Okay. Yeah. Alright. So thank you all
for coming. This is the last uh women and
gender development discussion series for this academic year. We'll
start again in the fall. Please be sure you sign up
And if you want to be on the list
serve you checked out. In any case we want
you to sign up just for attendance to see how
they were coming to the talks. Uh We don't
send a bunch of junk email. We only send
things specifically related to gender and international development and not
just our talks, but if there's something else on
campus that we learned about. So my name is
Maria Elia Christie. I'm the Director for Women and
Gender and International Development, which is at
O. I. R. E. D. Which is
the Office of International Research, Education and Development.
Uh huh. I want to just recognize that Dr.
Salo's visit is funded from resources including the women and
leadership and philanthropy endowed lecture fund as well as our
own program and Women and Gender and Development as well
as Women and Gender studies. Um I do want
to warn you that she's gonna have to be exactly
1:30 because she has a flight to catch to get
back to. It's like philadelphia and trying to do
so we'll be ready. So that means that her
talk will go on until 1 15 and then we'll
have 10 15 minutes of questions and answers discussion.
So, dr Salo joined the Department of Political Science
and International Relations at the University of Delaware last year
with a joint appointment and Women and Gender Studies.
She was a past director of the Institute for Women
and Gender Studies at the University of Pretoria in South
Africa. She's a founding member of feminist Africa,
one of the continent's foremost feminist journals. She's published
on masculinity, these gangs, feminism's and women's social
movements in South Africa, and on Women in higher
education. She teaches classes and water politics in the
global South politics of transitional societies and gender and politics
. So, thank you very much for coming.
Please welcome thank you so much. Doctor Christie and
a special thanks to dr um chance meeting after International
gender and development. Hundreds is done in South Africa
last year and then to the same attack. So
it really is a delight to be here and be
able to meet the commitment to enemies invitation. So
please do. Um so how did I get onto
water given a my cane as an app Ecologist.
I do. I literally to the ethnography of policy
making um in countries in the south because obviously a
lot of policies get made that it could not pay
her, but how they play out and practices another
sc. I've got onto the top of water sanitation
. I am colleagues working in the United Nations,
another band program as well as the Water Research Commission
, looking at the numbers of days that uh women
and girls last in terms of the their commitment to
attendance in educational institutions because of the lack of uh
sanitation and institutions on the content. And that's how
I got into this. So this study which is
just look at a compliance to the African Ministers House
on Waters gender Strategy um was the continent Continental Wide
study. And what we did was basically reviewed um
african water policies across the continent, five regions,
west, south, uh east, north and Southern
Africa. And we drew a sample of countries out
of those areas because obviously we have uh countries in
the various regions differ. We review those policies.
So just that's just to give you some sense of
introduction um study was funded by global water partnerships,
which is an international Indio and the Side Research Commission
. So I'm very grateful to them. So just
to start a wise waters incorporate relation to women's rights
. It's a key millennium development goal uh number seven
and that goal intends to have by this year the
proportion of population without sustainable access to safe water,
basic sanitation and of course access to water and sanitation
is gendered in so many ways on the continent of
Africa. Women are the primary producers of subsistence um
food that sustain household. So they keep providers and
protectors of security on the continent. And um as
I've indicated, a lot of school days and work
days after the last because the lack of access to
good sanitation, a lot of energy gets spent in
terms of accessing water in in rural areas in particular
uh for household use. And that comes off often
uh women and girls gendered labour with all sorts of
health consequences as well. So, you know,
the gender aspect is very important, especially on my
continent. Now, most of the countries on the
continent uh have signed up the Dublin principles which is
part of that girl governance of uh international global governance
of water. And the double government principles have committed
in signatories to implementing what all integrated, which is
this um tool of governance to uh over the water
comments. Now water as you know, as a
cross cutting issue. Right? And when you put
gender on, it becomes quite complicated because that too
is cross cutting. Okay, But let me focus
on the I. W. R. M.
It's a process of governance and the three strategic objectives
efficiency of water resource use, equity across social and
economic groups, as well as recognition of environmental sustainability
to protect the water resource base and associated ecosystems.
So there's also a commitment to um maintain and ensure
sustainable live ecosystems. It's quite a tall order and
within I'd er there are immediate tensions. One recognizes
the recognition of water and in terms of its economic
value as a commodity and thereby efficient use of water
versus water is a right, okay. The harmonization
of at least on the continent of Africa, continental
mechanisms of government as these are held in the African
Ministers Council of Water and that institution is located in
Senegal vs. National constitutions and what they contain its
rights. And when you go down further down scale
, you've got local diversity, cultural values assigned to
water. The comments. Natural comments take on particular
cultural symbols and often spiritual meaning and all of those
are often governed by very diverse systems of customary law
, in which very often women are dependent on men
in terms of access to natural resources, including water
. So this is what the african Council of Ministers
um on water. The general policy in strategy looks
like, as you can tell, it's pretty recent
. Uh it was Promoted at the Stockholm Water Week
in 2012. And this is it's a okay,
basically, it is looking to commit to gender equality
in the water sector in terms of building the capacity
of stakeholders to alert them to the gender sensitive issues
around water and to advocate for gender responsive water management
. Okay. As well as building capacity in terms
of the training of um young professionals in terms of
water, water governance and also setting in place gender
responsive policies, legislative and administrative frameworks and to ensure
especially vulnerable people of women and girls form a large
sector have a voice in policy making, so yet
another. It's a big order. Okay, this
is what the entire governance structure looks like. Women
are fairly represented. In terms of that executive leadership
, we've got a generation of one woman to three
men and all of those people represent um the various
areas on the continent. So it's it's fairly well
represented. Um in terms of the history of the
African Ministers Council on Water, formed in 2000 and
two in Abuja Nigeria, um and its purpose is
to promote cooperation, Security, Social and Economic Development
, poverty eradication amongst its member States for effective management
and provision of water. Now it relies heavily on
funding both resource from the continent, as well as
from private donors and the African Development Bank, which
is a primary key partner and the usa ideas.
Of course it's one of the key supporters are unhappy
. Um in terms of our own study of the
gender and water policy review, our aim was just
to examine the extent to reach this gender policy and
strategy, having recognized as important in the national states
as well as in transparently river basin agreements on the
African continent. And to assess the extent of that
commitment, whether it had ratcheted down the various levels
of governance and that presents its own um challenges because
you one is ratcheting up and down through scale of
governance. Okay. And in order to ensure implementation
first and foremost, you need a stable, supportive
constitutional context. So commitment within the constitution that has
credibility widely recognized and that is not being challenged from
any quarter stable political context, a stable policy and
supportive policy environment with the necessary evaluation too. So
the need for a lot of monitoring and evaluation with
necessary collection of data, both qualitative and you married
data and having that feedback you're constantly going through and
then looking at the relationships between different scales of governance
at the regional level, at the national level.
Sub national and local levels. In terms of the
importance of the of the review. Okay. Um
we want to draw attention to the importance of meeting
just a stable, supportive structural political environment and to
ask whether gender sensitive policies in water governments have been
formulated and was being implemented, whether people implementing these
have the capacity to do so and to ask whether
and how these policies have translated in women's participation in
the decision making processes in water governance. Um in
terms of the tools of unnecessary bureaucratic modern bureaucratic State
, whether indicators have been set in place, capacity
was in place whether you had the levels of assessment
um set within your frame. So creation and implementation
of gender sensitive targets, managing an evaluation, assessment
capacity again, capacity, capacity, capacity across scale
um in government and then the institutionalizing gender mainstreaming.
That of course is reflected in periodic assessments of policy
mm using research monitoring and evaluation. Now we're talking
about a continent. Okay. It's a continent with
great diversity in terms of climate and water sources.
The sections of the continent of water scarce or stress
areas, the Horn of Africa, North and the
voice in Africa parts of Southern Africa. And then
you've got while in doubt supplies in east, central
and West Africa. But while you're down water supplies
is just the beginning, you also need your infrastructure
and good governance in order to ensure access. So
distinguishing between provisions uh presents our water supply and then
access through good Dinos. There are numerous shared reverberations
across the continent. Um And this conflict about boundaries
, geopolitical boundaries that involved uh water resources, especially
East African lakes. So there there there are,
you know, issues of conflict to that need to
be taken into account so that that's what the continent's
um what supply looks like as you can tell,
denial being more important rivers. But the congo in
Central Africa*** involved in the West and Sam easy
. The proper origin in the south and southeastern and
all of the east. African like systems. Um
it's a continent of 54 countries vary. Yeah,
well there's a website called Africa is a country there's
aware of. Mhm And and there's variation in terms
of continental uh geopolitical stability, as you're probably aware
of, Somalia is basically a site of conflict and
that's impinges on the stability of countries like kenya,
you've got post conflict areas here are young in Liberia
that have huge challenging public health issues around the stable
set of countries. Ghana Nigeria, Gambia and so
on and so forth. Southern Africa generally tends to
be politically stable. Although levels of corruption, especially
in countries like Angola. I slept in the eastern
part of the democratically, you know, affected by
conflict. That is the team of researchers I've worked
with. So I'm on the left. Sudanese myself
, Monica is the deck is kinda roomy and Jackie
, the older is South African and then Sarah Masaki
as you can and then took charge of of uh
looking at the regional studies. So this study was
done across seven countries. We sampled only selling in
the five regions in order to draw some comparisons.
Um, I, Even though, you know,
Southern Africa has approximately 14 countries in that region and
we use the A. U. The African union
divisions of the region. Uh basically it was a
desktop review of policies, water policies to assess recognition
frequency agenda and women. And we looked at various
policy documentation, including constitutions to look at discussing context
in which women's rights to waters mentioned. We had
some limited interviews with primary water policy makers and this
was quite difficult because of people's entirely availability. People
have to travel um water. The one thing you
know, it is that these policies are not kept
in one place. So it's one of the suggestions
to outcomes, make sure you have your water policy
stored in one data um data location. We use
Surveymonkey is in short interview questions to us uh these
policymakers and then we use secondary sources of so,
so this was the spread. These were the country's
people took responsibility for. Um in terms of the
division of seven countries per region. And we chose
these very carefully in terms of variation um in terms
of water access as well as political variation, in
terms of relatively stable the post conflict countries that are
basically in some cases failing states. Uh This was
particularly true in East Africa with Somalia. Um Central
Africa to with Central African Republic. Okay, so
the methodology was that we used the gender mainstream tools
that we we took from the International Labour Organization.
They've got a methodology of assessing gender mainstreaming. And
we utilized that tool and kind of crafted to suit
the water sector and then utilized the uh implemented these
tools in terms of assessing uh the extent of gender
mainstreaming. You know, whether there is recognition of
example general sex equality in constitutions. What is women's
representation at the level of executive leadership and management within
the water sector? Are there gender differentiated goals and
targets set within policies? Do you have the connection
of sex disaggregated data sets? Are you looking at
the level of the local in the community? Because
a lot of these local and community water user associations
are often set in place whether you've got women represented
there. And how does this sit alongside? For
example, customary law, which is deeply deeply gendered
. Okay. And often dependent upon um accepting matrilineal
societies often dependent upon male uh local leadership to recognize
women's needs and rights to water. Okay, so
we or I took all of this fine. This
was left to me then as A P. I
. Taking these these fine reports and I organized the
gender mainstreaming, implementation and progressing water governance into four
stages of governance using specific indicators to mark the outer
limits of each stage. So for me, at
the level of state zero of gender mainstreaming, One
of the key aspects of course is the support of
structural environment. Uh if you have a country in
conflict and post conflict, you can't institute any form
of gender sensitive policies. If you've got constitutions that
are being challenged, then you've got a challenge to
the credibility of the constitution and you are not going
to have that um participation of all the stakeholders in
terms of implementation at stage one, which I call
the low level of gender mainstreaming those indicators with stable
political environment, recognition of equality of sex often less
often is gender recognize in terms of equality within the
constitution, that this constitutional prohibition of discrimination on the
basis of sex and gender, that that country has
officially endorsed. International global governance protocols around water,
specifically the Dublin principles and then the anchor gender strategy
principles and protocols in terms of stage to those indicators
were whether looking at whether gender potus was seen for
women's representation in government in all areas of decision making
, whether there's evidence of institutionalizing institutionalizing agenda machinery that
could be a water um women's Ministry, a specific
gender, this within the Water Ministry and related Ministry
of Agriculture, Forestry Health, um and so on
and evidence of a national gender policy and strategy um
that all of these various ministries have committed to Stage
three, which I called an advanced stage of gender
mainstreaming, was to look at where the budgetary resources
have been allocated to ensure gender mainstreaming through the gender
budgeting process. It's okay to have, you know
, you can have your women's ministry, you can
have your gender machinery and have your gender offices just
there. But if you don't give them any resources
, then that indicates a lack of commitment and really
just becomes about branding and ensuring at minimal level your
commitment to those uh, continental and global global protocols
. This level became particularly tricky here in terms of
just the connection of data uh where the collection of
data in water and related areas with sex disaggregated and
whether you also have qualitatively such present in these areas
that these this data are used to inform um time
gender targets that are set within specific projects and that
those get measured and you have a feedback loop between
policy and practice about the progress of general mainstream Stage
four was just an institutionalized stage of gender mainstreaming all
of the relevant stakeholders and actors in the ministries.
Except that the issue of gender is important, that
you've got sustained an extensive articulation through scale from regional
, national provincial local down to your user associations,
um that that feedback loop is established and that you
have time on plans to meet gender targets that you
identify knowledge gaps. And um projects are established to
see a small place projects to see whether the these
issues can uh in relation to gender. Main student
can be implemented at a higher level. So these
were out findings. Um as you can see in
terms of stage zero, predictably, a lot of
uh wow countries in North Africa, West Africa uh
countries where you've got conflict that he fell into stage
zero sum. In fact, countries such as Tunisia
would also um regressive stage two into stage zero as
the looking at the country being threatened by um political
instability. Um Stage one, Mauritania, many of
the North African countries, um Burkina, faso post
conflict countries like various sierra Leone. Now, those
countries present very important opportunities precisely because they are post
conflict and both of them Sierra Leone and Liberia come
out of this Ebola challenge in which water and sanitation
and the need for profit infrastructure are so key to
the prevention and the strengthening of the public health management
system. Um chad oops, chad congo the bond
equatorial guinea and expecting the bond because the one situation
to improve, because the bond is one of the
countries in africa as part of the highest economic growth
rates. Um Yes, the state commits to those
protocols and then Zimbabwe and Angola. Uh Zimbabwe because
of the challenge of governance stay under rather mugabe and
in Angola because of the levels of corruption, we
have seen huge amounts of wealthy um well from its
immense mineral resources really just filtering away and being taken
off by by a small ruling elite stage to uh
we had Egypt and Tunisia in Stage two, showing
signs of recognition of the importance of gender mainstreaming and
um assisting to statement. Although as I said again
, there's North African countries. Political stability is an
issue. The West African countries, Ghana, Senegal
and Nigeria are definitely in within stage two and then
East African countries, reminder kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia
and Tanzania. Um uh in in stage two,
D. R. C. Camera room now is
Zambia lawsuit lawsuit primarily being challenged because it is a
relative poor country and its water resources sadly to say
it's been colonized by South Africa uh literally uh because
South Africa is water scarce and it hogs. I
mean we had a mini war, just, you
know this, but just post President Mandela's inception as
a president, how military literally did go occupy the
area of dam construction. Then stage three stations in
South Africa were firmly set in terms of seeing a
progress towards institutionalizing gender mainstreaming because they also have very
clearly strong mhm systems of guidance with Jenna sensitive uh
policies and institutionalized gender machine. In terms of the
river basin findings out of the basin findings were Cuban
. Um Oftentimes the governance can't find the river governance
fell into the regional organizations. So the economic community
of Central African states uh took care of River basin
having instead that victoria basin commission as well. And
then yeah, Again, in terms of progress,
there not many transboundary river basin uh systems of governance
and progress past stage two. Um And really when
you saw Mhm progress, there was really in parts
interestingly enough, Central Africa and Southern sunday. Okay
, so these are the conclusions, countries recovering from
conflict or other social instability um have difficulty to ensure
gender remains on the national water agenda. Although this
, as I said, there's a window of opportunity
because those countries are post conflict Liberia sierra Leone.
Two of those countries, um institutionalizing of the necessary
monitoring and evaluation processes such as time by gender targets
, its targets and the collection of sex disaggregated stats
need to be instituted at all levels of scale across
the related water sectors that there's knowledge gaps in information
related to gender, especially at the level of the
local water user associations. And it's not reviewing.
I can't we found huge gaps just in terms of
the sexual division of labor and the gender differentiation.
Use of water in households and accessing the broader will
discipline um that customary authorities often fell off the off
the radar in terms of ensuring women's access to water
. So that suggests a gap in terms of,
you know, the various levels of state and government
and as it reaches out and ensures participation of uh
stakeholders such as your customary authorities at that very local
level, and that certain laws with regards to decision
making about water access and use needed to be ratcheted
up in order to strengthen these gender equality. Um
the strengths are that you have these gender protocols already
in place at the regional level, but there isn't
there isn't a great articulation between the au the African
Union and the African Ministers Council and Water and then
transboundary river basin protocols needed to be harmonized with national
water policies. Although that okay, even these national
challenges remains to be seen, as I said,
more, if not if he's on water use and
cultural meanings of water beyond just economic values, we
need more anthropological approaches to the governance of the environmental
diamonds. And I've got a question here, and
I call competing identities because the way local people imagine
water use and where their communities might be going in
terms of water use and its associated uh needs across
food health et cetera. You know whether and where
the national governments are taking these perceptions into account remains
to be seen. And again the data uh just
don't exist when you know some kind of system.
I divine the african Development Bank. Uh huh.
And the new plan for African development pad as well
as the African Ministers Council on Water. It should
be the proper response depositories or assistant strengthened national statistics
collections in terms of ensuring sex disaggregated data sets that
help inform and strengthen the quality of information. So
just to give you some of So yes. One
data, yeah. Data site that is accessible by
the Internet Creator 1st. Although a lot of the
one's gonna draw through the these data sets and in
order to find the water-related data. And then um
this is the african water facility that you can see
there. They are giving importance to gender primarily because
of the uh the issue being raised through global governance
. Either the U. N. Or through and
how and then yeah this is the and cast site
tom for problems and they knew their young 2012 was
just a few years ago. But you can get
a lot of information on this site regarding water partners
are the countries are what the initiatives and as you
can see uh water and sanitation is very very important
. And then they've got a bunch of, I
couldn't download the African Water Actress which is it's all
but at that I'll stop open the floor for discussion
queries hold back provide some teenager classes. Yeah,
I'm still at the top of your head. Do
you have any like specific examples that like of like
a policy that a country would have for like um
I guess water usage between men and women. It's
not so much intended uh usage but it's the recognition
of the different gender um access and use and how
that gets me how that is recognizing renting into policies
and what what I've seen with uh these often at
the level of the water ministries they follow the lead
put in place by what's called that gender machinery.
So you've got a woman's ministry place where you've got
a president that is pushing the agenda agenda um coupled
with that country signing onto international protocols whether the U
. N. Human rights, the African um how
African Union, the African Human at night and people's
rights protocols. And you know these countries uh put
a lot of by way of they're branding on the
international state. Okay. Especially at the U.
N. Level and when they are being held accountable
, then those issues ratchet back into the national sphere
and you find the water ministries that sitting up and
listen, health isn't the other issue, but you've
got activism that we also come from the bottom um
in terms of um civil society organizations and unfortunately often
in many cases uh where you've got a civil society
that has been dispersed such as in Zimbabwe or in
Angola. Okay then you're not going to have that
effect from the bottom as well. So this is
where the international the donor agencies player rather than terms
about small scale those Ngos that work at community level
raising, raising consciousness and does that. Yeah,
I was wondering how since an cows such a young
organization, how they plan to work with international development
projects such as damming projects facilitated by china and how
are they? I mean it seems like it's biased
to just the the ministries are biased to people of
Africa but are not including uh Anka has you are
so right ankle has not taken on board. The
issue of the boards called the brics countries primarily china
in terms of those relationships between china and the rest
of the continent and and really china's relationship is pretty
piece meal. So uh I mean china is assisted
for example Ethiopia with the construction of the renaissance dan
which Ethiopia and Northern Sudan Sudan are looking to for
hydro electric generation. But it's cause conflict between Egypt
and Ethiopia Sudan for the moment is seeing more benefits
than challenges, causing conflict with, you know,
no, the piecemeal integration of china's development projects.
It was dan. And is that causing problems with
Egypt because they're reducing the amount of water, it's
messing up with agriculture and reducing the the water table
and having problems with Egypt, it's more economic issues
and the obviously the downstream effects of lining up the
Nile further up because you know, Egypt for the
longest time as being the dominant sort of, you
know um decision making as as it were over the
Nile Ethiopia really was not seen as a primary play
but now Ethiopia together with the assistance of china.
Yes, basically they claim to those waters and it's
affecting both agriculture and the tourism. You know,
Egypt's got all of those two about they take you
all the way down stream etcetera. Plus of course
access to denial waters for massive cities like Cairo.
Um so it's got all of those um if it's
done in terms of, I mean, you know
, china also is involved in Gabon and where's the
logging? Many related to logging. And there was
indirect effects in terms of the those localized ecosystems.
Now. I think I'm, I think it is
in the barn where you've got local pushback, just
think, but coming from the cultural meanings of the
trees in the in the forestry areas and the recognition
of the importance for those trees in terms of those
ecosystems. Uh you know, and it's indirect effects
in terms of water etcetera, but it's very piecemeal
. It's alive. This is kind of touchy feely
across the continent. I mean, you know,
the chinese interests very Zambia, it's copper, uh
Mozambique, it's gas, the blind as far as
and so on and so forth. So there isn't
a continental approach and the au is being very um
and government has, I don't see any kind of
a unified a voice coming out in terms of these
relationships to china and also to a lesser extent to
India as well do you think And cow would be
able to like facilitate that? Are they have the
infrastructure in terms of organizations to propagate that? How
would they if I you know, I think they
recognize the importance of their work also in terms of
these um transnational agreements that they should take it on
. But right now there isn't any time any sign
of that right now. It's just about articulating these
issues specifically in relation to regional and continental issues.
As I showed you wash, you know that this
is a round dance but that story of the later
. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Have a couple of questions. The first one is
how was the so the key actors in each country
responded to the classification in your framework. If you
had an interesting exchange on that, that's the first
question maybe you could say a few words about.
Well, the first time we presented its findings was
that that international Gender and water development conference where we
had many country ministers there and they were shocked suitably
. So uh which was good. Um we've had
conversations. The findings have been sent to ankle.
We haven't really had responses from Africa specifically. And
this is going to come out in a book which
we hope to launch at the Stockholm, What are
we? Um but it's been muted and people felt
, I think some people found suitably embarrassed. Um
certainly the minister from South Africa when I indicated that
South Africa shouldn't be crowing about where it's sad we
were regressing, especially in relation to water access.
She kind of spoke up, but it's mutant.
You know, and so how we do this is
with global Water Partnership. We've got to play at
all these levels, you know, at the start
on the big water conference. The regional ones,
distribute these findings to the Au as well, push
and in that way and say but then, you
know, there's no way these ministers are going to
read a book. So it is and that is
what I'm working on is, you know, we
kind of bring out a document that is short but
succinct and tells the story in a very prominent visual
visual. So that's that I have a question relates
to the the idea of the sort of competing modernity
is, so far. It's really camps in the
context. U. S. A. M.
C. C. Investing literally hundreds of millions of
dollars in water projects globally. Um And so how
can we better respond to how local communities are interpreting
water and want to use water in the future?
So how can we, how can we solution shape
this flow is tremendous flow of money so that actually
response to what life, but if you have any
sort of insights on all they could do, I
mean part of I think part of the response is
just to add minimum, make sure all these stakeholders
are present in a kind of a project re beauty
. You know, when we set up on these
projects, there has to be some kind of local
mhm to which these findings and project implementation and its
effects are being reported back too often at that level
, that participants tend to be fairly restricted. It
is about making sure that those people you have people
visible and present and represented at those levels, even
if it's one of two people. Um yes,
often those climates of those meetings tend to be uh
relatively intimidating, but people do find their voices.
Um you know, I mean, just to talk
, I did in your class this morning about how
social activists have used the community organizers in terms of
keeping tabs on what's happening and how you believe social
audit, et cetera. It is also about instilling
some kind of parallel system about uh you know what
our citizens responsibilities and finding voice in terms of participation
in governance from the local and that can be a
parallel aspect. two big projects. Now, whether
these big projects can accommodate that remains to be seen
, but I think it is about those kinds of
uh aspects to say to um local citizens, you
know, your your point of view matter um if
you're you're lively, what's the matter? your quality
and conditions of life june I mean um small things
like with this international conference, we got at one
of the things that the conference organizers did was take
us on a tour, a very rural area of
where ordinary women were engaged in maintaining the little school
sanitation and training young people how to manage that influence
and and that matters a lot when people see these
presences and you know, just about a foreground in
the dignity of life and also being open to,
you know, listening to, you know, so
how did you manage water before all of this with
him? Because there's a lot of creative aspects that
come out, especially where the State Department at its
edges and people have had to look to the south
in terms of water harvesting, uh conservation and so
on and so forth. And and that is acting
with the ethnography is meant. I mean, you
know, we don't know how people are managing on
LTD waters advise how they're using it. It's patchy
information and when the information does exist it. So
now it's not finding itself because ministers just you know
, they want short and short information bites as it
. And so it's about the communication aspect as well
that that that that matters. And then suddenly,
you know, human rights commissions play an important role
where they do exist because they are often the ones
who take on board with the interests of the ordinary
people customary authority, gender sensitive trainings, customary authority
. Um I guess it's a feminist. I always
used to just deprive customary authorities like no they need
to cope Okay. But the fact of the matter
is I've since been convinced that customary law is actually
just another variant of family law, and when you
start looking at a customer's going in that way,
then one can start talking, you know, how
do we incorporate these customary authorities in these programs and
projects? Or do we just write them out somewhere
outside of this model? So that's just my off
the cuff spin off to you? Mhm. Yes
. Do you see a causal relationship between the stages
of gender mainstreaming and militarism is one the course of
the other, given the ranking of the war torn
countries at zero stage, you think militarism is leading
to a crisis of wars management, or is it
the other way around that crisis in war management is
leading to militarization of African societies. I mean,
as as the discourses are very complicated and for example
, in your own country in the North, I
think a lot of that has to do with just
the lack of confidence in the state and the state's
ability to deliver at those days, way up in
the north and then all of those divides. Uh
uh that is one aspect of it and we also
have more like femininity. These um the C.
I. R. Has had a had a woman
as a president and that did not quite assist in
terms of stabilizing the central african republic. A butcher's
wife, Mariama was not interested in democratising Nigeria properly
. And in fact, those ngos development, NGO
, she started personalities set in place to support his
dictatorship. So, you know, the way we
spin the femininity is and how we associate these with
deeper democratization or the denial of democratization. Those are
other other issues here. I'm talking about gender mainstreaming
within a country that recognizes substantive democratisation and the recognition
of rights all the way through its population. One
is still having to meet the uh water demands of
its economic sector and on the continent it's those are
the primary activities mining, you know, dependence on
natural resources. We've got a very small secondary level
. Oh, face. In terms of manufacturing,
I don't know if that helps answer your question,
but you know, you have to have a stable
context with a constitution that is acceptable. Incredible quite
everyone and a commitment to that and recognize how those
constitutional rights in foreign policy and you know, that
start when a constitution recognizes women's and men's equal rights
and enjoyment of resources and whatever uh goods that national
context provides for the improvement of their lives. That
is an excellent start. Now. The commitment to
that, Whether the constitution is up for tearing apart
and vigilance of it as well as cute. Thank
you. Whoa, adding on to that. So
if there's a constitution involves, it's kind of like
family law within a household and that sort of cultural
norms are developed. So using that similar in that
comparison and a militant in a country, there's a
militant state presiding over. There's a lot of um
, there's a lot of new cultures that are in
our cultural practices that are changing and morphing and that
would be a great period to introduce some of these
ideas. So I think just narrowing in on a
democratic state and the concept of state that has a
constitution is kind of limiting. If you're looking at
stage zero development. Sure. I mean, I
recognize me most of all. I should be recognizing
that given my own background right South African history along
this reason was undemocratic and we had I ground sort
of uprising and in the process of that uprising,
the recognition of women's gender rights surfacing. And of
course those are opportunities. The gender mainstreaming is a
policy to and you need you need resources and commitment
as well then and you need capacity. And this
is why I keep emphasizing social stability and the assumption
that that of the backdrop of of a commitment to
democratic democracy and democratic rights as being minimum. So
the issue around the context of conflict while those are
gonna windows of opportunity, but whether those translate into
a stable um stability and, you know, constitutions
that protect their democratic right, that's an context.
And, you know, post conflict countries Liberia,
sierra sierra Leone that those are for windows of opportunity
, especially Liberia, but it's you know, strong
women uh Lena globally. And uh johnson johnson,
you know, who at least internationally commitment those are
opportunities that enable some of the these practices. Um
but often times those, sometimes those commitments, all
of people's great off. Um, as I would
think it would be in countries such as Libya,
etcetera, where you're sitting with just trying to manage
stable. Right, okay. I'm afraid this brings
us to the end so you can write down your
computer run off to the airport, grown up.
Uh, thank you very much for coming.