> Millennia2025 Solidaty-Women

Concrete action and international conference, University of Namur

Millennia2025 Women and Innovation Foundation + The Destree Institute

 

> 05. Proceedings

Closing Plenary Session

Memorandum and resolution of Millennia2025 Solidarity-Women

 

The Millennia2025 Women and Innovation Foundation, 

 

01.  Recalling that Millennia2025 Solidarity-Women results from Millennia2015 Action Plan for women's empowerment and gender equality built with the patronage of UNESCO in December 2012 as part of the international foresight research process Millennia2015 "Women actors of development for the global challenges" led by The Destree Institute since 2007 (www.millennia2025-foundation.org); 

 

02.  Implementing the concrete action Millennia2025 Solidarity-Women which aims to help women in precarious situations to escape poverty and, consequently, to fight against all forms of psychological, physical and economic violence; 

 

03.  Proposing to establish innovative win-win partnerships with all stakeholders and generate a Citizen Solidarity Fund to improve the daily lives of women in precarious situations and therefore of their children; 

 

04.  Considering its willingness to work with the Millennia2025 International Voluntary Researchers Network, in collaboration with all the organizations or networks working for gender equality and women's empowerment; 

 

05.  Reflecting together on how to build Millennia2025 Solidarity-Women during the International action-conference organized at the Academic Hall of the Faculty of Computer Science of the University of Namur Saturday, April 25, 2015; 

 

06.  Reaffirming that women and girls are autonomous, self-determining beings with independent capacity for directing their own lives; that whatever their status, including single parenthood or being at risk, they have a right to dignity, privacy and their own choices in life and determining their own life-directions; that they have a right to their dignity, their privacy, their choices of life and development; and that the energy they generate to improve the conditions of their daily lives and that of their children must be supported as essential for the future of our society; 

 

07.  Regretting that poverty mainly affects women, yet is not inevitable and people who are victimized deserve respect and are entitled to non-judgmental support and acknowledgement of the dangers and risks confronting them; 

 

08.  Confirming its willingness to use all pedagogical tools at all educational levels to affirm  that women have the same human rights as men, that women participate in parity to decision-making and political, economic, societal choices to  build a just, equitable, sustainable society; 

 

09.  Considering that, if we do not fight together against structural poverty today, we will perpetuate an unequal society without any future prospects for future generations; 

 

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10.  Recommends that poverty should be subjected to gendered analysis and answers since gender inequality is a crucial factor sustaining poverty in the North as in the South; 

 

11.  Urges boys and men to mobilize for gender equality, women's empowerment and respect of women and girls' human rights, including working to ensure the deconstruction of gender stereotypes and ending violence against women and girls; 

 

12.  Recommends sustained analysis of the causes of poverty to prevent women, particularly as heads of single-parent families, falling into the cycle of financial and economic danger; 

 

13.  Recommends guaranteeing respect of women's rights and legal autonomy so that they do not become victims of traditionalism, conservatism and patriarchy in their access to education, training, information, health and employment; 

 

14.  Insists that all tools and processes capable of ending poverty be built in collaboration with the persons concerned in order to generate their command of these mechanisms in their private life; 

 

15.  Calls on the stakeholders to mobilize to develop a new "co" model: cooperation, collaboration, coaction, co-construction or co-working, transcending the individual through creative solidarity in an holistic ("circular") economy; 

 

16.  Urges all stakeholders to censure, denounce and prevent all violence against women - verbal, psychological, physical, sexual, economic -, and to prosecute and sentence the perpetrators by all legal means, in the North as in the South; 

 

17.  Confirms its commitment to work with the Council of Europe and its INGOs for the implementation of the Istanbul Convention to address violence against women and domestic violence; 

 

18.  Recommends the definitive implementation of equal pay between men and women, beginning with low-paid industries; 

 

19.  Recommends securing the economic empowerment of women and their inclusion in economic decision-making processes through both opportunities for training and employment, and by upgrading laws encompassing women's rights; 

 

20.  Recommends incorporating equality of women and men into the formulation, interpretation and enforcement of all laws, bearing in mind that gender equality policies constitute a long-term investment; 

 

21.  Recommends developing and implementing communications media to ensure access to information for all women: each woman with internet access and mobile phone, particularly in all spheres of health and eHealth; 

 

22.  Recommends strengthening the skills of women in the digital world, an essential tool for their empowerment, particularly through partnerships within the citizen intelligence platform Millennia2025 and the communities of knowledge network, in the framework of the European Commission Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs and eSkills4Jobs Programme.  

 

The Millennia2025 International Voluntary Researchers Network 

https://www.millennia2025-foundation.org/2015_solidari-femmes_actes.html  

 

Namur, 25.04-2015 - 09.11.2015. 

 

English version thanks to the advice of the Hon. Dr Jocelynne Annette Scutt 

 

> List of signatories 

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