allAfrica.com: Nigeria: New York - UN Meeting on the Status of Women (Page 1 of 2)

The venue was the main meeting room of the United Nations headquarters on the Manhattan's First Avenue in New York.

The event was the formal presentation of Nigeria's Sixth Periodic Report on the Implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women CEDAW to 41st Session United Nations Committee on the Status of Women. UN/CSW. All UN member countries that signed and ratified CEDAW see it as a veritable instrument for the guidance of State Parties on measures for the protection of women against all forms of discrimination so as to guarantee equality, development and peace.

However many State Parties, including Nigeria which signed CEDAW more than twenty years ago without any reservations, have not fully complied with their obligations under CEDAW. Others like the United States of America have refused to even sign the convention.

Nigeria's Report was produced by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, which is the country, mechanism for implementation of the CEDAW. As a member of the United Nations, Nigeria signed and ratified CEDAW in 1985 and 1991 respectively. In line with this, the country has an obligation under the Convention to present a periodic report to the UN. On July 3, 2008, the 73 member Nigerian delegation led by the Honourable Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Saudatu Bungudu was there to present the Country's Sixth Periodic Report on the Implementation of the CEDAW. The Report covered the period of July 2002 to 2006. Members of the delegation included Chief Executives from various government institutions, Commissioners for Women Affairs, the Academia, Directors and Gender Desk Officers from line Ministries, Departments and Agencies and members of Non Governmental Organisations NGOs. A member of the UN Committee said the delegation was the largest she had seen during her tenure.

The Report presented by the government was a response to the twenty six issues raised by the UN Committee the last time Nigeria appeared before it. Issue number one highlighted the progress made on the domestication of CEDAW which is still under consideration by the Executive. The government is confident that the bill will be passed during the tenure of the current administration. However, a bill on abolition of specific customary practices and discriminatory laws was passed in Ogun and Lagos states while Anambra and Imo states have passed the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. Another issue addressed by the Report was progress made at various levels to abolish harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation FGM and some states have passed the anti FGM law. In 2006, the government also mandated the Nigerian Law Reform Commission to undertake a reform of Nigeria Family law, an assignment that would be implemented in three phases.

Other issues were implementation of the Millennium Development Goals MDGs, the development of a National Gender Policy, increase in number of female teachers to 294,092 as against 304,659 for men, increase in primary school enrolment with the literacy rate for girls rising to 81% up from79%, male to female universal access stands at 55.9 and 44.1.Progress was also made in checking trafficking in persons. Strategic measures were also undertaken by government to increase the number of women in appointive and elective positions. On economic empowerment, the NEEDS document which contained a social charter which is committed to closing gender gaps was cited and gender was treated as a cross cutting issue in NEEDS. On reduction of maternal mortality, the declaration of maternal mortality as a national emergency in 2005, the construction of 381 model Primary Healthcare Centres which are managed by various communities and adoption of an Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses IMCI was also cited as government's intervention in this critical sector. Before the government presentation, the members of the CEDAW Committee had two days earlier invited and met with the representatives of the various NGOs to discuss and present a Shadow Report they had prepared on implementation of CEDAW in the country. I was privileged to be sponsored by the United Nations Fund for Women UNIFEM to participate in this event. The preparation of the Shadow Report was coordinated by an Enugu Based NGO, the Women Aid Collective WACOL led by its Executive Director, Barrister Joy Ezeilo. The activity was support from Heinrich Boll Foundation HBF, a German Foundation.. Other donor organisations and partners also provided support to the NGOs by providing travel grants to seven delegates who attended the New York report presentation. Among them were the Accra based African Women Development Fund (AWDF), Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), UNIFEM Abuja, HBF and IWRAW Asia Pacific.

The process of preparing the report was quite participatory, involving 148 NGOs which made contributions at national, zonal and state level workshops. The NGOs observed that 'the Nigerian 6th report is a commendable attempt to give a situational analysis and evaluation of the outcomes of its efforts to fulfill its obligations under CEDAW. The report, however, has not presented the full account of the status of women within the reporting period. This inaccuracy is, in part, due to acute lack of in-depth statistical information and failure to record issues that affect women. This dearth of reliable data acutely handicaps the compilation of Nigeria's country reports and prevents the Government from presenting an accurate account of the progress of implementation.'

The Shadow Report therefore examined Nigeria's sixth Country Periodic Report and assessed the success and failure of the government's implementation of CEDAW, MDG and the Beijing Platform of Action. The aim of producing the Shadow Report was to fill in some of the gaps in Nigeria's 6th Report to CEDAW Committee, and encourage the Government and strengthen the mechanisms for the implementation of CEDAW. So that all in Nigeria can work towards achieving a society free from discrimination against women. Some media women, women activists representing various NGOs and team leaders who coordinated the various contributions to the Shadow Report from the participants at the national workshops also attended the New York presentation of the report. Among them were Joy Ezeilo of WACOL Enugu, Mairo Bello of Adolescent Health Information Project AHIP Kano, Abiola Afolabi of WARD-C Lagos, Bisi Olagbegi- Olateru of Women Consortium, Sindi Goulda Meyer of Baobab. During their presentation they highlighted the various issues discussed during the production of the Shadow Report.

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