WfWP President Mariet Verhoef-Cohen (r) with H.E. Ambassador Katalin Annamária Bogyay, Permanent Representative of Hungary to the UN
Closing remarks Mariet Verhoef-Cohen HLPF 2018 side event on women and water:
Are Women meaningfully involved in implementing SDG 6+ in the national plans?
Ladies and gentlemen,
I have the honor to close the session and will try to summarize the main recommendations of the session. We will polish them later to present to the HLPF.
Uschi Eid commemorated that since the nineties of the past century, there is a lot of preaching about the inclusion of women in water, but there is still little practicing. Stop doing things about them without them! Therefore we will recommend to the HLPF to make policies concrete, implement, implement and implement and convince the member states to make the means available …. And include women as agents of change, experts and leaders from the start of any water initiative or action.
Most countries explained that they work on the implementation of SDG 6, but do not automatically include the role of women. It might mean a lack of information and awareness, prevailing prejudice about the important link between SDG 6 and SDG 5 … and we recommend to the HLPF to facilitate further research and campaigning about this link in the frame of an international year on water and women.
Countries do suffer from lack of data in general to measure SDG 6 and more specifically sex disaggregated data, so it remains difficult to know where we are. Lesha made it clear that there are tools tested and made available by UNESCO/WWAP (Word Water Assessment Programme) and we will recommend to use them.
In the report of the Secretary General is stated that gender inequality continues to hold women back and deprives them of basic rights and opportunities. Empowering women requires addressing structural issues such as unfair social norms and attitudes, lack of access to vocational training and payed jobs as well as developing progressive legal frameworks and practices that enhance equality between women and men. Or in other words a call to put policy into practice! And we need UN Women and member states to help us!
One of the initiatives to create more attention to the inclusion of women is to announce a special UN International Year on Water and Women. A special year can emphasize the positive role of women in the success of water projects, in innovation and more efficient use of resources. It can give a boost to the inclusion of women in the water world: from decisions about allocation of means, to training and education to (Citizens) monitoring & evaluation. It can give a boost to cope with water scarcity, since women play important roles to preserve the precious resource and are the main users in agriculture, health care and domestically, etc.
With or without an international UN year, means are always necessary to include women on an equal basis in the water sector. The NGO/CSW publication about a gendered approach to HLPF proposed to start a global fund for SDG5 based on the positive experiences of other global funds. We applaud that idea and recommend a special fund for Water and Women.
Thank you for your attention.
Mariet Verhoef-Cohen
Mariet Verhoef-Cohen is the president of Women for Water Partnership as well as of Soroptimist International. She is founder and owner of Bacolet Translations BV and co-chair of the Water Scarcity in Agriculture Platform WASAG as well as a member of the Supervisory Board of Catent, a foundation of several schools in Zwolle The Netherlands. She is Officer in the Royal Order of Oranje Nassau and Knight in the National Order of the Republic of Madagascar.
Are Women meaningfully involved in implementing SDG 6+ in the national plans?
Ladies and gentlemen,
I have the honor to close the session and will try to summarize the main recommendations of the session. We will polish them later to present to the HLPF.
Uschi Eid commemorated that since the nineties of the past century, there is a lot of preaching about the inclusion of women in water, but there is still little practicing. Stop doing things about them without them! Therefore we will recommend to the HLPF to make policies concrete, implement, implement and implement and convince the member states to make the means available …. And include women as agents of change, experts and leaders from the start of any water initiative or action.
Most countries explained that they work on the implementation of SDG 6, but do not automatically include the role of women. It might mean a lack of information and awareness, prevailing prejudice about the important link between SDG 6 and SDG 5 … and we recommend to the HLPF to facilitate further research and campaigning about this link in the frame of an international year on water and women.
Countries do suffer from lack of data in general to measure SDG 6 and more specifically sex disaggregated data, so it remains difficult to know where we are. Lesha made it clear that there are tools tested and made available by UNESCO/WWAP (Word Water Assessment Programme) and we will recommend to use them.
In the report of the Secretary General is stated that gender inequality continues to hold women back and deprives them of basic rights and opportunities. Empowering women requires addressing structural issues such as unfair social norms and attitudes, lack of access to vocational training and payed jobs as well as developing progressive legal frameworks and practices that enhance equality between women and men. Or in other words a call to put policy into practice! And we need UN Women and member states to help us!
One of the initiatives to create more attention to the inclusion of women is to announce a special UN International Year on Water and Women. A special year can emphasize the positive role of women in the success of water projects, in innovation and more efficient use of resources. It can give a boost to the inclusion of women in the water world: from decisions about allocation of means, to training and education to (Citizens) monitoring & evaluation. It can give a boost to cope with water scarcity, since women play important roles to preserve the precious resource and are the main users in agriculture, health care and domestically, etc.
With or without an international UN year, means are always necessary to include women on an equal basis in the water sector. The NGO/CSW publication about a gendered approach to HLPF proposed to start a global fund for SDG5 based on the positive experiences of other global funds. We applaud that idea and recommend a special fund for Water and Women.
Thank you for your attention.
Mariet Verhoef-Cohen
Mariet Verhoef-Cohen is the president of Women for Water Partnership as well as of Soroptimist International. She is founder and owner of Bacolet Translations BV and co-chair of the Water Scarcity in Agriculture Platform WASAG as well as a member of the Supervisory Board of Catent, a foundation of several schools in Zwolle The Netherlands. She is Officer in the Royal Order of Oranje Nassau and Knight in the National Order of the Republic of Madagascar.
