Archive for September 3rd, 2010
As the disastrous toll of the floods in Pakistan becomes clear, we are relieved to have heard from some of our grantee sisters that they are safe. Many are at the heart of relief efforts in Pakistan. Shirkat Gah, a grantee partner and a key Pakistan women’s rights organization is currently mobilizing support – please consider making an emergency contribution today to support women in Pakistan as they struggle to respond to this disaster and rebuild their communities.
Donate at https://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6174/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=2583
Solidarity letter to our grantee sisters in Pakistan
GFW in Solidarity with Flood-Affected Communities in Pakistan on August 04, 2010
Dear Sisters in Pakistan,
The Board and staff of the Global Fund for Women would like to express our collective sadness at the destruction and loss of life that has resulted from the floods that have struck Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa (formerly the North Western Frontier Province) and other parts of Pakistan these past few days. We have learned of the tragic loss of life and physical devastation, through the media and our friends on the ground.
Donate now to support women in Pakistan.The Global Fund is writing to express our solidarity with you during this difficult time. We do not know to what extent you have been affected, but we can only hope that you, your relatives, friends, and colleagues are safe. Please send us an e-mail, if you can, to let us know how you are. We also know that some of these areas have spent many years in conflict, and that this disaster adds to the difficulties faced by women’s rights activists across the region, including increased fundamentalisms. We hope to support you as best we can in these circumstances.
As you know, the Global Fund for Women’s mission as a grantmaking organization is to strengthen women’s organizing and women’s groups in long-term efforts to advance the human rights of women and girls. The Global Fund is not a relief organization and does not have the capacity to provide direct aid in emergency situations. However, we do encourage current grantees in the region, who have been affected by the current natural disasters and their aftermath, to use the funds for whatever activities they believe are most critical at this time. In the coming months, we will be accepting grant applications to address the gender-specific needs in rebuilding and reorganizing communities affected by the devastation.
At your convenience, we would like your advice on how best to support women and girls in the affected areas. Please send us your thoughts on the situation of women and girl survivors, and guide us on what you feel should be Global Fund’s priorities in its long-term response to such disasters across the region. Do let us know if there is any other way we can be of assistance.
In solidarity,
The Asia/Oceania team on behalf of the Board and Staff of The Global Fund for Women
The Global Fund for Women is a nonprofit grantmaking foundation that advances women’s human rights worldwide. We are a network of women and men who believe that ensuring women’s full equality and participation in society is one of the most effective ways to build a just, peaceful and sustainable world. We raise funds from a variety of sources and make grants to women-led organizations that promote the economic security, health, safety, education and leadership of women and girls.
Congolese community leaders say they begged local U.N. officials and army commanders to protect villagers days before rebels gang-raped scores of people, from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother.
The rapes occurred in and around Luvungi, a village of about 2,200 people that is a half-hour drive from a U.N. peacekeepers’ camp and a 90-minute ride from Walikale, a major mining center and base for hundreds of Congolese troops.
The number of people treated for rape in the July 30 to Aug. 4 attacks now stands at 242 — a high number even for eastern Congo, where rape has become a daily hazard. The rebels occupied the area for more than four days until they withdrew voluntarily.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has declared his outrage — survivors say they were attacked by between two and six fighters and raped in front of their husbands and children. Ban has sent his assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, Atul Khare, to investigate the alleged lack of action from the U.N. mission in Congo.
Many question why the peacekeepers are not fulfilling their primary mandate, the strongest yet given to any U.N. force, which allows them to use force to protect civilians, and especially women and children. The U.N. says it passed through Luvungi but villagers did not say anything about the rebels.
Charles Masudi Kisa said his Walikale Civil Association first sounded the alarm on July 25, meeting with Congolese army and local authorities to say that the withdrawal of soldiers from several outposts was putting people in danger of attacks from rebels. The military had abandoned every post from Luvungi to just outside Walikale, for unclear reasons, he said.
Masudi said that on July 29, acting on information from motorcycle taxis, he warned the U.N. Civil Affairs bureau in Walikale, the army and the local administration that rebels were moving in on Luvungi. “Again we begged them to secure the population of Luvungi and told them that these people were in danger,” he said. Freddy Zanga, secretary of the association Masudi leads, confirmed his account.
When Luvungi was occupied on July 30, Masudi heard from truck drivers forced to turn back and passed information on to officials in the same offices. That same day, the United Nations sent text and e-mail messages to aid workers warning them to be aware that armed perpetrators were in the area, much of it dense forest that provides convenient cover for fighters.
On Aug. 1, Masudi said, his group heard from some raped women who had escaped and reported that scores of rebels had overrun the area.
Roger Meece, the U.N. mission chief in Congo, says a Congolese army patrol moved through the area on Aug. 2, apparently removed a rebel roadblock, exchanged fire with some fighters, and got information suggesting “a dramatic decrease” in rebel and militia activity. In fact, some 200 to 400 rebels were occupying villages alongside the road and into the interior, according to reports from survivors. The U.N. says there are 80 peacekeepers at its Kibua camp near Luvungi.
Also on Aug. 2, Indian peacekeepers accompanied some commercial vehicles to protect them from the rebel roadblock and stopped in Luvungi.
“How could they protect commercial goods but they could not protect the people?” Masudi asked.
The peacekeepers stayed long enough to arrest a Mai-Mai militiaman accused of trying to steal a motorcycle. But the village people did not make any reports of what had happened in the preceding days, Meece said.
The patrol also stopped in another village, Bunya Mumpire, from which aid workers reported many rapes. Meece said people there wanted to fight the militiaman with the peacekeepers but again did not report that they were under attack. It’s unclear what means of communication were available to the peacekeepers, who often travel without interpreters and generally do not speak the Kiswahili, French or Kinyarwanda spoken in the region.
On Aug. 4, the local chief came to Walikale and reported that the rebels had left and that large numbers of people had been raped. He spoke to Masudi’s organization, the International Medical Corps, the U.N. office in Walikale and to civilian authorities, Masudi said.
On Aug. 5, a convoy including medical corps workers and Masudi’s organization drove to Luvungi and the extent of the horrors began to unfold, as raped women began coming out of the forest.
Miel Hendrickson, regional director of the Los Angeles-based International Medical Corps, says her group briefed officials at the Walikale office of the U.N. Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs when they returned from their first trip to Luvungi the night of Aug. 6. “We told them the area had been attacked, that there had been no fighting and no deaths, but raping and looting,” she says.
Roger Meece, the top U.N. envoy in Congo, said U.N. peacekeepers in the area did not learn about the rape and looting spree until Aug. 12 from the International Medical Corps. Two U.N. officials in Kinshasa told The Associated Press that they got first word from media reports, even though the U.N.’s small Civil Affairs office in Walikale is charged with protecting civilians.
The United Nations did not send a team until Aug. 13, according to Reece.
The number of people treated went up from a couple of dozen on Aug. 5, to 154 by Aug. 16, 172 the following week and 242 by Wednesday, Hendrickson said.
Congo’s government has grabbed at past failures by U.N. peacekeepers to call for the withdrawal of the force, the biggest in the world at about 18,000. U.N. officials say soldiers are hampered by mountainous and rugged terrain and are sparsely deployed across a country the size of Western Europe. But aid workers say there is a well-graded dirt road from the U.N. camp at Kibua to Luvungi, and from Walikale to Luvungi.
Congo’s army and U.N. peacekeepers have been unable to defeat the few thousand rebels responsible for the long drawn-out conflict in eastern Congo, which is fueled by the area’s massive mineral reserves. Maj. Sylvain Ikenge, a spokesman for army operations in eastern Congo, would not say why soldiers had withdrawn from the area, allowing rebels to move in, only that they “are now concentrated around Walikale to concentrate our efforts to track down the rebels.”
“The FARDC (Congolese armed forces) cannot occupy each and every area to secure everyone and also track the rebels,” he said, adding that Walikale territory is greater than the combined size of neighboring Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jPEADE6LA6PT95DxLVS1noE80bwQD9HV9CQ80
See also:
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Wartime rape no more inevitable or acceptable than mass murder says UN
Wartime rape is “the least condemned and most silenced war crime,” U.N. official says
U.N. initiative aims to put sexual violence in conflicts on international policy map
U.N. is monitoring five countries because of sexual violence in conflicts
In Congo, more than 200,000 women have been raped in 12 years of fighting, U.N. says
The United Nations is trying to put sexual violence on the international policy map, telling political and military leaders that wartime mass rape “is no more inevitable than, or acceptable than, mass murder.”
Rape is being used by armed groups to reignite flames of conflict and to terrorize and humiliate communities in Africa, according to Letitia Anderson, women’s rights specialist with the U.N.’s Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative.
article continues at http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/08/12/un.wartime.rape/#fbid=VN4pnUIr0jJ&wom=false
A month ahead of the 2010 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) review summit at the United Nations, some women’s groups are voicing concern that member states’ commitment to women’s issues is insufficient and slowing progress towards gender parity worldwide.
In June, a “draft outcome” document was released and has been circulating amongst U.N. groups in anticipation of September’s summit. The document re-affirms the commitment of U.N .member states to achieving the eight MDG goals by the year 2015, as outlined in 2000’s Millennium Declaration.
The 23-page draft details the progress made and challenges that remain in reaching the goals by the proposed deadline. Although there are some areas in which progress has been significant, other areas are falling far short of projected goals. Several women’s advocacy groups are blaming this disparity on the U.N.’s inadequate commitment to women’s rights.
For example, whereas efforts towards MDG 1 (cutting 1990 poverty rates in half by 2015) have seen considerable success, other goals, such as MDG 5 (improving maternal health) are nowhere near the projected success rate. In fact, between 1990 and 2005, maternal deaths were reduced by less than one percent – far from the goal of a three- quarters reduction by 2015.
Similarly, progress towards targets of MDG 3, such as boosting women’s political participation and eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2015, has been halting.
The problem, some women’s groups say, is the entire approach towards understanding and addressing problems of gender inequality. Focusing on individual women’s issues, such as maternal mortality and access to education, fails to take the larger picture into consideration – the symptoms are being treated while the infection spreads.
Lysa John, global campaign director of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), told IPS that trying to effect social change this way is useless. “If you want to really do something about gender equality,” she said, “you have to do it in all spheres, rather than making it into a piecemeal issue.”
“This seems to be the problem with the way all of the MDG commitments are being phrased,” she added.
John takes the aim of reducing maternal mortality as an example – in order to achieve this goal, she explained, efforts must focus on the system as a whole. “It’s about revamping the public health system. If the public health system doesn’t work for the poor or socially-excluded communities, it’s never going to work for women anywhere,” she said.
She pointed to the lack of gender parity in political appointments around the globe as a prime example of an underlying inequality that gives rise to specific issues such as these.
The lack of political power, she told IPS, raises the question of “whether one is willing to make women equal partners in the policy-making and budget-allocation processes so that resources are generalised to infrastructure, public access to services for all communities, ending violence against women, and ensuring equality in wages.”
The resistance to the idea of power sharing, she notes, essentially turns women’s issues into “a charity”.
Polly Truscott, Amnesty International’s deputy representative to the U.N., takes a similar stance on the summit draft document. Speaking to WeNews in early August, Truscott explained that the document’s largest failing is in viewing women’s empowerment as “a key goal in itself” and not as “a basic human right”.
Truscott has produced an edited version of the document that includes a stronger focus on human rights, categorising women’s empowerment as a “fundamental value” and “an issue of social justice”.
Both Truscott and John believe that the creation of the agency’s new women-focused entity, U.N. Women, will be instrumental in effecting positive change for women’s rights in light of these setbacks.
In the meantime, the wording of the final document will depend on the input of the 150 member states attending September’s summit.
Regardless of the specific language used, John says, there is much work to be done.
“When the last woman on the ground, who is far from democratic processes on the national and local levels, is able to feel a sense of ownership over local institutions as an equal decision-maker,” she said, “that’s when change has happened.”
Zimbabwean women are denied access to land under the government’s land reform programme, a new report has found. According to the report, women make up 51 per cent of the population and yet there has been little mention of women, if at all, during the two phases of the land reform programme. The report argues that unequal power and gender relations in institutions such as the village have prevented women from accessing land.
“According to the government, land redistribution has been completed and yet most women failed to get access to land,” writes the author, Dr Dominic Pasura, a research fellow at the department of geography at the University College of London, UK.
Zimbabwe’s Land reform and Resettlement programme (LRRP) was introduced to “improve the welfare of the poor and landless” by Robert Mugabe’s post-colonial government in the 1980s.
Dr Pasura writes: “At independence, Zimbabwe inherited a racially skewed distribution of land that excluded most black Africans from access to land.”
According to the 2001 study by Annelet Hart-Broekhuis and Henk Huisman, 6,000 white large-scale commercial farmers controlled about 15.5 million hectares, and 840,000 communal area farmers controlled 16.4 million hectares at the time of independence in 1980. LRRP Phase I ran from 1980 to 1997 and resulted in modest transfers, the study reported. However, Phase II began in 1998 and saw a more radical approach.
During the first phase of the land reform programme, the study reports there was a bias towards men in the resettlement model. This is because “land was given to individual households, which tended to mean male households”, the report found. The second phase of LRRP saw an intensification of land redistribution. “War veterans, squatters, ruling party militants and state officials” were the main beneficiaries of the second phase of the LRRP programme, the study reported. Women were again missing from the programme.
However, women’s groups in Zimbabwe have been vocal about this issue. The Women and Land Lobbying group had limited success in lobbying the government, the study reported. According to the report, “President Mugabe announced in October 2000 that female-headed households would receive 20 per cent of redistributed land”. However, this did not include married women, the study reported.
In response to a question during a news interview given in 2000, in which the former Vice President Msika was asked why women did not have land rights, he said: “Because I would have my head cut off if I gave women land… men would turn against this government”. He added that giving wives land or even granting joint titles would “destroy the family”, the study reported.
“This is an explicit admission by the government that if there is a man and a woman: a man is entitled to land,” writes Dr Pasura, adding: “Women can only get land in their own right in a world devoid of men.”
Moreover, the report suggests that the male bias in Zimbabwean society and reflected in the Vice President’s statement stems from colonial times where “changes in social structure … eroded women’s rights to land along with the erosion of women’s status in general”. Whereas in pre-colonial times, women had access to land, the study reported.
The researcher analysed documents such as government papers on land reform and reports from women’s groups. Due to the political instability of the country, the author has not been able to conduct first-hand interviews, the study reported.
According to the study, the Zimbabwean constitution has outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender. However, this does not include rules relating to land allocation. Zimbabwe has a “plural legal system”, in other words, state and customary laws co-exist, the study reported. In the report, customary law refers to African traditions which have become an intrinsic part of the accepted and expected conduct in a community.
Many studies, such as the United Nations Development Programme 2002 Zimbabwe Land Reform and Resettlement report, have cited that customary law has blocked Zimbabwean women from accessing land.
However, Dr. Pasura’s study finds that customary law is used to refer to both “the constructed versions of African practices codified in statutes and to customary practices in daily lives”. Therefore it is important to distinguish between the two. He argues that it is not customary law per se but rather customary practices that discriminate against women in land issues. Although the state is a guardian for customary law, customary practices take precedence in rural areas. Therefore, “customary practices on the ground ultimately determine which persons, gender and generation will inherit resources in the country”.
The report argues that customary law should not be outlawed rather, there needs to be huge change in attitudes and institutions to ensure the rights of women to access land.
Coalition of women’s groups calls on PM Netanyahu to name a woman to peace talks team; the appeal comes weeks after High Court criticized Turkel Committee’s failure to include a female.
Weeks after High Court judges harshly criticized the Turkel Committee’s failure to include a woman, a coalition of 14 women’s groups appealed to the prime minister on Sunday to name women to the team handling peace talks with the Palestinians.
Among the signatories to a letter addressed to Benjamin Netanyahu are Women Lawyers for Social Justice, Ahoti Movement, Isha L’Isha, Economic Empowerment for Women, Lobby for Gender Equality, The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow, and Kolech.
The organizations are demanding that the prime minister appoint a woman in accordance with a law that requires “adequate female representation” on government committees formed by the cabinet, the prime minister, a minister or a deputy minister.
In their letter, the groups said that the law also regards negotiating “staffs” or “teams” as bodies bound by the terms under which state committees operate.
“By dint of the demands of the law, there is a clear, unequivocal obligation to appoint women from all walks of the population in a manner that reflects their proportion in greater society,” the groups wrote. “This clearly applies to the negotiating team, and we expect that the law will be fully implemented.”
In the letter, Anat Thon Ashkenazy, an attorney with Women Lawyers for Social Justice, cited the High Court ruling earlier this month that required the addition of at least one woman on the Turkel Committee investigating the raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla.
As Hamas cracks down on the rights of Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip, their sisters in the occupied West Bank are slowly gaining ground. But a bureaucracy, that is sometimes supported by foreign aid, is crippling these advances.
The Hamas authorities in Gaza have been making international headlines as they slowly restrict the rights of women. The restrictions have included banning women from smoking argilah (also known as hookah or water-pipe) in public places and riding pillion on motorbikes. Schoolgirls and women lawyers are now forced to cover their hair, and mannequins displaying female underwear have been banned from Gaza’s shop windows.
In the West Bank, five of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) 24 cabinet ministers are women. Women head two West Bank municipalities. A woman has been appointed commander of one of the Palestinian police stations, and a woman also runs the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
The Governor of Ramallah (Palestine’s de facto capital) Dr Leila Ghanem has several government bodies falling under her jurisdiction. Earlier, she had been a high-ranking official in the Palestinian Security Services.
Nissan FM Radio station has a staff of 20, most of them women, and hosts a Café au Lait programme which broadcasts six hours a day. The radio station focuses its programme content on the rights and interests of Palestinian women.
And in the most significant development in March this year, PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad approved new legislation, which would equate “honour killings” of Palestinian women with murder.
Every year, throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, dozens of women are killed by their male relatives for allegedly having an affair or bringing “dishonour” of a sexual nature to the family.
Many of the murders, however, are actually motivated by other reasons. But the men know that even if they are found guilty of an “honour killing” they will get off with an extremely light sentence, in the worst-case scenario. Fayyad approved the legislation following several years of hard work and intensive lobbying by a number of Palestinian human rights and civil society organisations, as well as the PA Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
The Interior Ministry has been involved in numerous Palestinian human rights abuses such as torture. It is also accused of abusing civil rights, including denying Palestinians passports based on political allegiances.
The ministry works in conjunction with EU Cops, a contingent of European police and advisors based in Ramallah and funded by the European Union, who help to train and advise Palestinian police and other security forces. According to WCLAC, EU Cops is one of the donors of the new research project to inquire into “honour killings” and other gender-based issues.
“We are not prepared to start from scratch after spending years exploring the issue only to see our efforts – which were approved by the foreign minister – ignored by the PA and some who fund it. It would be unethical as well as an enormous waste of our time and the resources of foreign donors,” Abu Dayyeh told IPS.
Abu Dayyeh added that despite the goodwill of some senior politicians to improve the rights of Palestinian women, Israel’s continuing and illegal occupation of Palestinian territory was destroying the West Bank economically, and negatively affecting Palestinian society.
“Don’t be deceived by the Ramallah bubble where some people are getting rich and driving flashy cars. They are the minority. The majority of Palestinians are suffering great financial deprivation. And in our conservative society, when men can’t be the breadwinners who support their families, they feel emasculated. Then it is often the women who pay the price.
“The number of women suffering from domestic violence has spiked in the last few years. If anything, the plight of women is getting worse despite efforts at certain governmental levels,” Abu Dayyeh told IPS.
Part of a longer article at http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52650
Harassment on the Rise Against Women
Russia should put an end to local rules forcing women in Chechnya to observe an Islamic dress code, says Human Rights Watch.
Since the start of Ramadan in mid-August, Human Rights Watch has received numerous reports from Chechnya about women being harassed in the streets of Grozny, the republic’s capital, for not covering their hair and/or wearing clothes deemed too revealing.
“Forcing women to wear religious or traditional clothing violates their right to personal autonomy, and the Kremlin should end this interference with their private life,” said Tanya Lokshina, Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Chechen women, like other Russians, should be free to choose how they dress.”
In the first days of Ramadan, groups of men in traditional Islamic dress (loose pants and tunic) claiming to represent the republic’s Islamic High Council (muftiat) started approaching women in the center of Grozny, publicly shaming them for violating modesty laws and handing out leaflets with detailed description of appropriate Islamic dress for females. They instructed women to wear headscarves and to have their skirts well below the knees and sleeves well below the elbow.
The alleged envoys from the Islamic High Council were soon joined by aggressive young men who pulled on the women’s sleeves, skirts, and hair, touched the bare skin on their arms, accused them of being dressed like harlots, and made other humiliating remarks and gestures. In two cases reported to Human Rights Watch, members of the Chechen law enforcement were among the attackers.
For several years, women in Chechnya have been the target of a quasi-official virtue campaign. The Chechen authorities have banned women who refuse to wear headscarves from working in the public sector. Female students are also required to wear headscarves in schools and universities. Though these measures have not been codified into law, they are strictly enforced and publicly supported by the republic’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov.
In June 2010, Human Rights Watch received credible reports of individuals, including law enforcement agents, pelting uncovered women on the streets with paintball guns. At least one of the women had to be hospitalized as a result. In an interview with the television station “Grozny” on July 3, 2010, Kadyrov expressed unambiguous approval of this lawless practice by professing his readiness to “award a commendation” to the men engaged in these activities. He also stated that the targeted women’s behavior deserved this treatment and that they should be ashamed to the point of “disappearing from the face of the earth.”
“When a public official like Ramzan Kadyrov praises this cruel violence, he is openly encouraging physical assault and public humiliation of women,” said Lokshina. “It’s time the federal government stood up for the rights of Chechen women.”
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) guarantees people’s right to freedom of religion, including stating that “no one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his [or her] freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his [or her] choice.” Asma Jahangir, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and her predecessor, Abdelfattah Amor, have both criticized rules that require the wearing of religious dress in public. Imposing Islamic dress on women is also inconsistent with Russia’s constitution, which guarantees freedom of conscience.
Human Rights Watch has criticized the governments of Germany, France and Turkey for violating religious freedoms by banning religious symbols in schools and denying Muslim women the right to choose to wear headscarves in schools and universities. By the same token, women and girls should be free not to wear religious or traditional dress.
Amor urged that dress should not be the subject of political regulation. Jahangir has said that the “use of coercive methods and sanctions applied to individuals who do not wish to wear religious dress or a specific symbol seen as sanctioned by religion” indicates “legislative and administrative actions which typically are incompatible with international human rights law.”
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/08/24/russia-stop-forced-dress-code-women-chechnya
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