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| Features |
| MDGs reliant on women |
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by
Raphael Mweninguwe , 25 October 2006
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05:00:38
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As dawn breaks every morning, in a remote part of Chazale, women begin their daily chores—walking long distance in search of clean water, and firewood, then returning to tend to their gardens - their livelihood—caring for the children and keeping things in check in the home. Their lives in this small area in the Traditional Authority Kayuni in Karonga district, arduous as they may seem, are not unique in Malawi.
But, they do not complain, though the quality of their lives would greatly improve with better access to social services. Culture, tradition and poverty in Malawi dictate girls and women’s role within the confines of their homesteads.
“What can you do? Every woman knows that she has to support the family. She needs to work hard and any lazy woman does not stay in the marriage longer. This is cannot just change overnight,” said Ivy Kayira, a mother of three in a recent interview.
Chazale has high illiteracy rates and the population of around 25,000 people is served by one primary school. Many girls drop out of school before reaching Standard 8, while many more do not even start.
“This is a very rural area and there are very few girls who have gone beyond Standard 5, let alone secondary school. There are no role models for girls. Worse still the area is far away from the main trading centres where our children could learn something new,” said Kayira.
In Chazale like many areas in Malawi, high numbers of girls are dropping out of school because of tradition, poverty and lack of good infrastructure.
The United Nations (UN) wants to see this situation change. As the world body commemorates its founding day today, UN Resident Coordinator Michael Keating says the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) cannot be achieved “if women are not empowered”.
The distance covered and time spent to fetch water, collect firewood, leaves little time for primary school for girls or higher learning for women. When hospitals are far or ill equipped, maternal and child mortality rates soar. It is a known fact that women endure the worst of disaster, disease and poverty.
“Providing social services to the poor remains a challenge for Malawi. But getting girls to school and retaining them, enables women to make informed decisions about their health and general wellbeing and their economic prospects improve as well,” says Keating.
President Bingu wa Mutharika has on a number of occasions said he would like to see the lives of girls and women improve in Malawi. He has also promised to put “qualified women on positions of authority” as one way of bridging gender gap that exists in the civil service and other government institutions.
For Malawi, like many other developing countries, achieving the MDGs by 2015 is a struggle. Mutharika says his main priority is to improve the economy and reduce poverty.
Two priority MDGs the country needs to achieve by 2015 are reduce by half the proportion of people [of Malawi] living on less than US$1 a day and halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV and Aids.
However, the government single-handedly cannot achieve these goals. Malawians, too, have a role to pray.
“Economic growth and poverty reduction cannot be achieved by Government alone. The private sector is critical—entrepreneurs, business people, farmers, vendors, people who are trying to make a living from their hard work and to get things done,” says Keating, adding: “One of the challenges facing Malawi is to create an enabling environment for economic growth. Malawi needs to create conditions that will attract investors. Investing in Malawi is tough right now. Interest rates are high, and for manufacturers, reliable inputs remain an issue, such as water and power supply.”
Debt cancellation for Malawi has been seen as a major economic victory. But how this would translate into reducing people’s poverty is another thing.
Over 50 percent of the 12 million people live in abject poverty. Health, education, roads infrastructure and communications systems are poor.
To support Malawi address all these problems the UN family in Malawi is currently producing their five-year Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF). This is the third UNDAF, one being prepared by the UN and Government in response to national priorities as well as to renew efforts to make sure the UN is as useful and effective as possibly, working as ‘one UN’. The aim is to maximise the policy, technical and financial resources of all UN agencies in the country and ensure they are coherently used to make an impact on a limited number of national needs and priorities.”
“We are positioning ourselves in the context of Malawi Growth Development Strategy (MGDS). We look at the national plan and as UN we want to find out how we can most contribute to this national strategy,” says Keating.
The plan, which will run from 2008, is focusing on five priority areas, which are economic growth, protection of vulnerable people, provision of basic social services, HIV and Aids and good governance.
According to the UN, other cross cutting issues, will also be of focus. They include human rights, gender and capacity for implementing the programmes. Food security remains pivotal. The World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) are working with the government in ensuring that Malawi is food secure; United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), World Health Organisation (WHO), UNAids, World Health Population Fund (UNFPA) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) focus their activities in areas of child protection, health, HIV and Aids, reproductive health and human rights and good governance, respectively.
Other UN agencies not resident but greatly contributing to the development of the country includes the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Habitat, International Labour Organisation (ILO), UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).
Regarding the political situation, Keating praises Malawi’s peaceful transition from a one party to multiparty system of government. However, he points out that Malawi is a young democracy whose constitutional bodies and practices need to be strengthened and protected from politically motivating infighting.
“It is healthy for politicians to differ. I look forward to the day when differences have less to do with which region or party people come from and more to do with debates about how Malawi can achieve the MDGs and the best ways to grow the economy. Political infighting that derails the development process can be very damaging for the country—and ultimately, it’s the most vulnerable that suffer,” says Keating.
If indeed these political differences are to help people especially women economically then most people have no reason not to support them but if they are to benefit individual politicians, then the women’s empowerment and the desire to achieve MDGs remains a dream: —Courtesy of the UN Office in Malawi. |
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