Women in Rural Areas & the Aftermath of COVID-19
Women’s Empowerment Through Creating Awareness and Promoting Inclusivity
On a social-level, women in the smaller communities, remain under-utilized in the community development and civic-consciousness building while their needs and interests are not taken into account when making important decisions, greatly jeopardizing their basic human rights.
Many of the local communities, particularly grass-root women’s organizations reported that they did not have access to information on governmental support in the local communities, public transportation, health services during COVID-19, and social protection services.
According to the OSCE COVID 19 Crisis Response: human-rights and gender analysis (November 2020), BIH governments at any level showed insufficient understanding of human rights-based responses and the lack of a proper gender analysis, as well as a general lack of awareness on the need for more systemic inclusion of cross-cutting issues and multiple stakeholders, such as women in an emergency response or security planning. BiH’s social protection and civic-engagement system is still not ready for an emergency (issues in the accessibility of information on the benefits one could be entitled to, mobilizing to counter the immediate threats and lacking transparency in the distribution of an emergency social protection).
