By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Oct 15 2000 (IPS)

Women from all over the world will converge in New York on Tuesday in a “World March” to protest against poverty and violence towards women and to put pressure on national and international bodies to advance gender equality.

A pamphlet distributed here on Saturday by participants in a similar march, said Tuesdays protest will be “the grand finale of this extraordinary undertaking called the World March”.

The march has a world platform of 17 demands. Its organisers and participants are demanding from the United Nations and its member states concrete measures to eliminate poverty, violence against women and to ensure equality between the sexes.

They want to force governments, decision-makers and individuals the world over to institute the changes necessary for improving the status of women and women’s quality of life.

On Tuesday too, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is to receive a 200-strong delegation from the march in New York; World Bank President James Wolfensohn and the International Monetary Fund managing director Horst Köhler are to receive delegations in Washington on Monday.

“We plan to deliver to the United Nations millions of signatures in support of the Marchs world demands,” the pamphlet said.

Saturdays march in the Belgian capital attracted tens of thousands of womens rights activists. The demonstration was part of “The World March of Women,” an international undertaking which currently links 5,000 groups in 157 countries and territories worldwide.

Gerd de Clerck, a co-ordinator of the action in Belgium, told IPS that police had estimated some 45,000 people turned out for the march, in which 300 local groups took part, “so if that is the official estimate, perhaps as many as 50,000 are here”.

Demonstrators came from across Europe and beyond. The peaceful event had much of the feel of a festival, with food stands offering traditional Congolese, Indian, and Indonesian food, and live music throughout the day and cultural activities planned at Brussels venues for later that night.

The central theme of Saturdays event was ‘Sharing Wealth and Combating Poverty – Against Violence on Women and for Respect of their Integrity’ and throughout the Cinquantenaire parká in central Brussels a wide range of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) set up informational booths, held lectures, staged political theatre parodying the objectification and exploitation of women in the workplace and society at large, while bands played on the main stage.

Some demonstrators knitted a scarf thought to exceed five kilometres in length. The inspiration came from the 18th Century French women revolutionaries who knitted while they attended sessions in the national assembly.

“I wanted to remember them – not because they are victims or they are heroes, but because they tried to have a voice in political life. And that is just as important a thing for women now as it was then,” Lucresse Marna, the projects creator, told IPS.

Hilde van den Hooff, a volunteer knitter, added that the scarf “is a symbol of protest, but it also a symbol of connection between all the women of the different countries. A scarf, of course, is something warm and is a symbol of taking care of the children ¡ but you can also strangle someone with a scarf, so it has these two connotations”, she said with a laugh.

A slogan of the demonstration was ‘2000 good reasons to march’ and there were hundreds of diverse demands put forth on Saturday. Women from Indonesias Moluccan Islands (former Spice Islands) called for an end to sectarian violence in their homeland and Kurdish women for a homeland of their own; French lesbians were demanding anti-discrimination laws be adopted by international bodies; Filipino women called for an end to trafficking of women; Belgian childcare-providers were asking for better working conditions; Arab immigrant women for access to basic social care.

The speeches were kept to a minimum. Suzanne Cautaert of the Belgian organisation Refleks told the crowd: “In all our big (European) cities traffickers in human beings are detaining women who come from poor countries, forcing them into prostitution, while in many poor countries with armed conflicts women and girls are raped and kept imprisoned ¡ when they escape and arrive in the West, they physical or sexual violence is often not grounds for political asylum”.

She demanded that national and European authorities allocate funds for a “real action plan” to combat violence against women. “Violence against women

is a social problem asking for a political solution,” said Cautaert.

A representative of the Philippines Freedom from Debt Coalition, Jean Enriquez, spoke of the impact of globalisation, which she said has lead to even greater feminisation of poverty.

“Together we have to stimulate exchanges and co-operation between the women of the North and of the South, to support women in weaving solidarity networks and act in synergy for our common interests,” said Noell Mwavita Rugense of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa).

“We must fight all gender-related inequalities in all spheres of life,” she said, not that women carry the heaviest burdens of poverty and violence all over the world.

Sophie Zafari, of the French co-ordination of the march, said that in Europe women perform “invisible and undervalued tasks, such as domestic chores, the education and care of children” that grant them less financial independence than men enjoy and marginalise them from public life.

“We demand a real re-division of the useful and indispensable social activities and of human resources. This World March of Women wants to show the absurd and unjust mechanisms that make women poor. Our demands form the urgent answer to this situation,” she said.

Excerpt: