Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Parramatta for her motion concerning the Millennium Development Goals, which are the means chosen by 189 member states of the United Nations to tackle global poverty. There are many causes of poverty in the world, but in part they can be traced to two key themes—indifference and injustice. Today I want to talk particularly about indifference and injustice towards women. In my view we will not end poverty until we prioritise the needs and voices of women.

Of all the MDGs, it is goal 5, on maternal health, where the least progress has been made. More than 500,000 women die each year as a result of complications during pregnancy. Half of these maternal deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and another third occur in southern Asia. Together, these two regions account for 85 per cent of all maternal deaths. We know that more than half of all births in these regions take place without the assistance of trained personnel. Most of the deaths could be prevented with good quality reproductive health services, antenatal care, the provision of appropriately skilled birth assistance and access to emergency obstetric care. In this context I am happy to note that both the United States and Australia have this year dispensed with the harmful restrictions that previously stopped the provision of aid for family planning and reproductive health.

Of course, all the MDGs are linked and intertwined. Improvements in maternal health would positively impact upon the chances of a child reaching his or her fifth birthday, reduce the number of orphans and keep more young women alive. The Australian government has committed to doing more in child and maternal health and is looking at ways to build up the skills of health workforces in Africa and in the Asia-Pacific region, including by training midwives.

Clean water and sanitation is another fundamental pillar of development that has been demonstrated to lead to better health and welfare all round. The Australian government has committed to helping improve the delivery of water and sanitation services to local communities. This will directly benefit women, to whom the task of fetching and carrying water generally falls. Research in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that women spend some 40 billion hours a year collecting water. The recent UNIFEM report on the progress of the world’s women 2008-09—entitled ‘Who Answers to Women?’—cites an example in Nazlet Fargallah, in Egypt, of women gathering water up to four times a day and using sewage-contaminated water for washing. Without proper latrines, these women would commonly wait until dark to relieve themselves, leaving them ill and also vulnerable to attack. The situation changed when a local government water and sanitation project introduced female health visitors and enabled women to participate in community and household decisions about how to improve health and livelihoods. The 700 households now each have two taps and a latrine, and those women spend less time gathering water and have gained dignity and security.

MDG 3, which seeks to promote gender equality and empower women, is one of the most important of the MDGs because it directly impacts upon women’s and children’s access to services, their voice in decision-making and their vulnerability to violence. Indeed, women are agents of change but they largely operate outside the formal political systems of their nations. Grassroots volunteerism in NGOs is the starting point for many women and, in the international community, NGOs are playing an increasingly important role.

I was in Bangladesh in January and visited some projects being run by the incredible development organisation BRAC in a rural area outside of Dhaka. BRAC has a holistic approach to poverty alleviation and the empowerment of the poor through health, education and microfinance programs. It has so far disbursed US$5.27 billion in small loans, with a 99.3 per cent recovery rate. The women told me how the loans had helped them to transform their lives, given them their dignity back and empowered them within their own families and community. The efforts of Bangladeshi women are transforming Bangladesh from the ground up, and NGOs like BRAC and UN agencies like UNICEF have had a lot to do with it because they target their programs towards women.

There is obviously a long way to go to ensure that all the world’s people have the basic conditions for a stable life. These include freedom from violence; freedom from poverty; access to health care and, specifically, reproductive and maternal health care; access to education; and access to employment. The MDGs are our signposts to tell us how close we are—or how far away we are—to achieving these goals by the target date of 2015.

As I have noted, one of the most effective ways to get there is through the empowerment of women. By focusing on the MDGs relating to maternal and child health, water and sanitation and gender equality, we will help poor women everywhere to help their communities and to make poverty history for themselves. In the words of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who became Liberia’s and Africa’s first elected woman president three years ago: ‘Women can overcome old barriers, can seize new opportunities, can aspire to leadership and can lift their families, communities and economies’.

I thank the member for Parramatta for her motion.

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