Gender Analysis of the Sdgs in Five Countries in Latin America | July
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Gender Analysis of the SDGs in Five Countries in Latin America | July 2020 1 Environmental Educators without Borders (Grupo Educadores Ambientais Sem Fronteiras, GEASF) Organizations involved: Fundaexpresión (Colombia), Heñoi (Paraguay), Colectivo VientoSur (Chile), CIPCA (Bolivia) and MUPAN (Brazil) Author: Juana Vera Delgado Editor: Megan Morrissey Translator: Megan Morrissey Cover page photos: GEASF, CIPCA, Colectivo VientoSur, Fundaexpresión and Lisa Meyer Back cover photo: Inés Franceschelli This publication has been made possible thanks to... financial support from EU DEVCO. The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of our contributors. Gender Analysis of the SDGs in Five Countries in Latin America | July 2020 2 Contents Summary of the Women2030 LAC Gender Assessment Report 4 1. GFC and the Women2030 program 7 2. Participating organizations and the context of the communities involved 8 3. National policies regarding women's rights in Latin America 13 3.1 Policies and standards regarding the elimination of violence against women 14 3.2 Policies and regulations regarding access to and ownership of land 15 3.3 Policies and regulations regarding political rights and democratic parity 16 3.4 Policies and standards regarding labour rights and equal opportunities in vocational 17 education 3.5 Policy instruments regarding gender equality 18 4. Barriers and constraints faced by social organizations and women's organizations in 20 implementing Sustainable Development Goals 4.1 Lack of rights over the use and control of land, forests, and other natural resources 21 4.2 Living conditions and basic services 23 4.3 Lack of appreciation and full recognition of the role of women in maintaining family and 24 community agri-food systems 4.4 Domestic, political, and structural violence 26 4.5 Undervalued ‘reproductive’ work and remunerative discrimination of ‘productive’ work 28 4.6 Women's effective participation in decision-making spaces and political leadership 31 4.7 Gender and climate change 32 4.8 Gender and biodiversity and forest conservation 34 4.9 Insufficient budgets to implement the gender equality agenda 38 5. Alternative responses from women's organizations to advance gender equality and 39 (living well) 5.1 The Peasant and Community Reserves Collective of Santander in Colombia 39 5.2 Peasant and Indigenous women in Paraguay organize to tackle unsustainable agriculture 41 and climate change 5.3 The promotion of or among the Mapuche in Chile 42 5.4 The experience of agro-ecological crop diversification under irrigation in Bolivia 43 5.5 Environmental education and women's rights projects in Brazil 44 6. Conclusions and recommendations 45 References 50 Annex 51 Young woman at her organic farm, Colombia. FundaexprGeesnidóenr Analysis of the SDGs in Five Countries in Latin America | July 2020 3 Summary Summary of the Women2030 LAC Gender Assessment Report Global Forest Coalition (GFC) member organizations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia have conducted gender assessments in the communities that they work in based on processes of recognizing, understanding, and addressing the causes of gender injustice in rural, forest, and Indigenous communities. Through analysing gender- local, national, regional, and with the different gender barriers disaggregated data, we wish to not international levels. they face, and the sustainable only expose the current alternatives to the dominant inequalities in communities, but The gender assessments aim to patriarchal capitalist paradigm also provide evidence-based assess progress towards SDGs 1, 2, they create in order to achieve recommendations to help 5, 6, 13, and 15. Data was collected mutual coexistence between decision-makers assess the through interviewing individuals people and nature–a notion implementation of the Sustainable and groups in the communities known in Spanish as or Development Goals (SDGs) on the according to a participatory “living well”. Finally, chapter four ground. methodology framed in an presents the conclusions and intercultural and gender- recommendations of the gender This report presents the results of responsive approach. The results assessments. gender assessments carried out by and discussions of the gender five organizations in Latin America: assessments are presented here in While all five organizations work in Fundaexpresión in Colombia, four chapters. The first chapter unique local contexts, the results HEÑOI in Paraguay, Colectivo deals with the different existing of the gender assessments VientoSur in Chile, CIPCA in national policies and international indicate that the gender injustices Bolivia, and MUPAN in Brazil. With agreements and instruments on faced by women in all their support from the Global Forest gender equality. The second diversity and in rural, forest, and Coalition through the Women2030 chapter analyses the economic, Indigenous communities involve program, these five organizations social, and cultural barriers common patterns of are implementing capacity- women (and men) face to making differentiation, and gender building and women's legal instruments truly effective in hierarchies based on persistent empowerment, communication, relation to the six SDGs listed patriarchal practices. These outreach, and advocacy projects to above and prioritized by the practices are deeply-rooted in defend the rights of women and Women2030 program. Chapter colonial, extractivist, and capitalist vulnerable populations at the three examines the work that models. One of the common women’s groups engage in to cope denominators emerging from the Women2030 project, Paraguay. Susana Balbuena Gender Analysis of the SDGs in Five Countries in Latin America | July 2020 4 Summary gender assessments is the widespread violence faced by women in its various and interconnected forms: domestic, political, and structural. This violence is disproportionately directed towards Indigenous and Afro-descendant women from rural communities and marginalized urban areas, and levels of femicide are increasing in each country (see section 4.4), despite the fact that on paper Discussing women's rights , Bolivia. CIPCA there has been progress in implementing national laws and versus 17% in Paraguay, and an between 2010 and 2015. international agreements to overage of 40% in Chile • eradicate all forms of violence (Indigenous Mapuche against women (see section 3.1)1. communities). Increasing At the same time, growing dispossession of land and This is violations of human and forests due to incursions for counterproductive when environmental rights at the hands extractive industries makes planning and developing of extractive industries (such as access to land even more resilience policies. In practice, commercial tree plantations, critical for women. women interviewed indicate that unsustainable livestock and • they are more affected by feedstock farming, and mining), increasing water scarcity and have a particularly dramatic effect food insecurity, and forced on women in rural, forest, and Although ultimately this work migration. Indigenous communities. Unlike sustains the patriarchal • domestic violence, these rights capitalist system, national violations are promoted and statistics often group women protected by international trade under the categories of agreements and national laws ‘inactive’, ‘not working’, or ‘does While it is recognized that designed to boost economic not contribute to the family women play decisive roles in the growth. economy’. conservation and management • of biodiversity and forest Specifically, the gender ecosystems, their exclusion assessments demonstrate the from decision-making makes it different structural barriers that easier for extractive industries to women face to “living well” due to , even though continue harming forests and gender inequality and many of these are led by biodiversity, often in the name environmental injustice. These women. 31.7% in Chile, 25% in of ‘sustainable management’. barriers include: Bolivia, and 18.7% in Brazil. • • One of the conclusions highlighted in the gender assessments is that Except for Bolivia, where increasing numbers of women's female access to land is around One exception is organizations and environmental 47% in the Altiplano- La Paz Bolivia, where the percentage of movements believe that gender and 52% in Cochabamba women elected to serve in and environmental justice are key Valley, in Colombia, only 8% of departmental assemblies to achieving the SDGs. It is women interviewed own land, increased from 27.6% to 45.5% recognized that the climate crisis, 1 Relevant initiatives and institutions include: the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); Beijing Platform for Action; ILO Convention 169; Agenda 2030; Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará); Latin American Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights (CLADEM); Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Women2030 project, Paraguay. Susana Balbuena Gender Analysis of the SDGs in Five Countries in Latin America | July 2020 5 Summary social injustices, and gender-based The key recommendations are: resilience, and by destroying violence–and, more recently, • All forms of violence against forests and other biodiverse pandemics–are directly related to women, girls, and Indigenous ecosystems. deforestation, extractive peoples must be urgently • The United Nations should not industries, and