Global Issues, Local Voices

Global Issues, Local Voices: the Role of NGOS in Building Sustainable Capacity

This parallel event of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)sponsored by the Bahá'í International Community and supported by FATIMA Women’s Network, the National Alliance of Women’s Organizations and the UK National Committee of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) titled “Global Issues, Local Voices: the Role of NGOS in Building Sustainable Capacity” considered ways that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can be influential in holding governments accountable for the international agreements they commit to at the United Nations.

Even among those organizations that are aware, there is often a misconception that a huge amount of expertise is needed in order to put the declarations and commitments in such mechanisms as the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, the Beijing Platform of Action and other UN agreements. It’s important for NGOs to know that they can use these international documents when contacting their national governments to add the weight to their appeals for justice and equal rights, she said.

Ms. Hainsworth stressed the practical impact of these agreements, which may seem simply to be words on a page.  “In Beijing, three words changed the lives of millions of people,” she said.  “Those three words – the girl child – changed our ability to work for the special needs of girls.”  Prior to Beijing, girls as a group were classified either as women or as children, which did not allow for the unique obstacles and threats they uniquely face.

Shama Pande, from Nepal and a member of the Bahá'í International Community delegation, has experience working with national and international NGOs in Nepal. She spoke about how the relationship between donors and NGOs has changed.  After 1990, Ms. Pande said, the role of the government changed to “planner, implementer and monitor” of funding.  Sustainability has become the number one concern, she said, and guidelines, planning, capacity building and training are the new focus.

Panelist Eleanor Ann Nwadinobi, Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Representative of the UN NGO/DPI Executive Committee works with widows in rural Nigeria.  Dr. Nwadinobi presented compelling cases of this “most marginalized of marginalized groups” which defies the notion of widows as old women and more likely includes cases such as one she described: a young woman who was married at 13, gave birth and was widowed at age 18.

Dr. Nwadinobi also stressed the necessity of training people how to use the international instruments to protect the rights of these threatened populations, and told how a network of women’s human rights organizations had gotten together and pooled their various skills – media, lobbying, interpreting the law – to make good use of the existing international mechanisms.