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In Celebration of Women's Creativity in Rural Life

Presented by Marta Benavides
Prize for Women's Creativity in Rural Life, sponsored by The Women's World Summit Foundation
October 15, 2003 Geneva, Switzerland

First I offer thanks to life for the opportunity to be here with you, to the Women's World Summit Foundation for creating this program and process, and to all of you for coming to celebrate with us. Your presence honors our work. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to reflect together with you about the creative power that we each are, for we are always cause and not effect. I am also glad to be part of a team of women from around the world who make it their priority to work for the betterment of rural peoples, and in this way contribute to create a world of food security and a healthy environment for all. This is a contribution to peace and freedom in the world.

It is very important to reflect and recognize the contribution of women's creativity in the quality of rural life and that of their nations' in general. It is a well known fact that historically women have not been land owners, and that usually there has been little financial access to them. In spite of this, we do know that around the world, women are the ones who have been producing those basic food products, and vegetables and legumes too, it is them that understand the importance of cultivating those food products rich in energy and important for nutrition and health. It is women, especially indigenous women, who maintain traditional knowledge for food, and medicinal plants, as well as traditional methods to preserve seeds, for planting, for natural control of insects and plagues. They have safeguarded biodiversity. In many countries in Latin America, where coffee is a major national product, women and children are key to all the activities related to collecting the crop. Without doubt, rural women's work and creativity, make a great contribution to the family's economy, thus to the Gross Domestic Product, to food security, to the caring of biodiversity, to the quality of life of rural families and communities. Yet, the productive work, and all the listed contributions of rural women, continues to be invisible in statistics and government national policies. And what is more, the liberalization and privatization processes currently being implemented, and the various free trade agreements, all part of national economic policies, negatively impact on women's work and conditions making life, and rural development much more difficult and complicated.

According to the World Bank, "more than a half century of persistent efforts by the bank and others have not altered the stubborn reality of rural poverty, and the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Most of the world's poorest people live in rural areas and this will continue for the foreseeable future." And it adds that with globalization, the "poverty challenge is getting bigger and harder." Robert McNamara, President of the World Bank stated in 1973 that " absolute poverty is a condition of life so degraded by disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, and squalor as to deny its victims basic human necessities... a condition of life so limited as to prevent realization of the potential of the genes with which one is born...the problem is most severe in the countryside...".Today, it is almost three fourths of the poor who live in rural areas and according to social analysis the majority of them will continue to live there for most of the 21st century. Thirty years later-in 2001-- James Wolfenson, president of the World Bank expressed a grave concern in terms of the lack of commitment of finances for rural development, he said, " eighty percent of our global population have 20 percent of the world's income...some 800 million people... go to bed hungry every night, the majority of them in rural areas. In deed, 70 percent of the poor of our globe are in rural areas... why is that this year in the demand for the world bank loans, we are almost at an all- time low in terms of the proportion of our lending for rural and agricultural purposes...?

As we begin the new century massive poverty and hunger are a fact of our reality. More than 1,200 million human beings-half of them under 16 years old, half of them women-live in poverty and extreme poverty, that means that they are to live under fed, in poor health and illiterate. This massive poverty and hunger negatively affects everyone and the health of the social and natural environment. As it has been pointed out before, liberalization and privatization, and the resulting elimination of basic human services are a source of the impoverishment of people in general and of women and especially rural women in particular. Academic and UN studies show that the same is true of the negative impact of structural adjustment policies, the foreign debt and its interest and payments on economic and social aspects. Thus poverty and hunger are a detriment to sustainable, to durable peace. Peace has been shown to be a key factor for sustainable development.

Under this understanding, and recognizing that poverty and hunger are not natural nor inevitable, during the Millennium Summit, September 2000, led by the UN, the official representatives of the nations of the world committed to reduce by half the number of people living under poverty and hunger by the year 2015, as a concrete step to eradicate hunger and poverty. To actually work to eradicate poverty means to in fact work to eliminate those obstacles where the impoverished are, and in the activities they carry out in order to survive. Thus since rural people live from agriculture and its related activities, it is necessary that there be a large national investment and foreign aid in support of agriculture and services in support of the social, economic, ecological and cultural development of rural areas. The situation of rural women is considered to be twice as difficult as that of their male counterparts. Thus, it must hold that to work for the eradication of poverty and hunger, there has to be an enabling environment that guarantees the access of women to social, economic and financial services, ecological education, and participation in planning and decision making in all levels and aspects of their life and the life of their communities.

I come from a country, El Salvador in Central America, where poverty and hunger are grave concerns of the day. We are at the verge of desertification, and yet each year we suffer floods and lack of access to drinking water. Air and water are very polluted, many children and elderly die of contaminated water, water born and respiratory illnesses. In the 80's and early 90's we suffered the devastation of war, and the peace agreements are not yet a living reality. There has not been a peace dividend and impunity is a big concern. We are considered the most violent country of the Americas. Women, especially rural women, and those most impoverished suffer most of this violence. We are overpopulated, adolescent girls' pregnancy rate is the highest in the continent, and the same is true for fatherhood irresponsibility.

El Salvador according to the Human Development Index Report went this year from being 104, to 105. Even though there has been economic growth, it does not mean that it has translated into peoples' better quality of life and better health for the environment. We are still suffering from colonial and neocolonial policies-the work of peoples and the use of natural resources still benefit only a few. With the recent dollarization of the economy we do not have our national coin any longer, which has made all prices go up. This is much of the reality of the region, where most countries are highly indebted and impoverished.

The various free trade agreements now under process have not been shown necessarily as a way to turn the situation for the best. Each day life becomes more expensive and unemployment rapidly grows. In the region it is our country that is exporting the most people, who even though under difficult and undocumented situations in foreign nations, manage to send the largest amount of monthly support to their families in the whole continent, making this a large and needed percentage of the national budget. Right now it represents over the amount the country's exports. It is this support that keeps our economy safe and going.

I know these conditions personally, they are part of our daily life, and that is why we commit to work to transform it. Within the framework of UNESCO's Decade of Education for Culture of Peace, and the Campaign of Education for All Through Life, we work with local communities, we have an ecological house and a permaculture farm, and butterfly gardens. We celebrate with concrete programs the life of the indigenous grandmothers, and that of peasants, youth and children too. We provide trainings on water purification and soil and water restoration and management to contribute to stop desertification, we work on mental health and on keeping our traditional knowledge on food and medicinal plants. At our initiative, we work cooperatively with other groups on festivals to promote a culture of peace. We know it is important to work with universities, and with the legislature too, on issues of environmental sustainability and sustainable peace, we work with churches and with inter religious bodies. We educate and mobilize the media, and support and worked for the creation of the International Criminal Court. We cooperate and promote various processes and programs with UNICEF and with UNESCO. We participate on the Commission on the Status of Women, Agenda 21, the Agenda for the Future, and the Commission on Sustainable Development and Financing for Development. We know that we must work holistically and intentionally in all the various levels that we can: local, national, regional and international to have an effective presence for a peaceful society and a healthy planet.

On Sunday October 12, instead of celebrating Columbus Day, and the Day of Our Discovery as it is the and has been the 500 year old practice, we held a festival and a church mass in the indigenous town of Nahuizalco to celebrate the Day of our Identity and First Nations' Cultures, the World Rural Women's Day, and the World Food Day. It was a be a festive, cultural, educational day, where indigenous popular art, medicinal plants ere special exhibits, and indigenous music and Spirituality were part of the mass and cultural programs. In this way we offered a different paradigm for equality, respect, justice and understanding. I am convinced that working on bringing about the Millennium Development Goals:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Universal primary education
Gender equality
Empowerment of women
Reduction of child mortality
Improvement of maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
A global partnership for development offer a very good framework for working intentionally, holistically, in an integrated way, with a gender perspective, to bring quality of life to peoples and health and peace to the planet.
In this framework we can make use of such supportive programs as the Beijing Platform of Action, the Decade of Culture of Peace, Decade of Literacy, Education for All Through Life, Decade of Education for Sustainability, Agenda 21, Women's Agenda 21 for a Healthy and Peaceful Planet, Financing for Development, and any other programs that are relevant to carry out these goals. We can use them to guide our work, and to monitor and press our national governments and global processes to bring about these commitments and goals in favor of Rural women and peoples, food security and sovereignty: for a peaceful and healthy planet. In this context, it is urgent that each country review its agricultural and rural development programs and related financial support as an integral part of meeting its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals and WSSD. It is important to ensure that rural women's access to land ownership and the recognition of water as a national public good, and as a fundamental human right, are essential to the life of rural peoples. Historically these have been at the base of great social conflict and existing inequalities. Water has been and is increasingly becoming a source of local, national, regional and international conflict. Access to safe unpolluted water and to sanitation is another key commitment of the Millennium Development Goals and a major one of the last Social Development Summit-WSSD.

We are challenged to commit to work on these goals, we urge everyone for the good of all, to accept this challenge. I am part of the people who have committed to work creatively in all possible ways and levels to create this reality. I commit to continue to do so. I invite you to join with us.