Press Release: Men from the within Inside? Will they do the Job they Promised?
The Hague 26th January 2010
International Women’s organisations: The missing link!
Uncertainty and doubts around London Conference
There is absolutely no representation of any regional or international women’s organisation, there is hardly any significant number of Afghan women present at the conference.
Minister Koenders is willing to put Afghan women back to the centre of attention,
Will Miliband British Foreign Secretary forward the recommendations to the delegates of the conference?
Representative of 10 Downing Street, London says we are getting attention!
In midst of all of this we do not know where we will end. Says Sabra Bano, director Gender Concerns International before leaving for London to attend some civil society meetings. “Since the Hague recommendation we have been trying to get women represented at London Conference. We did all that we could”. Thanks to the British Ambassador to the Netherlands Ambassador Arkwright here who has been generous enough to receive these recommendations at the conference held in the Hague on 14 January and has further passed it on to The Foreign Secretary Miliband, we know that it is now in the hands of Miliband MP.
Gender Concerns international highlights the gender dimension of Afghan conflict in a wider regional context and it emphasizes the need of close cooperation between international and regional women’s organisations and networks. Currently it holds the Secretariat on the Regional Gender, Conflict and Development Platform and has just organized the Hague Conference on Women at the Flash Point. What concerns Gender Concerns now is the internal mechanisms that will decide the fate of regional women’s a year long work. We still do not know if we will be allowed in to the conference or not. Thus our role as to defending of these recommendations from within is limited. We hope that Minister Koenders will keep up with his promise in bringing back women of Afghanistan to the centre of the stage of attention and he will be our man from within inside.
This broad regional conference fills the vacuum created by an absence of any regional consultation with or amongst womenand it aims to strengthen the potential of women’s ability of being an actor for change. This conference is afollow-up to the Kabul Conference of July 2009 and is highly important within the context of an upcoming international conference on Afghanistan to be held in the UK.
For further information please contact:
Sabra Bano, Director
Gender Concerns International
Phone: 00 31 (070) 4445082 Mobile: 06 53965784
Laan van Meerdervoort 70 2517 AN, The Hague
Email: Sbano@genderconcerns.nl Site: www.genderconcerns.nl
Laan van Meerdervoort 70 2517 AN, The Hague
Email: Sbano@genderconcerns.nl Site: www.genderconcerns.nl