South Asia is being recognized as an area where the biggest gap in gender development exists and the key international development target for funding agencies in the years to come is to reduce this growing disparity so vital for the achievement of human rights and the elimination of poverty, the senior education advisor of the department for international development, British Government Ms Felicity Townsend said here today.
Delivering a lecture on "Education As A Human Rights Issue" to participants of the second post graduate diploma course in Human Rights being conducted jointly by the Visva Bharati University and the Dehra Dun based Rural Litigation & Entitlement Kendra Ms Townsend said she was certain that none of the international development targets would be achieved without greater gender equality. The gender gap in literacy was at the maximum in the South Asian region.
Ms Townsend said she was certain that none of the international development targets would be achieved without greater gender equality.
She said the evidence showed that greater equality for women brought huge development dividends and that women's empowerment was necessary for the achievement of human rights as well as the elimination of poverty.
Analysing the situation in the world especially the South Asian region Ms Townsend said as many as 500,000 women die every year because of pregnancy. Women were also overtaking men in rates of HIV infection. Millions of women suffer violence and abuse in and out of home, most of which goes unpunished.
She said for every woman in parliament there were more than nine men. Ms Townsend said most work by women was unpaid and unrecognized and women were widely discriminated against in access to productive resources and asset ownership. It was also a matter of concern that two out of three out-of-school children were girls.
Stating that education for girls was the single most effective way of tackling poverty, Ms Townsend said it had led to increase in productivity by adding 25 per cent to gross national products in Africa in the past thirty years. It also improved life expectancy, reduced family size and improved child survival. It also enabled women to gain greater autonomy and demand a voice.
She said the key lesson about rights and poverty was that development was a political process and that non-government parties have responsibilities to respect human rights.
The senior DFID advisor said international human rights organizations had tended to focus on civil and political rights and had in the process missed the opportunity to realize the interdependence of all human rights and perhaps bodies like the World Bank had these constraints. She said economic, social and cultural rights of poor people were essential too.
She said the DFID was of the view that education was at the heart of all development as it was central to the achievement of greater equality. In this context she said she was astonished to find that 83 per cent of primary school children in Lucknow were attending private schools. She said according to figures 67% of the primary school budget in India was going towards salaries of teachers.
While she understood the constraints being faced by the government there was need to balance the allocation of resources in such a way that it resulted in more efficient use. She said if there is a commitment on the part of the government in this area of basic education the resources of bodies like the DFID was there.