International Women's Day: Same countries, different worlds

We need to redouble our commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.


Dr Noeleen Heyzer March 08, 2012



We are in a race against time - with just three years left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Many of our people, even in the same country, continue to live in different worlds. This is especially true for large numbers of Asian women, whose experience of development and growth remains starkly different from that of men – especially when compounded by disparities of ethnicity,   caste, economic status, education and geographical location.


The best  celebration  of  International  Women’s  Day this year will be a commitment  to  redouble  our efforts in a final push on the MDGs to 2015 – because  confronting  gender  inequality  and  advancing the empowerment of women  holds  the  key to accelerating regional development and meeting the goals.

The power of the MDGs lies in their promise of a better world. Since their adoption by the member states of the United Nations in 2001, the eight goals have become universally recognised as important milestones in the pursuit of a more equitable future for all.

The new Asia-Pacific MDG Report 2011/12 makes it clear that addressing disparities in Asia and the Pacific, especially through narrowing gender gaps, holds the key to a final push on the MDGs. The report shows much progress.

Our region has already made great strides by halving the incidence of poverty, reducing HIV prevalence, stopping the spread of tuberculosis and halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. Major gaps still remain, however, across goals, across sub-regions, and especially within countries.  One indicator of these challenges is the still unacceptably low level of maternal health across the region.

In 2008, with about 140,000 deaths, our region accounted for almost 40% of maternal mortality in the developing world. In South Asia, for instance, maternal mortality ratios are almost 70 per cent higher than the world average and nine times those of Europe and Central Asia. With a number of multi-sectoral and achievable development interventions, however, we could have saved the lives of almost 150,000 women by 2015 in this one area alone.

Countries like China, Vietnam and Turkey are well on their way to joining Bhutan, Iran and the Maldives, who have achieved the MDG target of reducing these deaths by three quarters by 2015. More than 30 other Asia-Pacific countries, however, are unlikely to achieve the target unless we accelerate progress.

The positive news is that the countries currently off-track can reach the current target by reducing maternal deaths by only two to three per 100,000 live births annually for the next three years. Our ultimate aim, however, must remain the avoidance of all preventable deaths.

The writer is the United Nations undersecretary
general and the executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8th, 2012.

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