RIGHTS: Activists Hope Women’s Day Will Bring Change

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 1998 (IPS) - International Women’s Day, to be celebrated worldwide Sunday, should be used to promote changes in ending violence and rights abuses against women, say feminist activists.

Government delegations and women’s groups from more than 150 nations are at the United Nations for a two-week session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that focuses on women’s rights and violence against women. But despite the progress made since the 1995 Women’s Conference in Beijing, many experts are worried that the issues of violence and rights still do not attract enough attention from world governments.

“At the rate that this document (the Beijing Platform for Action) is being implemented, it will be the 23rd century” before women have equal rights, argues Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, a programme of New Jersey’s Rutgers University.

As a result, Bunch contends, women’s groups must use International Women’s Day on Mar. 8 to call for worldwide leadership to address violence against women. At the United Nations non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should push for increased financial resources to fund programmes to counter gender- based violence.

Some of that funding could come from billionaire media mogul Ted Turner’s offer of one billion dollars for the United Nations – half of which, Bunch argues, could be spared to enhance U.N. programmes for women.

Many of the NGO representatives present for the talks here are equally determined to take action on Women’s Day in their respective home countries to draw attention to pressing human rights concerns.

Algerian NGOs have seized the occasion to spotlight the rape, kidnapping and killing of women in the ongoing conflict between their government and radical Islamist groups. Some 240 groups have signed a petition for a petition stating that “the ongoing conflict in Algeria violates, on a daily basis, the human rights of Algerian women and girls” and condemning the armed groups which have claimed responsibility.

“Although it’s a pretty mild petition … we have been approached by the official delegation of Algeria, telling us that this is not the thing to do,” says Anissa Helie, an Algerian activist currently working for the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership.

Although the feminists worry most about the attacks from the Islamists, Helie explains, the government is adamant that “there is no conflict” in Algeria.

Other groups face more peaceful circumstances, but still intend to use Women’s Day to strike at the disparities in their societies. In Morocco, the Union of Feminine Action (UAF) is organising a march of some 10,000 women on the Parliament in Rabat, to seek changes in the family code (or Moudawana), which the group contends discriminates against women.

“The main problem is repudiation,” says noted Moroccan singer and UAF activist Soumeya Abdelaziz, referring to the laws by which a Muslim man can obtain a divorce simply through “repudiating” his wife, or publicly saying three times that he will divorce her.

Although the Moudawana now stipulates that a husband seeking a divorce must so formally in court, the UAF believes it is still too easy for Muslim husbands to leave their wives, Abdelaziz argues. Moreover, changes in the family code on custody laws now compel boys to go into their mother’s custody if they are under 12 years old, but into their father’s custody beyond that age – a “systematically discriminatory” practice, she adds.

“A mother cannot marry if she wants to keep her children,” Abdelaziz points out. “If she gets remarried, she loses her child’s custody.”

The UAF, founded in 1987 by noted Moroccan leftist Latifa Jbabdi, is expecting a large nationwide turnout to support its call for changes in the codes – but even the march may be affected by the climate for women’s rights. “We don’t know if we will get permission even now for the march, because the police are afraid of (the possibility of) intervention by Islamist groups,” Abdelaziz says.

Atsango Chesoni, an attorney with the International Federation of Women Lawyers of Kenya, hopes that Women’s Day can also draw attention to women who are fleeing societies marked by discrimination or abuse of their basic rights. On Women’s Day, she argues, the special needs of women asylum seekers also ought to be emphasised.

So far, Chesoni says, women who are fleeing from the prospect of undergoing female genital mutilation are not widely recognised as legitimate applicants for asylum. However, the recent case of Fauziya Kasinga, who was admitted into the United States last year after a lengthy immigration battle focusing on her contention that genital mutilation violated her rights, may have changed the political climate on that issue.

Amid the dozens of different causes being pushed to centre stage for Women’s Day in 1998, one theme stands out: the battle for equal human rights.

With debates slated here next week for such contentious issues as the Aghanistan-based Taliban’s poor record on women’s rights and the decades-old effort of Korean “comfort women” to win redress from Japan, that is a battle that will extend long after the Sunday marches.