World population 2010…
-chockfull of touching little anecdotes, real-life experiences

USER-friendly, different are just some of the thoughts that cross the mind when reflecting on the composition of this year’s edition of the State of the World Population Report, a document produced annually by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The organization, in a break with a more than 30-year tradition, has taken a more proactive approach in the compilation of the study, rather than staying with the academic style we’ve grown accustomed to over the years.

According to the author, Barbara Crossette, a veteran American journalist and former New York Times foreign correspondent, this year’s report is different in that it was decided “to take chosen countries and regions of the world where people have been affected [by war and other adversity] and to go and talk to those people and let them tell their own story.”

They didn’t do it by country either, as one would have expected, but rather from a thematic perspective. “We didn’t do it country-by-country; we did it by theme; you’ll see that the book is divided into themes; [such as]… the role of women in peace-building; the role of men …And this is a new idea, and a very important one, because women and men have to work together; and the way they talk to each other is extremely important… particularly in certain societies,” she told Latin American and Caribbean journalists meeting in Haiti recently for the launch of the Report.

Speaking of societies and their adjusting to the idea of women being at the helm of things, Barbara recalled a Ugandan official cautioning her about filling his people’s heads with her newfangled western way of thinking. He advised that should she tell the men in his village about empowering women, she’ll just scare them away because the concept was hitherto unheard of. “So the conversation has to be beginning between the men and the women in order to build the society anew,” she said.

And touching on the report’s title, ‘From Conflict and Crisis to Renewal: Generations of Change’, Barbara said: “…this topic was chosen because 10 years ago, the Security Council raised the issue of women in conflict and peace-building and in the prevention of war …to the level of an international security issue. There was an argument in Council about this: Should this be something in the UN Security Council? It was just women…”

The upshot of it all was the historic passage, on October 31, 2000, of Resolution 1325, a motion that sought for the first time to recognize “the vulnerability of women and girls to violence during and after armed conflict, and the absence or low level of women’s representation in efforts to prevent war, build peace, and restore devastated societies.”

What the decree sought to do in essence, according to the report, was “to formally end this neglect and actively promote and draw on the untapped potential of women everywhere on issues of peace and security.” Most important, however, was the call on parties to armed conflict, to take measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence.

Said Barbara: “…now there are four resolutions to be taken as a problem of international security, because women are so much at the centre of development in some countries, and have so much to contribute, and are often kept from doing that; prevented from contributing to peace-building; kept out of peace conferences; and not taken seriously when preventive conferences are held and so on…

“Women are key to rebuilding a society; rebuilding the family; rebuilding the village; rebuilding the community… and if they are the subject of violence… if they are dismissed by society or held in contempt, then everybody suffers.”

UNFPA Director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid vindicates this argument when she observes in the publication’s foreword: “…this report is not only about the Resolution; it is also about the special challenges women face in conflict or in humanitarian emergencies, and about how women themselves are responding, healing wounds, moving forward, and not just helping the communities return to – the status quo, but also building new nations on foundations of equal rights and opportunities.”

She follows-up by saying: “Resolutions may guide governments’ and the international community’s response to conflict, and establish the framework for actions to protect women and assure their participation in peace-building and reconciliation, but they are not a substitute for grassroots efforts to empower women, and to build long-term resilience to crises of any sort, whether war, an earthquake, or any other catastrophe.”

Among countries featured in the first half (or segment) of the report; the anecdotal part, are: Liberia, which Barbara says  is “a good illustration what happens when women really get together,” in that they launched a peace movement that ultimately brought down the government and had a woman elected president for the first time; Uganda, which is now recovering from the savagery of a civil war led by the infamous Lord’s Resistance Army, and seeing attempts being made to bring the perpetrators to international justice; and Bosnia-Herzegovina, whose war-time atrocities committed on women and girls precipitated the passage of Resolution 1325 among other deterrents such as the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ITCY) in the Hague; and the International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Hague, making rape an international war crime, which  carries a life sentence.

Others are Timor-Leste, a small country of barely a million or so people in southeast Asia; the Occupied Palestinian Territories (mainly the West Bank and not the Gaza Strip because of time constraints); Jordan; Liberia; and of course, Haiti.

Some stories are riveting in their telling, and so touching they can sometimes bring an unexpected tear to the eye; like the story of the middle-aged woman in Mostar, a little town in Bosnia-Herzegovina; or ‘A Mother’s Priceless Gift’, as is the title of another; or the moving account of a young Haitian journalism student who kept a record of everything that went on around her in the “squalid, congested encampment” where she and her middle-class family sought refuge in the aftermath of the January 12, 2010 earthquake.

As Barbara observes in the synopsis at the beginning of the publication, “The current report takes a more journalistic approach, drawing on the experiences of women and girls, men and boys, living in the wake of conflict and other catastrophic disruptions.

“They speak for themselves about the challenges they face, the ways their communities are coping and becoming more resilient, and about how many of them have become involved in reconstruction and renewal.

“The individuals featured in the report are neither statisticians nor demographers; they are rural people living off the land, and urbanites trying to survive in broken cities.”

But all is not just gloom and doom, as there are some stories that are very informative and thought-provoking. Among this lot fall stories like ‘How Filipinos Wrote their own 1325 Action Plan’, and ‘The Making of a Minister of Gender and Development’.

Of course, there are the traditional facts and figures; the real meat of the matter, but these has been reserved for the second half of the report, or to be precise, the last 20-odd pages of the 108-page document.  And they deal this year specifically with ‘reproductive health’, placing “indicators [the same as data] …within a more comprehensive accounting of demographic trends, living conditions, access to resources and other factors that are connected to women’s empowerment, access to education and access to health services.”

According to the authors in the preamble of this particular segment, “Displaying data this way yields a broad view of factors that shape women’s and men’s quality of life. These tables also provide information about national wealth, educational attainment, and level of urbanization, three issues that have significant bearing on access to reproductive health.”

All in all, the report makes for a very interesting read, if only the layman can get their hands on a copy or excerpts thereof, as it can be of significant help in the discourse on conflict resolution among other developmental issues.