Gender and Social Development

Social Protection
The Commonwealth's role in shaping emerging global dialogue on social protection is significant against a backdrop of global financial crisis and its aftermath. This has exposed vulnerabilities of countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Our approach to social protection underscores the importance of considering women and children’s agency; their contribution to unpaid care and subsistence work; their unequal access to and rights over productive assets, especially land; and anticipating developmental and other challenges in the planning and delivery of social protection.

Recent work in this area includes:

• A roundtable on social protection in the context of the unpaid care economy and rural subsistence. Partners included ILO, IDS, member governments and CSO networks. Information generated and lessons from good practices from the roundtable have enhanced knowledge of member countries on the issue of social protection.
• An interactive panel on social protection convened at the 2012 AWID Forum where the agenda to expand the social protection floor was advanced. A Discussion Paper on social protection was issued and disseminated at the Forum as well as to Commonwealth national women’s machineries.

HIV/AIDS Carers
At the centre of the HIV/AIDS response are the 12 million people who need care and treatment. Those who are ill require support from carers who provide physical, social and psychological support. Yet these carers – essential actors in the response – are often invisible to the system that relies on them.

The Commonwealth Secretariat’s research, Who Cares? The Economics of Dignity, which focused on the human rights of unpaid HIV carers in 11 Commonwealth countries, revealed that carers had no time to do anything else but care. Their labour was not available for pursuing livelihoods and income-generating activities.

The writers argue that focusing on the carer at the household level directs assistance where it is most effective and most needed, will respect human rights, and will help achieve the MDGs on health.

Land Rights
To advance women’s land rights in Africa, we have focused on reconciling customary norms with more formal judicial processes, national laws and international human rights standards through production of legal handbooks.

Handbooks on women’s land rights will cover four jurisdictions – Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.  We are now working with partners including ActionAid International and the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) to popularise the handbook through training and advocacy targeting rural women, magistrates and land officials at the provincial level.

Strengthening Jurisprudence of Equality – Violence Against Women
Strengthening jurisprudence of equality is a key component of our work on gender, human rights and law. As the main institution on which women’s rights ultimately depend, the judiciary plays a critical role in the development and implementation of formal legal responses to discriminatory and criminal activities, including violence against women.

We have produced a review of pan-Commonwealth case law on violence against women which enabled the assessment of legal principles relating to this issue.  The review informed the Commonwealth Southern and Eastern Africa Judicial Forum on Jurisprudence of Equality. We will be producing a Benchbook for the judiciary on addressing violence against women and a related resource guide with case law.