Lack of focus on women’s rights delays progress on UN anti-poverty goals, study finds

Systematic discrimination against girls and women in the world’s poorest countries may prevent the United Nations (UN) from meeting its goal to halve global poverty by 2015, found anti-poverty agency ActionAid International.

Entitled "Hit or Miss? Women’s Rights and the Millenium Developement Goals," the 43-page report found that due to a failure to make women’s rights a central component of the UN’s eight Millenium Developement Goals (MDGs), it is unlikely that any of the goals will be met.

The report described the systematic disadvantages that women face across the globe – ten million more girls than boys fail to attend primary school, while African women accounted for 75% of all young people living with HIV/AIDS.

ActionAid gave five recommendations for refocusing the MDGs on promoting women’s rights, in order to increase chances that all eight MDGs will be met by the proposed deadline. The recommendations included revising the MDGs so that gender inequality is a central focus, set more ambitious targets on women’s rights, collecting more and better sex-disaggegrated data, stregthening the UN’s capacity on women’s rights, and recognizing women’s rights as central to aid effectiveness.