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Special Article: Gender Dimension in Regional Cooperation: Asian Experience

 

Biswajit Nag[1]

 

Despite having faster growth and development in recent years, world is still grappling with some real challenges. High population growth, mal-nutrition, illiteracy, gender divide, etc. are some of the major concerns world is facing today. Globalisation has resulted into faster growth in GDP and trade but there are many countries that are not part of rising income and are unable to derive the benefits from the fruits of globalisation. In recent years, emphasis on South-South cooperation has coincided with a recognized need for interdependence among countries of the South as a strategy to harness the opportunities presented by globalization and to minimize attendant risks. A number of countries in the South that have successfully and rapidly reduced poverty, raised life expectancy and increased the rate of economic growth present significant shareable skills, knowledge and experience, constituting rationale for promoting South-South exchanges of ideas and strategies. In this context, South-South initiatives are viewed as learning processes that highlight proven development paths in achieving poverty reduction and other Millennium Development Goals.[2] Of late, several countries have found that regional cooperation is an effective tool to address the socio-economic issues which is a special form of south-south cooperation.

 

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region have a long history of high growth. In general, the rise in growth rate is associated with increasing openness of these countries[1][3].  The countries in East and South East Asia experienced a rapid decline in poverty and perhaps more rapid than elsewhere in the developing world[1][4]. Other gains in social welfare include longer life expectancy, notable reductions in social and maternal mortality rates, greater calorie intake and widened access to basic needs, such as health, housing, safe water, sanitation facilities and education. However, this increased openness also brought risk. Rising openness and shock in the growth rate are quite visible incase of Indonesia and Thailand. Countries like Cambodia being increasingly open could not register high growth. Same is true for Central Asian countries. Along with the growth rate,literacy rate has been improving in the region but enrolment and completion rate is still low. Situation in  South Asia is worse compared to other Asian countries. Due to a lack of broad based development policies many countries do not have sustained accessibility and affordability of health facility and better utlisation of medical services. Countries in the region are increasingly bringing several policies to fight poverty, improve health condition, increase enrolment, and integrate environmental issues with sustainable development to face the challenges of globalization. In this context, better utilization of public funds and developing meaningful public-private partnership has been found to be important. There is a need of the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the South with the objective of creating jobs, reducing poverty and meeting other internationally agreed development goals, including those in the Millennium Declaration. Sub-regional groups like ASEAN[1][5], BIMSTEC[1][6], ECO[1][7], Pacific Island Forum and SAARC[1][8] are increasingly addressing the socio-economic issues including that of gender.

 

 

It is observed that the issues related to chronic poverty, scarcity of foods and poverty driven malnutrition etc are the prime areas where SAARC members have given focus. On the contrary, in ASEAN attempts have been to reduce the socio-economic adjustment cost due to macroeconomic reforms in the economy. In Pacific island Forum (PIF), the policies are tuned to achieve MDGs. Central Asian countries address the issues of environment and energy through triangular cooperation or regional cooperation mainly by the initiatives taken by the group ECO. All these blocs also address gender related issues with variety of commonly agreed policies and programmes. The bloc holds convention and proposes action plan at the highest level. Later on, technical committee looks into implementation and country level issues. The experience of SAARC, ASEAN and Pacific Island Forum is described below.

 

SAARC has an elaborative action plan for women as this is very prominent on the SAARC Agenda. The Technical Committee on Women in Development was created under the erstwhile Integrated Programme of Action (IPA) in 1986. Thirteen Meetings of the Technical Committee held under IPA resulted in the formulation of a Regional Plan of Action on Women. Over the years, technical committee included the issues of women, youth and children together. As a result, the structure of the programme got revised and put under Regional Integrated Programme of Action (RIPA) in 2004.

Convention on Prevention of Trafficking of Women and Children for Prostitution  (2002)[9] was conducted to promote effective cooperation amongst Member States to  deal with different aspects of prevention, interdiction and suppression of trafficking in women and children, repatriation and rehabilitation of victims and preventing the use of women and children in international prostitution networks, particularly where the SAARC Member Countries are the countries of origin, transit and destination. The Convention urges the members to take effective measures to ensure that criminal laws in individual countries can take care of this situation and provide effective punishment to criminals. Member countries are also suggested to provide counseling and legal assistance to victims. Under this Convention, members are expected to provide adequate training to respective authorities to carry out the principles of the convention and exchange information about trafficking and other related issues. The Thirteen Summit (in Dhaka, 2005) affirmed its strong resolve to continue to work together to address the problem posed by trafficking in women and children. That Summit expressed satisfaction at the ratification of the above Convention by all Member States and called for effective measures for its early implementation.

Convention on Regional Arrangements for the Promotion of Child Welfare of SAARC countries was held in 2002[10] and its objective was to unite the SAARC Member Countries in their effort in redeeming the promises made by them to the South Asian Child at the World Summit for Children and various other national, regional and international conferences and successive SAARC Summits. Also, the convention is expected to facilitate development and protection of the full potential of the children of South Asia through the   promotion of understanding and awareness of the rights, duties and responsibilities of the children and others. Apart from this, SAARC gives special importance to girl-child and child health through programmes like polio eradication, protection of child from mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS.  Being one of the poorest region in the world, women and children of SAARC countries are the victims international trafficking. SAARC has taken up steps to combat fight against this evil practices.

 

Pursuant to a decision of the Eleventh Summit (Kathmandu, 2002), the SAARC Autonomous Women's Advocacy Group (SAWAG) was formed, to advocate mainstreaming gender and make recommendation on gender related issues and programmes in the region. So far the group has aimed to address issues such as women's citizenship, women's political representation, trafficking and sexual exploitation, gender and HIV/AIDS, female education and literacy, legal rights and economic empowerment and impact of globalization on women, etc.

SAARC has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), to help Member States to strive towards the goals of gender equality based upon the empowerment approach. The MoU was signed in December 2001. Under the MoU, SAARC and UNIFEM are in the process of developing the SAARC Gender Database: Mapping Progress of Women in the South Asia Region.

ASEAN address the women related issues through an economic angle. One of the major issues is better participation of women in all activities in a secured and safe environment. ASEAN Sub-Committee on women was set up long back in 1975. The sectoral body was restructured into the ASEAN Committee on Women (ACW) in 2002. The coordination and monitoring of the implementation of ASEAN's key regional priorities and cooperation in women's issues and concerns are carried out by the ACW which meets regularly every year. ACW focuses on reporting various aspects of women development including development of database and compilation of national policies. Currently, ASEAN's work programme is guided by the Work Plan for Women's Advancement and Gender Equality (2005-2010) and the Work Plan to operationalise the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (2006-2010).

ACW works closely with non-governmental organizations such as the ASEAN Confederation on Women's Organisations (ACWO). The ACW has also established close partnerships with a number of key international organisations in working for gender equality and advancement, and eliminating violence and discrimination against women.  ASEAN regularly publishes their findings on the Advancement of Women in the region. 


Pacific Island Form popularly known as Forum has wide range of plans and activities for women. Forum secretariat recognizes that "investing in gender equality is central to sustainable development, attainment of human and political security, good governance and management of resources"[11]. The Pacific Platform for Action (PPA) - for the Advancement of Women was adopted in 1994 and formally recognizes the importance of women's participation in national and regional development activities.  The Forum SecratatriatGender Policy. Action Plan was developed considering the holistic role of women in Pacific society. The Forum Secretariat adopted a Gender Policy in 1998 which provides the organisational internal mandate for gender mainstreaming of all work of the Secretariat. The detail activities according to the plan are already being implemented since 1999.  In 1996, the Gender Working Group was formed to share information among regional inter-governmental agencies and donors with an interest in promoting gender as development issue in the Pacific region. A Gender Strategy was adopted by CROP (Council of Regional Organizations of the Pacific) in 1998 to focus on integration of gender-balanced initiatives by regional organizations. In 1999 -Draft Gender Policy Action Plan has been adopted.  Technical committee on women are meeting regularly and adopted several measures for gender equity, asses the fund requirement for several action plans  for HIV/AIDS, education, mal-nutrition and environment protection and gender vulnerability.

It is found that Asia Pacific regional cooperation has already addressed several gender related issues through several agreements and common action plans. Although these agreements did not incorporate explicit resource mobilization aspects, a rich dividend is expected from intra subregional collaboration especially learning from each other and synergising their effort to achieve a common social objective. However, an integrated strategy under the banner of MDGs with proper roadmaps and achievable milestones can be chalked out. Regional institutions can play a leading role to bring harmony in jotting down these in details through advocacy, documenting and sharing good practices, and linking them with overall national policies of growth and development.

 


[1]1] Associate Professor,

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India

[1][2] Report on the implementation of South-South cooperation; UNDP (2004), http://www.undp.org/execbrd/word/dp04-26.doc

[1][3] Note Chinese and Indian experience along with the experience of South East Asian countries in this regard.

[1][4] Page 22 of 'Development through Globalisation and Partnership in the 21st Century: An Asia-Pacific Perspective for Integrating developing countries and economies in Transition into the International Trading System on a Fair and Equitable Basis', ESCAP, 2000.

 

[1][5] Association of Southeast Asian Nations

[1][6] Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation

[1][7] Economic Cooperation Organisation

[1][8] South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

[1][9] SAARC Convention on Prevention and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution was signed in Kathmandu in 5th January 2002. The document is available in                                                              www. saarc-sec.org,   dated 15th October 2006.

[1][10] SAARC Convention on Regional Arrangements for the Promotion of Child Welfare in South Asia was signed in Kathmandu, 15th January 2002. The document is available in   www. saarc-sec.org, dated 15th October 2006.

 

[1][11] http://www.forumsec.org.fj/pages.cfm/sustainable-development/gender/