Running for Congolese Women to End Violence

Chris Jackson is running 12 marathons this year for Run for Congo Women to raise awareness about violence against women and children in the Congo. Here he is running the Congo marathon with Congolese children beside him.

Last Sunday morning, Team Congo Paris raced from Paris to Versailles for Run for Congo Women. It was a 15K journey heavy with French history, because King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were brought from Palace Versailles to Palace Tuileres at the start of the French Revolution. Around two miles into the race, came Île des Cygnes along river Seine housing a small version of the Statue of Liberty erected by Americans living here in France. It is a replica of the original standing in New York Harbor given by the French to America as a sign of international friendship in 1886.

The race had authentic historical depth to say the least. Yet, I spent it thinking how all last week while reporting on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), I noted that media did not acknowledge that violence against women and girl’s (VAW/G) is not one of the eight goals specified by the MDGs. In the World's Women at the Center of Achieving the MDGs conference during the UN Summit, one of the first points addressed was that very issue.

In August, Post-AIDS 2010 Conference Her Blueprint highlighted how tied the issue of violence against women and girls to the violation of a plethora of human rights in Health Versus Harm: Zero Tolerance on Violence Against Women and Girls. Yesterday, the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) was up for a critical vote in the United States Senate but was postponed until November. However, Ritu Sharma, co-Founder and President of Women Thrive World Wide published her thoughts about her own grandmother's death in East India in hopes of sharing why the bill should pass when voted on.

“I never met my grandmother. She was burned alive with kerosene doused on her sari and lit on fire. Some think it was suicide, some think it was a dowry murder since her mother-in-law was not pleased with what my grandmother brought into her new husband’s family. She had four children; one of them my mother, the other my uncle, who was just a few months old when she was killed. I cannot imagine her shock, grief and pain in the moments before she died…Regrettably, her story is not uncommon.”

In the United Nation's special meeting World's Women at the Center of Achieving the MDGs, Denmark's Minister of Health noted that women of the Democratic Republic of Congo have to ask their husbands before they can sign a contract or start a business. After citing this statistic, he asked, "Can you imagine?"

To be honest, I cannot imagine any of the previous scenarios. Yet, I know they are happening daily and consistently and have been for a very long time. On Sunday while racing Paris to Versailles, I began reciting statistics in my head about Congolese Women that I know by heart because right now they are who I run for.

“Congo presents one of the world's deadliest emergencies to date. More than 5.4 million people have died since 1998. Gang rape and brutal torture are a daily reality for the women and children of Congo. Women as old as 80 and as young as five have been victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence. 38,000 continue to die every month, 1200 a day. Half of these deaths are children under the age of 5 years.”

At moments I was not sure what to do with all the emotion.

One Man’s Admirable Effort of Support

Chris Jackson, a London lobbyist pictured here running the August 18th marathon in Congo for Run for Congo Women and Women for Women International, is well acquainted with the intensity of emotion and action Congo can provoke because he has devoted himself, utterly, to raising awareness about violence against Congolese women and children as part of his year-long endeavor to run 12 marathons for Run for Congo Women. Already successfully completing nine marathons, including an Ironman as well as an Olympic Triathlon along with a smattering of 10Ks, Chris is someone who is exceptional and sincere in his endeavor -- so much so he will actually be running 13 marathons just to make sure he completes one every month in 2010.

Chris can also voice what most of us can only imagine because he has run Congo. He went. He ran. He returned. And, now he shares why the Congo race was the hardest one so far for him.

UN Women and MDGs: Moving Forward with Acknowledgment

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the French Republic and the future president of the G20 and the G8 Summits, spoke at the UN Summit about focusing on Africa.

Part 3
MDGs Politically Revitalized By UN Summit?

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of UN Women and MDGs.
On Wednesday the high-level plenary session in Manhattan to assess the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ended with elites heading back home to their respective countries having firmer knowledge of budgetary and country-specific concerns. Overall, the take away was acknowledgment: the MDGs are not tracking to success.

As reported earlier this week in UN Women and MDGs: UN Summit Assesses Progress, MDG No. 5 to reduce maternal deaths by 2015 is still seen as the most lagging, and UN leaders such as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were openly acknowledging it as the most hindered goal of the eight proposed MDGs.

On September 22, BBC's UN Launches $40bn Woman and Child Health Plan reported that Ki-moon said, "Progress on women and children's healthcare has been slower than on some of the other goals discussed at the three-day summit," but Mr. Ban said the coming century "must be and will be different for every woman and every child."

"We know what works to save women's and children's lives, and we know that women and children are critical to all of the Millennium Development Goals," he said in a statement.

Yet Women's eNews Bachelet's U.N. Debut Brightens MDG Summit reports that budgets are still incredibly lacking for MDG No. 5, around $120 billion or so, in that "donors' answer to the United Nations' request for a $169 billion women and children's health plan fell predictably short at $40 billion, with about half of that committed at previous events."

Those events were the G8 Summit as well as private aid. One of the greatest hopes, according to
Women's eNews, however, is that "U.N. Women might be able to make up some of the shortfall in money to improve girls' education and women's health through an integrated approach. Supporters think this approach will work better than one that separates "women's" targets into the specialized areas of health and education."

Sarah Brown, Britain's First Lady, wrote in her Huffington Post article Sign Up to Play Your Part for Girls and Women about how in "the New York Times best seller Half the Sky, we learned that....Healthy, educated girls break the cycle of poverty. Healthy women work more productively and earn more for their families. Children whose mothers have been educated for at least five years are 40% more likely to live beyond the age of five."

Yet even with such solid statistics, even those who are experts in the landscape of female health and advocacy already voice how much work lies ahead. As Women's eNews reported, Under-Secretary General Bachelet shared her thoughts about upcoming actions in a press conference.

"I'm a very realistic person and I am completely aware of the challenges for UN Women," Bachelet told a Sept. 22 press briefing, speaking for the first time in her new role. "But on the other hand, UN Women was supported by an enormous number of member states and I will be calling on those political commitments to become a reality."

The hope is that all world leaders will rise to her call.

Photo credit: Christian Science Monitor

UN Women and MDGs: UN Summit Assesses Progress

Read Part 1, UN Women: A New Entity Paves a New Path.

Part 2
MDG No. 5: Where Change is Most Needed

Last week brought the news that Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet would head UN Women with an unprecedented annual budget of 500 million dollars. Today marked the opening of the UN Summit of world leaders to assess the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Thus, politicians, ambassadors, and Ministers of Health converged on Manhattan's East Side to take on the issues that as of ten years ago were named of utmost importance to humanity's well-being.

On the eve of the summit and with five years left to meet the 2015 goals, yesterday the The New York Times published MDGs for Beginners...and Finishers from U2's known humanitarian Bono to perhaps infuse the notion that everyone would be watching from rock star to NGO. For review, the MDGs are the following:

1. End Poverty and Hunger
2. Universal Education
3. Gender Equality
4. Child Health
5. Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS
7. Environmental Sustainability
8. Global Partnership

When the meetings opened this morning, I listened in from Paris via the UN's Live Webcast while at the same time in Times Square, Amnesty International's death clock began to count off the passing of a woman's life lost during childbirth, thereby marking that every 1.5 minutes a woman dies while giving birth.

According to Women's eNew's U.N. to Ask $169 Billion Maternal Health Question the biggest hurdle still exists for mothers. "Millennium Development Goal No. 5 -- to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by two-thirds in 2015 from 1990 global-average levels of 400 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births -- is lagging the most out of eight major initiatives on poverty, health and equality adopted by the UN."

Yet as country representatives delivered opening speeches their messages moved between realistic and uplifting to outright robust, but what continuously overrode was how profound each country's desire to meet the MDGs. Bolivia shared that sport is a guide to keeping children on the right path. Kenya pushed for sustainable business while Guatemala cited that it still remains the top four country in the world most affected by climate change. Jordan's representative shared that development depends on peace, partnership, and global opportunity while Spain spoke of solidarity.

In Huffington Post's Revitalizing the Political Will to Achieve the Millennium Goals, Former UN Secretary General from 1997 to 2006 Kofi Annan shared his thoughts on what could be the best outcomes for the meetings. "Revitalizing the political will to achieve the MDGs and scaling up proven interventions is the linchpin to success. As instigator and guardian of the MDGs, the UN has an important role to play in this process and the High Level Advocacy Group created by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is a welcome step in the right direction. The primary responsibility, however, rests with national leaders. Their challenge is to re-articulate a compelling case for global solidarity and equitable growth -- one that embraces but goes beyond aid. One that addresses the growing inequalities between male and female, rural and urban, rich and poor. One that does not measure development and progress purely in terms of GDP but also of the quality and sustainability of growth. The message must be that MDG achievement is not optional, but an essential investment in a fairer, safer and more prosperous world."

In a recent interview, women's rights advocate and AIDS-Free World Co-Director Paula Donovan shared her own thoughts on the MDG Goals, "The Millennium Development Goals are useful, in the way that any goals can be useful, but they are no more than a set of time-bound measurements that act as incentives, and keep us focused on humankind’s shared aspirations of a world free of poverty, hardship, structural inequality, ignorance, environmental degradation and preventable diseases, including HIV."

With two more days left of the summit to evaluate where the MDGs stand and how best to meet them, it seems understood so far that political will and shared unification are two elements that will prove essential.

Photo credit: Amnesty International

Read Part 3 of Kate Stence's UN Women and MDGs posts about the UN Summit.