The Word on Women

By Emma Batha 

The photo shows a woman sprawled in the dirt, grimacing in pain. A man is lunging towards her.  The image needs no caption – the man has obviously beaten the woman up and hurled her to the ground. His demeanour suggests her ordeal is not over.

This is the disturbing picture at the front of a new International Rescue Committee report on domestic violence. It was taken by an Ivorian woman who wanted to help highlight the severity of abuse happening in her country.

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By Gabriela De Cicco

In December 2011, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM) launched the campaign For a State that fulfills its duties towards women’s human rights^[1]. AWID spoke to Elba Núñez Ibáñez, CLADEMS’s Regional Coordinator, about the goals and scope of this campaign.[1] The Campaign is conducted by an Alliance including Inter-American Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development (PIDHDD), International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Red-DESC) and the Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and African Diaspora Women’s Network.

By Lisa Anderson

NEW YORK (TrustLaw) - A woman or girl dies every two minutes due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

Yet of the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the one dedicated to improving maternal health has made the least progress overall and no progress in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a panel of experts at a recent conference here.   

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This Save the Children tribute to motherhood is signed by model Christy Turlington, Indian actress Shabana Azmi, Indian author Jaishree Misra and Nigerian actress Joke Silva  

No matter where she is from, a mother’s happiness will depend on her child’s wellbeing.  This similarity cuts through all other differences that may exist between mothers living on opposite sides of the world.

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By Maria Caspani

I recently went to the launch of the Women’s Empowerment Principles, hosted by the UK chapter of the United Nations women’s agency (UN Women) in London.

The principles - signed by over 400 CEOs worldwide - provide companies with a framework to improve women’s empowerment and promote gender equality in the workplace.

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This summer, world leaders will gather in Rio to hammer out a new set of agreements on what sustainable development means, and more importantly, how both rich and developing nations can get there before it’s too late. However, for the scores of women who will be attending, there are glaring omissions: reproductive health, gender equality and girls education are nowhere to be found on the Rio+20 agenda.

I know that women offer the most promising levers for the transformation to sustainable development. My experience around the world tells me that women are full of creative and strategic solutions to the problems facing their communities. Their voices must be included in critical decisions affecting our world. And the fact is, sustainable development isn't sustainable if it doesn't include empowering women to plan their families, educate themselves and their children, and have a voice in government at all levels. Rio+20 must have human rights – and women's rights at its core. Earth summit planners haven't yet done that, but women can make it happen.

Women are 51 percent of the world's population, yet own only 1 percent of its assets. Women are 2/3 of the world's workers, but earn a mere 10 percent of the wages. Rio+20 must not become another forum in which women's voices are not heard. Instead, the summit must demonstrate that women's voices are integral to all development. Environmental sustainability simply can't happen without women's inclusion.

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                While there is no silver bullet to solve global hunger, discussion at the Global Conference of Women in Agriculture (GCWA), held in New Delhi from March 13^th to 15^th, 2012, pointed to a piece of the solution. In a breakout discussion, participants came to the conclusion that empowering women is the key to improving household access to nutrition.

                The question participants left with is how to ensure that women have the power they need to positively influence household nutrition. The Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights recently released a brief that holds part of the answer: secure rights to land.

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By Nita Bhalla

Is marriage a guarantee that a woman won't be prostituted? 

It's a question that played heavily on my mind recently when I went to the remote village of Wadia in India's western region of Gujarat to cover a mass wedding and engagement ceremony of 21 girls, which was aimed at breaking a centuries-old tradition of prostitution.

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By Nita Bhalla

The U.N.'s latest report on the state of the world's 1.2 billion adolescents gives food for thought, especially on the plight of India's girls aged between 10 and 19.

The report explores a range of issues affecting teenagers around the globe, from nutrition and health to sexual behaviour, knowledge on HIV/AIDS, attitudes towards gender violence and access to education.

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Two reports by the BCC this month raise the spectre that the United Nations Millennium Development Goals which include reducing maternal mortality and ensuring environmental sustainability may actually be undermining women’s sexual and reproductive rights. 

The BBC has reported on the UK government’s Department for International Development is funding a program of forced sterilization of both men and women in India.

As happens all too often, poor tribal women seem to be particularly targeted for the forced sterilization.

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By Mike Shanahan

Ha Thi Ngan is a young woman with a buzz about her. She's a beekeeper and her story provides a snapshot of the way poverty, nature and climate can combine to affect lives and set questions with no easy answers.

Ngan lives in a village called Ri in the remote highlands of Vietnam's Thanh Hoa province. It's beautiful. Everywhere you look is green-green-green, from the forested limestone mountains that look like the humps of long dead dragons to the flat sheets of emerald rice fields that shimmer in the sun.

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By Lisa Anderson

ISTANBUL (TrustLaw) - Discrimination hurts many women economically and socially, but it has an even greater and sometimes dangerous impact on lesbians, according to a group of women working on lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights in dozens of countries. 

The women, most of them lesbians, discussed their experiences at a session called “Economic Justice for Lesbian Women: Setting an agenda,” on the fourth and final day of the 12^th International Forum of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). 

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By Rebekah Curtis

ISTANBUL (TrustLaw) - In an Istanbul conference room of sex workers and women’s rights experts, a black and white silent film sparks waves of laughter.

Instead of the likes of Charlie Chaplin, the film’s star running across the screen to upbeat music is a woman escaping police as they raid a bar for sex workers. After chasing her in circles, the police arrest her, only for her to return to the bar again anyway.

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By Lisa Anderson

ISTANBUL (TrustLaw)—Women’s rights are in flux and under pressure in many Muslim-majority countries at the moment, but things could get much worse if regimes dominated by Islamic fundamentalists wind up replacing dictatorships toppled by revolutions, according to Muslim women’s rights leaders from Syria, Tunisia and Egypt. 

“A fundamentalist rule would be the hardest thing for us to face,” said Sabah Al Hallak, an activist and member of the Syrian League for Women’s Rights, speaking to a large audience during the 12^th International Forum of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development.

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By Rebekah Curtis

ISTANBUL (TrustLaw) - Worldwide, women battle patriarchal systems daily to own what is rightfully theirs, be it their right to land or household finances – as highlighted by delegates at the world’s largest global women’s rights conference in Istanbul this week.

Yet when it comes to women and girls who have suffered sexual violence, the property they often strive to reclaim is their own body.

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By Lisa Anderson

ISTANBUL (TrustLaw)—When it comes to Islamic law, one short verse in the Koran poses one very big obstacle to advocates for Muslim women’s rights--but they may have found a way around it.

The key is fighting medieval interpretations of the Koran with modern scholarship, according to Dr Ziba Mir-Hosseini, a professor and legal anthropologist on Islamic law at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

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By Lisa Anderson

The uncertain fate of women’s rights in the turbulent Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region emerged as one of the most pressing concerns on the agenda for the 12^th International Forum of the Association For Women’s Rights In Development (AWID), which launched a four-day run in Istanbul on Wednesday.

“It takes a lot of hard work to change cultures of dictatorship to cultures of democracy. We need to develop strategies so we can work as quickly as possible…to try to avoid replacing one kind of dictatorship with another,” said Mahnaz Afkhami, president and CEO of the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development and Peace (WLP).

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By Julie Mollins

Easy access to hardcore pornography on the Web and a general lack of sex education for youth is changing attitudes about lovemaking, according to entrepreneur Cindy Gallop.

“I date younger men – they tend to be men in their 20s – and in dating younger men I encounter the real ramifications of the creeping ubiquity of hardcore pornography in our culture,” Gallop, 52, said during an interview at London Web Summit, where she gave a presentation.

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By Kathambi Kinoti

LGBTQI individuals in Africa face numerous civil, political, economic, social and cultural barriers. AWID spoke to Hakima Abbas, the Executive Director of Fahamu about the challenges of LGBTQI activism and how the politics of foreign aid impacts the struggle. 

By killing seven French citizens, the suspect in the tragic Toulouse murders, Mohamed Merah, has sought -- in his own words -- "to bring France to its knees."

Merah reportedly joined the Islamist group Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride), whose primary goal is to "protect the honor of Muslim women."

Now that the suspect has been killed, the central point will not be whether Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group claim responsibility for the attack - this is now about our responsibility as global civil society.

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By Widney Brown

Any delight at the historic first verdict of the International Criminal Court (ICC) convicting Thomas Lubanga Dyilo of recruiting and using under-15s in armed conflict must be tempered by the prosecutor’s failure to investigate adequately claims of sexual violence against girl soldiers.

Judge Adrian Fulford indicated when delivering the Court’s decision, although the court heard evidence during the trial of rape of girls as part of their recruitment, they could not make any finding as there were no related charges.

It is impossible to know if such charges could have been brought because the records indicate that crimes of sexual violence were not fully investigated in the first place.

This is yet another example of how women and girls’ specific experience of violence in armed conflict is sidelined.  

The worst case of denial was the Far East Tokyo Tribunal failure to address the widespread and systematic sexual slavery practised by the Japanese army during World War II.

Although the ad hoc tribunals for both the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda did prosecute cases of sexual violence, arguably those cases failed to reflect the scale of sexual violence during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the genocide in Rwanda.  

Part of recovery and healing is to have the harm recognized otherwise survivors and victims are placed in the limbo of having experienced the violence without the experience being validated.  Lack of validation can lead others to deny the harm suffered, question the veracity of the victims and stigmatize those who insist on telling the truth.

When crimes of sexual violence are ignored, it is more difficult for the communities of victims to access reparation.  Reparations include services for survivors including health care and counselling.

In the case of the women who were held as sexual slaves by the Japanese, there was no effort to provide health care and counselling, to repatriate the women to the countries in which they lived prior to being enslaved, or to compensate them for the harm they suffered.  For decades after the end of the war, those who survived this enslavement report how their lives and hopes were destroyed first by the Japanese and then by the denial about their experiences.

Victims of sexual violence require particular services and reparations awards can provide these.  Specifically, women and girls may need reconstructive surgery to address mutilation.  

They may need specialized counselling to address how they can reclaim their sexual and reproductive rights.

If the sexual violence resulted in a pregnancy, the woman or girl may need access to abortion services or if, is too late, assistance in dealing with a child born from sexual violence.  When the violence itself is ignored or denied, the reparations may fail to meet the women and girls’ specific needs.

In the Lubanga case, the failure to fully investigate allegations of sexual violence against girl child soldiers has practical and immediate implications for the girls: The totality of the harm they suffered as girl child soldiers, which included sexual violence, will not be addressed in any award for reparation that the ICC might now order for the victims of Lubanga’s crimes.

That is because the ICC can make reparation orders only in relation to crimes for which a person has been convicted.  

So, the Prosecutor’s decision to exclude crimes of sexual violence against child soldiers, especially girls, limits or denies them their right, under international law, to proper reparation.

Finally, for hundreds of years we have lived with contradictory attitudes towards sexual violence against women in the context of war.  

In Henry V, Shakespeare writes of commanders allowing soldiers to rape and pillage after a successful siege – that is women as reward.

Allegations of sexual violence against women in a community are often used to rally the troops to defend – not the women necessarily – rather the “honour” of the community.  

Mostly, we have seen that sexual violence in war is treated as inevitable, albeit regrettable.
This is not acceptable.

When it was recently reported that a US Army sergeant deliberately killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan, there was an outcry and a rapid and straightforward condemnation of his alleged actions.  

It is clear that the prohibition against deliberately killings civilians is taken seriously and breaches of the prohibition are also taken seriously.

It is unimaginable that this case will not be pursued if the evidence is credible.  This sends a message. Those crimes we take seriously are vigorously pursued in our justice systems.  The ambiguity of society’s response to sexual violence in non-conflict situations in many ways seems to have spilled over into conflict situations.

When confronted with this failure, investigators, prosecutors and others often hide behind the victims: They claim that the women and girls who have been raped are ashamed, reluctant to come forward to tell their stories and afraid.  

But there is another way to analyse this.  Perhaps the victims do not come forward because they know that there is a very real danger that their stories will be ignored, investigations will falter, they will be blamed – even punished and humiliated - and justice will remain beyond their grasp.

In short, cases of sexual violence make many people uncomfortable so the system becomes complicit in the shame and silence.  Survivors deserve truth, justice and full reparation - not denial. The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court must do better the next time.

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By Katie Nguyen

When Kiran Bedi took to the stage in London recently, it was easy to see how she has become a celebrated role model for women leaders in her native India.

A confident, commanding presence, Bedi told an audience at the Southbank Centre's WOW - World of Women festival about how she used to "love leading" as an adolescent in the national cadet corps. This was way before her incredible career started in 1972, when she became the first woman to join the Indian police service – and made history.

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By Diana Aguiar

This article is part of a series of Friday Files to explore some of the issues and debates related to the AWID 2012 Forum theme and draw the connections between women’s rights issues and economic power. For more information related to the planet and ecological health click here.

Twenty years after the first United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 it is clear that governments have failed to implement development models that are socially just and environmentally sustainable. It is in the context of revision of the of sustainable development framework that Rio+20 will take place.

By Katie Nguyen

At least one in four women in England and Wales will experience one or more incidents of domestic abuse in their lifetime, official figures suggest. That means everything from being punched, slapped and kicked to being verbally threatened and sexually assaulted.

Nearly 1 million women experience at least one incident of domestic abuse every year, and 750,000 children a year witness domestic violence.

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By Katie Nguyen

How do you make family planning desirable in a mostly patriarchal society which demands women produce as many male children as possible, fast?

You woo them with the "romance of a better life", of course, and the promise that by staggering the birth of your children by several years you can be richer, healthier and happier.

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Uma Lele, a former World Bank senior adviser, is an international thinker and policy analyst in the areas of food, agriculture, health, and the environment.  She is presenting at the Global Conference on Women in Agriculture,  in New Delhi on 13-15 March and sponsored by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and the Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions. The opinions expressed are her own.

While the developed world and wealthier Indians are worried about obesity and related diseases, one of the puzzles in the phenomenon of global hunger is the “downward drift” in nutrition in India, where an estimated 350 million people remain undernourished. 

Given India’s tremendous economic growth in the past decade – the second-fastest GDP growth in the world in the period from 2000 until the 2008 financial crisis – how can it be true that so many are malnourished? 

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HIV and AIDS also has a huge impact on older women in Africa. They are often widowed by the illness or are stigmatised because of their status. They may have lost many of their children to HIV and AIDS related illnesses, resulting in them becoming the sole carer and provider for their orphaned grandchildren.

Daily struggles of older women

Kate Bush sang "a woman's work is never done" and my experience this week certainly reinforced just how true a statement that is. I was privileged enough to visit Siaya District, Kisumu (Western Kenya) to meet HelpAge Affiliate KESPA (Kenya Society for People with AIDS). 

I was there to do marketing training and collect stories of four older women who had been part of the programmes delivered by the KESPA team. The interviews looked at the daily struggles the older women faced as they cared for orphaned grandchildren and how KESPA's work had helped them. 

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This International Women’s Day, Women without Borders/SAVE would like to celebrate the strength, resilience, and dedication of women to make the world a better place.

We also want to take the opportunity this day provides to raise the alarm bells—the global women’s movement was one of the most influential social movements of the 20th century, but a decade into the 21st, we must acknowledge that hard-won rights are slowly slipping away as political, economic, and ideological shifts are shaking the world. The push for recognition of the extent and trauma of domestic violence is one of the triumphs of the women’s movement—but the global economic crisis has now led to the closure of a significant number of women’s shelters across even the UK, not to mention other regions of the world.

The breach of women’s fundamental human rights in Afghanistan served as an impetus for many who gave their lives in the war to stand up and fight. How must these brave men and women feel when they read that the Ulama (religious) Council in Afghanistan just issued a statement declaring that “men are fundamental and women are secondary?” We urge Muslim and non-Muslim civil society alike to protest in one voice, to ensure that women’s status does not backslide in Afghanistan at this critical moment in time.

Securing women’s status has a broad impact, including within the security arena. Recruitment to extremist groups most often does not start at the ideological level—it begins at the personal level. Individuals find answers to personal problems and needs within the framework—economic, social, ideological, and at times vengeful—recruiters provide. Combating the spread of violent extremism, therefore, must also begin at the personal level.

Women, and particularly mothers, are best placed to speak to, discuss with, and educate their children. They can and should provide them with alternative solutions to personal problems, and to elaborate the consequences of their actions. But how could a mother in Afghanistan empower her children to combat violent extremism when she cannot even leave the house alone, cannot speak freely, and cannot seek help? Women can be a fundamental barrier to the spread of extremist ideologies, but they must have the self-confidence and strength to do so. We must contribute by supporting their right to move and speak freely.

European countries have created a “safety umbrella” to prevent the economic collapse of the European Union. It is the responsibility of the international community to create just such a safety umbrella for women around the world who are at risk—in terms of health, safety, security, economics, and fundamental rights.

Security and stability also lie in our hands. Times of crisis are also often times of opportunity—this is our moment as women to exercise our smart power to meet global challenges with competence and confidence.

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This is a card given by a friend to Lucy, one of the women who is part of my project.

When she showed it to me it rang so true. It was a phrase that has come into my mind on so many occasions over these last months working on this project.  For Lucy, and for all of the other women I have been working with.

All of their stories are entirely individual. But for each of them one thing is the same - that they have survived not just one, but a series of incredibly traumatic events in their lives.  They have spoken of experiences of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, domestic violence as well as neglect and loss of children. Each time I come away from talking to these women I want to know where their strength has come from to fight on, to keep on standing and moving on.

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