Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EWTEK (Empowering Women with Traditional Ecological Knowledge)
Période du rapport: 2017-06-01 au 2018-05-31
1. Advance the social recognition of women employed as a labor force in cooperatives, as their traditional knowledge skills are hardly recognized but play a vital part in product development.
2. Advance socio-economic development and traditional knowledge as a tool for participation, enrolment for IGA to trigger the women’s empowerment.
The EWTEK project is auspicious at a time when issues of poverty and socio-economic exclusion persist in the country. It is expected that these results will permeate the policy making realm and influence the Moroccan political agenda for a gender “rural traditional dimension” be integrated to improve the conditions of rural women.
At ISS during 2017 and 2018, I followed courses and attended several seminars and panel discussions, relating to issues of land access, farmers' and women’s struggle for political rights and representation. It showed that these issues are widely encountered and that the communities’ powerlessness when facing these intrinsic pressures as well as external demands emerging from an increasingly globalised world. This has reinforced my sense of activism and advocacy to help the communities with similar issues in my own work. I also attended the “EU for Facts Evidence Policy Post Fact World” Conference at the European Commission in Brussels. I learnt that that it is increasingly essential to provide clear evidence in research to be able to influence policies and make successful impacts. I attended several capacity building workshops for NGOs in Morocco and in The Hague. This gave me the opportunity to bring my experience on the lack of communities’ active participation, and the need for establishing solid mechanisms that foster accountability and transparency. I also taught “Ethnobotany and Development: “What do we have to gain or lose?” at the Department of Horticulture, Aromatic and Medicinal Plants (HAMP), at the University of Mizoram and gave a lecture “Ethnobotanical and traditional aspects for uplifting the social status of rural communities” at the Department of Botany at the University of Lucknow. I also visited the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic plants (CIMAP) and the National Botanical Research Institute. Both institutes conduct cutting edge research on aromatic and medicinal plants and development of botanical products and offer major opportunities for collaboration for my own work. I also learned of the Access to Benefit Sharing (ABS) of the Nagoya Protocol under the Convention on Biological Diversity in India; many people are able to benefit today. The results of my research will be available in two major journals: the Journal of Human Ecology and the Women's Studies International Forum.
These include:
• A lack of authorities’ consultation, women’s participation exacerbated by geographical isolation, a lack of decent infrastructures and inadequate facilities for project enquiry.
• Lack of political representation and accountability to higher authorities by which the local populations could demand guidance and support for initiatives
• Lack of women’s participation in decision-making processes although prescribed by the Moroccan government
• Lack of recognising the traditional knowledge as a key instrument for triggering women’s social enterprise
• Lack of recognition of the traditional skills associated with vital processes of product development. This can have major implications for women with the article 8 of the Nagoya Protocol under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
The EWTEK project is timely. GIZ is currently working on implementing the Access to Benefit Sharing (ABS) at government level which has not yet been fully ratified. However, this is in progress as many parameters have to be taken into account. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), can then be implemented once ABS funding mechanisms for the local communities has been developed and enforced. Only then will the implementation of IPR be possible.