Yakin Ertürk, Director, UN Division for the Advancement of Women
...The issues which widows generally face and those encountered by women in developing countries are cause for serious concern. The situation of widows should continue to be featured on the international fora until they become firmly integrated into the policy agenda.
WRI Newsletter 1st Edition
WRI has for some time wanted to start an e-newsletter for all those groups we work with or know about, as well as individuals who enquire about our work.
What we would like to create is a two-way newsletter – by this we mean that we would provide information about our own work, about our partners’ activities, as well as reproduce articles which we feel would be of interest to readers concerned about widows’ lack of rights and the need to struggle for social justice for widows.
At the same time we would ask readers, to provide information about your work that you would like to share with our partner groups, donors, and interested readers. We would endeavour to include your news in the e-newsletter following receipt of it.
We are particularly interested to learn of new laws that have been introduced in your country which are of benefit to widows (see the case of Enugu State in Nigeria included in the report on WiDO) and to women who live on their own owing to desertion, divorce, abandonment etc.
The first edition includes some details of our Fighting Fund for Widows Rights and our partners’ activities supported by this fund.
We have also included information on our training programme for widows in Kabul , Afghanistan .
We are also undertaking research, or supporting research in some Asian and African countries, to get some really firm data about the situation of widows in a number of countries in Africa and South Asia so that in due course we can present a number of well documented country case studies to the relevant government authorities and request that laws be introduced that forbid the cultural, social or economic practices that deny widows their common humanity with us as women, their rights as citizens of their countries. Where relevant the country studies will make the case for the need for specific government support for widows.
We hope you will enjoy the first number of our newsletter. We hope very much to hear from you and to establish this 21st century form of conversation.
Copies available from WRI office