By Hyshyama Hamin
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Apr 3 2023 – Discriminatory family laws and policies that restrict women’s access to educational opportunities, employment, inheritance, property ownership and equal pay, are making women disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of the global economic downturn.

Not only is it unjust to deny women equal economic rights, but it is also significantly hampering socio-economic progress of nation states. Governments urgently need to reform discriminatory family laws that privilege men over women because countries cannot afford to sideline half their population.

Women shoulder a greater burden of unpaid labor

Many countries are currently mired in financial crisis, soaring inflation, and debilitating debt. The backdrop to this is a global economic slowdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and extreme weather fuelled by climate change. Research shows that gender inequality at home is exacerbated by such economic slumps, with women more likely than men to be saddled with increases in unpaid domestic work like cooking, cleaning, and caring for family members.

According to the International Labour Organisation, up to 76% of unpaid care work is done by women and girls. The unequal division of informal labor requires women to forgo paid employment, work more hours, and can curtail their financial and career prospects.

Unpaid care work can account for anywhere between 10% and 39% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a potential tenth of the world’s economic output. It contributes hugely to a society’s economic well-being, but is excluded from official GDP figures that measure the economic performance of countries. This is because many people, including some economists and policymakers, view unpaid domestic labor as women and girls “fulfilling their family duty.”

Discriminatory gender stereotypes of this kind are embedded within patriarchal family structures and are both encoded in and perpetuated by sex-discriminatory family laws that limit women’s ability to participate in the economic sphere.

Legally prohibiting women from equal education and economic involvement limits their earning potential, reduces their decision-making power, and widens the gender pay gap.

All this traps women in a cycle of poverty and forces many to remain financially dependent on male relatives, thus putting them at greater risk of a range of human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence and exploitation.

Around half of countries have economic status laws that treat women unequally

Equality Now’s policy brief, Words & Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable to the Beijing +30 Review Process – Sex Discrimination in Economic Status Laws, highlights how around half of countries still have economic status laws that treat women unequally, making them more vulnerable to exploitation in real life and online.

Recent data from the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2023 report shockingly shows that only 14 out of 190 economies surveyed have achieved full legal equality, and a typical economy only grants women 75% of the same rights as men.

According to the same report, women face restrictions in marriage and divorce matters in 89 economies. Lamentably, 43 economies do not grant equal inheritance rights to male and female surviving spouses and 41 economies still favor sons in the division of property.

One factor highly corresponds with these statistics – family laws that discriminate against women and girls. In Gender-Discriminatory Laws and Women’s Economic Agency, Mala Htun, Francesca R. Jensenius, and Jami Nelson Nunez analyzed World Bank data. They found a strong correlation between restrictions on women’s economic agency and gender-discriminatory legislation relating to family laws and personal status laws that regulate relationships between individuals, such as in marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance.

Religious and legal discrimination entwines

Sri Lanka is one of many countries with sex-discriminatory family laws. It has also recently been experiencing a severe economic crisis and public demands for political change.

Lawyer and activist Ermiza Tegal highlights how this upheaval tallies with an uptick in domestic violence and sexual abuse.

Tegal is calling for legal reform, citing mounting evidence of the “direct relationship between discriminatory family laws and women’s physical and mental health, and vulnerability to exploitation and violence,” with unjust legal provisions and practices driving women and children to destitution and excluding them from education and development.

Examples of Sri Lanka’s discriminatory laws include the Muslim Intestate Succession Law, which stipulates that daughters can only inherit half of parental property compared to sons, and the Jaffna Matrimonial Rights and Inheritance Ordinance (or Thesawalamai) that applies specifically to Jaffna Tamils and prevents a married woman from disposing of real estate without her husband’s consent.

Another example is the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA), which allows child marriage, denies women the ability to sign their own marriage documents, and does not recognize the concepts of matrimonial property or alimony.

Currently, Sri Lanka is in the process of reforming the MMDA following widespread public demand for reform, led by Muslim women’s rights groups.

In Tunisia too, women do not have equal inheritance rights, despite a very progressive Personal Status Code enacted in 1956 that promoted equality between spouses and abolished polygamy.

Samia Fessi is President of Kadirat, an NGO working to repeal discriminatory laws, and she is part of a vibrant women’s rights movement that has campaigned for decades for equal inheritance.

According to Fessi, “Women rights activists argue rightfully that equality in the inheritance will benefit economically marginalized women as half is better than nothing. We believe that discriminatory laws should be abolished if we want women’s conditions to improve.”

In 2017, there were hopes that equal inheritance would be granted as part of progressive amendments to Tunisia’s Personal Status Code announced by former president Beji Caid Essebsi.

Despite opposition from conservatives arguing that equal inheritance is a violation of Islamic Shari’a law, he succeeded in getting the reform Bill approved by the Ministerial Council.

Unfortunately, Essebsi’s death in 2019 meant the loss of presidential support, and the Bill has not passed. The likelihood of imminent reform has faltered under the new president, Kais Saeid. He holds conservative views on inheritance and other social issues, and has overseen the passing of a new Constitution that declares Tunisia is an Islamic nation and the state must work to achieve “the goals of pure Islam in preserving life, honour, money, religion and freedom.”

Reforming family laws benefits everyone

Equality Now’s report summarizes that “women’s legal capacity – their ability to act and make choices independently of the men in their lives about money, travel, work, property, and children – by far is the strongest predictor of the share of women with bank accounts, the share of women who participate in firm ownership, and female labor force participation.”

Mala Htun et al.’s study concurs, concluding that egalitarian reform of family laws “may be the most crucial precondition to empower women economically,” and this should be everyone’s priority because it would “unleash massive economic potential.”

Global data demonstrates that accelerated progress toward gender equality can result in huge economic gains for a country, and compelling evidence shows that nations have more diverse, dynamic, and resilient economies when they foster environments that enable women to enter and thrive in labor markets.

Employment and property rights can grant women access to loans, insurance, and social protection schemes like pensions and provident funds, reducing the likelihood of old-age poverty, and making women and their families more resilient during economic crises.

Women with full legal capacity and agency are more likely to pursue education, fund skills and income-building, and contribute to the national economy. Women are also more likely to invest in their family’s welfare, such as by prioritizing their children’s education, nutrition, and healthcare.

To advocate for much needed legal change, the Global Campaign for Equality in Famly Law was launched by eight leading women’s rights and faith-inspired organizations, alongside UN Women.

The campaign calls on governments to prioritize equality in family law, policy, and practice, especially in light of severe economic crises that affect women and girls disproportionately. Sexist family and related laws need to be repealed or reformed and attempts to introduce new discriminatory laws should be blocked.

Ensuring that laws which govern the family and personal status protect and promote women’s economic and legal rights must be a prerequisite for every country striving to overcome economic challenges. This must also be a priority for multi-lateral and bilateral agencies supporting countries. Economic equality in the family culminates in economic equality in society. The time for family law reform is now!

Hyshyama Hamin is Campaign Manager, Global Campaign for Equality in Family Law, Equality Now

IPS UN Bureau

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 3 2023 – As signs of a new Cold War are fast emerging at the United Nations, the US continues its war of words with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The rivalry, which extends from Russia and Taiwan to Iran and Myanmar – where the UN’s two permanent members are on opposite sides of ongoing political or military conflicts– has now triggered a battle on semantics.

Is China, described as the world’s second largest economy ranking next to the US, really a “developing nation”?

The US House of Representative unanimously passed a bill March 27 directing the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to strip the PRC of its “developing country” status in international organizations

Titled “PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act” — the bill cleared the House in an overwhelming 415-0 vote. The legislation reads: “It should be the policy of the United States—

(1) to oppose the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as a developing country in any treaty or other international agreement to which the United States is a party;

(2) to oppose the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as a developing country in each international organization of which the United States is a member; and

(3) to pursue the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as an upper middle-income country, high income country, or developed country in each international organization of which the United States is a member”.

At the United Nations, China is closely allied with the 137-member Group of 77 (G77), the largest single coalition of “developing countries” (a group created in 1964 with 77 members).

Since China is not a formal member of the G77, the group describes itself either as “The G77 and China” or “The G77 plus China.”

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN and a former UN Under-Secretary-General, told IPS the defining of a developing country is a complex challenge.

“There is no established framework or charter for defining a “developing country,” he noted

According to well-respected economist Jeffrey Sachs, the current divide between the developed and developing world is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Some economists emphasize that the binary labeling of countries is “neither descriptive nor explanatory”.

For the UN system, the G77, which provides the collective negotiating platform of the countries of the South, is in reality synonymous with nations which are identified as “developing countries, least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries and small island developing states” (SIDS).

“They are all sub-groupings of developing countries and belong to the G-77, he pointed out.

Outlining the group’s history, he said, the G-77 was established in 1964 by seventy-seven developing countries, signatories of the “Joint Declaration” issued at the end of the first session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.

Although members of the G-77 have increased to 134 countries, the original name was retained due to its historic significance. Developing countries tend to have some characteristics in common, often due to their histories or geographies, said Ambassador Chowdhury, Chairman of the Administrative and Budgetary Committee (Fifth Committee) of the UN General Assembly in 1997-98 and Chair of the Group of 27, working group of G-77, in 1982-83.

In October 1997, he said, China joined the G-77 while keeping its special identity by proposing the nomenclature as “G-77 and China”. China aligns its positions on the global economic and social issues with G-77 positions for negotiating purposes.

Being the largest negotiating group in the United Nations, and in view of the mutuality of their common concerns, G-77 is not expected to agree to separate China from the current collaborative arrangements.

“And more so, if the pressure comes from the US delegation, in view of the recent resolution of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, to take away the categorization of China as a developing country”, declared Ambassador Chowdhury.

In a World Bank Data Blog, Tariq Khokhar, Global Data Editor & Senior Data Scientist and Umar Serajuddin, Manager, Development Data Group, at the World Bank, point out that the IMF, in the “World Economic Outlook (WEO)” currently classify 37 countries as “Advanced Economies” and all others are considered “Emerging Market and Developing Economies” according to the WEO Statistical Annex.”

The institution notes that “this classification is not based on strict criteria, economic or otherwise” and that it’s done in order to “facilitate analysis by providing a reasonably meaningful method of organizing data.”

The United Nations has no formal definition of developing countries, but still uses the term for monitoring purposes and classifies as many as 159 countries as developing, the authors argue.

Under the UN’s current classification, all of Europe and Northern America along with Japan, Australia and New Zealand are classified as developed regions, and all other regions are developing.

The UN maintains a list of “Least Developed Countries” which are defined by accounting for GNI per capita as well as measures of human capital and economic vulnerability.

“While we can’t find the first instance of “developing world” being used, what it colloquially refers to — the group of countries that fare relatively and similarly poorly in social and economic measures — hasn’t been consistently or precisely defined, and this “definition” hasn’t been updated.”

“The World Bank has for many years referred to “low and middle income countries” as “developing countries” for convenience in publications, but even if this definition was reasonable in the past, it’s worth asking if it has remained so and if a more granular definition is warranted.”

In its legislation, the US House of Representatives says “not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report identifying all current treaty negotiations in which—

(a) Any international organization of which the United States and the People’s Republic of China are both current member states, the Secretary, in coordination with the heads of other Federal agencies and departments as needed, shall pursue—

(1) changing the status of the People’s Republic of China from developing country to upper middle income country, high income country, or developed country if a mechanism exists in such organization to make such a change in status;

(2) proposing the development of a mechanism described in paragraph (1) to change the status of the People’s Republic of China in such organization from developing country to developed country; or

(3) regardless of efforts made pursuant to paragraphs (1) and (2), working to ensure that the People’s Republic of China does not receive preferential treatment or assistance within the organization as a result of it having the status of a developing country.

(b) The President may waive the application of subsection (a) with respect to any international organization if the President notifies the appropriate committees of Congress, not later than 10 days before the date on which the waiver shall take effect, that such a waiver is in the national interests of the United States.

Speaking during the debate, Representative Young Kim (Republican of California) said: “The People’s Republic of China is the world’s second largest economy, accounting for 18.6 percent of the global economy.”

“Their economy is second only to that of the United States. The United States is treated as a developed country, so should PRC,” Kim said. “And is also treated as a high-income country in treaties and international organizations, so China should also be treated as a developed country.”

“However, the PRC is classified as a developing country, and they’re using this status to game the system and hurt countries that are truly in need,” she added.

Elaborating further, Ambassador Chowdhury said the World Bank, as a part of the Bretton Woods institutions, classifies the world’s economies into four groups, based on gross national income per capita: high, upper-middle, lower-middle, and low income countries.

In 2015, the World Bank declared that the “developing/developed world categorization” had become less relevant and that they will phase out the use of that descriptor.

Instead, their reports will present data aggregations for regions and income groups.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) accepts any country’s claim of itself being “developing”.

He said certain countries that have become “developed” in the last 20 years by almost all economic metrics, still wants to be classified as “developing country”, as it entitles them to a preferential treatment at the WTO – countries such as Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

The term “Global South“, used by some as an alternative term to developing countries, began to be mentioned more widely since about 2004.

The Global South refers to these countries’ interconnected histories of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and differential economic and social change through which large inequalities in living standards, life expectancy, and access to resources are maintained.

“Most of humanity resides in the Global South,” declared Ambassador Chowdhury.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Mariela Jara
CUZCO, Peru, Apr 3 2023 – Paulina Locumbe, a 42-year-old peasant farmer who lives in ​​the Andes highlands of southern Peru, learned as a child to harvest and dry crops, one of the ancestral practices with which she combats the food insecurity that affects millions in this Andean country.

“I have tarwi (Lupinus mutabilis), peas and dry beans stored for six years, we ate them during the pandemic and I will do the same now because since I have not planted due to the lack of rain, I will not have a harvest this year,” she told IPS in her community, Urpay, located in the municipality of Huaro, in the department of Cuzco, at more than 3,100 meters above sea level.“Farmers faced a very hard 2022, it was a terrible year with water shortages, hailstorms, frosts and an increase in pests and diseases. These factors are going to reduce by 40 to 50 percent the crops they had planned for planting corn, potatoes, vegetables, and quinoa.” — Janet Nina Cusiyupanqui

She, like a large part of the more than two million family farmers in Peru, 30 percent of whom are women, has been hit by multiple crises that have reduced their crops and put their right to food at risk.

A study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published in January estimated that more than 93 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean suffered from severe food insecurity in 2021, a figure almost 30 million higher than in 2019.

Compared to Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, the situation was more alarming in South America, where the affected population climbed from 22 million in 2014 to more than 65 million in 2021.

In Peru, a country of 33 million people, food insecurity already affected nearly half of the population, according to the FAO alert issued in August 2022, far exceeding the eight million suffering from food insecurity before the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly due to the increase in poverty and the barriers to accessing a healthy diet.

Women from the Andes highlands areas of Peru, such as those who reside in different Quechua peasant communities in the department of Cuzco in the south of the country, are getting ahead thanks to the knowledge handed down by their mothers and grandmothers.

Putting this knowledge into practice ensures their daily food in a context of constant threats to agricultural activity such as extreme natural events due to climate change -droughts and hailstorms in recent times – the rise in the cost of living and the political crisis in the country which means the needs of farmers have been even more neglected than usual.

Paulina Locumbe, an agroecological farmer from the rural community of Urpay, in the municipality of Huaro, in the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco, shows her recent planting of vegetables in her greenhouse, which once harvested will go directly to the family table to enrich their diet. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Producing enough for daily sustenance

Yolanda Haqquehua, a small farmer from the rural community of Muñapata, in the municipality of Urcos, answered IPS by phone early in the morning when she had just returned with the alfalfa she cut from her small farm to feed the 80 guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) that she breeds, a species that has provided a nutritious source of protein since ancient times.

“I don’t sell them, they are for our consumption,” she explained about the use of this Andean rodent that was domesticated before the time of the Incas. “I cook them on birthdays and on a daily basis when we need meat, especially for my eight-year-old daughter. I also use the droppings to make the natural fertilizer that I use on my crops,” she added.

Haqqehua, 36, the mother of Mayra Abigail, has seen how the price of oil, rice, and sugar have risen in the markets. Although this worries her, she has found solutions in her own environment by diversifying her production and naturally processing some foods.

“I grow a variety of vegetables in the greenhouse and in the field for our daily food. I have radishes, spinach, Chinese onion, chard, red lettuce, broad beans, peas, and the aromatic herbs parsley and coriander,” she said.

She also grows potatoes and corn, which last year she was able to harvest in quantity, although she does not believe this will be repeated in 2023 due to the devastating effects of climate change in the Andes highlands in the first few months of the year.

“Fortunately, I got enough potatoes and so that they don’t spoil, we made chuño and that’s what we’re eating now,” she said.

Chuño is a potato that dries up with the frost, in the low temperatures below zero in the southern hemisphere winter month of June, and that, when stored properly, can be preserved for years.

“I keep it in tightly closed buckets. I also dry the corn and we eat it boiled or toasted. And the same thing with peas. It’s like having a small reserve warehouse,” she said.

Selecting the best ears of corn, carrying out the drying, storage and conservation process is the result of lifelong learning. “My parents did it that way and we are continuing what they taught us. With all this we help each other to achieve food security, because if not, we would not have anything to eat,” she said.

Janet Nina Cusiyupanqui, a young Quechua agronomist, talks with a farmer in her vegetable greenhouse in the rural community of Muñapata in Cuzco, southern Peru, during her work providing technical assistance for food security to rural women, as part of the Agroecological School of the non-governmental Flora Tristán Center. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Agroecology to strengthen Andean knowledge

Janet Nina Cusiyupanqui, an agronomist born in the Cuzco province of Calca, is a 34-year-old bilingual Quechua indigenous woman who, after studying with a scholarship at Earth University in Costa Rica, returned to her land to share her new knowledge.

She currently provides technical assistance to the 100 members of the Agroecological School that the non-governmental feminist Flora Tristán Center for Peruvian Women runs in six rural communities in the Cuzco province of Quispicanchi: Huasao, Muñapata, Parapucjio, Sachac, Sensencalla and Urpay.

“Farmers faced a very hard 2022, it was a terrible year with water shortages, hailstorms, frosts and an increase in pests and diseases. These factors are going to reduce by 40 to 50 percent the crops they had planned for planting corn, potatoes, vegetables, and quinoa,” she told IPS in the historic city of Cuzco.

She stressed that women are leading actors in the face of food insecurity. “They know how to process and preserve food, which is a key strategy in these moments of crisis. To this knowledge is added the management of agroecological techniques with which they produce crops in a diversified, healthy and chemical-free way,” she said.

The expert stated that although they would have a smaller harvest, it would be varied, so they would depend less on the market. Added to this is their practice of exchanging products and ayni, a bartering-like ancestral tradition: “You give me a little of what I don’t have and I pay you with something you lack, or with work.”

Luzmila Rivera (2nd-L) poses for photos together with her fellow women farmers from the rural community of Paropucjio, in the highlands of Cuzco in southern Peru, after participating in a market for agricultural products organized by the municipality of Cusipata, where they sold their vegetables, grains and tubers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Don’t give up in the face of adversity

At the age of 53, Luzmila Rivera had never seen such a terrible hailstorm. In February, shortly before Carnival, a rain of pieces of ice larger than a marble fell on the high Andean communities of Cuzco, “ruining everything.”

In the peasant community of Paropucjio where she lives, at more than 3,300 meters above sea level, she felt the pounding on her tin roof for 15 seemingly endless minutes, and the roof ended up full of holes. “Hail has fallen before, but not like this. The intensity knocked down the tarwi flowers and we are not going to have a harvest,” she lamented.

Tarwi is an ancestral Andean cultivated legume, also known as chocho or lupine, with a high nutritional value, superior to soybeans. It is consumed fresh and is also dried and stored.

Rivera is confident that the potato planting carried out in the months of October and November will be successful in order to obtain a good harvest in April and May.

And like other small farmers in the Andes highlands of Cuzco, she also preserves crops to store. “I have my dry corn saved from last year, I always select the best ones for seeds and for consumption. I also store broad beans, after harvesting I air dry them and in a week they can be stored,” she said.

This provides the basis for their diet in the following months. “I cook the broad beans in a stew as if they were lentils or chickpeas, I put them in the soup or we have them at breakfast along with the boiled corn, which we call mote, it’s very tasty and healthy,” she said.

In another rural community at an altitude of 3,100 meters, Choquepata, in the municipality of Oropesa, Ana María Zárete, 41, manages an organic vegetable greenhouse as part of the Flora Tristán Center’s proposal to promote access to land and agroecological training to boost the autonomy of rural women.

She said it is valuable to have all kinds of vegetables always within reach. “This is new for us, we didn’t used to plant or eat green leafy vegetables. Now we benefit from this varied production that comes from our own hands; everything is healthy and ecological, we don’t poison ourselves with chemicals,” she said.

This knowledge and experience places Quechua women in Cuzco on the front line in the fight against food insecurity. But as agronomist Nina Cusiyupanqui stated, they continue to lack recognition by government authorities, and to face conditions of inequality and disadvantage.