The concluding recommendations are issued in direct response to the written and oral statements presented by Togolese NGOs, with the support of FIAN International, on the unique situation of the right of rural women to adequate food in Togo.
In October, Claire Améyo Quenum, of the Togolese women’s rights NGO FLORAISON, presented statements that outlined the impact of Togo’s mining industry on the rural women of Gnita.
“Many in Togo rely on agriculture as their main productive activity. Over the last several years, this reliance on land has been severely threatened by Togo’s phosphate mining industry”, said Quenum. “In the community of Gnita, agricultural land has been reduced from 3000 hectares in 1980 to less than 1200 hectares in 2007 due to land grabbing by the phosphate industry and soil degradation resulting from mining activities”.
Overview of the statements presented to the CEDAW
The written and oral statements presented to the CEDAW Committee during its 53rd session went on to detail factors affecting rural women’s food insecurity in Togo, such as land grabbing by the mining industry, in combination with prevailing traditional gender roles, lack of access to education for women, lack of access to healthcare and gender disparities with regard to access to land, property and other means of production. As a result of these factors, the rural women of Gnita are displaced from their lands, are unable to continue feeding themselves and their children, and are forced to migrate to nearby cities where they rely on exploitative labor to make a living.
CEDAW’s concluding observations will serve Togolese rural women and supporting NGOs in holding their government accountable for the realization of the human right to adequate food for women in Togo.
The full text of the CEDAW’s concluding observations is available here.
“FIAN International welcomes the Committee’s observations and, together with Togolese NGOs, will closely monitor State action in regard to compliance with the recommendations at the country level,” said Ana Maria Suarez Franco, permanent representative of FIAN in Geneva.
Togo in the context of Millennium Development Goals
In its recommendations, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women emphasizes that full and effective implementation of the Convention is indispensable for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It calls for the integration of a gender perspective and explicit reflection of the provisions of the Convention in all efforts aimed at the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and requests the State party to include information thereon in its next periodic Report.
The Committee requests the wide dissemination in Togo of the present concluding observations in order to make the people, including Government officials, politicians, Parliamentarians and women’s and human rights organizations, aware of the steps that have been taken to ensure de jure and de facto equality of women and the further steps that are required in that regard.
The Committee recommends that dissemination include dissemination at the local community level. The State party is encouraged to organize a series of meetings to discuss the progress achieved in the implementation of the present observations. The Committee requests the State party to disseminate widely, in particular to women’s and human rights organizations, the Committee’s general recommendations, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly on the theme “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”.
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