Great news from CEDAW session at the UN

Although I got back from New York last week, I wanted to update you on the outcome of the CEDAW session. Great news! – the CEDAW Committee has made some strong recommendations on older women’s rights to the Government of Tanzania.

In its concluding observations, the Committee expressed their concern about the vulnerable situation that older women find themselves in. It is deeply concerned about the reports of intimidation, isolation, abuse and killings that can result from witchcraft accusations. It expressed concern about the delay in revising the inheritance laws and the continued existence of discriminatory customary practices, including wife inheritance and widow cleansing.

It made a number of recommendations to the Government:

• to ensure older women have full access to health and social services and decision-making processes, as well as adequate and appropriate jobs in the labour market.
• to adopt special programmes to alleviate older women’s poverty
• to adopt special programmes to combat discrimination against them
• to challenge traditional views regarding older women, particularly accusations of witchcraft
• to provide further information, including disaggregated data on the situation of older women in its next report to the Committee
• to accelerate and set a clear timeframe for the review and amendments to the inheritance laws
  

You can read the full text here, in particular look at paragraphs 17, 46 and 47:

So what happens next?

The Government has been asked to share these recommendations widely, including with parliamentarians, government officials, politicians, NGOs and human rights organisations. The Committee has also requested that it submit a report to them on what it has done to implement the recommendations within the next two years. The Government is then due to submit its next full report to CEDAW in 2014, when again, it must report on progress made on these recommendations.

In the meantime we can use these recommendations in our advocacy and lobbying work and continue to play a role in holding the Government to account on its rights obligations to all the older women and men of Tanzania.

Visit our website to read more about our work on rights issues.

Holding the Tanzanian government to account

It has been a busy week here in New York in the run up to the Government of Tanzania reporting on their implementation of the CEDAW convention on Friday.

Briefing the CEDAW committee
In addition to HelpAge International’s oral statement and written submission on older women’s rights, I took part in a lunchtime briefing with CEDAW Committee members on Thursday. Organised by the Tanzanian Women’s Legal Aid Centre (WLAC), a long time partner of HelpAge International in Tanzania, this meeting gave us another opportunity to raise our key issues with the Committee members and gave them an opportunity to ask us further questions before Friday’s session with the Government delegation. It was good to see that they were particularly interested in finding out more about the discriminatory inheritance laws and practice that have such an impact on older widows.

Holding the Tanzanian government to account
I was also really pleased with the attention that was given to older women’s rights in Friday’s examination of the Government of Tanzania’s progress in implementing CEDAW. All of our key points were raised by the Committee members: what the Government is doing to prevent the violent consequences of accusations of witchcraft; when it will complete its reform of the discriminatory inheritance laws; what the Government is doing to ensure older women can access the health services that are theirs by right; and what support the Government is providing to older women carers.

The Government recognised the discrimination many older women are experiencing but was unable to give concrete answers to many of the questions on how they would address this. So now we wait for the Committee’s concluding comments to the Government in which we hope they will make some specific recommendations on these issues.

CEDAW member championing older women's rights
In another development, I was really encouraged by the fact that one of the Committee members wants to champion older women’s rights within the Committee. I and other representatives from ageing organisations met with her to talk about how we would like the Committee to systematically address older women’s rights with every government that comes before them.

The Committee can do this by issuing a General Recommendation. These look at how particular themes or issues relate to government obligations under the different articles of the Convention. A General Recommendation on older women’s rights would look at the implications of the Convention on government obligations from an ageing perspective and therefore help ensure that the rights of older women are addressed by governments, by the Committee in their examination of government reports and by NGOs submitting shadow reports.

It is early days and these processes take time but the fact we now have a champion within the Committee is great step forward.

Highlighting the abuse of women's rights at CEDAW

One of the things we are doing at HelpAge International is using existing human rights mechanisms to influence national policy. We collate evidence and experience generated from our and our partners’country programmes and present it, along with recommendations for government action, at the international level.

Today, I delivered an oral statement on older women’s rights in Tanzania on behalf of HelpAge International and 12 other Tanzanian NGOs that are working on older women’s rights. This is the third time that HelpAge International has submitted evidence to the Committee that monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Our previous submissions on Mozambique and Bolivia were successful in ensuring the Committee made recommendations to the respective governments on how they can better protect older women’s rights. Now it is the turn of the Government of Tanzania, which is reporting this week on their record of implementing the Convention.

The CEDAW Committee is incredibly open and responsive to the input from NGOs, in particular national and local ones. Today was no exception and there were a number of NGOs from the various countries highlighting women’s rights in their countries. Five minutes is not long for a statement but it is enough to make the key points.

As well as making an oral statement we have submitted written evidence and recommendations on three key areas of violations of older women’s rights: gender-based violence as a result of witchcraft accusations; their exclusion from HIV and AIDS programmes and services despite their pivotal role as carers of sick adults and vulnerable children; and, the discriminatory inheritance laws which impact hugely on them in the event of widowhood.

We now look forward to Friday when the Committee questions the Tanzanian Government delegation and hope they do not ignore the very real discrimination that older women are experiencing.