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Minority Women Fight Back Against Mistreatment
By Elizabeth Whitman
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 6, 2011 (IPS) - Women in minority and indigenous communities are especially
vulnerable to wide-ranging forms of violence, abuse and
discrimination, according to a new report released Wednesday
by Minority Rights Group International (MRG), a human rights
group that works on behalf of minorities and indigenous
peoples.
With limited access to political mechanisms of justice and
protection, they are disproportionately the targets of attacks and
discrimination, during times of conflict or peace, the report said.
Dalits in India, Muslims in Britain, Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, Batwas in
Uganda,
Aborigines in Australia - these are just a few of the communities
spanning the globe who are sometimes welcomed, but more often not, by
the dominant national cultures.
The disproportionate levels of abuse and discrimination that these
women face - including rape, other forms of sexual violence, and
trafficking, from government forces, paramilitaries, or members of
their own communities - can be attributed to the fact that their
identity exists at the intersection of two rather marginalised
groups, women and minorities, making them easy targets.
In spite of the compound disadvantage, these women are standing up
for themselves and challenging the status quo, even as government
policies fail to provide the rights and protections they deserve, or,
in some cases, attempt to write discrimination into their very laws.
One hundred percent of Batwa women in Uganda interviewed by MRG said
that they had experienced some form of violence, whether ongoing or
in the past year.
Dalit women in India experience horrific discrimination as part of
the "Untouchables" within the traditional caste system. Even though
"untouchability" is illegal according to India's constitution, in
practice, it is alive and pervasive in many forms.
In Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, ethnic Uzbek girls and women were subject
to widespread rape and sexual violence. Yet in women's crisis centres
sympathetic to them, they could not receive residential support due
to "hostility among ethnic Kyrgyz clients", the report said.
Speaking up
In countries where discrimination towards minorities is the norm,
women from these groups have a particularly difficult time ensuring
that they are protected, in law and in reality, from attacks and that
perpetrators do not enjoy impunity, especially where socio-economic
and geographic factors entrench discriminatory practices further.
Because minority and indigenous women often hail from poor
socioeconomic backgrounds and remote areas, they have less access to
education, employment, or justice. Without these opportunities, their
channels through which to fight violence and discrimination are
extremely limited, and opportunities to ameliorate the situation are
scarce.
Nevertheless, "many are actively fighting for their rights as women,
for the rights of their communities and for their rights as minority
or indigenous women," the report stated, even at the risk of violent
reprisals from majority communities or their own.
Dalit women "have come out very powerfully to fight for their rights
and for justice," said Manjula Pradeep, executive director of
Navsarjan, a grassroots Dalit human rights
organisation.. "They are
the ones that are really fighting for the rights," even if they
receive little support from families and community members, she said.
For instance, over the nearly two decades that Pradeep has worked
with Navsarjan, she has witnessed a shift in reportage of cases of
abuse. When she first began, few cases of violence against Dalit
women were reported to police. Now, she says, women are coming out
and speaking about sexual abuse by landlords and employers.
The double standard applied to Dalit women exemplifies the horrors
they face. "At one level you don't allow a Dalit woman to fetch water
from a public well, but on the other side you rape the woman,"
Pradeep said. "At one level you see her as a defiled person, somebody
who is very impure, but you rape the same woman."
Developed countries have poor records too
"Politicians in the developed world sometimes speak as if the
violation of women's rights was simply a problem in the developing
world," Mark Lattimer, executive director of MRG, told IPS, "but the
evidence shows that that is simply not the case."
In Australia, for instance, the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women determined that indigenous women "have
fewer opportunities, are less likely to participate in public life,
and have more restricted access to justice, and to quality education,
health care and legal aid services."
In Britain, Muslim women endure verbal and physical assault, and
different countries in Europe have sought to ban the hijab or fine
those wearing it.
Nor is discrimination limited to the practices of daily life - it
reaches the higher echelons of society as well. Lattimer noted that
"in almost every developed democracy, minority women are grossly
underrepresented in politics, in the judiciary, in corporate
boardrooms and in other positions of power and influence."
What we need to do is listen to women who speak out and risk their
lives to protect their rights, he concluded, "and take seriously
their own recommendations for how their rights should be protected."
(END)
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