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UNFPA Press conference 29 June 2020
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10:08
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732.7 MB

Edited News | UNOG , WFP

UNFPA press conference State of World Population 2020 29JUN2020

ENG
  1. Wide shot: exterior, UN Geneva flag alley.
  2. Wide shot, Podium Press room, UN Geneva
  3. SOUNDBITE (EN) – Monica Ferro, UNFPA Geneva Director: “Our reports cites at least 19 specific practices against girls and women that are most universally been denounced as abused and violations of human rights ranking from breast ironing to virginity testing. It is the first analysis of its kind to show that these practices are grounded in negative attitudes about the value of girls and other means for controlling their bodies and sexuality. It is also groundbreaking in its treatment of harmful practices as a human rights violation”.
  4. Medium shot: Podium and screen behind 
  5. SOUNDBITE (EN) - Monica Ferro, UNFPA Geneva Director: “Harmful practices against girls they cause profound and lasting trauma, robbing them of their right to reach their potential in life. Harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation are inflicted on girls by their families and propped up by discrimination and community norms”.
  6. Medium shot: Journalist
  7. SOUNDBITE (EN) - Monica Ferro, UNFPA Geneva Director: “This year, for example, 4.1 million girls are at risk of female genital mutilation. One in five marriages today is to underage females. One pernicious effect of preferring sons over daughters is a shocking deficit of 140 million females”. 
  8. Medium shot: Podium with speaker
  9. SOUNDBITE (EN) – Monica Ferro, UNFPA Geneva Director: “Only equal treatment can bring equal outcomes. We have to stop treating girls like commodities, to be treated or objects to be controlled, and afford girls the same rights and opportunities as boys”.
  10. Wide shot: Press room
  11. SOUNDBITE (EN) – Monica Ferro, UNFPA Geneva Director:“Governments must fulfill their obligations under Human Rights Treaties that require elimination of female genital mutilation and child marriage”.
  12. Wide shot: UN Palace, Entrance Pregny  
  13. SOUNDBITE (EN) – Monica Ferro, UNFPA Geneva Director:” The good news is that the tide is turning. More and more people are defined the persistent hold of harmful practices, parliamentarians are passing effective laws, traditional practitioners are putting down their tools, mothers and fathers are choosing to keep their daughters in school. Community leaders are telling friends and neighbors to protect girls from violations of their humanity. The rights, choices and bodies of girls – these are their own”.
  14. Wide shot, Place des Nations with broken chair and UN building behind
  15. SOUNDBITE (EN) – Monica Ferro, UNFPA Geneva Director:” Covid-19 will also disrupt our efforts to end child marriage, potentially resulting in an additional 13 million child marriages between now and 2030. And we also know that as the Covid pandemic rages on, the number of women unable to access family planning facing unwanted pregnancies, gender-based violence and other harmful practices could skyrocket in the months ahead. We cannot slow down the pace”.
  16. Medium shot, UN Palace

Urgent global action needed to end harmful practices against women and girls, says the United Nations Population Fund

Urgent action is needed to stop female genital mutilation, child marriage, and other harmful practices to which millions of women and girls are subjected to every year.  This according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) State of World Population report for 2020.

“Our reports cites at least 19 specific practices against girls and women that are most universally been denounced as abused and violations of human rights ranking from breast ironing to virginity testing,” said UNFPA Director Monica at the presentation of the report at the United Nations in Geneva under embargo on Monday.

“It is the first analysis of its kind to show that these practices are grounded in negative attitudes about the value of girls and other means for controlling their bodies and sexuality. It is also groundbreaking in its treatment of harmful practices as a human rights violation,” Ms. Ferro said.

Every day, hundreds of thousands of girls around the world are subjected to practices that harm them physically or psychologically, or both -- with the full knowledge and consent of their families, friends and communities, according to UNFPA.

“Harmful practices against girls they cause profound and lasting trauma, robbing them of their right to reach their potential in life”, Ms. Ferro said. “Harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation are inflicted on girls by their families and propped up by discrimination and community norms”.

Three widespread practices that cause harm are female genital mutilation, child marriage and the preference for male children.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is an invasive procedure which entails partial or total removal of female external genitalia or other injury to female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The procedure is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15.

“This year, for example, 4.1 million girls are at risk of female genital mutilation”, warned the Director of the UNFPA Geneva Office “One in five marriages today is to underage females. One pernicious effect of preferring sons over daughters is a shocking deficit of 140 million females,” she said. 

The UNFPA estimates that every day some 33,000 girls under age 18 will be forced into marriage, often to much older men. Also, an extreme preference for sons over daughters in some countries has fueled gender-biased sex selection or extreme neglect that leads to their death as children, resulting in 140 million “missing females”.

“Only equal treatment can bring equal outcomes,” Monica Ferro said. “We have to stop treating girls like commodities, to be treated or objects to be controlled, and afford girls the same rights and opportunities as boys.” “Governments must fulfill their obligations under Human Rights Treaties that require elimination of female genital mutilation and child marriage,” she added.

Countries that ratified international treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child have a duty to end the harm, the report states. Many have responded with laws, but what is needed, UNFPA says, are grassroots approaches to bring change.

”The good news is that the tide is turning”, Ms Ferro said. “More and more people are defined the persistent hold of harmful practices, parliamentarians are passing effective laws, traditional practitioners are putting down their tools, mothers and fathers are choosing to keep their daughters in school. Community leaders are telling friends and neighbors to protect girls from violations of their humanity. The rights, choices and bodies of girls – these are their own”.

While progress has been made in ending some harmful practices worldwide, the Covid-19 pandemic threatens to reverse those gains.

“Covid-19 will also disrupt our efforts to end child marriage, potentially resulting in an additional 13 million child marriages between now and 2030”, Ms. Ferro predicted.

“We also know that as the Covid pandemic rages on, the number of women unable to access family planning facing unwanted pregnancies, gender-based violence and other harmful practices could skyrocket in the months ahead. We cannot slow down the pace”, she concluded.

Teleprompter
Welcome to the launching of the State of the World Population 2020, against my will, defying the the practises that harm women and girls and undermine equality.
My name is Monica Fahu, I'm the Director of UNFPA's office here in Geneva, and it's my honour today to share with you some of the key findings of our report.
Let me start by challenging you to an exercise.
Imagine a girl, she's 12 years old.
She left school.
Her teacher says she has a gift from maths.
Then one morning when she wakes up, her parents tell her to put on her best clothes.
In a couple of hours she's going to be married off to a neighbour who is at least three times her age.
She'll never be able to go back to school again.
Imagine another girl, she's 16.
She wakes up one day to find out that she's about to go through a rite of passage.
A few hours later, her genitals are cut by the woman who does it to all the girls in the village.
And imagine yet another girl.
She's four years old.
She overhears her parents say how cursed they are not to have a son.
They complain that their daughter is nothing but a burden.
As UNFP as State of World Population Reports shows, there's no need to imagine these scenes because they are all real and they play out 10s of thousands of times a day, every day, all over the world.
Our report cites at least 19 specific practises against girls and women that have almost universally been denounced as abused and violations of human rights, ranging from breast ironing to virginity testing.
It is the first analysis of its kinds of its kind to show that these practises are grounded in negative attitudes about the value of girls and are a means for controlling their bodies and sexuality.
It's also ground breaking in its treatment of harmful practises as a human rights violation.
These practise are human rights violations because they violate the right to physical integrity, the right to health, the right to education and to sexual productive health and rights.
And they are grounded in gender discrimination, as all armed for practises are grounded in the assumption that the rights and well-being of a woman or girls are less than those of men and boys.
Women and girls have fewer choices as a result and are more likely to have choices made for them and put them under the sexual, legal and economic control of men.
And this too is a human rights violation.
Harm is a discrimination today and a trauma for a lifetime.
Harmful practises against girls they 'cause they cause profound and lasting trauma, robbing them of the right to reach their potential in life.
Harmful practises such as child marriage and female genital mutilation are inflicted on girls by their families and propped up by discrimination in community norms.
This year for for example, 4.1 million girls are at risk of female genital mutilation.
One in five marriages today is 2 underage females.
One pernicious effect of preferring sons over daughters is a shocking deficit of 140 million females.
We've made progress in slowing the rates of some of the harmful practises, but the numbers of girls subjected to them is actually growing.
The harmful practise of child marriage increases in times of hardship and crisis, even in humanitarian settings.
As a coping mechanism, only equal treatment can bring equal outcomes.
We have to stop treating girls like commodities to be traded or objects to be controlled and afford girls the same rights as and opportunities as boys.
Communities must stand for equal rights for girls so they can stay in school, prepare for employment, learn about their choices and shape their own futures.
Governments must honour the international agreements they have signed to protect the girls and reproductive choices and end female genital mutilation and child marriage To end armful practises.
Men need to use their privilege to raise the value of girls around the world and demand the equal treatment of girls and boys.
Economies and legal systems must guarantee every woman equal opportunity to build a decent life based on equality, autonomy, dignity and choice.
So there are three words that summon up this report.
The first one is respect.
We must foster respect for women and girls by changing entrenched attitudes and practises that humanise and commoditize them.
This means disrupting root causes of inequality and respecting girls autonomy.
Second, protect.
We must protect women and girls by enacting and enforcing laws against practises like child marriage and female genital mutilation, but also but also by changing attitudes and norms.
Parents need to understand the long term harm of these practises and take a stand against them and finally fulfil.
Governments must fulfil their obligations under human rights treaties that require elimination of female genital mutilation and child marriage.
Governments have already taken steps to to end armful practises, often by enacting and enforcing laws banning them.
Laws are, however, just a starting point and in some cases laws can even make can even have the unintended effect of driving these practises underground.
Decades of experience and and research show us that it's bottom up grassroots approaches the best ones to bring change about because communities themselves are the best suited to transform themselves.
Organic change is lasting change.
At the same time, we must tackle the problem by tackling the causes.
Gender discrimination and harmful practises thrive on bias, norms and stereotypes.
While norms or stereotypes are just ideas, they can be powerful destructive forces.
At the same time, because they are ideas, they can be changed, no matter how deeply rooted they are.
There is no magic bullet to stop harmful practises, and since a confluence of factors shape them, it's unlikely that we will ever find one.
More understanding is need of what works, including for specific practises in hugely diverse societies.
But what we know is that we want to get to 0 and in order to do that, we have to move much faster.
And this is where we would like to highlight the many international commitments, the many international political commitments that have been made, recognising the the human rights violation of harmful practises and the commitment to end such such harmful practises.
We just had our 25th ICPD Nairobi Summit and we saw the true commitment by Member States and by all partners to accelerate the promise made 25 years ago in Cairo.
And no.
And most of the political commitments were around precisely in ending harmful practises, in ending gender based violence.
And these commitments also mean that it's critical to invest, recognising that without doing so the costs will be much higher.
This will accrue in financial terms through healthcare costs and losses of economic productivity.
But the greatest toll is in lives lost permanently or harmed.
The sums required are relatively small.
For 31 countries where girls are most likely to go to undergo a female genital mutilation, the cost of ending the practise would be relatively little, 2.4 billion / 10 years.
Ending child child marriage globally would cost about 35 billion.
Greater investment in education and measures to achieve gender equality could catalyse these investments and accelerate progress.
The good news is that the tide is turning.
More and more people are defying the persistent hold of harmful practises.
Parliamentarians are passing effective laws.
Traditional practitioners are putting down their tools.
Mothers and fathers are choosing to keep their daughters in school.
Community leaders are telling friends and neighbours to protect girls from violations of their humanity.
The rights, choices and bodies of girls, these are their own.
When that principle is fully realised in every country and community, without exception, the harm will finally, irrevocably come to an end.
We cannot stop until we get to 0 and we cannot let anything, not even the COVID-19 pandemic, get in our way.
Our report was finalised before the extent of the crisis and its impact on the health and rights of women and girls across the world became clear.
What we know from the research we commissioned and released in the end of April is that national and international efforts to bring an end to harmful practises have scaled back or stalled because of the pandemic.
So what we are predicting is that the COVID-19 pandemic, by disrupting the programmes to end FGL, to end female genital mutilation, could result in an additional 2 million girls being harmed over the next decade.
2,000,000 cases that otherwise could have been averted.
COVID-19 will also disrupt our efforts to end child marriage, potentially resulting in additional 13 million child marriages between now and 2030.
And we also know that as the COVID pandemic rages reaches on the number of women unable to access family planning, facing an unwanted, unwanted pregnancies, gender based violence and other harmful practises could skyrocket in the months ahead.
We cannot slow down the pace.
We have to accelerate progress.
This decade of of action for the SDGS has to mean more dignity, rights and choices.
To the million of women and girls who are counting on us, thank you.