“It is crucial to put rural women’s needs and priorities at the centre of development efforts if hunger and poverty are to be eradicated,” said Phrang Roy, Assistant President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
More than 75 per cent of the world’s 1.1 billion extremely poor people live in rural areas of developing countries. The majority are women.
Speaking on the eve of International Women’s Day, Roy said IFAD prioritized the economic empowerment of women as one of the fundamentals for broad-based economic growth and poverty reduction. For this to be possible, women need secure access to productive resources such as land, water for agriculture and financial capital.
“We have learned through our experience in rural development projects and programmes that when women have secure access to these resources, and when they can take advantage of economic opportunities, they have great capacity to become powerful agents of change and social transformation,” Roy said. “They can transform their own lives and the lives of their families and communities.”
http://www.ifad.org/media/press/2005/23.htm
In this section we are collecting various documents & redirecting you to websites to demonstrate and inform on the issues girls and women face in their struggle to get a better deal for themselves. We hope that you get to find inspiration, information, may be even a new bee in your bonnet.
The following pdf download is available from http:/www.odi.org.uk
Girls’ education through a human rights lens: What can be done differently, what can be made better
From Action Aid International
The Johannesburg Position on HIV/AIDS and Women’s and Girls’ Rights in Africa
From http:www.womendeliver.org
Focus-on-5 – Women’s Health and the MDGs
Nicholas D. Kristof is a New York Times Op-Ed columnist. He is the author, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, of “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” He wrote D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid Revolution which highlights how many women over time have made some huge impact in the lives of other women. This article is also about the issue of menstruation for poor women and girls and the germ of an idea (by a woman) of how it could be solved.
