Submit a question and you might hear it answered by experts at an upcoming UN TV debate.
Is culture preventing women from having equal rights? Can women work to change their culture’s harmful practices? When international agencies try to respect a society’s traditions, are they harming women? These and more are questions that experts are grappling with.
To study the issues more thoroughly, United Nations ECOSOC will be hosting “Face to Face,” a television debate on June 30 in New York to debate how culture and women’s issues intersect.
Speakers from several organizations will debate issues related to women and culture. Can we honor culture and support women’s rights at the same time? Find out.
What do you have to say?
That’s where you come in: what questions related to culture as it relates to realizing women’s rights do you have? We want to keep the debate as lively as we can, so please post a question that you’d like to hear answered by the experts. The speakers will reply to both questions posed by the live audience as well as several questions selected from the web.
Who are the experts?
The debate will be moderated by Daljit Dhaliwal, Host of 21st Century UN Television Series and former TV anchor of the ABC News Now, BBC, CNN International, and the Independent TV News (ITN). Speakers will include Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Irina Bokova, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESC), Kavita N. Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women, and Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, Laurance. S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University.
How do I access the event?
The debate will be featured live here.
The event will also be broadcast live on several channels, including live on the European Broadcasting Union, and an edited verion will be carried by Denver TV, Cape Town TV, Islam Channel, and Caribbean Media Corporation, among others.
How do I participate?
Post your questions online here before June 29.
The best way to help African people regarding HIV or malaria, is to fund scientific research projects. For example, I have set up a research projects on potential medicinal plants against malaria cancer, diabetes, and HIV from Congolese tropical rainforest. I am looking for financial assistance. May be UN can help us in this matter.
Dr. Topwe M. Mwene-Mbeja, PhD
Member of the Chemical Institute of Canada
I think the most important question to ask is how to realistically integrate equal rights into a society while maintaining positive cultural influences.
However the mere fact that "positive cultural influences" and "equal rights" really depends on a societies interpretation of what those are make it an almost impossible proposition.
Its one thing to theoretically insinuate that a society's cultural norms is what is holding back civil rights but with everything human, behavior and customs shapes the strength of any given society.
About
Christian works on visual and advocacy communications for the United Nations Population Fund, including exhibits, video news releases and documentaries.
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The Hon. Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt
Saturday 3rd July, 2010, 8:36am
These are most important questions. However, central in the list should be: Are men capable of addressing and changing the cultural practices and expectations, demands and 'requirements' that impact negatively upon women and girls, that harm women's and girls' lives, and that ultimately deny both women and men the opportunity of living in an egalitarian world where women and men have equal rights.
We must not leave men out of this equation, nor out of the questioning of what is accepted as 'culture'. We also must not forget that 'culture' does not, or should not, exclude the positive practices, ideas and concerns in which women engage, so often omitted from discussion about culture or the recognition of 'culture'.