The discrimination is real, and it exists everywhere — in our places of work, worship, public spaces and in our very own homes. More often than not, these acts of discrimination against women are done unconsciously. With all the time, funding and effort invested in raising awareness of discrimination against women, change is happening, albeit at a very slow pace. This week, The Fiji Times caught up with Nahla Haidar, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee chairwoman to talk about discrimination, the disconnect between the levels of society, and the slow road to transformation.
The Fiji Times: Is this your first visit to the Pacific region?
Haidar: This is my first time in the region. Fiji had featured in my consciousness as really a fascinating place to visit. Beautiful people, beautiful land. When I arrived, it was exactly at the level of expectations. All of us have some dream about the Pacific islands, the beauty, simplicity of life, the values, the different things that we don’t have back in our own countries where we have been raised or educated. I found a lot of all those beautiful things. But at the same time, I found also the concern of the impact of climate change. This is a region that is not contributing to gas emissions — the least contributing, but the one paying the highest price. As someone who has always been concerned with disaster risk reduction, the impact of climate change and the fact that natural hazards can become real disasters when they hit vulnerable states, my heart feels a lot with the way these countries are struggling.
The Fiji Times: There is a disconnect between what happens at policy-making and decision-making levels and how this affects people on the ground. We heard at one of the sessions that not many young people know about CEDAW. How do we work as a collective to bridge this gap?
Haidar: I’m hoping this event will provide this kind of venue for these exchanges. It’s a multi-stakeholder event, you have civil society organisations, grassroots, you have academic missions and you have government. When the two levels meet, bottom up and top down, those that prepare policies and legal frameworks, it’s wonderful, but how do you operationalise that? If you don’t have the work from the ground coming up, to change the attitude, provide better understanding. When these two intersect then we can really implement transformational change we’re aiming for. There is a lot of potential for this to happen here because these are societies that talk to each other. These are small societies and everybody’s view is important. There should be more building on these types of consultations. The talanoa in itself is an indication that this is a society that wants to reflect, and exchange and put its own diagnosis. CEDAW, for one, there is a misunderstanding. There was a perception at one of the talanoa that CEDAW was for same-sex marriage. That was very surprising. Of course, we are about the rights of everyone including people’s sexual orientation and gender identity. But CEDAW is about women and girls and this has to be restated to the centrality of the convention. Sometimes misinformation can lead to neglect, or to consider that these tools are becoming irrelevant. Unfortunately, gender equality in the world is far from having been achieved and, therefore, I think it’s more relevant than ever, and I hope this region can build on this event, the dialogue we’ve started. You also have a lot of UN presence that can help you. This session is called the Technical Cooperation Session so it’s about capacity-building and we can cumulatively build on the impact including with the dialogues we’ll be having with the three particular countries at this session. But even beyond that, I think the dynamics of the multi-stakeholder consultative process should continue.
The Fiji Times: You mentioned the presence of many UN bodies in Fiji, and how we should consider ourselves fortunate because of this. Why are we not progressing enough in terms of ending violence against women and discrimination against women and why are our statistics not reflecting the change we hope to see in these areas with this in-country presence?
Haidar: I think the issue of setbacks sometimes are beyond the presence of UN. Unfortunately, the world is going through so much transformation and chaos that many things are not producing the results they were expected to. For Fiji, a lot of the progress has happened in the past decade in terms of legal frameworks. Maybe the area where there is still resistance is changing mentality and attitudes especially in areas away from the capital, away from the cities, in the maritime areas. These are areas that require specific intervention to bring them up to speed. I’m sure there is also, from the CSOs side, interaction with those areas and there is awareness of the importance of filling those gaps.
The Fiji Times: There is an assumption that there is little to no discrimination against women in development agencies overseeing the implementation of work related to the principles of CEDAW and other UN conventions that strive to uphold human rights. What is your advice for development sector partners to ensure they walk the talk?
Haidar: What is important for all these entities is to have a staff representation voice. To have a way where they have an assembly of staff and a form of representation that can air their concerns and they can go to a go-between to ensure implementation of policies on non-discrimination and parity. It has to be done through representation. The voice of the staff has to be heard and management alone cannot make everything happen. In my UN career, for almost 15 years, I was the staff representative so I believe in the staff power and their ability to identify, to diagnose the problems and to address them.
The Fiji Times: Who monitors the UN when it comes to the implementation of ending discrimination and violence against women? What mechanisms are in place to ensure the “do no harm” approach is a lived reality within the UN?
Haidar: That’s a very pertinent question. I happen to have been a staff member of the UN for three decades. I have to say I was not always pleased with the mechanism we had – we had some. And I was part of the Anti-Discrimination Committee but it has an advisory role. And then I became a volunteer for the Advancement of Women but it was an advisory role. Very often, I say the UN does not practice what it preaches including at one point on work and family agenda. We used to speak about it and then I had cases of staff come to see me as focal point for the Advancement of Women and they would say: I’m promoted to this job in this duty station but no one is doing anything to help my husband find a job so how am I going to keep the balance? I have to admit that until now, although we have a very progressive Secretary General and he has set the target for parity, complete parity at senior level in the UN, the mechanisms for accountability are not really properly there. There have also been several mechanisms (to which funding has stopped) to see if there was any ill-making or harm done, by even peacekeeping troops or others in the field. I cannot say that I’m satisfied with what we have. We are also part of the imperfect world that we live in.
