On Friday 8th November, Women’s Rights and Mining was represented at Surrey Business School for the fourth edition of Harnessing the Extractive Industries for Development (Ex4Dev). This year’s workshop centred on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yrene Coli Rivera from Solidaridad participated in the panel Gender and inequality. The other two panels were Decent work and financial inclusion, Environment and Health.
Professor Gavin Hilson introduced the day underlining the importance of linking ASM to the SDGs. This includes building a narrative for ASM around youth employment, gender equality, decent work etc. Participants were urged to ‘speak more creatively in the language of the SDGs’ as a way to reframe ASM. In the panel advice was given on how to work on improved gender equality in ASM. Yrene emphasized the use of gender transformative tools that address violence, harmful norms and restrictive structures in society that limit women’s ability to use their agency (the capacity of people to act in a certain environment). And importantly, engaging men in this process as they are the ones that need to give up some of their opportunities, power and resources to women.
The keynote speaker was Caroline Ngonze from the United Nations Development Programme. She emphasized there is rapidly growing demand for development minerals and metals. To achieve this and promote socio-economic growth and enhance environmental protection, Caroline appealed for participants to remember and implement three ‘-ions’ in their work and advocated ASM and SDG policymaking to focus on: formalisation, transformation, and acceleration.
For a full summary of the event: https://ex4dev.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/ex4dev19-briefing-1.pdf
