce this poverty, UNIFEM has worked with the Ministry of Women's Affairs to establish four Women's Development Centers (WDCs) and six internally displaced Women's Community Centers. These centers bring together women across ethnic and political backgrounds and function as a support network for women's empowerment at the provincial level. They provide an array of services and have already trained 3,751 women in the areas of education and literacy, computer skills, health, income generation and women's rights under the new Constitution. UNIFEM's WDCs have been a monumental success in Afghanistan; however, women continue to be disproportionately concentrated in poorly paid, unsafe and insecure jobs. Ending Violence Against Women Each year, roughly two million girls between the ages of 5 and 15 are trafficked, sold, or coerced into prostitution. An estimated 130 million women have undergone Female Genital Mutilation, and an addition 2 million girls and women are being subjected to it each year. Women's bodies have become a battleground for those who use terror as a tactic of war - they are raped, abducted, humiliated and made to endure forced pregnancy, sexual abuse and slavery. In 1997, UNIFEM's Trust Fund was established to identify and support innovative projects aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women. To date, the Trust Fund has awarded over $14 million in grants to 237 initiatives in more than 100 countries. However, UNIFEM's Trust Fund can only support one out of 15 worthy initiatives that apply for funding. |
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| UNIFEM Projects.pdf | 420.03 KB |