Scheme for widows: UN Women

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Kiran

22 April, 2011

Widows face many challenges in day to day life. To observe the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day on March 8, 2011, the United Nations has announced an initiative named UN women to empower women, and will also help widows.

TO MARK the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2011, a women arm working in the field of women empowerment called - the UN women, announced a new regional programme to attend to the needs of widows in India. The programme will also cover the widow populations in Nepal and Sri lanka.

According an announcement made by the organization, India has an estimated 40 million widows whose lives are caught up in poverty, neglect and deprivation. The programme aims at creating space for those widows in mainstream policy by way of social welfare schemes.

The three year programme is funded jointly by UN Women Swiss National Committee and Standard Chartered Bank, will be implemented mainly to abolish the social isolation faced by the widows.

This will be done by collecting data and evidence to highlight the disgrace faced by them, by working with widows’ coalitions so that they can speak up and access public services, and finally by guaranteeing that discrimination and ill practices against widows are reviewed and repealed.

In India, the UN Women will work with widows affected by HIV. The programme will be implemented in partnership with Guild of Service and Astha Sansthan, two frontline NGO’s.