ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - With water being a global challenge, gender-equality indicators, policy, and support are critical for women’s access to the life-sustaining resource, the founder of a US-based NGO said on Wednesday.
"We are seeing in areas where water is literally stopped, so water cannot flow that impacts everybody and people cannot survive without it,” Alicia Douglas, founder and CEO of the Water Rising Institute, told Rudaw’s Sinan Tuncdemir in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
She stressed the importance of UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: “to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all."
Douglas’ organization is applying lessons learned from the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in 2014 to support women within organizations that organize water globally.
"We work with other countries to look at putting in gender equality indicators in with their work,” she said, “because one of the things we are seeing is that women in some areas don't even have proper facilities to be able to use…”
She praised world capitals like Amman in Jordan which are addressing crises like water with gender-based approaches.
"Jordan actually has policy on gender equality within their country for women,” she said, explaining that it is easier for international organizations to support women and girls when local inclusive strategies already exist.
However, policy alone is not enough, Douglas said, when conflicts disproportionately affect women.
"Some of the challenges we do experience ... in a country like Jordan, there are people coming from different areas like Syria or also from Palestine,” she said.
While climate change is often associated with water access, Douglas emphasized other factors are obstacles like equality in management and decision-making.
"The level of awareness is small, she said. “Ninety percent of the global water is managed - that is natural resources, that is non-potable water, that is wastewater - is managed by men.”
"So decisions are being made by men. Only ten percent are made up of women, Douglas added.
Opportunities and facilities for women are ways within gender-equality frameworks which governments can address water-access solutions.
"Without water it is difficult to bring a child into this world…” Douglas said. "Women are impacted differently.”
The UN aims to hit the SDGs by 2030.
