Gender Rights in UNA: Why it is important

Gender, Nature & Resilience

Gender responsive nature and resilience initiatives aim to identify the drivers that can aid in building an enabling environment, improve access to resources and facilitate an individuals ability to fully participate – this session aims to examine what are some of these drivers and how we can mainstream them to build resilience and sustainability at the local level.

Les droits des femmes dans l’UNA: Pourquoi c’est important

Les initiatives en faveur de la nature et de la résilience sensibles au genre visent à identifier les facteurs qui peuvent contribuer à la création d’un environnement favorable, à améliorer l’accès aux ressources et à faciliter la capacité des individus à participer pleinement. Cette session vise à examiner quels sont certains de ces facteurs et comment nous pouvons les intégrer pour renforcer la résilience et la durabilité au niveau local.

Host: ICLEI Africa

Veronica J. Fortune

Chief Administrator, Bo City Council, Sierra Leone

Sabrina Ohler

Principal, Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), Kenya

Nana-Anna Abaka-Cann

Legal Practitioner, University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana

Dr Funmi Adeniyi

Senior Professional Officer: Rights Based Approaches, ICLEI Africa

Sarah Nandudu

Community leader, Uganda, Shack Dwellers International

Session Summary

Within the context of Africa, it is very difficult to introduce the gender approach especially around the topic of urban natural assets. In some areas, although some men are affected too, women are usually affected the most when it comes to climate change impacts.As such, there is a need to design grass root scenarios, for example, “a day in a life of a woman” so that participants are able to better understand the reality of different societal groups including women. While women are key stakeholders, their voices have been underrepresented in development projects and their needs and inputs are sometimes missing. Therefore, Women involvement should be bottom -up and not top down, and should be given the platform to make decisions as that will give them the opportunity to address women and gender issues that they face.

In addition to creating men’s sensitivity to Women’s marginality and demanding their actions to change that narrative, it is also important to strengthen women to women support networks. This is vital because, there are instances where women stand behind male political contestants against their women counterparts avoiding the fact that political will is fundamental in achieving gender equality, and that we need more women leaders.