How the 2015 election can benefit the grandmothers of Africa
Women are the driving force of development in all societies. This is particularly true in AIDS ravaged sub Saharan Africa--- grandmothers provide a stellar example. But we also know that women of all ages are prevented from fulfilling their potential to raise themselves and their communities out of poverty by a number of barriers based in gender inequality that the international community, including Canada, has been promising to address for decades.
GRAN highlights three interrelated goals to achieve gender equality that are important to grandmothers: ensuring access to affordable medicines and health care, improving educational outcomes in their broadest sense and ending violence against women and girls. Monetary aid, though no panacea, is critical to improving conditions and bolstering fundamental human rights.
During the election campaign these general issues translate into specific ‘asks’. GRANs will ask our candidates and our political parties what they will do to:
- Reverse the downward slide in Canada’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) to developing countries and increase the proportion that goes to education to 10 percent;
- Ensure that Canada’s commitment to eliminating child, early and forced marriage is backed up by effective initiatives; and
- Address the lack of transparency in pricing and the high costs of providing the pneumococcal vaccine to developing countries.
To find out more about these issues go to our Campaigns page.
