Lakshmi Puri. UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz

In Bangladesh and Cambodia, the shocking loss of life by garment factory workers, many of them women, sparked global debate on how to secure safe and decent jobs in our globalised economy. In Europe, the disproportionate impact on women of austerity cuts, and the use of quotas to get more women on corporate boards continue to make headlines.

Even though women have made real gains, we are constantly reminded how far we have to go to realise equality between men and women.

World leaders recognised the pervasiveness of discrimination and violence against women and girls when they signed onto the visionary Millennium Declaration in 2000. Amongst the eight Millennium Development Goals, they included a goal to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.

With these goals set to expire in 2015, we are now in a race to achieve them. We are also in the midst a global conversation about what should replace them. It’s time for women to move from the sidelines to the centre.

In a new post-2015 development agenda, we must build on the achievements of the MDGs while avoiding their shortcomings. Everyone agrees that the goals have galvanised progress to reduce poverty and discrimination, and promote education, gender equality, health and safe drinking water and sanitation.

The goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment tracked progress on school enrolment, women’s share of paid work, and women’s participation in parliament. It triggered global attention and action. It served to hold governments accountable, mobilise much-needed resources, and stimulate new laws, policies, programmes and data.

But there are glaring omissions. Noticeably absent is any reference to ending violence against women and girls. Also missing are other fundamental issues, such as women’s right to own property and the unequal division of household and care responsibilities.

By failing to address the structural causes of discrimination and violence against women and girls, progress towards equality has been stalled. Of all the MDGs, the least progress has been made on MDG5, to reduce maternal mortality. The fact that this has been the hardest goal to reach testifies to the depth and scope of gender inequality.

To make greater progress, UN Women proposes a stand-alone goal to achieve gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment that is grounded in human rights and tackles unequal power relations. We envision three areas that require urgent action.

First, ending violence against women and girls must be a priority. From sexual violence in the camps of Haiti and Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to intimate partner shootings in the United States and elsewhere, this violence causes untold physical and psychological harm. It is one of the most pervasive human rights violations, and carries tremendous costs for individuals, families and societies.

Second, women and men need equal opportunities, resources and responsibilities to realize equality. Equal access to land and credit, natural resources, education, health services including sexual and reproductive health, decent work and equal pay needs to be addressed with renewed urgency. Policies, such as child care and parental leave, are needed to relieve working women’s double duty so women and men can enjoy equality at work and at home.

And third, women’s voices must be heard. It is time for women to participate equally in decision making in the household, the private sector and institutions of governance. Despite progress in recent years, women comprise just 20 percent of parliamentarians and 27 percent of judges. For democracy to be meaningful and inclusive, women’s voices and leadership must be amplified in all public and private spaces.

Any new development agenda must be grounded in human rights agreements that governments have already signed onto. This includes the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, and U.N. resolutions, including the recent agreement of the Commission on the Status of Women on eliminating and preventing all forms of violence against women and girls.

There is plenty of evidence to show that countries with a higher status of women also enjoy higher levels of social and economic performance. There is also evidence to guide countries on what works, from equitable labour market policies, to the removal of discriminatory laws and policies, to universal social protection and social services, to security and justice reforms that end impunity for violence against women and girls. The activism of the women’s movement everywhere has been critical in demanding and driving change in all of these areas.

The discussions to shape the post-2015 global development agenda offer a real opportunity to drive lasting change for women’s rights and equality. A strong global goal can push our societies to the tipping point of rejecting violence and discrimination against women and girls and unleash the potential of half the population for a more peaceful, just and prosperous world and a sustainable planet.

*Lakshmi Puri is Acting Head of UN Women and Assistant Secretary-General.

At the UN Forum of Mayors on Crime Prevention and Security in Urban Settings, from left to right: Dong Min Ki, Jonathan Lucas, Cecilia Andersson, Martin Xaba, Bilal S. Hamad, and Marin Casimir Ilboudo. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

As people around the world continue to migrate into cities, swelling urban populations, they have sparked growth in another area: crime and security issues.

“Big cities are…where the greatest opportunities are, but also where more criticalities concentrate,” said Piero Fassino, mayor of Turin, Italy, at the plenary session of the Forum of Mayors on Crime Prevention and Security in Urban Settings, held in Turin from May 20 to 21.

“While the quality of services to citizens are usually higher in those centres, they also present more problems of social alienation, youth unrest and crime,” Fassino added.

The forum, organised by United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) with the United Nations Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the municipality of Turin, sought to reduce inequality and injustice in urban settings and address the dynamics of security and crime preventions.

The challenge for the future is to take advantage of opportunities offered by urbanisation while reducing episodes of crime and violence that hinder sustainable development, particularly for the most vulnerable people: women, youth and marginalised groups.

“From 1960 to 1990, urbanisation was accompanied by a severe increase [in] crime and violence, which affected the majority of cities and towns in both the developed and the developing world,” explained Cecilia Andersson, human settlements officer of the Safer Cities Programme of UN-HABITAT, during her opening speech.

“This situation required change. It required the cities and towns themselves to take responsibility to deal with these issues,” she added.

Mayors and representatives of 18 municipalities around the world from Cape Town to Bangkok, from Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to Seoul, discussed the biggest challenges they encountered and the best measures to take to address them.

Martin Xaba, head of the Safer Cities and I-Trump Department of Durban, South Africa, explained how the local municipality decided in 2000 to adopt the Safer Cities strategy.

“The strategy requires the implementation of both reactive and proactive approach,” Xaba explained. While adequate responses to crime are always needed, “prevention remains the most effective tool, and this is where community involvement becomes critical”.

Such tools, in the case of Durban, include campaigns for crime awareness and against the abuse of women and children, workshops on drug abuse, and the active participation of the community in ward safety committees.

It was “upon the request of African mayors, who were having an issue with regards to safety in their cities” that the programme Safer Cities began in Africa, Andersson explained to IPS, with Johannesburg, South Africa and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania as pilot cities. The programme has since gone global.

Meanwhile, local leaders say that exchanging ideas among cities does work. Antonio Frey, director of local security in Santiago del Chile, told IPS, “The experience of Cape Town, South Africa, is very interesting for us. They managed to recover public spaces, thanks to the involvement of citizens from marginalised areas.”

“This strategy has positive effects in the long run, because those people recover that space, and then take care [of] and manage it.”

Despite the substantial differences between cities in terms of crime rates and types of crimes, a key requirement to enhance safety and security is the decentralisation of policies from the national to local level.

When policies are not decentralised, improving circumstances becomes very difficult, as Bilal S. Hamad, mayor of Beirut, could attest during his speech at the plenary session.

In Beirut, a lack of decentralisation is hindering the municipality’s ability to intervene on crime and safety issues. “The central government has its hand in the affairs of the municipality,” Hamad lamented. The city is not in charge [of] a police force, and the central government put someone in the role of governor, “taking all the executive power in the city of Beirut”.

In another example, inadequate housing is a problem indirectly connected to crime, but “we don’t have full power [over] it, because it’s the central government which controls that”, insisted Hamad.

According to Andersson, apart from decentralisation, cooperation is also essential. “The best results come when all the various departments in a municipality [understand] that they have a role to play with regards to providing safety and security for the inhabitants of the city,” she told IPS.

Interestingly, crime and violence differ significantly from city to city, and developed and developing countries do not necessarily face separate types of crimes.

“In developing countries, the biggest challenge is always finding resources,” Andersson told IPS, particularly moving resources from national to local governments. Some problems, however, affect most cities, regardless of the country in which they are located. “Across borders, in all regions, the issue of women and girls’ safety…comes out quite clearly,” Andersson said.

This issue, by limiting the freedom of women and girls, prevents them from participating in and contributing to their communities. As Andersson clarified during the conference, “Communities where all citizens are empowered to participate in social, economic and political opportunities…are instrumental [in reducing] poverty.”

A Congolese man transports charcoal on his bicycle outside Lubumbashi in the DRC. Credit: Miriam Mannak/IPS

With casualties in the long-running conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) now surpassing every conflict since World War II, U.S. policymakers and advocates are stepping up campaigns to raise awareness and push legislation aimed at encouraging new negotiations, assisting in government reforms, and pressuring the neighbouring countries that have propped up the DRC’s government.

Some advocates say the situation today could be better than at any time in recent years for a durable peace process.

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently preparing to consider a bipartisan bill, unanimously passed by a subcommittee Wednesday, aimed at supporting international efforts to forge a peace deal in the long-running crisis in Congo.

The bill is an “important step forward in raising awareness within the U.S. Congress and among all Americans of this horrific and tragic crisis in the DRC,” Representative Karen Bass, one of the bill’s lead authors, told IPS.

“To date, this legislation has the support of nearly 60 Democrats and Republicans in the House and efforts are currently underway to introduce a similar piece of legislation in the Senate. It has also received significant support from the NGO community.”

Supporters say they expect that number to increase.

Recent months have also seen a strengthening of advocacy on the part of the Congolese diaspora here in Washington, as well as from the rest of the country and Canada. Legislators say this support has been key in helping the House bill gain the legislative backing it has.

One element of the new bill would respond to a longstanding key demand, urging the creation of a special envoy from the president to the DRC and the surrounding Great Lakes region.

“This legislation calls for such an envoy, and Secretary [John] Kerry, in testimony before both the House and the Senate, has indicated his plan to make an appointment,” Bass said.

“I am pleased that this effort is making progress and urge the secretary to move swiftly to make his decision and develop a comprehensive strategy that relies on diplomacy and engagement to address the complex set of issues that stand as barriers to peace and stability in the DRC and the region.”

Conflict-free consumerism

The war in Congo has been running for almost two decades, taking the lives of nearly six million people as several peace processes have failed. Militias engaged in the war have often used rape and sexual violence as a tool of repression and intimidation.

The economics of the mineral trade have also defined this struggle, with armed groups having been able to control mines and trading routes to prop up their actions.

“DRC is potentially one of the world’s wealthiest nations, but has been unable to unlock the potential of the riches above and below the soil due to the ongoing conflict there,” Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst at the Enough Project, a Washington advocacy group that published a new report on the DRC today, told IPS.

“However, a couple of different policy windows have created the space for a peace process that today has a better chance of success than anytime in the last decade.”

Lezhnev refers to the recent emergence of international pressure on Congo’s neighbouring states – particularly Rwanda – for supporting armed groups within eastern Congo. The World Bank has now withheld 135 million dollars from Rwanda for this reason, and there has likewise been pressure on the Congo to enact greater transparency reforms.

In addition, U.N. Special Envoy to Africa Mary Robinson has been working to establish a more comprehensive and inclusive peace process that addresses the core drivers of violence in the DRC. In February, she and 11 African heads of state established a diplomatic framework to identify reforms that would enable Rwanda, Congo and Uganda to cooperate on the extraction and export of minerals.

“This is a first step, but we think this provides a good roadmap for where we think this peace process should go,” Lezhnev said.

“What needs to happen now is Mary Robinson needs to lead regional negotiations between Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo on economic, refugee and security issues so that all these interests can be put on the table and can be worked out in a transparent and legitimate way.”

Also helping to break the link between the armed groups and the minerals that have in part funded them is new U.S. legislation, enacted over the past year as part of comprehensive financial legislation known as the Dodd-Frank Act. A section of this law targets so-called “conflict minerals”, and is reported to have brought about a 65-percent drop in profits for armed groups from tin, tungsten and tantalum this year.

“The Dodd-Frank Act has resulted in armed groups and their supporters finding it significantly more difficult to profit from an illicit trade, and so there is an opportunity to take advantage of these changing incentives and create structures for legitimate cooperation,” Lezhnev says.

“This shows there is a growing global consumer movement against conflict minerals, and conflict-free products have created new momentum to say that enough is enough when it comes to buying untraceable minerals and turning a blind eye.”

Temporary window

A further sign of the weakening of the armed groups is the sight of one of the chief Rwandan warlords, Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, sitting in The Hague at the International Criminal Court (ICC) after he turned himself in to law enforcement in Rwanda in March. Analysts say this turn of events has weakened his militia, known as the M23, and increased opportunities for peace.

Meanwhile, countries around the world have increasingly taken notice of the trade and investment opportunities throughout Africa, resulting in greater levels of engagement. However, groups like the Enough Project warn this policy window will not remain open indefinitely.

“We call on the Obama administration to deploy a high-level envoy and to work with Mary Robinson,” Lezhnev said.

“The administration needs to help shape this process, to incentivise the economic cooperation between the countries of the region by setting up a responsible investment initiative for working with the tech companies, metals companies and responsible investors to identify gaps and opportunities for investing in a conflict-free environment.”

Next week, World Bank President Jim Kim and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are slated to travel to Congo and the region.

Damián Valencia (second right) and other members of the young people's network against machismo. Credit: Courtesy of Cascos Rosa

At the age of 20, Damián Valencia speaks knowledgeably about every aspect of gender equality. He is a member of Cascos Rosa, a young people’s initiative working for cultural change against machismo and violence against women in Ecuador.

“We seek and promote gender equality and equal rights and opportunities for men and women,” said Valencia, one of the founders of the network of young people – originally all men – united against machismo, whose members call themselves Cascos Rosa (Pink Helmets).

The group was formed in 2010 by teenagers and young adults who had received awareness raising training on gender equality, violence and ways of expressing masculinity from the Ecuadorean chapter of Acción Ciudadana por la Democracia y el Desarrollo (ACDemocracia – Citizens’ Action for Democracy and Development) and the Coalition against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Valencia said that gender equity “is such a huge problem that it affects everyone.” He acknowledged that “an improvement can be seen” in the country, but added that “even so, we are still living in a patriarchal society.”

Belonging to Cascos Rosa has had a major impact on his life, he said. At home there was “a machista scheme of things” in which the men “did not wash clothes or do the ironing, did not cook or wash dishes, and expected everything to be done for them.

“Now we all share the same jobs at home, no one is above anyone else, and we have the same rights and opportunities,” he said.

The network promotes a new mentality for combating gender violence and the consumption of prostitution and pornography.

Their pink helmets and T-shirts “break the stereotype that only women wear pink; that boy babies are dressed in blue and girls in pink,” said Valencia, the network’s spokesman.

Cascos Rosa originally had 33 members who emerged from the first workshops held in educational centres, and now has 140. So far 900 teenagers and young people have received training. At first, only young men were included, but as of this year women have joined the ranks.

The network members replicate their knowledge by giving talks in schools and conducting awareness raising activities at gatherings that draw young people, like music festivals. The work of the Cascos Rosa has spread from Quito to four other municipalities in the northern province of Pichincha, where the local government supports the project.

They wear pink T-shirts at their talks, meetings and other activities, in order to create an impact and practise what they preach.

Carolina Félix, who runs workshops for the network, told IPS that it is an ongoing effort, because deep-seated change is not achieved in a 12-hour training session. “That is not enough to modify behaviours and attitudes, let alone reality,” she said. But she added that the workshops do spark reflection, interest, questions and new practices among young people.

“We do not impose a way of thinking. We encourage the construction of a society based on equality, human rights and equity. The goal is to create spaces where men do not have power over women, where they express their emotions, and where women also understand that we have rights, freedoms and responsibilities, just as men do,” Félix said.

The aim, as well as shaping character and educating youngsters, is to encourage leadership traits and to make each young person a multiplier agent of their knowledge and experience, at home as well as at educational centres.

What happened in Valencia’s home shows that this can be done. In this middle-class family of three children, where the parents are shopkeepers, “everyone has changed, especially my father, who now washes the dishes and sometimes does the ironing. My mother is happier and calmer because her burden is lighter,” Valencia said.

“A definite change is taking place,” said Félix, describing the impact on the new generation taking up the baton for gender equity. “They are not afraid of showing themselves as they are, and neither do they say, ‘poor women, such victims!’ because it is an issue both men and women have to work on.”

Violence: the tip of the iceberg

The Transition Commission set up by the government to determine the public institutions that will guarantee equality between women and men recognises the need to “promote cultural transformations” to eradicate inequality and discrimination.

The priority, according to Alexandra Ocles, who chairs the commission, is to transform “cultural patterns involving values, customs, practices, the social imaginary, habits, sexist stereotypes, representations and symbols to do with sexual diversity and the traditional roles that society assigns to women and men.”

Gender violence is one of the most serious problems, according to the National Survey on Family Relationships and Gender-Based Violence against Women, the first of its kind to be carried out in this country of 14.5 million people.

The survey, carried out in 2011, found that 60.6 percent of the women interviewed had suffered some type of gender violence: physical, psychological, sexual or financial.

Psychological or emotional violence was the most frequently cited, by 53.9 percent of the respondents, followed by physical violence (38 percent), financial or property violence – the removal or retention of property or economic resources belonging to the victim – (35.3 percent) and sexual violence (25.7 percent).

“Ninety percent of married or cohabiting women (in the sample) who had experienced violence were not separated from their partners. Some 52.5 percent of them said that couples must overcome their difficulties and stay together, and 46.5 percent said their problems were not so serious,” says the study, carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC).

The debate on gender-based violence emerged into the public arena in the late 1980s. The first special police units providing services for women and families were introduced in 1994, and one year later the law on violence against women and the family came into force.

In 2007, the National Plan for the Eradication of Gender-Based Violence against children, adolescents and women was launched, which includes in its aims “changing discriminatory social and cultural patterns.” The constitution approved in 2008 mandated the integration of a gender perspective into all public projects and established institutional guarantees for women’s human rights.

In recent years there have been advances, including provision of comprehensive services in the justice system, campaigns against machismo and gender violence, and a strategy to mainstream a gender perspective in higher education.

Progress has also been made in women’s participation in the different branches of government: the proportion of women in the judiciary climbed from six percent in 2006 to 43 percent in 2011; in the executive branch their participation rose from 14 to 33 percent in the same period; and in the legislature the share increased from 25 to 34 percent.

Left-leaning President Rafael Correa has declared that achieving gender equity is one of the priorities of his government.

“Pending issues include economics, education, violence and sexual and reproductive health,” María Oviedo, the Argentine training manager for the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), told IPS. “Enforcement of the laws is the weakest link. Governments lack a comprehensive policy to address these issues.”

Oviedo, together with dozens of women’s rights defenders from Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa, attended the May 7-10 seminar “Incidencia en red: el desafío que los estados cumplan con los derechos humanos de las mujeres” (Networking: Challenging States to Respect Women’s Human Rights).

CLADEM, founded in 1987, launched a campaign in 2011 with the slogan “For a state that fulfils its duties towards women’s human rights. The time has arrived!” Financed by the European Union and the Dutch organisation Oxfam Novib, the campaign will conclude in 2015.

In Latin America, indicators on primary school education, employment and incomes have improved over the past decade, but there are still significant gaps between the status of women and men in this region with a highly patriarchal culture.

There are some 163 million economically active men and 113 million women in the region. By 2020 these figures are forecast to rise to 188 million and 141 million respectively, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

There is an upward trend for women’s employment, and ECLAC estimates that by 2020, 56 percent of women will be working outside the home, compared to 52 percent in 2010.

“Inequality and injustice underlie day-to-day violence,” Gabriela Delgado, of the human rights programme at the state National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told IPS. “The bottleneck for women’s struggles is the justice system. This means that structural changes are needed.”

Among the states’ pending debts in this area are legislative reforms to establish formal equality under the law, and the enforcement of policies to achieve the goals of access to economic resources, violence-free lives, sexual and reproductive rights and non-sexist education to combat discrimination.

Activists have identified laws that tolerate marital rape and other kinds of rape, endorse different minimum ages at which men and women can marry, or grant greater rights to men on marriage, in countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua and Panama.

Between 17 and 53 percent of women in the region are victims of violence, and this scenario is exacerbated because 92 percent of reported crimes go unpunished.

And abortion largely remains illegal in Latin America.

In the view of Rosa Cobo, an academic at Spain’s public University of A Coruña, a mixture of age-old forms of violence are reemerging, together with new phenomena linked to the illegal economy and organised crime.

“We are living in a world characterised by geopolitical, economic, political and patriarchal disorder, which produces excessive violence that always affects the most disadvantaged and the weakest sectors,” Cobo told IPS.

She cited as examples the femicides (gender-based murders of women) in Guatemala and Ciudad Juárez, on the border between Mexico and the United States; gender violence in armed conflicts; the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation; and the sale of women into marriage in Asia.

The activists called for guarantees from states for equality between men and women and girls and boys, through the elimination of discriminatory rules and practices, and the promotion of equality and shared responsibilities for domestic chores, in order to eradicate poverty and usher in a life free from violence for women and girls.

They also called for sexual and reproductive autonomy for women, access to reproductive health resources and services, and secular, intercultural, non-sexist and anti-discriminatory education.

“There is a worrying debt to women that is going to take years to overcome,” Oviedo said.

CLADEM, which is based in Lima, launched a campaign in 2009 for non-sexist and anti-discriminatory education to promote education based on respect, equality and cooperation between the sexes.

“Isn’t it likely that there is a relationship between this extreme violence against women and the progress made in winning women’s rights in recent years?” Cobo asked.

This kind of violence “shows a compulsion to control, in response to the social reality that criticises the status of women. Violence has been displaced from known spaces to the unknown, so that men are now killing women whom they do not know,” she said.

Maasai villagers in traditional clothing and jewellery in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Credit: William Warby/cc by 2.0

The Maasai tribe of Kenya and Tanzania has long been a beacon of traditional culture to many Africans – and for Westerners on safari through Maasai Mara, Samburu or Amboseli, a familiar face.

But familiarity and travels aside, the tribe faces many of the same roadblocks on the path to development as any other marginalised community around the world.

William Kikanae, community leader of his Maasai village in Maasai Mara, recently spoke with IPS in New York during the launch of an initiative to provide economic opportunities for local tribeswomen by the Spanish footwear brand Pikolinos.

“First, I know for myself that women are the most important part of the family,” Kikanae told IPS. “(But) for Maasai people, women are not important. They don’t have power like a man.”

As an Adcam director for Kenya, Kikanae works with brands overseas like Pikolinos to cultivate projects that allow the women of his community to earn money.

Through the Maasai Project, local women embroider sandals that are then sent to Spain for finishing and sold all over the world, with the proceeds going back into community development projects such as schools, clinics and housing.

“Before, the men of my community thought that I supported women to be in power more than them,” Kikanae said in regards to the Maasai Project.

“We’re not going against anyone. I can say now that even our politicians are proud of the project,” Kikanae added.

The middlemen

According to a female government officer and doctor from the Maasai tribe, who asked that her name be withheld, supporting women and propelling them to the forefront of development is a significant way to achieve change among the Maasai.

“Women cannot own livestock they look after, but if educated these things will change. All is not lost for those who did not go to school, however. If allowed by their men to trade in milk, handicrafts, they can generate income for their families,” the Kenyan officer told IPS.

Poor communities are always subject to exploitation and misrepresentation when it comes to aid, so when a tribe like the Maasai partners with an organisation abroad, it is only natural for scepticism to arise.

“I think the problem here stems from the middlemen. These are the guys who are supposed to connect the community with the ‘helpers’. These people will use the opportunity to exploit the community to realise their own ambition with very little of the help reaching the beneficiary,” the officer told IPS.

“Since education has lagged behind, the few educated individuals have used the ignorance of the majority to their own benefit. So, in a nutshell, the common villager may not be able to differentiate this.”

Homework by firelight

The women of the Maasai are hardly in denial when it comes to their lack of education. They understand that the more people are educated within their community, the fewer will fall victim to exploitation.

But old patterns persist. In many local African villages, it is a well known fact that only if a young girl is rendered useless to her family – unwilling to marry young, reluctant to perform household duties and chores, or go to the garden and dig – would she be sent off to school to study. This caused a division in opportunity and kept education inaccessible to those who desired it.

A tradition-versus-modernisation issue is still visible today.

Additionally, the lack of basic needs at home such as electricity or transportation to school greatly hinders the performance of a rural student. As the officer told IPS, “You can imagine trying to do homework by firelight or walking long distances to and from school.”

Let the women lead

From an outsider’s point of view, it may seem that the Maasai women cannot catch a break, from lack of health services – especially in regards to maternal health where many women still die during childbirth – to the spread of HIV/AIDS, a topic that most do not feel comfortable talking about.

“Men go to towns, sells cows or work, have relationships with town women and bring the virus home,” the officer said. “The women have not heard of condoms or negotiating for safe sex.”

As in other societies around the world, the spread of HIV/AIDS is directly linked to education, and when children don’t receive information on sexual health, the perpetual cycle of disease continues.

Added to these concerns is the growing problem of displacement.

“Large tracts of Maasialand are being sold by men, sometimes without the knowledge of their wives. From Kitengela to Namanga on the border this is happening. This land is being bought by other communities and before long the Maasai will be in the back of beyond in extremely hard to reach areas. The current leadership is too short-sighted to see this catastrophe in the making,” the officer added.

Asked what is needed to facilitate development among the Maasai, the officer said, “There is need to for good leadership to guide this process so that there is no exploitation.”

With education and good leadership, the obstacles that the tribe face are slowly tackled. One by one, Maasai women are more likely to reassess the needs of their entire families and surrounding community, whilst working together with local and international organisations to bring about measurable change, she said.

A woman is attacked by police at an anti-rape protest in New Delhi. Credit: Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)

Harsh police handling of public protests erupting across India over a spate of sensational rapes since December has resulted in renewed demands to reform a force that retains the repressive features of its colonial origins.

Last month a bench of the Supreme Court, angered by police brutality on women protesting against rapes in the capital, New Delhi, and other north Indian states, demanded to know the status of compliance with rulings the apex court had made on police reforms six years ago.

“Even an animal won’t do what the police officers are doing everyday in different parts of the country,” the bench said, referring, among other things, to the beating up by police of a 65-year-old woman who had joined protests against rape in Aligarh, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. “How can police officers beat an unarmed lady?”

Justice G.S. Singhvi, leading the bench, singled out the case of a police officer slapping a young woman participating in protests on Apr. 19 outside a Delhi hospital where a five-year-old girl was being treated for serious injuries inflicted on her by her rapist in the Gandhi Nagar area of the capital.

“The police can do little to reduce crimes like rape, but they should be judged by how they react to such crimes,” said Jyotiswaroop Pandey, who retired last year as director-general of police in the northern Uttarakhand state and is currently a member of the police reforms commission.

Pandey told IPS that it was “unacceptable” that police failed to react to complaints of misbehaviour against a bus driver on Dec. 16, 2012.  Hours later, the driver and his crew were arrested for the gang rape and brutalisation of a 23-year-old woman passenger.

The victim and her male companion were flung off the bus and left lying in a busy Delhi street naked and bleeding for almost an hour with no passer-by daring to intervene for fear of getting embroiled in a lengthy police case.

As public protests grew, authorities moved the young woman to a Singapore hospital where she succumbed to her grievous injuries on Dec. 29. In Delhi, police resorted to water cannons, baton charges and mass arrests as protesters surged towards parliament.

Commenting on the rough treatment of protesters, Pandey said the police had “forgotten that their primary focus should have been on maintaining peace and order without resorting to force or behaviour likely to exacerbate tensions when an empathetic attitude could have quietened tempers.”

Even more than the brutal repression on the streets, rights activists are concerned with the way rape victims are treated at police stations, starting with refusals to record complaints.

In December, the victim of a gang rape in Patiala, Punjab state, committed suicide by consuming poison after leaving behind a note charging police with failing to act on her complaint and, instead, intimidating her.

Soon after she was raped by three men, the victim had appeared on television channels describing her ordeal, but that failed to rouse the police. Even after the suicide it took intervention by the Punjab high court before authorities moved to sack three policemen and initiate criminal proceedings against them.

In a press note released on Apr. 23, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), a major non-government organisation that is pushing for police reforms, expressed “serious concern at the continuing lack of response to victims of rape.”

CHRI said evidence of this failure could be seen in the way police handled the case of a five-year-old girl who was kidnapped and raped in Delhi last month.

Instead of registering the missing person complaint, police “simply drove the distraught parents away,” the CHRI press note said, adding that policemen even offered a bribe to prevent the family from taking their story to the media.

Even the new rape laws, which threaten police officers who refuse to record a complaint of rape with a two-year jail sentence, seem to have done nothing to change attitudes and behaviours, said CHRI Director Maja Daruwala.

The new law, drawn up after wide consultations with civil society, takes into consideration current thinking on gender issues and existing patriarchal attitudes in society to modify ideas ingrained in the Indian Penal Code that was introduced by the British colonial regime in 1860.

Recent events show that the law, passed by parliament on Mar. 20, is yet to kick in. “Changes in law brought about after the Dec.16 rape have little meaning if the police continue to defeat justice through their…subversive practices,” Daruwala said.

Also, while the changes provide for quicker trials and harsher punishments for rapists, they have been criticised for completely overlooking the burning need to modernise the police force to make it service-oriented rather than repressive, as desired by the Supreme Court.

“If the 2006 directives of the Supreme Court were adopted and implemented they could have transformed the police from a feared and distrusted force into an essential service upholding the law,” says Navaz Kotwal, coordinator of CHRI’s police reforms programme.

On Mar. 6, alerted by reports in the media of the police’s repeated high-handedness in dealing with anti-rape protests, the Supreme Court issued notices to the provinces to report on progress in implementing reforms.

But senior police officers are sceptical. “Even though the apex court has not given up its monitoring, the present bunch of police reforms is already a futile exercise,” says Vikash Narain Rai, former director-general of police in the northern Haryana state.

Rai told IPS that if police reforms are to be successful they need to be accompanied by “judicial reforms, an overhaul of correctional services and real empowerment of society.”

Rai regrets that the emphasis remains on “flexing state muscles through increased retribution and protectionism, essentially by-products of male chauvinism, rather than on sensitising criminal justice functionaries and empowering women.”

Yet the figure that is causing widespread anger here is the estimated number of unreported cases – some 26,000 incidents of rape or assault. That’s a significant rise even over last year’s estimated figure of 19,000, an astonishingly high number that constituted the first time that the U.S. military had released estimates for unreported incidents.

In a new annual report released Tuesday, the Pentagon says some 70 sexual assaults may be taking place within the U.S. military every day, affecting more than six percent of all women in active service and around 1.2 percent of men over the past year. Other official figures suggest that one in five servicewomen could be experiencing such assaults.

“Sexual assault is a crime that undermines trust within military units and is an affront to the basic values our Service members defend,” the report, available here and here, states. “While the Department has taken a multifaceted approach to fundamentally change the way the Department confronts sexual assault, there is still much work to do.”

Such figures constitute an increase of more than a third during just the past half-decade, and have clearly exasperated the top military leadership.

“[S]exual assault is an outrage; it is a crime … And if it’s happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they’re wearing,” President Barack Obama told reporters Tuesday.

“So I don’t want just more speeches or awareness programmes or training but, ultimately, folks look the other way. If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable – prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonourably discharged. Period.”

The Pentagon’s new report was given an inadvertent curtain-raiser on Monday, when the Air Force’s head officer in charge of sexual assault prevention was himself arrested on charges of sexual assault.

On Tuesday, President Obama noted that he had spoken with Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel earlier in the day and told him to “exponentially step up our game”. He also said that he wanted military members who have experienced sexual assault “to hear directly from their commander-in-chief that I’ve got their backs.”

Hours later, Secretary Hagel unveiled a new “prevention and response” plan aimed at increasing accountability, stepping up punishment and, ultimately, trying to end military sexual assault outright. The strategy includes the formation of a new nine-person panel, appointed by both the Pentagon and Congress, tasked with coming up with concrete recommendations within a year.

“This department may be nearing a stage where the frequency of this crime and the perception that there is tolerance of it could very well undermine our ability to effectively carry out the mission and to recruit and retain the good people we need,” Hagel told reporters Tuesday.

“We need cultural change where every service member is treated with dignity and respect, where all allegations of inappropriate behavior are treated with seriousness, where victims’ privacy is protected, where bystanders are motivated to intervene, and where offenders know that they will be held accountable by strong and effective systems of justice.”

62 percent retaliation

While the new Pentagon panel will be tasked with making recommendations on the full gamut of military sexual assault, one element that probably won’t be included is the possibility of removing responsibility for related investigation and punishment from the military structure itself.

This despite Secretary’s Hagel’s own contention on Tuesday that much of the problem has to do with the military’s “culture”. And despite critics’ contentions that assault victims are far less likely to report their experiences if they have to do so to a commanding officer.

Indeed, according to U.S. Senator Patty Murray, co-author of new legislation on the issue, some 62 percent of military personnel who have reported sexual abuse have experienced some form of retaliation.

“Every American should be outraged by the disturbing numbers from this year’s Defense Department sexual assault report, but no one should surprised,” Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps Captain and the executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), an advocacy group, told IPS in an e-mail.

“Today we still have a military justice system in which commanding officers are granted the authority over the entire criminal justice process – instead of trained, impartial attorneys and judges.”

Although last month Hagel received plaudits for putting forth a policy recommendation that would weaken or do away with commanding officers’ abilities to overturn courts-martial decisions in cases of sexual assault, on Tuesday he nonetheless stated that he did not believe that the panel should look into taking this power outside of the military chain of command.

“It is my strong belief … that the ultimate authority has to remain within the command structure,” Hagel said. “We do have to go back and review every aspect of that chain of command, of that accountability … [but] taking the ultimate responsibility away from the military – I think that would just weaken the system.”

Yet according to SWAN’s Bhagwati, more may need to be done to regularise investigation and accountability procedures.

“Unless Congress removes the institutional bias from the military judicial system,” she says, “sexual predators will continue to wreak havoc on our Armed Forces, and our troops will continue to face a well-founded fear of reporting, institutional retaliation, and career jeopardy.”

In recent weeks, the U.S. Congress has focused increasingly on military sexual assault, and on Tuesday senators put forward a bill aimed at combating the issue. According to a release, the 380,000 members of the Military Officers Association of America have already “strongly endorsed” the bill, which is slated to be introduced in the House in coming weeks.

Among other elements, the legislation “would create a new category of legal advocates, called Special Victims’ Counsels, who would be responsible for advocating on behalf of the interests of the victim,” Senator Murray, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

“These SVCs would also advise the victim on the range of legal issues they may face. For example, when a young Private First Class is intimidated into not reporting a sexual assault by threatening her with unrelated legal charges – like underage drinking – this new advocate would be there to protect her and tell her the truth.”

Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, the general secretary of the global rights network World YWCA, said that further economic and social empowerment was needed to change the lives of women in Africa. Credit: Ravi Kanth Devarakonda/IPS

Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, a human rights lawyer and the general secretary of the global rights network World YWCA, knows what it is like to struggle against poverty and violence: she herself comes from a poor family in Magaya village in Murewa district, which lies northeast of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare.

But Gumbonzvanda has travelled a long way from her home. And she has spent much of her life trying to change the lives of women who were not as fortunate as she was.

And now she is a candidate for the executive director position at United Nations Women – a post formerly held by Chile’s ex-president Michelle Bachelet, who resigned in March.

In an interview with IPS at her offices in Geneva, Switzerland, Gumbonzvanda said that economic growth and development have to address “opportunities for creating wealth at household level, but also structural issues such as the violence and inequality that women continue to experience almost on a daily basis.”

She applauded development on the African continent, while stressing that further economic and social empowerment was needed to change the lives of women.

“I see women going forward in various areas and sectors in all African countries, who are able to shape a new narrative. We need economic and social empowerment – it is not enough to have political empowerment,” she said.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: Let us start with the growing rates of rape and domestic violence against women. How grave is this problem and is it universal?

A:  I think this is one of the biggest issues facing women and girls in the world today. I see the violence against women as a manifestation of inequalities, disempowerment and exclusion…

Social disempowerment, the fact that women are seen as second-class citizens who do not often have a voice or rights about their own bodies; the painful realities of poverty and violence against women; and child trafficking for sexual exploitative work are all burning issues that need to be addressed.

What is important is that we work on preventing violence against women, including domestic violence, violence in conflict (situations) and sexual abuse. The prevention part is critical, (and it should be) followed by robust policies in different social sectors within countries and at the international level.

Q: Over the last 30 years there have been tremendous changes in the global economy and culture – largely due to the internet and globalisation. What impact has this had on women?

A:  I think there are a couple of things that happened in the last 30 years. I was in Beijing (in 1995) for the (World) Conference on Women and I would argue that there has been real international work on the international norms to do with women and human rights that is progressively good.

We now have conventions and treaties at an international level, and even at regional level, like the Maputo Plan of Action for Women (on reproductive and sexual health rights).

Even at the normative level, we see quite a lot of work and some good progress. However, whether an economic model can address the structural issues that contribute to violence against women still needs to be resolved.

Q: Are governments doing enough to address these challenges?

A:  They are not sufficient. I think governments need to get (their) priorities right and do more when they formulate their budgets. The greatest security of any nation is when its mothers and children are secure, when there is food on the table and water nearby, when there is a functioning school and, ultimately, the possibility of getting a job. That is the most secure nation.

I would urge our governments to rethink the relationship between military expenditure and expenditure on social and basic services. Just by buying one military helicopter less, governments can build 10 schools. That is the paramount challenge for governments all over the world.

Q: While there has been renewed conflict on the African continent, there are also great successes and progress with regards to development and empowering women. What do you think still needs to be done for women on this continent?

A: This year, the African Union is celebrating its 50th anniversary and African women were quite involved in the decolonisation process. They were in the trenches looking for a new Africa – and it has happened.

We are celebrating Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who is the first African woman to lead the African Union, and that’s good for Africa.

We see countries like Rwanda and others having (significant) number of women in decision-making (positions). And yet we have to address the issue of conflict. As long as countries remain in conflict situations, and as long as there is violence, it continues to hold us back.

The continent, from the Cape to Cairo, is a rich one and we need to look within Africa (and see) where women can be more involved in the big sectors like mining, transport, and agriculture.

Q: We see technology playing a role in developing the continent with SMSs being used to inform mothers of vaccinations for children etc. What role does it have to play in bettering the lives of Africans?

A: We see a lot of potential in Africa in mobile telephony and we see it being used in Tanzania around services for family planning or for the immunisation of kids. We have also seen the introduction of mobile (phone) banking services in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and these are powerful ways to enable and empower communities.

There is a lot of potential that can be harnessed from technology and what is critical is the infrastructure and regulatory framework, which needs to be enabled.

Q: What, in your opinion, are some of the greatest successes of African women? And what can we learn from them?

A: I think I always reached out to the women leaders from my continent.  You have to remain grounded in your identity … You (have to) embrace the totality of what is good about your own context. And that is your contribution as a global citizen … My identity is informed by the collective identity.

The Muslim Rohingyas and Rakhine Buddhists have had a history of conflict dating back to World War II. The latest round, however, was ignited in June 2012 when 10 Rohingya Muslims were killed by ethnic Arakanese, following the rape of a 28-year-old Arakanese woman. It sparked off a cycle of violence in which an estimated 200 non-Rohingya Muslims, Rohingya and ethnic Arakanese have been killed and more than 125,000 displaced.

The horror peaked in October last year when security forces assisted ethnic Arakanese in razing villages in nine of the 21 townships in Arakan, in western Myanmar or Burma. The Rohingyas were disarmed of the sticks they were carrying to defend themselves. At least 70 of them were reportedly killed, including 28 children, nearly half of them under the age of five.

“Since the state-sponsored pogrom against the Rohingya started in June 2012,” says student, activist and Rohingya blogger team member Mohammed Sheikh Anwar, “their living conditions have deteriorated. Access to humanitarian assistance such as food and medicines has been blocked, their properties are looted and vandalised on a daily basis.

“In addition, the internally displaced Rohingya and Kamans have no shelter, clean water or clothing. Many are suffering from pneumonia, diarrhoea and other infectious diseases. Women and under-aged girls are subjected to rape at the hands of security officials, the men have to face inhuman torture in secret jails.”

This plight of the Rohingyas was the subject of a 153-page report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch last week. Titled ‘All You Can Do is Pray’, it accuses the Myanmar authorities of ‘ethnic cleansing’ by failing to prevent the violence, conducting mass detentions and blocking humanitarian aid.

So desperate is their situation that it has sparked off an exodus where more than 13,000 of them – according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) – have fled Myanmar by sea in overcrowded dinghy boats.

They are headed mostly to Thailand, but if they have been hoping for refuge here, the country is not extending it. Instead, in a bid to protect its own shores, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra called on Myanmar President Thein Sein to assist in the repatriation of the more than 1,000 detained Rohingya in Thailand.

Confirming Thailand’s unwillingness to take in the Rohingyas, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of HRW told IPS, “Thailand absolutely refuses to let the Rohingya have access to the UNHCR to file a claim for refugee status. In fact, Thailand has a special policy created by the National Security Council, which sees the Rohingya as a national security threat to Thailand.”

“UNHCR and other human rights organisations need to come forward and rescue these individuals fleeing persecution,” says Anwar. “If the Thai authorities send them back to Myanmar, they could be killed or imprisoned.”

There are an estimated 800,000 stateless Rohingya in western Burma’s Arakan state, which borders Bangladesh. “History tells us that in the early 1950s a few Bengali Muslim intellectuals of the northwestern part of Arakan began to use the term ‘Rohingya’ to identify themselves,” says historian Aye Chan of Kanda University of International Studies in Japan and author of ‘The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma’.

“They were, in fact, direct descendants of immigrants from the Chittagong district of East Bengal, who had migrated into Arakan after the province was ceded to British India under the terms of the Treaty of Yandabo. Most of these migrants settled down in the Mayu Frontier Area, near what is now Burma’s border with modern Bangladesh. Actually, they were called ‘Chittagonians’ in British colonial records.”

Arakan saw a great deal of bloodshed during World War II and after 1948, at the beginning of Burma’s independence, Chan goes on to say. “One of the underlying causes was the zamindari system, under which the British administrators granted Bengali landowners thousands of acres of arable land on 90-year leases. The Arakanese peasants who had fled Burmese rule and returned after British annexation found themselves deprived of their inherited land.”

Things only got worse after the British left. “Some people in the Mayu Frontier, who are now in their 70s and 80s, still remember the atrocities they suffered in 1942-1943 during the short period of anarchy between the British evacuation and Japanese occupation of the area,” says Chan. There was an outburst of ethnic and religious tensions that had been simmering for a century.”

Most Burmese still consider the Rohingya illegal Bengali immigrants. A 1974 Emergency Immigration Act, initiated by former dictator General Ne Win, stripped Rohingya of their Burmese nationality. Further, under Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, Rohingya are not considered part of the country’s 135 ethnic groups unless they can prove their ancestors lived in Myanmar before independence from Britain in 1948. Although some Rohingya carry temporary registration cards, many lack documentation.

“Rohingyas, as is well known, have been persecuted by different regimes in Myanmar due to their ethnic origin and religion,” says Anwar. “As their situation stands today, it will not be an exaggeration to say that they are one of the most discriminated, oppressed and persecuted people in the world.”