Latoya Peterson – with Women’s Media Center – for Women News Network

Many modern young women in Tehran have their own developed distinct cosmopolitan fashion sense.

With reporting opportunities strictly limited in Iran, images of Iran women carry the narrative. Much of the media focus is on young attractive women. The author wonders about complexities hidden behind the emerging icons.

Images are driving the Western response to the Iranian elections.  The media, hampered in their ability to report from the ground, has elected to go with citizen videos and photographs of the rising civil unrest.  One early narrative that emerged, before the demonstrations against the results of the election, was of a beautiful Iranian woman, in modern clothes, wearing a loose headscarf and casting her vote.

We can’t predict the image that will eventually represent the Iranian elections as the situation grows more serious each day. The original iconography of painted hands—with green representing the regime’s chief challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi—has given way to palms painted red, to commemorate those who are dying.  A video is circulating of a woman known as “Neda,” who was killed during the protests and is becoming a symbol for the protestors who feel betrayed by their government. One site proclaims, “We Are All Neda.”

However, the pre-protest narrative needs a bit more analysis. One of the most recognizable photographs was shot by Atta Kanare for Getty Images.  A young woman stands facing the camera, a stern expression on her face and lips painted peach. A trendy pink and purple headscarf and sunglasses complete the look and she stares directly at the lens, holding up her ink-stained index finger to prove she voted.  Some journalists and bloggers have noticed that this and other photographs taken before the election results were announced, of proud young women lining up to cast their ballots, seem to focus on the beauty of the women engaged in political action, and this trend has continued in documenting the protests.  In the midst of scenes of chaos, smoky streets, and anger, small symbols of beauty continue to emerge—a hand with manicured red fingernails clutching a pamphlet, or a bright yellow headscarf framing a waterfall of chestnut hair.

Sex sells, but so does Iranian beauty, compelling even those who are disinterested in politics and current events to pay attention, if for no other reason to find out why the alluring girl in the photo has painted palms while she flashes a peace sign.  Advertising agencies understand that attractiveness draws people in, forcing them to pay attention.  In addition, photographers are known for working toward a poignant, beautiful, and memorable picture, so their focus on beauty should come as no surprise.  However, is the narrative around what’s happening in Iran becoming dominated by the idea of what is beautiful?

Megan Carpentier, writing for Jezebel, makes a note of the discussion of “pretty” around the issue, saying “when you see a woman with a tunic above her knees, red fingernails, an extremely loose headscarf and a protest sign, try to look beyond the ‘pretty.’ Those things are also a symbol of what an Ahmadinejad regime would deny (and, in some cases, has denied) her the right to be.”

Iranian intellectual women Simin Behbahani, Shirin Ebadi, Tahmineh Milani, Mehrangiz Kar, Elaheh Koulaei and Farah Karimi.

Mimi, one of the bloggers at Threadbared, a site that discusses politics and fashion, argues for a broader analysis.  In a post titled “You Say You Want a Revolution in a Loose Headscarf,” Mimi writes:

“In this moment of civil unrest, we are meant to understand these sartorial and somatic signs—the looseness of the scarf and the amount of hair she shows, but also the French manicure displayed by her v-sign or raised fist, her plucked eyebrows arching above Gucci sunglasses or balaclava mask — as cultivated political acts that manifest a defiant desire for Western-style democracy. But this shorthand is too simplistic, too easy.”

While the politics of beauty practices has been a feminist mainstay around the globe, when employed while discussing the situation in Tehran, it distracts from understanding the actual issues at play.  Often times, Western feminists become infatuated with the symbolic nature of veiling, and fail to listen to women discussing what they are actually fighting for.

In this case, it was not just the fact that the votes in Iran may well have been rigged—the regime hand selects the candidates anyway, meaning that only a small portion of those who wish to run for election will ever find themselves on the ballot. As a result, many Iranian citizens often do not vote, feeling that they are encouraging a farcical democracy.  This particular election, however, brought remarkable voter turnout as the women of Iran made a decision to take their dissatisfaction to the ballot boxes.  In an earlier piece for Jezebel, Carpentier lays out “10 Reasons Why You Should Be Following the Iranian Elections,” parsing out the key themes that are fueling the political fires.  Most of them trace back to women’s rights.  Women’s rights activists have been jailed for protesting the changes the Ahmadinejad administration ushered in, including allowing the growth of employment discrimination, legislation that attacks women’s financial freedom and renaming the Center for Women’s Participation as the Center for Women and Families (and the goal of the newly named agency would be to promote women returning to more traditional roles).

Our feminist conversations on politics in the region should not immediately default to veiling and other style issues.  While the freedom to express oneself through clothing is important, it pales in comparison to the economic conditions and limited opportunities for advancement that are sparking the demonstrators.  The new generation in Iran is young and educated, but stuck in a perpetual adolescence as they can’t find jobs and can no longer afford an apartment.  Even steadily employed young couples are unable to qualify for apartments and are postponing their dreams of marriage and family until well into their 30s.  While the economic climate is disastrous for young couples, it is harder still on single women, who may be forced to find a partner in order to be financially stable.

The visual narrative may emphasize clothing and beauty, but we should not be so distracted by images that we miss the message underneath the make-up.

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Many women ask “Why?” as male police, along with policewomen wearing full-length black chadors, ticket women as they enforce approved dress codes “only” on the streets of Tehran.

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For more information on this topic:

Notes on the Repression of Women – Iran by Akbar Ganji, ISIM Review Autumn 2007  (The International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World)

Crackdown in Iran Over Dress Codes - BBC News report, 4/27/2007

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Latoya Peterson has written for The American Prospect, Jezebel, The Women’s Review of Books, Slate’ Double X and the Guardian. Her essay, “The Not Rape Epidemic,” was published in the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (Seal Press, 2008).

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Material for this Women News Network – WNN article is from The WMC – Women’s Media Center, a non-profit organization founded by Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, dedicated to making women visible and powerful in the media.

©Women News Network – WNN 2009

SALLY CHIWAMA – Women News Network – WNN

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative Deji Popoola said (in 2006) teenage pregnancy has become a crisis in Zambia

WNN Zambia: Selina’s gullet (where food passes) is constricted, burning and on fire. An opening has been created in her stomach in an effort to feed her because food and water cannot pass through the gullet. Next, she must undergo an operation to fix what’s left of her stomach. She must have another operation to take out her uterus as well because the dead fetus inside her is rotting in her womb.

At first glance it’s not easy to get the connection between a woman’s gullet and her uterus. But this is what happened to 25 year old Selina Mwendakula in a bid to terminate a 4 month unwanted pregnancy.

Although she is married with three other children, Selina did not want to carry the responsibilities of a fourth child. We think that all mothers should want their children. But conditions of desperation mark another choice. In desperation, Selina opted to terminate her pregnancy. To do this she took part in a personal ritual that almost killed her. She did two things. She drank battery acid in an effort to miscarry. And if this wasn’t enough, she also pushed an object painfully through her vagina and into her uterus in hopes for a speedy and uncomplicated miscarriage. But the miscarriage didn’t happen. And it wasn’t uncomplicated or speedy.

Selina is only one of hundreds of daily women admitted to the gynecology department at the UTH – University Teaching Hospital in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka. According to a 2004 report by the World Health Organization, “an estimated 68,000 women die as a consequence of unsafe abortion.”

Women in Zambia who resort to terminating their pregnancies with untrained abortion providers put their health and their life at serious risk.

Each day the gynecology department receives more than 200 cases of attempted self-inflicted abortion. 30% to 50% of the hospital beds in the GYN emergency ward are now dedicated to abortion related health service.

Lying in the emergency center at UTH, Selena wished deeply she had never tried to abort her child. “God has given me a second chance,” she said. Even with this wish, she knows that if her pregnancy had continued she would have never been able to find a home for her child. The hard facts today in the ongoing crisis of AIDS orphans in Zambia has raised the fear level on adoptions, causing many “outside of family” adoptions to come to a complete standstill.

“Mwandi mummy, if I hadn’t attempted this now it would have been a different story,” she said. “You wouldn’t be talking to me. Look at me. I’ve lost so much blood. Elo ichi chapamukosi (gullet) kaya (My uterus has been removed. I have nothing left),” said Selina in broken sobs.

“In addition to acid, I pushed a casaba stick through my vagina in hopes of perforating my uterus,” she said looking away.

Other women try sharp glass or wire for the same reason. In Zambian society desperate women, without access to standard reproductive healthcare, use the only desperate means they have available to make themselves infertile.

At a March 2009 conference held at the Pamodzi Hotel, doctors from Lusaka’s University Training Hospital gathered to discuss abortion, specifically safe abortion.

They met with Dr. Victor Mukonka, spokesperson and director of Public Health and Research at Zambia’s Ministry of Health, to discuss the issues surrounding safe and unsafe abortion in Zambia. “Abortion is a significant contributor to high maternal mortality in Africa, including Zambia,” said Dr. Mukonka opening the discussion.

Banner sign for a traditional healer in Nkumba, Zambia.

Unsafe abortion for African women, especially those in Zambia, is one of the major causes of maternal mortality. The issue is controversial spanning reproductive rights and women’s rights in all African countries including Zambia. Because of the social stigma associated with abortion, the issues surrounding it are usually not discussed. Rights and laws are left to the doctors and lawyers and not to the women, even though more than half of the global deaths from unsafe abortion occur in Zambia. 

Risks are greater here than anywhere else in the world.

“Abortion has always been an emotive issue,” said Dr. Mukonka. “It is important to remember that a lot of women are either dying or are suffering complications.”

The suffering can be vast. Every women who faces a decision to abort faces the possibility of death from poisoning by herbalists or from quack doctors who often work under very unsanitary conditions. Women can be their own greatest enemy, too, as they try anything they can, including drinking acid, to miscarry.

According to Dr. Mukonka, unsafe abortion in Zambia today contributes to 30% of all maternal deaths. With this, the imperative to stop women from dying unnecessarily has been an ongoing part of Zambia’s legislative attempt to follow The UN Millennium Development Goals, an international campaign which calls for specific programs that will, hopefully, help lift women out of poverty.

“Thousands of women die in African countries every year because they have no access to safe services,” said scheduled speaker, Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, Vice President of Ipas Africa, an international advocacy group for women working to reduce abortion related death and injuries.

On reproductive choice, women in Zambia often face a solitary hardship in their home-life relationships when their husbands refuse to use condoms. “Women in Zambia have little power in sexual negotiation with their husbands,” quotes a 2003 University of California analysis report. Unwanted pregnancy is common. Making a life choice between buying food or birth control pills has an obvious answer. Because of society, fear, tradition and needs, many births still occur completely outside of medical supervision.

“The Ministry of Health is taking firm and steady action on maternal death,” continued Dr. Mukonka. “We are optimistic that time, along with the involvement of private/public partnership, will yield positive results to eliminate the unnecessary death of women from unsafe abortion. It should be noted that safeguarding women’s reproductive health is one of the key national health priorities, which is now (finally) receiving its due.”

In Lusaka, nearly 40% of all pregnancy related cases at UTH are related to problems of pregnancy rather than childbirth. 27% of these complications were for non-medical or self-inflicted abortions. Many abortions are still happening in Zambia with the help of  local traditional healers who know next to nothing about safety and sanitary procedures. Some of these healers actually suggest dangerous life-threatening procedures for women who are desperate to rid themselves of the looming life struggles involved with their pregnancy.

“Access to safe abortion is essential to human rights and to the health and lives of women,” said Dr. Brookman-Amissah. “Lack of access to effective contraception, stigma around abortion, gender inequalities, archaic colonial laws and ignorance among policy makers,” contributes to women seeking self-abortions and other unsafe procedures.

From 1982-1983, only 15% of all maternal deaths at UTH were due to clandestine illegally induced abortion. Recent studies in Zambia show that abortion is now listed among the top of five causes of death for women who are pregnant. Even with these frightening figures, condom use, within marriage or other consensual unions, to prevent pregnancy is very low.

Mpongwe Hospital clinic for mothers. Image: Kathleen Paulson

 “Very few people are aware, however, that termination of pregnancy is provided for in the laws in Zambia,” said University Teaching Hospital staff obstetrician and gynecologist, Dr. Ameck Kamanga.

Since 1972, Zambia has pushed through some of the most liberal reproductive rights laws in sub-Saharan Africa, as procedures of abortion have been legalized for health and social-economic reasons. But unsafe complications continue to be a major health problem for Zambian women who continue to seek alternative solutions to their pregnancies.

Abortion procedures at UTH are not always easy for the patients. Hospital policy restricts use of pain killers due to the costs, which causes women to go through severe pain in the process. Even with the pain, there is no shortage of patients at University Teaching Hospital.

“The public has to understand that even if Zambia was a rich country and all was available, unwanted pregnancies would always occur and when such a thing happens, a woman should be given a choice.” said Dr. Kamanga.

“Women of all nationalities and social standing, rich or poor, married or single, educated or uneducated, young and old, with or without children have abortions and have always had a need for terminating an unwanted pregnancy,” added Ipas director Dr. Brookman-Amissah.

Many women patients come to the hospital for the first time after someone they knew lost their health or died from a self-inflicted or unsafe abortion.

“A lot of women have died at the hands of ‘self styled experts’ who perform abortions in the back streets,” said Dr. Stephen Mupeta, a GYN intern at UTH. “These ‘experts’ come in all forms – elderly women, clinical officers, and even doctors who are out to make a quick buck. We offer our services with access to safe abortion almost free, but most people are unaware of this service.”

 “It’s a pity that most of them come in (to the hospital) almost too late, after they’ve attempted to terminate (their pregnancy) on their own, as infections start to get septic and start to affect other parts of the body,” said Dr. Kamanga.

In Zambia the process called “termination of pregnancy,” also known as TOP, is a specialized procedure done only by specifically trained health care providers. These providers include doctors, mid-wives, clinical officers and nurses. In Zambia however, only licensed medical doctors are allowed to be in charge of a TOP procedure.

“I would like to emphasize that no matter who the health care provider is as long as they are not trained in termination of a pregnancy, they will not provide a safe abortion,” outlined Dr. Mupeta.  

The GYN department at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka’s “unsafe abortion” cases make up a surprisingly large 30% of all cases at the hospital. These cases span from women who have taken an over dose of chloroquine, to others who have used a life threatening amount of herbs in their vagina, many come to the hospital very close to death. Still others die before they arrive after drinking such dangerous liquids as battery acid, all in the name of acquiring what should be a safe medical abortion.

Most women don’t want to talk to anyone about their procedures. They want to keep quiet on their decision to have an abortion. Even with liberal laws on abortion in Zambia, abortion is seen in society as something that should be kept invisible and unseen. After the abortion procedure is over the suffering is not. The suffering of women to decide the number of children they birth or not stays as a wound of consciousness in their hearts and souls.

Doctors working with safe abortion in Zambia have one thing in common. All of them want to see health care and TOP providers getting access to the training they need. Safety in abortion can save lives.

“People should be aware that they shouldn’t just go to anyone to get this service,” said Dr. Mupeta.

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The impact of the Global Gag Rule on reproductive health programs in Zambia has been devastating to women. At a time when one in five adults is infected with HIV and nearly 70 percent of the population is under the age of 24, the gag rule has deprived Zambia’s primary family planning agency of critical U.S. assistance. This video is a Population International production. For more information go to: www.population.org

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For More Information on this topic –

- “Insuring Women’s Access to Safe Abortion”
Ipas Publications, March 23, 2009

- “Abortion as a Public Health Problem in Zambia” – Peter Sims
Journal of Public Health Medicine, 1995

- “Safer Abortions in Zambia”
PRI – Public Radio International with WGBH Boston, April 2009

- “(un)Safe Abortion – A Review and Discussion Paper” – Siegrid Tautz
GTZ Worldwide with BMZ – Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Nov 2004

- “Global Agendas, Health Sector Reforms and Reproductive Health and Rights: Opportunities and challenges in Zambia” – Priya Nanda
Center for Health and Gender Equity
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Sally Chiwama, Women News Network – WNN correspondent and gender specialist reports from Mporokoso, Zambia. For her Aug 2008 WNN story feature, “When a Girl Child Stands Up and Wins,” Sally won a UNESCO and Internews Europe award, the Every Human Has Rights Media Awards, sponsored by The Elders, Internews International and The Global Forum for Media Development. As part of the Zambia Media Women Association (ZAMWA) Secretariat, Sally has represented ZAMWA in Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa. In Oct 2008, she had a chance talk to women patients of Lusaka’s International Teaching Hospital for this story.

WNN founder/editor, 2007 Pushcart prize nominee, Lys Anzia, is a humanitarian journalist working on women’s rights and advocacy issues worldwide.
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Additional sources for this article include The Journal of Public Health, Oxford University, Ipas – Africa Alliance for Women’s Reproductive Health and Rights, World Health Organization, AIDS Policy Research Center – University of California, NPR NC Public Radio and University of Zambia Medical Library
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©Women News Network – WNN 2009

LYS ANZIA – Women News Network – WNN

During the recent days of battle in the northwest region of the Swat Valley, minority groups are leaving as quickly as possible. Although the majority of religious minorities in the Swat Valley are ethnic Pushtuns, with Sunni religious beliefs, Christian minority women and their families are also part of the fleeing force of refugees.

As violence continues between 4,000 Taliban splinter groups and Islamabad soldiers in the conflict of war, Christian minority refugees, global rescue agencies and Pakistan’s own army leaders nervously wait to see who, in the end, will end up controlling the region. Some Christian women and their families will be forced to stay behind as they have been unable to leave due to the expense of travel. Those who join the 100 degree Fahrenheit refugee camps also face problems with the sharing in handouts of food, an activity that is usually segregated among Sikhs, Hindus and Christians.

“Christian, Hindu and Sikh families have been forced to flee because the Taliban imposed on them Jizia, a tax levied on non-Muslims living under Islamic rule,” said Catholic Archbishop, Lawrence John Saldanha, in a letter released by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. “Now minority communities in the province are forced to endure unemployment, intimidation and migration,” continued the Archbishop’s message.

90% of Pakistani Christians live in Punjab with 50% living in rural villages. “Less than 2% of Pakistanis are Christians,” says a 2008 CNS – Catholic News Service report, although this number has been more recently set by United Nations agencies at a larger 4%. Half of Pakistan’s Christian minority population is Catholic, the other half Protestant.

Pakistan’s religious minorities

Minority religions and sectarian groups in Pakistan come from a vast collection of religious diversity which includes Christians, Buddhists, Ahmadis, Zikris, Hindus, Kalasha, Parsis, Sikhs and Shia Muslim sects, including Ismailis and Bohras. Ethnic regional groups come from 5 different communities, including the Baloch, Huhajir, Punjabis, Pushtuns and Sindhis.

Although 25% of religious minority women are not considered disadvantaged, Christian minority women who live on the bottom of society face many untold limitations. A policy of “living invisibly” with family members is often the only answer for protection for many minority Christian families who suffer under the great specter of poverty in Pakistan.

The most recent Pakistan 1998 census shows minority totals in the country to number somewhere between 11 to 13 million. Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus claim to have a population of 4 million each. 

Marginalization of Christian minority women

Most of the families of Christian minority women in Punjab came, at the turn of the 20^th century, from families that were originally from India. They came from dalit Hindu families who moved to what would later become the Pakistan region in 1947. Their legacy of isolation and separation from Indian society is ongoing. As dalits they were part of the lowest “untouchable” caste in India. This has been a nemesis that has followed them, even after they converted from Hinduism to Christianity. Basic women’s rights and human rights are often out of reach for these women who daily experience conditions of extreme poverty.

Dalit Christian women who have been severely marginalized often suffer from a shortage of even the simplest basic needs. Lack of health care is common. Slum conditions can also be found where families are forced to live on the streets or to live together in crowded poorly constructed shelters, amid garbage, toxic chemicals and refuse. Their structures often have no electricity, heat or clean water.

Because of these conditions, many dalit Christian women fall into lifetime careers as sewer cleaners, domestic servants or brick kiln workers. Payments for these positions are painfully low, or at times non-existent. Some employers give payment loans ahead to trap minority women, preventing them from ever paying the loans back as they continue to work for free on wheels of never ending debt bondage.

University educated Christian minority women, on the other hand, have quite an opposite experience. Because they are usually supported by family or a husband with money they fare much better among Pakistani society. These women usually have comfortable standards of living, a home their family owns and personal time for leisure activities. They also have much greater freedom with contacts and life opportunities.

The act of clustering poor dalit Christian minority women and families on church owned land or “colonies” has contributed to a much deeper degree of cultural segregation. While isolation and clustering is meant to provide safety, at times it has created more danger for families, as Islamic extremist groups identify Christian community locations to specifically plan their attacks.

A survey of Christian minority women in society

When a 2006 University of Birmingham, UK study was conducted among a wide span of Christian minority women in Pakistan, all women did mention that they had experienced what they called Muslim “name calling.” One derogatory name which is used commonly in Pakistan is “sweeper” which refers to the “worst of all” – a dalit Christian.

Both educated and uneducated Christian women admitted that they had been asked numerous times by others if they would convert to Islam. Some also experienced reverse discrimination when they befriended someone Muslim, as some of their Christian friends criticized them. One student said that her marks at school were lowered when her teacher realized she was Christian, but she also added her experience was, “not that difficult.”

Those who come from much greater disadvantaged backgrounds, on the other hand, shared much more serious grievances.

Women from disadvantaged backgrounds described how legal and police protection systems in Pakistan had failed minorities. For a few, this included their own experience or someone they knew who had experienced rape, assault or torture as Police forces did little to nothing to help them. In contrast, one woman who had police fail to protect her and her family, admitted enthusiastically that the Muslim owner of the factory where she worked “very happily” gave her a position of “influence” at her workplace.

“The general attitude in Pakistan is that if you are rich you are respectable and if you are poor you are not,” said another woman interviewed. Consensus in attitudes among all the women pointed to feelings that the less educated and “poorer” Muslims were, the more like they were to act from a “habit of discrimination.”

Literacy challenges for women in Pakistan’s Christian minority

As the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) gathered data on education for women in Pakistan (with the help of 900 civil and rights groups), in 2007, their shadow report revealed, “Pakistan has an extremely low female literacy rate with higher drop-out rates among girls before completing primary education. The social norms and practices prefer boys over girls for better education…”

Statistics show that education for the poorest ethnic and religious minority women has constantly been placed at the very bottom of Pakistan’s educational system goals.

With such little opportunity for public education in rural areas, the best chance for poor Christian minority girls to receive literacy training is for them to attend a Christian parochial school. Even this is often very difficult as Islamic Madrasas schools are moving to close all existing programs for minority girls education across Pakistan.

“We are at the beginning of a great storm that is about to sweep the country,” said Ibn Abduh Rehman, who directs the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent organization. “It’s red alert for Pakistan.”

“The mindset wants to stop music, girls schools and festivals,” said Salman Abid, a social researcher in southern Punjab. Because of the rapid expansion of Madrasas schools in northern Pakistan, vandalism and burning of Christian schools and buildings has been increasing since 2002.

Attacks in the Muree region on a Christian school and violence against a chapel in Taxila Hospital have both been attributed to small terrorist groups like the (LJ) Lashkar i Jhangvi, a small Sunni splinter group numbering approx 100 members.

Current dangers facing Christian minority women and girls

Under-reported cases of rape against Christian women have occurred. In 2000, the rape of seven Christian women on a bus to Lahore was viewed by the larger Pakistani (Muslim) public as a “deplorable act.” In August 2007, Christian Bishop Arif Khan and his wife were murdered in Islamabad. That same month seven churches and five Christian settlements received threatening letters.

The intimidation of abduction, rape or violence of women and girls from minority religious families adds greatly to their vulnerability. Any legal recourse with police or courts, in working Pakistani law in their favor, is often very limited.

“In the weeks after the Islamabad (March 17, 2002) attack (on the Protestant International Church), I talked to many Pakistani Christians—Catholics, Protestants and Anglicans—in private homes and at dinners and church socials. Several discerned what they described as a larger pattern of violence directed not only at Christians, but at other religious minorities throughout the country,” said David Penault, associate professor at Santa Clara University, California, US.

There have been a number of reported cases of forced marriages of girls from religious minority communities who are under the age of 15. After separation from their family, abductions are framed with the pretext that their conversion to Islam was the reason for their kidnapping. In some cases, there may be a possibility that these are unidentified sex-trafficking kidnappings, but no study to date has been done to confirm this belief yet.

The list of abuse against poor Christian minority women and girls is long.

“Law enforcement personnel abused religious minorities in custody,” said the 2008 International Religious Freedom Report by the US Department of State. “Security forces and other government agencies did not adequately prevent or address societal abuse against minorities,” continued the report. “Discriminatory legislation and the Government’s failure to take action against societal forces hostile to those who practice a different religious belief fostered religious intolerance, acts of violence, and intimidation against religious minorities.”

Legislative tightening, Blasphemy Laws and Hadood Ordinances

In a reversal of restrictions under laws covering accusations by a husband against his wife in adultery, the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, had the intention to free 2,500 women from Pakistan jails in 2006. Unfortunately, this was not completed. Following this improvement,  a more conservative interpretation of the law, through Shar’ia based legislation, was given more emphasis, causing greater restrictions in the courts.

As legal doors closed again more tightly, Christian women suffering from extreme poverty were left dangling in a forgotten field of legal ambiguity, no protection and “non-personhood.”

Even with the measured 2006 attempt to ease the 1979 Hadood Ordinances, which now allow women to report domestic violence and rape with one instead of the previously required three male witnesses, women still do not feel safe stepping forward to press their case. Blasphemy laws, that sanction anyone criticizing Islam also inflicts intimidation under the sentence of death by stoning. Stoning as a sentence in Pakistan’s courts has been used as punitive measures in quarrels against neighbors and against religious minorities.

For protection, minority women and their families, whether poor or middle class, often try to hide or mask their religious beliefs for safety at work and in public.

“Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are so vaguely formulated that they encourage, and in fact invite, the persecution of religious minorities or non-conforming members of [the] Muslim majority,” said human rights advocates, Amnesty International.

Under reported cases of rape and torture of religious minority women and girls presents an ever present human rights crisis. Police corruption, along with abysmal Pakistani prison and jail conditions, creates an atmosphere of intimidation and non-accountability.

“Religious minorities need more than just fair treatment under the law, they also require visible cooperation from the police and authorities, to prevent mob justice taking over,” said Settlement Director, Nasir Saeed of (CLAAS) Center for Legal Aid Assistance, which has an office in Lahore and London.

In Oct 2007, Dr. Ms. Asma Jahangir, the now UN Special Rapporteur for UN Commission on Human Rights said, “The NWFP (North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan) presents a disturbing picture of religious militancy that is increasingly manifesting itself in vigilante actions against the population and creating widespread fear… The government has continuously refused to heed complaints and warnings from both the public and civil society organizations and has adopted a policy of appeasement of militants.”

“The government has chosen to look the other way when the militants have blown up girls’ schools and video shops, threatened teachers, students, doctors, nurses, NGO workers and barbers,” added Jahangir.

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In Pakistan, there’s a very high price to pay for poor Christian women and their families - all part of the minority. This video shows unliveable conditions in Islamabad’s French Quarter, a sordid slum where Dalit Christians try to survive. See this 11:16 min April 16, 2009, France24 News video.

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 For more information on this topic go to:

 Annual Report – Pakistan, 2009 – International States Commission on International Religious Freedom

 Religious Minorities in Pakistan by Dr. Iftikhar H. Malik – Minority Rights Group International, 2002   

 State of the World’s Minorities 2008 – Pakistan  – UNHCR, RefWorld

How wealth/poverty affects the treatment of Christian women in Pakistan by Anna-Joy Alves  - International Development Department, School of Public Policy, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, United Kingdom, 2006  

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2007 Pushcart prize nominee, Lys Anzia, is a humanitarian journalist working on women’s rights and advocacy issues worldwide. She is also Editor-At-Large for Women News Network – WNN and current executive director for World Voice International.

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Sources for this article include ReliefWeb, UNESCO, USAID, BBC News, UN Girls Education Initiative, Asian Human Rights Commission, Emory University, In These Times, The World Bank, CNS – Catholic News Service, USCIS, WLUML, UNHCR, Sindh Today, PILDAT, Aljazeera News, USCIRF, ActionAid, CLAAS, US Department of State, The Catholic Voice, Minority Rights Group International, The Malaysian Insider, Riz Khan – Aljazeera TV, AFP news

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©Women News Network – WNN 2009

Cairo Correspondents MANAR AMMAR and JOSEPH MAYTON - Women News Network – WNN

Journalist, Youmna Mokhtar, asks questions about marriage that do need discussion in Egypt. Image: Manar Ammar /WNN

Cairo, Egypt – It is a challenge to be unmarried in Egypt and even more so if the woman is “growing old” according to Egyptian customs. This means any unmarried woman past her mid-twenties is seen negatively through society’s lens, leaving many questions to be answered. However, a group of Egyptian female activists are speaking out against the “A’anis,” or spinster, concept, calling for a re-examination of how the country views women.

Youmna Mokhtar is a young Egyptian journalist who became fed up with the use of this word in everyday life. So she founded the social group called “Spinsters for change” that aims to educate people on the use of “A’anis.”

In Arabic, “A’anis” has at least three meanings – none of which have a relationship to its understood social meaning. The first is: a dull tree branch, the second is: one who looks at the mirror more often and the third is: a strong female camel. In Egypt and across the region, socially, it refers to a woman who has reached a certain age and is still unmarried.

“I started the group to initiate a dialog between women to discuss how we can change that social look,” said Youmna. The group is outspoken against the social labeling and ill treatment of unmarried women. Although the word is commonplace in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, it remains a derogatory word.

Women feel the negative attachments to the word, which they argue attracts rumors, suspicion and pitying looks, as if asking; “what’s wrong with her if?” (if she hasn’t yet married). But, with the average marriage age continuing to rise, Mokhtar believes it is time to evaluate how language plays a role in societal perceptions.

“Although the group is called “A’anis for change,” I am against the label, yet we used it to name the group [because] it is the term people use,” Mokhtar explained. “First, we thought of calling it “girls for change,” but it was not going to deliver the same meaning,” she added with a chuckle.

“There are more important things than the name, it is the pattern of behaviors that comes with it,” Mokhtar continued. The openness of the group is attracting more than just unmarried Egyptian women. Married couples and bachelors are also joining in as they explore the concepts of marriage and the intense pressure to marry cast today on a majority of Egyptian youth.

“First, in the family a lot of pressure is put on the girl to get married. Then the pressure turns into insults and condescension and they ask her why are you being snobby for refusing these men. And if that doesn’t work, they use the fear factor, saying ’so what are you going to do? We are not going to live forever.’ And then comes friends. All of her friends got married and she didn’t, so in their eyes, she becomes the one who is going to envy them for getting married and she could even find herself not invited to one of her friends’ weddings.”

“A deeply rooted belief exists in the Egyptian culture that early marriage is better for girls,” said a 2006 USAID report, “Preventing Child Marriage: Protecting Girls’ Health.”

From a very young age schoolgirls in Cairo are pressured toward marriage. Image: Ed Yourton

“Pressure on women to get married often begins immediately following university. Some women have the luxury of waiting one or two years before the nagging begins. By the time a woman reaches 30-years-old, parents stop trying to force their daughters to get married, Mokhtar admitted. However, not because they don’t want to see their children wed.

“They would justify it using the idea that it becomes unsafe for women to get pregnant after 35,” Mokhtar said.

“Women who seek divorce in Egypt have two options, fault-based or no-fault divorce (khula),” said Cairo public prosecutor, Hassan Osman, during a 2004 interview on marriage law and legislation with Human Rights Watch. “Unlike men, women can only divorce by court action (tatliq). Regardless of which system they choose, a number of government officials are involved in the process, including judges, attorneys for both parties, and arbitrators involved in compulsory mediation between the couple. Public prosecutors are also often present in divorce cases, exercising considerable influence on these proceedings and the outcome of the case.”

“What happens to women who refuse to marry in the first place?

“Many women in Egypt are married without their consent, often before they become adults,” outlined Human Rights Watch. Women who do not marry, though, are often looked upon negatively as complete outsiders.

Although marriage in modern Egypt is seen as an equal contract between husband and wife, in practice it’s not that easy. Many women on the edge of marriage are hesitant to ask for equal rights in the contract itself because of fear their suitor may decide to “back out” of the arrangement.

A female friend of Mokhtar, who is over 30, has turned down a number of possible suitors, which has left a mark on her village. A number of men have even taken the step to come to the friend’s house, pretending to ask for her hand in marriage in order to glimpse the woman who refuses marriage past 30. Mokhtar believes this is part of the issue surrounding Egyptian society’s continued wrongdoing against women.

“It shows how our society looks at women as wives and baby makers. She is born to get married and give birth no matter what kind of marriage she is in. Happily married or not, the point is to [get] married,” Youmna added. The concept of a wife as “property” in marriage spans centuries in Egypt, but ancient history may point to a different story.

The definition of "family" in ancient Egypt may not have anything to do with "marriage" as we know it today.

According to the Annenberg Foundation project, Bridging World History, the concept of marriage as a “family” identifier for parents and children in ancient times should be questioned.

“It is highly debatable whether there was a concept of [Egyptian] ‘marriage’; the sole significant family-establishing act appears to have been cohabitation for reproduction. The concept of fertility was important to social and political orders that evolved along the Nile… Like many other societies, ancient Egyptian society was patriarchal: men and their male heir controlled the majority of relationships. In the realm of the household, elite Egyptian women controlled property, business, ritual, and family matters. This is not always obvious from the surviving records,” said the project.

Dr. Abdel-Halim Nureddin, professor of ancient language at the Faculty of Archeology at Cairo University, agrees that women in Ancient Egypt had numerous rights. “Ancient Egyptian traditions and laws gave much attention to women’s rights in marriage, divorce, inheritance, as well as in cases of selling and buying,” said Dr. Nureddin in a recent lecture.

In spite of a more liberal trend in ancient history, a majority of people view Egyptian marriage and divorce today with the belief that women are discriminated against in modern Cairo.

In Egypt an overwhelming majority (80%) thinks that divorced women are mistreated (a great deal, 38%; some, 42%), though interestingly a substantially lower number (48%) perceive this level of discrimination of widows,” says WorldPublicOpinion.org, a respected global consortium of research centers from 25 nations (23 June, 2008). 

Statistics prove, a greater percentage of citizens in Egypt today see marriage and women’s rights under a very tight lens of societal rules and regulations. Others, like journalist, Youmna Mokhtar, see the limits of “acceptable” roles in Egypt placed constantly, and without merit, on the shoulders of women as the “barriers” to a better society. 

As Mokhtar describes her recent group discussions, “Later many men joined [my] group and presented superficial cliché comments in which they blamed women for being unmarried. One man said that “girls are too romantic and they want to marry a knight or someone who looks like a movie star.”  

The idea goes further than simply marriage. The group addresses the discrimination against divorcees as well as unmarried women. It attempts to show the error in society’s obsession with social patterns.

“People treat unmarried woman with pity all the time, praying for then to get a good man and a good home, very similar to the way they treat the disabled: with prayers and pitiful eyes,” said Asma Abdel Khalek, a 30-year-old single Egyptian woman. 

“In reality, women are viewed as dependents whose primary duty is to the home and the family,” said a May 2008 EUROMED study on cultural perceptions of women’s productive and reproductive roles in Egypt.

Youmna Mokhtar revealed that a number of people, women and men, are increasingly excited about the idea of Spinsters for Change, which has them thinking of targeting a larger audience outside the Internet. The group is planning meetings to share their experiences and hold lectures to discuss the merits of marriage in order to re-examine why people “get married in the first place.” 

“The label [of a’anis] shames those who fall under it no matter if it was her decision not get married or it just happened. Either way, why shame her?” explained Mokhtar, on woman’s right to choose marriage. 

“Another important message we try to deliver to society is please leave the a’anis alone. Let her be and don’t pity her,” added Fairouz Omar, an Egyptian educational and social advisor for the group.

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Marriage is under public and private scrutiny today in Egypt. A 5:13 min news video by NEW TV Beirut, released by LINKTV Mosaic Jan 2008
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FOR MORE INFORMATION ON EGYPTIAN WOMEN, MARRIAGE AND SOCIETY GO TO:

An Analysis of Decision-Making Power among Married and Unmarried Women – Muzamil Jan and Shubeena Akhtar, Institute of Home Science – University of Kashmir, KREPublishers, 2008

World Public Opinion on the Treatment of Widows and Divorced Women, Worldpublicopinion.org, June 2008

Women’s Movement in Egypt – With Selected References to Turkey – Civil Society and Social Movements Programme Paper Number 5, UNRISD – United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, April 2002

Role of Women in Economic Life – Women’s Economic Rights in the South Mediterranean Region – A Comparative Analysis of Law, Regulations, and Practice, EUROMED, May 2008

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WNN correspondent, MANAR AMMAR, is an Egyptian freelance journalist and translator. Her work has been published in The Daily News Egypt and All Headline News (AHN). She is a professional translator, having worked on a number of international projects in the region. JOSEPH MAYTON, Women News Network – WNN journalist based in Cairo, has also written for this report. He is currently a correspondent for Middle East Times. His contributions are published regularly in The Middle East Magazine, The Media Line, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Newsweek Turkey, among other publications.

Lys Anzia, of WNN, has also contributed to this special report.

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Additional sources for this article include: EUROMED, The Program on International Policy Attitudes a the University of Maryland, Freedom House, USAID, Human Rights Watch, Cairo University- Faculty of Archeology, Institute of Home Science – University of Kashmir, Daily News Egypt, Bibliotheca Alexandrina and The Annenberg Foundation with Candice Goucher, Charles LeGuin, and Linda Walton (“Ordering the World: Family and Household,” from In the Balance: Themes in Global History, Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998).
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©Women News Network – WNN 2009

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Correspondent ELAHE AMANI with Lys Anzia – Women News Network – WNN

Staff and supporters at the DHRC - Defenders of Human Rights Center Iran

Dr. Shirin Ebadi and other lawyers and activists working with DHRC – Defenders of Human Rights Center Iran welcome the decision to set up a Campaign in defense of the Center and express their gratitude to members of the women’s movement who have provided much support in this difficult time.

WNN Iran Report – 30 years ago, Dr. Shirin Ebadi, the first female judge in Iranian history, was removed from her post when religious authorities in Iran declared that all women serving in the country as judges were “unfit” to perform their duties. She was then immediately demoted to a position as administrative clerk in the courtroom where she once presided. Dr. Ebadi was hit then by the inequities of women’s rights and inequality in Iran, but she did not let that stop her.

During a time marked by political and religious upheaval, Shirin Ebadi found her path and continued her journey by becoming a human rights advocate and attorney serving the public as she helped those who looked to her to provide counsel on the interpretation of rights under Iranian law.

In 2003, Dr. Ebadi received the Nobel Peace Prize, “for her efforts for democracy and human rights” as she “focused on the struggle for the rights of women and children.” Almost six years later, in Feb 2009, the struggle to defend human rights in Iran continues.

“The issues facing us today are increasingly complex. A certain number of states have ignored the rules of international law to impose relations dominated by force. Domestically, repression is increasingly often gaining the upper hand over the respect of rights and freedoms,” said Ebadi to human rights defenders, FIDH – International Federation of Human Rights.

Over the past years, Ebadi has been the target of threats, arrests and assassination attempts, but she is not slowing down. She keeps moving forward. Today she continues, in spite of recent reversals, to represent victims of human rights injustice and discrimination in Iran.

“I realize that putting so much store in political dialogue seems overly optimistic, given the gulf that exists between the West’s expectations of Iran and the Iranian system’s inclination to compromise. I focus on the political process not because I imagine we will refashion a new relationship around the negotiating table anytime soon but because I see no other options ahead. Iran, for its part, must peacefully transition to a democratic government that represents the will of the majority of Iranians,” said Ebadi in her 2006 book, “Iran Awakening.”

Now at the age of 61, her life is in more danger than ever. A sentence for “death” has recently been written by vandals on the walls outside her home and office in Tehran and pinned on her door. But the fearless Iranian human rights lawyer has a deep conviction that, “When you believe in the correctness of your work, there is no reason to be afraid of anything.” 

Dr. Shirin Ebadi attending the "Tolerance Prize" award ceremony where she received recognition

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize 2003 winner Shirin Ebadi (center) attends the Tolerance Prize award ceremony before she receives her award beside Friedemann Greiner (left) President of the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, and Udo Steinbach, President of the Orient-Institut Hamburg, at Evangelische Akademie on Oct 1, 2008 in Tutzing, Germany. Photo image: Johannes Simon/Getty Images Europe

Recently, only a few weeks following an invitation to give a series of public lectures for the University of Malaya, the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs suddenly cancelled Ebadi’s speaking tour. “Dr. Shirin Ebadi is a strong critic (of the Iran government),” said the Ministry. “Her public speaking engagements in Malaysia would cause a disruption of the good relations between the governments of Malaysia and Iran, especially in the field of education,” continued the Ministry’s office communication.

“On the brink of the 10th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights Defenders and the 60th anniversary year of the International Declaration of Human Rights, it is ironic that a 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been censured in Malaysia.

As Ebadi’s censured visit came to a close, on Sunday Dec 21, 2008, plain-clothes and uniformed police and security officials raided the offices of the DHRC – Defenders of Human Rights Center. DHRC staff speculates that the closure was in part pushed through on the heels of a Oct 2008 negative report on Iran’s human rights by UN General Assembly.

Now the subsequent complete closure of the DHRC building in Tehran has come as a very hard blow to human rights defenders worldwide. DHRC cases defending women rights activists, prisoners of conscience, journalists and students in Iran have been compromised, along with DHRC documentation of families of prisoners with reports of human rights abuse. In addition to this, the DHRC committee of investigation on fair elections has now been forced to completely halt its work for the upcoming April elections in Iran.

“The closure of DHRC is not just an attack on Shirin Ebadi and her Iranian colleagues, but on the entire international human rights community of which she is an influential and important member,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

As global human rights are also put to the test in the US with new administration policies in the closing of Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp along with government interests in the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, the record of human rights abuse by the US is also in the global public eye. Speaking up for the greater good is ringing strongly throughout global communities.

“Thirty years on, some of the worst abuses of the Shah’s time – torture, executions and the suppression of legitimate dissent – are still being replicated in Iran,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program, “despite the efforts of the country’s growing and valiant community of human rights defenders.”

“It is high time that Iranian authorities lived up to their obligations under international human rights law,” added Smart.

Dr. Ebadi's torn office placard and threatening graffiti on the facade of her office and home. Photo image: Change4Equality.com

The sign for Ebadi’s law office that reads, “Shirin Ebadi, Legal Advisor and Lawyer,” was torn from its place recently by vandals who wrote threats on the outside façade of Ebadi’s home and office building. After Ebadi called for assistance, police did nothing as they watched the mob spray paint epithets. Photo image: Change4Equality

On the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution, a new and innovative opportunity to address the status of democracy in Iran may be secretly on the mind of many Iranian citizens. Many who participated in Iran’s revolution 30 yrs ago had high hopes for freedom and independence, dignity and rights. But the hopes and aspirations of Iranian women were shadowed by despair in the early months of the new Islamic Republic.

As new government policies in the post revolution “Spring of Freedom” responded to widespread opposition to the idea of mandatory Islamic dress for women, including requirements to wear the Hijab, relaxation of the codes were not encouraged as Iran’s government took a step back only a few months later.

“As long as I am alive, I will do my duty and activities,” said Ebadi to the press recently.

Exposing Ebadi to higher risks and dangers, her advocacy work on issues related to human rights violations in Iran and her defense in the human rights of Iran’s Baha’i community, has placed her in an undeserved dangerous and very precarious position.

When she received the Nobel Peace prize in 2003, she used the 1.4 million prize money to found and finance the opening of a center for legal rights counsel in Tehran called the DHRC – Defender of Human Rights Center.

Recently, in Feb 2008, Ebadi and her family suffered under the weight of her human rights convictions as the government sponsored, IRNA – Islamic Republic News Agency, published a series of articles falsely claiming that she and her daughter, a student at Canada’s McGill University, had converted from Islam to a religion currently considered by the Iranian government to be part of a heretical and unrecognized minority – the Baha’i religion.

Leaving the Iranian Islamic State religion is a serious crime in Iran called “apostasy” and being accused of this “crime” cannot be taken lightly. “The penalty for apostasy Kofr (infidelity, blasphemy) under the Iranian criminal code is death,” states Section 5, Article 225-1 of the pending Iran State Penal Code.

The drive to formally include apostasy laws and to enact “justice” under the penal code has caused “deep concern” at the United Nations. On the Oct 30, 2008 UN General Assembly session, the Assembly expressed concern about Iran’s “increasing discrimination and other human rights violations against persons belonging to religious, ethnic, linguistic or other minorities.” Groups recognized as suffering under the report include Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, Sufis and Sunni Muslims, as well as Baha’is and their defenders.

“Particular attacks on Baha’is and their faith in State-sponsored media, increasing evidence of efforts by the State to identify and monitor Baha’is, preventing members of the Baha’i faith from attending university and from sustaining themselves economically,” along with Baha’i arrests, were also highlighted in the General Assembly report.

Under government scrutiny and the implication in pending Iranian law on the charges of “apostasy,” Shirin Ebadi and her daughter are clearly facing personal danger with a looming and dangerously real sentence of death.

She and her daughter promptly denounced the false accusation in public when Ebadi said, “Threats against my life and security and those of my family, which began some time ago, have intensified.”  An anonymous, handwritten threat that Ebadi has received during this time says, “Shirin Ebadi, your death is near.”

Oct 2008 threats and harassment against Ms. Ebadi also escalated while she was in Germany receiving the “Tolerance Prize” from the Protestant Academy of Tutzing. While receiving the prize, the IRNA – Islamic Republic News Agency warned Ebadi that she was not in favour with Iran’s government officials. They went on to explain, that Ebadi was exploiting Iran’s government authority’s “patience and tolerance.”

“This (Tolerance Prize) award was ‎bestowed on her because of her remarks that are contrary to the interests of the Iranian ‎nation,” stated the IRNA.

Since the revolution, 30 yrs ago, the population of Iran has doubled. 70 percent of all Iranians are the same age, or younger than, those who took part in the revolution. Today, these youth are eager to just “live their lives” and be part of the global community. Out of two million students attending higher education, more than 60% today are women. 30 years ago, of the 100,000 students attending institutions of higher education in Iran, only 17.5% were females.

Seven months after the Iranian revolution ended, prominent Iranian poet, Ahmad Shamloo, summed up the feeling of the Iranian people when he wrote, 

In This Dead-end

They smell your breath.
You better not have said, “I love you.”
They smell your heart.
These are strange times, darling…
And they flog love
at the roadblock.
We had better hide love in the closet…
In this crooked dead end and twisting chill,
they feed the fire
with the kindling of song and poetry.
Do not risk a thought.
These are strange times, darling…
He who knocks on the door at midnight
has come to kill the light.
We had better hide light in the closet…
Those there are butchers
stationed at the crossroads
with bloody clubs and cleavers.
These are strange times, darling…
And they excise smiles from lips
and songs from mouths.
We had better hide joy in the closet…
Canaries barbecued
on a fire of lilies and jasmine,
these are strange times, darling…
Satan drunk with victory
sits at our funeral feast.
We had better hide God in the closet.

The leadership, creativity and utilization of communication technology by the young women of Iran is setting a vibrant and energetic example for other global social movements.  Iran women are now heralding a new global 21^st century women’s emancipation.  While in western society, young women are often hesitant to claim the identity, or even use the word “feminism,” feminism in Iran has become commonplace in the discourse. Feminism is considered neither taboo nor dreadful.  The creation of online human rights journals, “The Feminist School” and “Campaign for Equality” are two examples of this expanding trend.

Even as a majority of women receive higher education in Iran today, 30 years after the revolution, women still constitute only 15% of the formal paid labor force.  According to the results of the 1385/2006 Iranian census, only 3.5 million Iranian women are salaried workers, compared with 23.5 million men.   Female share of the labor force is less than 20%, considerably below the world average of 45%.

Slightly over half of all teachers in Iran today are women, but the proportion of female university teaching staff is only 20%, less than that of Algeria (41%), Tunisia (40%), Turkey (38%), and Bahrain (36%). To top this off, less than 4% of employed women are found in senior, executive or managerial positions.

The Campaign Against Stoning and All Forms of Violence against Women, The White Scarves Campaign – fighting against gender segregation in Iran stadiums and Kanoon Zanan are all part of a 30 year transcript of a nation where women will no longer take the back seat and accept the inferior position in society.  Iranian women writers, novelists, journalists, publishers and movie directors are defining and redefining gender roles and gender relations on a daily basis.

In a 21st century re-interpretation of 14th century Sharia law the Iranian people, and Iranian women in particular, are claiming moral victory and the beginning of real legitimacy.

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Shirin Ebadi, the famous Iranian human rights activist, in a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C. on 2 February 2009 said: “We have a great many female university professors, physicians, engineers, executive managers. It is for that reason that the women of Iran are critical of the discriminatory laws, – which were all passed after the revolution because they do not correspond to our culture.” A Feb 2009, 6:08 min video production by IranVNC.com
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LINK TO REPORTS ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS – IRAN:

Amnesty International Report – Iran’s Women’s Rights Defenders Defy Repression, Feb 2009

United Nations General Assembly – 63rd Session – Agenda Item 64 (c) , Oct 2008

Bridgewater State College (Bridgewater, Massachusetts -US) – Iranian women and the Civil Rights Movement, Nov 2007

WFAFI – Women’s Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran – Official laws against women in Iran, 2005

Open Society Institute – Muslims in EU – Cities Report, 2007
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Additional sources for this article include the FIDH – International Federation of Human Rights, Peacewomen – WILPF – Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Campaign4Equality, The Open Society Institute, US Dept of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review, UN General Assembly reports, Amnesty International and The US Department of State.
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Special correspondent for Women News Network – WNN, Elahe Amani, is director of Technology for Student Affairs at California State University. She is also a 2007 Lillian Robles Award winner for her outstanding community service, social education efforts and feminist activism and is chair of Women Intercultural Network (WIN). 

Humanitarian journalist, Lys Anzia, is Director/Editor-at-Large for Women News Network – WNN

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 ©Women News Network – WNN 2009

Mindy Kay Bricker – Women News Network – WNN

Uganda girl-child night commuter. Image: K.Burns - USAID

UGANDA – It had been 11 years since my feet had touched the dusty rust-colored soil of Uganda. My first visit had been particularly remarkable as it had been the first time the long, black barrel of a gun had been pointed within centimeters of my face.

In a national effort to expel a swelling and beleaguered Sudanese refugee population from the country, an eager soldier of some sort had stopped our matatu (mini-van) in the middle of the night. He awoke me—at gunpoint—demanded my passport, and told me to get out of the vehicle. Within a few minutes, about 10 or so of us re-boarded with two less people—a Sudanese woman and her daughter.

On that night, little did I know that somewhere, kilometers away, an 11-year-old Lucy Aol was sleeping in the thick Northern Ugandan bush hoping that she wouldn’t be awoken in the same fashion. With one thin mattress below her, and one covering her, her dark chocolate skin was swallowed by the night as she hid from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that was not only largely supported by the Sudanese government but was enthusiastically amassing an army of children to torture, kill and steal from the area’s Acholi people.

Her luck would last two more years. At 13, this Acholi girl would be abducted and issued a gun so that she could protect herself while she pillaged homes for food and clothing at the behest of the LRA. Within days of her abduction, she would be made a “wife”, a position she would keep until, at the age of 16, she would understand that death was a small consequence if she were caught escaping.

“I’m not going to risk much,” she negotiated with herself. “I have to escape.”

She would walk cautiously and quietly for more than 24 hours, without rest, through bush so dense a cat would find it difficult to claw its way through. When she would finally reach Gulu, the second largest populated town in the country and home to a military base against the LRA, she would immediately enter a rehabilitation center, where she would be told the unimaginable: She was pregnant. A teenager so traumatized, Lucy had never even had her first period.

The Lucy Aol who I didn’t know existed 11 years ago, I return to meet in 2008. Now 22 years old, Lucy delivers a handshake so cotton-ball soft that even a ballerina would feel brutish in her company. Her voice is quiet, her smile gummy, and her laugh affable. What you don’t see, however, is the gallery of torture on her body—a shrapnel scar on the heel of her foot, the panga (type of a machete) and stick scars on her buttocks from being repeatedly beaten by soldiers in the bush.

But there is a reality that neither a smile nor clothing can mask: When you meet Lucy, what you see is a girl—wanting to be a woman—and desperately trying to extricate herself from her experience as a child soldier of yesterday, while anxiously trying to safeguard her child from the stigma of being tomorrow’s rebel soldier.

Lucy is among more than 60,000 Northern Ugandan children abducted by the LRA during its 21-year-long civil war against the Ugandan government. Organized by former Catholic altar boy Joseph Kony, theoretically, the LRA was founded to protect Northern Ugandans from the National Resistance Army, which had staged a military coup in 1986, and was exacting revenge in the north, the home of many of the soldiers that tried to resist the coup. It didn’t take long before Kony began attacking, rather than protecting, the Acholi people—which, ironically, was his own tribe. As they began to fear him, he accused the Acholi of betraying him and he wanted them dead, all the while bolstered by the messages he claimed he received from the “holy spirit.”

“A person who believes in God cannot kill, cannot rape people, cannot burn their house … cutting their ears, cutting their necks,” Lucy says. Kony “is a devil, not God.”

“When you first arrive [after being abducted by the rebels], they put all the girls together. Then they call the officers so they can pick who they want for a wife. Even if you are very young. I was given to a very big man. He was blind on one side. So maybe he didn’t see that I was very young.”

- from a Ugandan girl soldier, exhibition of drawings and quotes for Nobel Peace Centre via CAP International – Children/Youth as Peace Builders 2006

Most abductions occurred during the’90s. Like Lucy, thousands of the girls who were abducted were forced into “marriages” with soldiers. Almost 40 percent of the girls who were forcibly married had at least one child in the bush, according to reports.

Within days of her arrival in southern Sudan, where the LRA’s headquarters were based, Lucy was lined up with other girls and assigned to her “husband.” The more successful the soldier, the more wives he was awarded—Kony allegedly had over 40 forced wives.

Lucy would become the fourth wife of a 24-year-old captain. “He was so big,” she recalled. “He was so old.” Devastated, Lucy burst into tears and refused the man.

Image: HDPT CAR - Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team - Central African Republic

“They told me to lie down, and they said, ‘You pick: Do you want life or death?,’” she recounts. “Then they brought a boy near me and killed him using a panga. They cut him here (her finger slices her neck), here (waist), here (legs) … Then they told me, ‘Have you seen what has happened with that boy?’ I started crying. ‘You are crying!’ Then, they started beating me.”

She chose “life,” which meant that for 2.5 years she was forced to have sex with her husband twice a week, each time crying and each time being beat for her tears. She would sometimes be denied food for up to five days and almost just as long without water—when deprived water, soldiers would make her drink someone else’s urine. She was only required to fight in the field once, but was forced several times a week to pillage villages to gather food and clothing.
Kony was set to sign a peace agreement in April of this year, officially putting an end to a war that left nearly 2 million people homeless, 80 percent of who were women and children. But he never showed. The LRA still managed to stay in the headlines, however, when they orchestrated over 300 abductions in Congo, Sudan and Central African Republic.

“For us, we are just waiting,” Lucy says. “Will he come back to kill you? Will he come back to arrest you? Will he come back to abduct you?”

“I was scared. There were many bullets fired. I dropped down for safety, but could see the tree leaves falling from the bullets… I didn’t shoot, but six rebel soldiers and man abducted children were killed. Over twenty children died. I was running for safety and had to jump over many of the bodies. The youngest was about twelve.”

- Grace T., age 16, abducted July 2002, VOHU – Village of Hope – Uganda

Back in Gulu, Lucy is at ease on her home turf, her black flipflops dusted with red dirt as she calmly walks around the city. The expense of the bus ticket prohibits her from visiting her mother and her daughter, Winnie, often—she only manages the 7-hour journey about once a semester.

Winnie “likes my mother more than me,” she says matter of factly. “I don’t feel good [about that]. I want my kid. Just because I’m away from her, she’s not like me. So when I finish my course, I will come back, and she will know me better.”

Motorbikes buzz past her on the street, carrying women with children, and men clutching nearly empty briefcases, while people bustle about with an effort of feigning life in a city. The market buzzes with excitement, and the smell of dead fish wafts over women walking around with straw-weaved doormats on their heads. Lucy is stopped by a friend, who instantly grabs Lucy’s arm and slowly walks with her down the street, asking question after question: How much is your tuition? When does the next semester begin? How do you like the program?

“It’s normal,” Lucy says. “People used to stop me all the time. They want to know everything.”

Lucy is studying environmental health, with the hope that she will work as an environmental health assistant with the Ministry of Health in her region of the country, working to improve sanitation in the community, educating people on disease outbreaks, like cholera and tuberculosis, and providing HIV counseling and testing.

Her friend’s interest is genuine. One would be hard pressed to find another country where education is so prized, but so unattainable for many, as exorbitant school fees depress any kind of academic aspirations. Around 41 percent of former abductees returned to school, 28 percent of whom were long-term abductees. According to a recent study, however, girls, like Lucy, returning from the bush with a child had nearly a zero percent chance of returning to school.

But despite her success as a student and her sacrifice as a mother, there is no guarantee that she will land a job—the reality in Uganda is that just as tribal nepotism and politics worked against her during the civil war, they could also work against her when trying to work for the government.

“It is different for boys and girls when they are coming back. The boys come back without children. But us, we all have children from our time with the rebels. They are our children, you cannot leave this child, she is yours. But if you want to make a new life, start a new life with a man, you will always suffer because of this child. And the child will suffer too, because of you, because of your past in the bush.

It is harder for girls. And it is hard. Because people will say things to you and that thing will live with you. It stays in your heart. And when you are suffering, when you are depressed, you will always think about those things. A boy just forgets but a girl is not made that way. And people do not let a girl forget. It is impossible for a girl to brush that thing off.” 

– Interview with girl child soldier Uganda, CAP- Children/Youth as Peacebuilders 2003

A few hours before Winnie comes home from school, Lucy finally arrives in her mother’s village, a mud-hut suburb of sorts two kilometers outside Gulu. Lucy walks around for a few minutes before a friend spots her, the two simultaneously laughing at the sight of each other.

“This is my friend, Grace” Lucy says. “We met in the bush.”

The two met when Lucy had been deprived of water for three days. Lucy begged Grace for a drink, and Grace acquiesced, even though she would have been killed had she been caught.

Now when Lucy and Grace see each other it is instant relief, mostly because they know they will be able to discuss their problems, their traumas, their fears. Since they understand each other’s pasts so well, they can offer each other therapy that they can rarely find anywhere else. Lucy does not even talk about her days in the bush to her mother—it is a taboo topic.

But Grace and Lucy have more in common than just their harrowing past: Neither of them plan to tell their children any time soon of how, and to whom, they were born. Children are already beginning to taunt their children at school, calling them “bush children”, creating rounds of questions for both the mothers. Both Lucy and Grace, who had two children in the bush, avoid the discussion, by offering terse explanations.

Grace tried to marry, which would have assuaged the situation, but the man divorced her when his family found out she was one of “Kony’s children.” This sort of rejection is sadly typical for former female soldiers with children.

“I tell [Winnie] that she wasn’t born in the bush; she was born in Gulu,” Lucy says, which is the absolute truth—Winnie was conceived in the bush, but she wasn’t born there.

To mitigate such harassment, Lucy enrolled Winnie in a private school, where she has a more intimate learning environment. There are no educational standards in public schools, Lucy says, so the family sacrifices everything to provide this for Winnie. Lucy’s mother takes food rations from the displacement camp to sell for Winnie’s school fees. But she broke her arm recently when taking cassava to sell in the West Nile; now, Winnie must carry out the chores for the house.

In June, rising food prices provoked a 5,000 shilling (CZK 50, $3.20) boost in school fees—school fees that Lucy’s mother hadn’t managed to gather yet, bringing the total to 50,000 shillings (CZK 500, $32).

“I’m not happy at all because they ruined me. I had to cut short my studies. I have no hope that I will one day be somebody. I gave birth to two children and was not prepared. I have two children and no means of survival. I worry about what will happen next.”

- Christine A., age 20, abducted in 1996, VOHU – Village of Hope – Uganda

Emotionally spent, Lucy and her mother sit inside the dark mud hut and discuss the option of selling charcoal over the next few weeks. Lucy also suggests asking the school to allow for an extension in payment. However, the two women conclude that they aren’t going to be able to keep up the momentum—the women might need to return to their family in the displacement camp, and Winnie might have no choice but to be in a poor school system with provocative children.

“She should not be hearing such kind of language as she’s growing,” Lucy says. “It will be dangerous for her to hear that she was born in the bush and that her father is from the bush killing people … She will not be fine in the future.”

But Lucy maintains her hope that at some point she will find, or create, some kind of job, and that she will be able to purchase land for her parents, five brothers, their wives and children, so that the family can leave the displacement camps, where over 1 million northern Ugandans still live despite the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement that was signed in August 2006 between the LRA and the Ugandan government. And then, and only then, will she be able to build a fence around the family compound “to protect” Winnie.

“Maybe I can get a job, and in the future my child will be okay,” she says. “If you have nothing to do, then you suffer.”

A day into her trip and a day away from returning to school in Kampala—where she will study for upcoming exams, sleep in a room with 19 other people, and subsist on a diet of beans—Lucy’s visit home quickly turns sour. While standing with Winnie, the two posing for a photograph, the landlord—and friend of the family—stares at 6-year-old Winnie.

“That child has the eyes of a rebel soldier,” she says to her.

And as much as Winnie doesn’t know about her life, she understands that the words are vitriolic. Winnie sobs. And Lucy consoles her, careful not to tell her the truth.
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- Ugandan girl soldiers often suffer critical trauma from the violence they witness and take part in during their incarceration with the LRA – The Lord’s Resistance Army. A VOHU – Village of Hope Uganda video/film production.
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For more information on this topic see these reports:
UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency – Child Soldiers Global Report 2008 – Uganda
CAP International – Children/Youth as Peacebuilders
VOHU – Village of Hope – Uganda Child Soldiers Report

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Editor-at-large for Marie Claire magazine in the Czech Republic, WNN journalist, Mindy Kay Bricker has also been a Womensenews correspondent. She has also worked as a freelance journalist for the International Herald Tribune and Christian Science Monitor.
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©Women News Network – WNN 2009

Portions of this article have appeared previously in Marie Claire magazine – Czech Republic.
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KAMALA SARUP, Nepal Correspondent with LYS ANZIA – Women News Network – WNN

This desperate mother traveled from her village in Nepal to Mumbai, India, hoping to find and rescue her teenage daughter who was trafficked into an Indian brothel. Nepalese girls are prized for their fair skin and are lured with promises of a “good” job and the chance to improve their lives. “I will stay in Mumbai,” said the mother, “Until I find my daughter or die. I am not leaving here without her.” Image: Kay Chernush US State Department

WNN Nepal – “In recent years, millions of women and girls have been trafficked across borders and within countries. The global trafficking industry generates an estimated five to seven billion U.S. dollars each year, more than the profits generated by the arms and narcotics trades,” quotes a Feb 2001, Asia Foundation and Horizons Project Population Council report.

In the late 17th century, the brothel area of Kamathipura was first established to service British troops in what was then called Bombay, India. In 2004, the cost to buy a sex-trafficked girl from Nepal in what is now called Mumbai, has risen to 100,000 – 120,000 Indian rupees (approx $2,004 – 2,405 USD). Girls trafficked from Nepal are known as a “tsukris.” They are those who have been indentured (forced) to work under a “never ending” contract commonly found with human trafficking.

The industry in the trafficking of Nepali girls is a very lucrative business. It can include forced labor, domestic and factory work. Young girls who are teenagers are often used in the sex-trafficking industries, though, because of the extreme profit for traffickers and the very low incidence of law enforcement arrests against sex-industry racketeers.

Arresting the traffickers can be very tricky. In rural Nepal this is a constant challenge as adequate police enforcement is often non-existent. Seen only as an investment to brothel owners, trafficked girls, in addition to cooperating in the daily sex-servicing of clients, are used by the brothel owners as “virgins,” as owners attempt to sell a girl’s virginity over and over again. This insidious crime can be found throughout the back alleys of Mumbai today.

So, why are most brothel owners interested much more in owning girls from Nepal versus girls from India?

The answer is obvious. Sex sells and girls from villages like Ichowk, Mahankal and Talmarang in the Sindhupalchowk district in northern central Nepal are full of girls who are more than anxious for a better life.

Besides this, Nepalese girls are cheaper to buy, much more cooperative and much easier to control and enslave. Girls from the rural regions are known to be much more obedient and considered more attractive for brothel owners who may want to resell them. Nepali girls coming from the rural farming areas, because of their naïveté,  are much more easy to cheat and to force into debt bondage. This is because they have very little, if any, education and they usually do not speak any of the native languages of India.

“Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors,” reports the US Department of State in a 2008 study.

In an unending cycle of degradation, Nepali girls are forced each and every day into the sex-trades. And most often face vast cultural and gender discrimination if they return home.

In April 21, 2008, WNN correspondent, Kamala Sarup, organized a program on HIV/AIDS and Trafficking in the district of Sindhupalchowk, Nepal. Here she shares a first hand story about the sex-trafficking in Nepal:

Tamang used to come to Kathmandu at our house every year. He was a part-time tailor and full-time farmer who used to work in Kathmandu to make extra money to take home each year. He was a very poor man. When I saw him the first time he told me he wanted to send his daughter, Tara, to school. I felt very kind toward him, so I gave him a small room to stay at our big family home in Kathmandu. But my parents did not like my decision and our community criticized me because of his poverty and standing. This year, Tamang did not come to Kathmandu, so I went to see him and his family in his village.

According to The Asia Foundation, a human rights advocacy group for women, many Nepali communities “recognize the role of social and economic hardships in vulnerability to trafficking. They also blame the immoral character of the trafficked girl herself. Girls who seek independence, want exposure to the world outside.”

While girls are faced with desperate prospects in trying to “improve” their lives, they are many times “tempted by the prospect of gaining material benefits and are perceived as bad and more likely to be trafficked,” continued The Asia Foundation.

The daughter of Tamang was lost. But for Tamang, it’s not a new incident, because the loss of girls in Nepal is quite common in Sindhupalchowk. (Sindhupalchowk is a district of the Central Development Region of Nepal in the Bagmati Zone, 75 KM from Kathmandu).

The forced prostitution of teenage girls in Sindhupalchok is a ongoing hideous crime of deceit, deception and broken promises. In many rural areas, some girls leave home due to domestic violence and other personal problems. But there also exists many cases of missing girls who have left home purely in an attempt to better their life or to provide for family obligations.

Many sex-traffickers take advantage of these conditions as they falsely encourage girls to leave home.

Often these daughters are persuaded to travel with people who offer marriage and a better life, jobs or money. Many times, they and their parents are also promised education in the large cities of neighboring India. While this is not often the case, some parents who are suffering under severe economic hardship are also known to deceive their daughters as they sell them to traffickers.

“Trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, purchase, sale, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by threat or use of violence, abduction, force, fraud, deception or coercion (including the abuse of authority), or debt bondage, for the purpose of placing or holding such person, whether for pay or not, in forced labor or slavery-like practices, in a community other than the one in which such person lived at the time of the original act described,” said Sri Lankan attorney and UN Special Rapporteur on Violence, Radhika Coomaraswamy, at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Watching Tamang enter his house after his day’s work he consoled his wife, Sunita, as their worry about Tara mounted. These are the moments when Tamang should be sharing his pleasures and pains with his wife. He loves Sunita very deeply. He remembered well how he had sung love songs while going to the market in his youth with Sunita. But now, how can he console his wife? Tara was missing and there was no one who knew where she had gone.

Tamang tries to control his hesitating and worried mind. He lights a leaf-wrapped cigarette letting his mind burn along with the dark stick of cigarette. “This life just goes on burning just like a cigarette!” he sighed in dismay.

Because most sex-trafficking in rural Nepal is often made through personal contacts and arrangements, up-to-date detailed accurate documentation and data of girls who have been forced into the global sex-industry in this region is still greatly lacking. Tragically, many missing girls from Nepal disappear deep into the brothel system of India without a trace. As time passes, they are often sold again and again, to one owner after another, only to settle deep into the degradation of life trapped as a young prostitute.

In 2007, the Interim Government of Nepal upheld sanctions against all human trafficking in Nepal.

THE INTERIM CONSTITUTION OF NEPAL, 2063 (2007)

29. Right Against Exploitation

(1) Every person shall have the right against exploitation.

(2) No person shall be exploited in the name of custom, tradition and practice,

or in any other way

(3) No person shall be subjected to human trafficking, slavery or bonded labour.

(4) No person shall be subject to forced labour.

The top destination for most Nepalese girls is to Mumbai brothels. Other common destinations for run-away girls leaving Nepal include the cities of Pune, Delhi and Kolkata, India. Calcutta, too, is an area where trafficking is a lucrative business. Areas outside of India include cities in numerous locations in the Middle East / Asia regions.

Tamang’s wife, Sunita, cast a quick glance towards Tamang. It was then he felt overwhelmed with love.

“What can you do now by crying?” he said to his wife. “Instead, let’s leave this village and go far away, tomorrow right away! Could it be that our daughter went to Kathmandu?”

Girls who are victims of sex-trafficking in Nepal often come from the very poorest regions of Nepal. Without education or opportunity they often live with their families on the poorest outcast edge of society. Often food may be scarce or clean water unavailable. Missing girls can be as young as 8 or 9, but are most often 14 – 18 yrs of age. They often come from the very lowest caste in Nepali society, where hardship is the norm, although current trends in trafficking are showing higher-caste girls who are also being bought and sold by traffickers. 

For the last decade it has been estimated that  6,000 – 7,000 girls are trafficked out of Nepal each year. But these numbers have recently risen substantially. Current numbers for girls trafficked out of the country are now 10,000 to 15,000 yearly. This is compounded as the US Central Intelligence Agency states that most trafficked girls are currently worth, in their span as a sex-worker, approx $250,000 (USD) on the sex-trades market.

2005 data from case records documented by six rehabilitation centers in Nepal of sex-trafficked women show that most (72.7%) rural girls who are trafficked are Hindu by religion. 59.9% are unmarried. 46.5% are 16-18 yrs of age and 77.2% have none to little education.

Tamang wanted to speak but  he felt an unbearable pain in his heart. He thought it not at all proper to cry in front of his wife.

“I had suggested that we should get Tara married in time,” said Sunita. “You heard my words in one ear and let it go through another ear. Now, who knows, someone could have taken her away and sold her!”

Tamang’s heart was broken in two as his wife spoke. He felt as if someone had smeared his burning chest in salt and red chilies.

The odds for a girl to escape her life in the brothels, once she is there, is very slim. Only a dismal percentage (6.9%) of brothel owners will voluntarily release one of their girls. 73.7% of all girls trapped inside the brothel system must be rescued if they are ever to reach the outside world again. 

Maiti Nepal, a 20 yr old rescue organization,based in Kathmandu, is one of the organizations that today manages ongoing rescue of Nepali girls from the brothels of Mumbai. Going up against organized crime in India is not an easy matter though. “The criminal elements that ‘deliver’ young girls are a ruthless enemy and have political connections at the highest levels in India and Nepal. Maiti Nepal’s main office in Kathmandu has been destroyed twice and Maiti workers must travel with a bodyguard when overseeing rescue missions in India,” said the sister organization of Maiti Nepal, called Friends of Nepal.

As Tamang got up abruptly he thought of the young man, Harka, who grew up in his village. In fact, he had heard rumors from time to time about the intimate relation of his daughter with Harka. Maybe his daughter was taken away by him. “Harka is not a good man. I don’t trust him,” thought Tamang. “He was under police custody for seven days when he was involved in a squabble in the village.”

Most sex-trafficking (59.4%) in Nepal is carried out through “Dalals” or brokers who falsely guarantee good work to girl-children who are willing to travel to other country locations. At times, the some Dalals even pretend to marry girls who come from families with little resources, as they sell them in the brothels. The real tragedy is that most, if not all, trafficking victims fall into forced prostitution because of false promises made by someone “familiar” to them.

“It is estimated that 50 percent of Nepalese sex workers in Mumbai brothels are HIV positive,” says a World Bank 2004 report. The youngest victims of sex-trafficking are those most likely to be directly exposed to HIV/AIDS. There is an “increased risk among those trafficked prior to age 15 years,” says a 2007 JAMA – American Medical Association report.

Coming home with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis causes most trafficked girls to suffer intense judgement. Often Nepal society blames the victims of sex-trafficking, not the traffickers, for choosing a “life of immorality.”

Tamang couldn’t get a wink of sleep the whole night. On one hand, he was extremely worried at the thought of his missing daughter. On the other hand, his wife didn’t allow him to fall asleep because of her nightlong weeping. Seeing his own cold bed he was angry and disgusted. “What is the use of such a life which is full of so many wants?” he said. Even if Tamang worked hard through the year, he could not afford sufficient food for the family nor could he spend more than a few rupees in front of his friends and relatives. And now, on top of it all his daughter, Tara, is lost.

On top of the discrimination thrown at them for being “sex-workers” many trafficked girls also end up dealing with rejection by others because they have HIV/AIDS. In 2007, JAMA outlined statistics that prove a direct rise in HIV/AIDS cases in the youngest section of girls trafficked from Nepal. These girls are usually 9 to 14 yrs of age. “Within this high-risk group, risk for HIV was increased among girls trafficked at 14 years or younger (60.6% HIV-positive) to those trafficked to Mumbai (49.6% HIV positive) and to those reporting longer duration in brothels,” the JAMA report states.

These problems are wrapped deep inside the structure of Nepal and Indian society as a whole. Girls and women in Nepal are usually only given status according to the economic and social standing of their fathers and/or brothers. A majority of Nepali women are expected to live according to ”traditional” Nepali standards that leaves little opportunity to build any self-esteem.

According to JAMA, “Sexuality is a taboo in Nepal; discussing sex and sexuality is beyond the social morality,” states a FWLD – Forum for Women Law and Development (Kathmandu) report. “Sex work is considered ‘deviant’ behavior and is unacceptable (in Nepal). As a result, sex workers retain highly marginalized status in the society.”

Young women used in prostitution wait for customer/exploiters in Mumbai’s red light district. They face routine violence from pimps and customers and a wide range of diseases and adverse health effects — from sexually-transmitted diseases and tuberculosis, to rape, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, and murder. Image: Kay Chernush US Department of State

Drug use, too, among girls who have been in the brothels for extended periods of time causes many problems as these girls are returned home to families and home communities. Girls who have received no assistance with drug rehab often try to return to their life in the brothels because of their intense addiction.

“Injection drug use appears to be extensive in Nepal and to overlap with commercial sex. Another important factor is the high number of sex workers who migrate or are trafficked to Mumbai, India to work, thereby increasing HIV prevalence in the sex workers’ network in Nepal more rapidly,” says World Bank Asia (2008).

Predominant drugs abused by trafficked girls working in Mumbai brothels includes cough syrup, cannabis, heroin and propoxyphene (Darvon), along with alcohol and mild tranquilizers. Addiction in the brothels is common among the young prostitutes there. 

The next morning as Tamang walked slowly on the street of his village, he went to talk to his good  friend, Murali. Many years ago, there was a severe famine in the village and Tamang’s field had no yield. It was Murali who proved himself and gave Tamang 48 lbs of corn and 32 lbs of rice for the season. It was Murali who didn’t accept any repayment of the loan. Tamang had never forgotten such generosity.

As Tamang walked the village street he saw a crowd had gathered as a rising noise came from a stream of people. Tamang was startled. He had seen this kind of crowd and uproar only once before at the time of the election in Nepal. What kind of unexpected calamity had fallen in the village? Tamang headed straight toward the house of Murali.

The average stay for most girls in a brothel is not short. Brothel stays for girls who have been rescued average 12 – 36 months inside the brothel system. Unfortunately, those who cannot be rescued are trapped for many more additional years. Even with current ongoing attempts to rescue girls by rescue agencies, countless girls fall desperately through the cracks.

At the border between Nepal and India rescue agencies attempt to inspect cars for young girls who appear to be trafficked. But even with this, girls and traffickers do make it through. These car searches and border interviews are usually done without the assistance of police or Nepal government agencies.

As Tamang walked closer to Murali’s home people began shouting. Then, through a break in the crowd Tamang saw his friend, Murali’s daughter laying on the ground. Her dead body was on the edge of the street. She was filled with death. Had died of HIV/AIDS and someone had thrown her body there. 

“The poor soul!” cried an old woman in desperation from the street. “Who was the one who killed this girl at such a young age?” she asked. “She never spoke a bad word to anybody. Such a good girl who has now become a victim of such an evil fate!” 

“The high rates of HIV infection seen among these survivors of trafficking, indicates a need for greater attention from the public health community to this population and to prevention of this violent gender-based crime and human rights violation,” said the 2007 JAMA report.

“In Mumbai and Pune, for example, 54% and 49% of sex workers, respectively, were found to be HIV-positive (NACO, 2005). A large proportion of women with HIV appear to have acquired the virus from regular partners who were infected during paid sex. HIV prevention efforts targeted at sex workers are being implemented in India. However, the context of sex work is complex and enforcement of outdated laws often act as a barrier against effective HIV prevention and treatment efforts. Indeed, condom use is limited especially when commercial encounters take place in ‘risky’ locations with low police tolerance for this activity.”

“Controlling trafficking has been compounded by the conflict of the last ten years,” said Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba, Executive Chairperson of Samanata Institute for Social and Gender Equality in Kathmandu in a September 2008 interview with photo-journalist Mikel Dunham. “The communities (in Nepal) became poorer and some of them had no recourse but to try to find a means for a livelihood. During and after the conflict, there was a lot of displacement, a lot of women came to the urban centers, and most were not equipped to get into jobs. They were not educated–no skills. So a lot of them became ‘dancers’, you know? So now, it’s like a phenomenon. Every town you go to, you have all these dance bars. It’s just a front for brothels,” Dr. Deuba added.

On the grisly sight of Marali’s daughter Tamang thought of his own his daughter and wife. He thought of the conditions of his family, of his life, his home. He was paralyzed with grief. He fell over the body of the young girl and started crying. Now we have to live a pathetic life here,” he said. “We are in Sindhupalchowk, as thousands of young girls who are living in the rural areas are the victims of trafficking!”

 

The 1999 “Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation” states that over 200,000 Nepali girls exist to supply the world as sex “products” for sale. Along with India, China, Eastern Europe, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other regions, many nations have also been areas that receive and use Nepali girls in the sex-trafficking and porn industries. In 1999, the city of Hong Kong was the second largest destination for trafficked girls from Nepal.

Along the 1,740 mile border between Nepal and India, smuggling a girl is still very easy today.

The district of Sindupalchow is not the only district guilty of smuggling girls. The rural districts of Makwanpur, Dhading and Khavre are also very involved in the ongoing trafficking of girls in sex-exploitation.

“The government has made stringent laws, but again, the problem is enforcement. Most of the traffickers are very rich. They buy the lawyers. They have money to hire top-class lawyers. They may be even paying bribes to come out of it. And the other thing we have noticed is that most of the women who are trafficked are poor. So even if they come back and they file a case, eventually, they’re pressured by their family, who are paid off by the traffickers to keep quiet. And the legal system in Nepal takes forever for a case to be resolved. That has been one problem… When the traffickers are caught, very few are brought to justice,” continued Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba, as she outlined the ongoing problems of enforcement against trafficking in Nepal.

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In an emmy award winning film, Executive Director of Apneaap Women Worldwide, Ruchira Gupta, goes inside the brothels of Mubai to show the degradation of girls who have been trafficked from Nepal to serve in India’s sex-industry. This is a 8:57 min film excerpt.

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For more information on sex-trafficking in Nepal link to:

Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation – College of Arts and Sciences, University of Rhode Island and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), Norway

Fallen Angels – photo essay by Thomas L. Kelley

Trafficking and Human Rights in Nepal: Community Perceptions and Policy and Program Response, 2001 – Horizons, Population Council & The Asia Foundation

Litigation, Girl Trafficking in Nepal – INTS 4945 Human Rights Advocacy Clinic, Jennifer Aengst, 2001

Interim Constitution of Nepal 2063 (2007) – UNDP, United Nations Development Programme

HIV Prevalence and Prediction in Nepalese Sex-Trafficked Girls – JAMA, American Medical Association, 2007

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Sources for this article include: Friends of UNDP – United Nations Development Programme, Maiti Nepal, CIPA – Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, FWLD – Forum for Women Law and Development (Kathmandu), UNDP – United Nations Development Programme, The Asia Foundation, US Department of State, JAMA – American Medical Association, University of Denver – Human Rights Advocacy Center, UNODC – United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, The World Bank – HIV/AIDS South Asia Report, Nepal Branch of Statistics Offices – Central Bureau of Statistics, photographer, Mikel Dunham, WILPF – Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Human Rights Watch, Opportunities and Choices Reproductive Health Research Program, Southhampton, UK, 1996-2001 and Terre des hommes Foundation – Kathmandu.

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WNN correspondent, Kamala Sarup, specializes in reporting and writing stories on peace and anti-war issues, women, democracy and development. Some of her other publications include: Women’s Empowerment in South Asia, Nepal; Prevention of Trafficking in Women Through Media; Efforts to Prevent Trafficking for Media Activism.

2007 Pushcart Prize nominee, humanitarian journalist and award winning playwright, Lys Anzia, is founding director for Women News Network – WNN. Lys is strongly dedicated to bringing issues of global women’s equality and human rights to the public through the use of media.

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©Women News Network – WNN 2008

Protective laws unfit for women on streets of Cairo

- WNN correspondents JOSEPH MAYTON and MANAR AMMAR

Cairo woman 1943. Image: Jeannie Fletcher

CAIRO: Being an Egyptian woman is to accept sexual harassment as daily routine, according to a recent report from the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR). The study outlines, 60 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women are harassed on a daily basis.

This is not a new problem. In fact, the problem has been simmering silently since the fall of 2006, when dozens of men and boys attacked and assaulted women outside a downtown a Cairo cinema. In a mob style attack, the perpetrators attempted to grope and tear at any passing woman’s clothes in the October attack.

Street harassment globally includes a wide range of verbal and nonverbal acts, including whistles, jeers, winks, grabs, pinches, public displays and often the use of foul and offensive language. Extreme cases can accelerate into physical attacks where clothing is ripped and a woman is bruised, cut or injured.

No woman is left unharmed by acts of street harassment. Exposure to such acts of public humiliation that result in verbal or physical assault are often ignored by the police. In Cairo this is due to the lack of protective enforcement of Egyptian laws.

Although articles 268 and 306 of the Egyptian Penal Code touch on issues rising out of extreme sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo, the specific legal wording to aid in protecting women exists nowhere in the code. This makes prosecution very difficult and extremely rare.

“There is no law criminalizing sexual harassment in Egypt,” says New York based and award-winning Washington Post columnist, Mona Eltahawy. A native of Egypt, international speaker on Arab and Muslim issues and former reporter for Reuters news in Cairo and Jerusalem, Eltahawy has been vigilant in her stand on human rights and women’s rights.

“Police often refuse to report women’s complaints,” added Eltahawy. “And when it is the police themselves who are harassing women, then clearly women’s safety is far from a priority in Egypt.”

The 1993 Harvard Law Review report, “Street Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women,” by Cynthia Grant Bowman, Cornell Law School professor and Gender Studies professor from Northwestern University, outlines the need for specific criminal and civil laws to protect women in public. Street harassment globally has one insidious and common denominator, the use of words that include extreme sexual innuendo and profanity.

“Fighting words statutes seem to offer an appropriate remedy for many kinds of street harassment,” says Professor Bowman in her report. “They encompass personal, face-to-face insults that cannot possibly be described as political discourse; they apply to ‘threatening, profane or obscene revilings’; and they turn upon the reaction of the hearer rather than upon the intent of the speaker or harasser.”

Although the ACLU – American Civil Liberties Union has come out strongly in opposition defending the use of ‘fighting words’ as free speech under United States law code, it does lean in the favor in the prosecution of “acts of violence, harassment or intimidation and invasions of privacy.”

“The ACLU recognizes that the mere presence of speech as one element in an act of violence, harassment, intimidation or privacy invasion doesn’t immunize that act from punishment,” said the organization in a 1994 “Hate Speech on Campus” report.

On the streets of Cairo in 2006, eyewitnesses and citizen reporters’ pictures were clear proof that terror against women had taken place, despite denials by police and the Ministry of Interior. Some of the photos revealed police watching from a distance in amusement and indifference to the women’s predicament.

The event proved to be the breaking point for women, and some men, in removing their heads from the sand. It was the first time women had spoken out about the issue, taking to the streets in demonstrations against this enduring social problem.

“Not only do we not have the space and the freedom to do it (demonstrate) but also some of us women got harassed by police officers,” says Mona, a 25-year-old Egyptian girl who attended her first demonstration following the 2006 attacks.

“I went with my sister and her friends and I saw one of her friends screaming at a couple of soldiers for harassing her,” Mona added. “The irony was unbelievable.”

Women walk on the streets of the Han Al-halili district in Cairo. Image: Peter Snelling

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Two years on from those horrific events in downtown Cairo, and despite the few instances of activism that brought false hope for change, women complain about the same issues, according to the ECWR study. The statistics reveal a difficult reality; 60 percent of women answered that they are harassed every day. This includes both verbal and physical abuse.

Making matters complicated, approximately 70 percent of the men surveyed admitted to participating in harassing women, not taking matters seriously and even blaming women.

Mohsen Reda, an Egyptian Member of Parliament, said women should be dressed more modestly as “a lot of our youth can’t afford marriage so it is only normal for some harassment to take place.”

Are women in Egypt not dressed appropriately? “That is funny,” began Dola, a 55-year-old mother of two young women when asked about modesty in Egypt’s busy streets. “Of course he is talking about another nation. If you walk down the street you will see the truth: women are modest. Sure, you may see a small percentage of young college girls who like to dress in fashion, but that is it,” she added.

“Women with headscarves are harassed all the time, too,” the mother argued.

“At 15, I was groped as I was performing the rites of the hajj pilgrimage at Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims. Every part of my body was covered except for my face and hands. I’d never been groped before and burst into tears, but I was too ashamed to explain to my family what had happened,” said journalist Mona Eltahawy in a July 27, 2008 article for the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

Foreign women in Cairo, according to the ECWR study, have an even more difficult situation. 98 percent of foreigners are harassed, and in some reported instances, more violently than locals.

Asma, a 29-year-old masters student retells the story of an Italian friend. “She was walking in downtown in the afternoon wearing cotton sporty pants and a t-shirt when a man came from behind and set part of her bottom on fire with a lighter and sprinted off,” the Egyptian student says of her friend. The Italian woman had third degree burns and “a wish to not come back here (to Egypt) again.”

The ECWR warned that harassing foreign women would lead to the loss of millions of pounds. A number of foreigners said they would never return to Egypt. 14 percent of all foreign women said they would either never return to Egypt or tell their friends not to visit, which could put a damper on the country’s number one source of income: tourism.

Despite the report and documented harassment, little has been done to prevent the situation from worsening.

Nehad Abu Komsan, the chairwoman of the ECWR, is optimistic on the future. She believes more women are willing to speak out about their experiences.

“The problem is that women did not have the ability to talk,” she begins, “and they feel the shame and were afraid to talk, but now they are more free to talk and they know that they are not alone and this is not their fault.”

Komsan argues that this has helped Egyptian society understand what is going on and will help to solve this social issue. An important aspect of her work is helping to develop society as a whole, not only within the activist community.

“It is not important to be a woman figure or a women defender. Women are an essential part of society, so as long as they are active in different fields they will defend their rights and other people’s rights,” she adds.

She pointed to recently appointed Islamic notary, known as a ‘maazun’ in Arabic, Amal Soliman. The lawyer is the first female maazun in the Islamic world’s history, and the 32-year-old mother does not want to be seen as an activist despite the attention her new job has brought.

“Sure, this was expected, although I didn’t think it would take this long,” said Soliman, who holds a master’s degree in law from Zagazig University. The Ministry of Justice has yet to give her the green light to begin work after months of waiting.

Like many obstacles in Egypt, men are guarding the entrance to the male dominated field, but Soliman expects to begin work before the year’s end.

She also has numerous law and criminal justice diplomas, which gave her the credentials to beat out 10 male candidates for the vacancy in her hometown of Qanayit just north of Cairo.

Amal Soliman didn’t believe gender would be a factor in the position when she applied, although she has long since gotten over that shock.

“I never thought that my gender would be a big deal, at least not as big of a deal it has become,” she added.

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The streets of Cairo continue to be unsafe for women in spite of media exposure and activist attempts to draw attention to ongoing problems.

(if having trouble viewing this video please go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvNoOmSUHag)

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Additional reports on this topic:

Harvard Law Review, Street Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women, Cynthia Grant Bowman, January 1993

ECWR research study, Clouds in Egypt’s Sky – Sexual Harassment: From Verbal Harassment to Rape, Rasha Mohammad Hassan with Dr. Aliya Shoukry

The American University in Cairo, Gender and Street Harassment: Women’s Access and Claims to Public Space 

Passing By – Gender and Public Harassment by Carol Brooks Gardner, Univ. of California Press c1995

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WNN correspondents Joseph Mayton and Manar Ammar have reported on this story from Cairo, Egypt. Manar Ammar is a freelance Egyptian journalist who has worked with All Headline News and Daily News Egypt. Reports by Joseph Mayton appear regularly in the Middle East Times, The Middle East Magazine and other region-focused publications.

Lys Anzia, of WNN, has also contributed to this special report.

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©Women News Network – WNN 2008

Women achieve temporary victory over Iran Family Protection Bill

ELAHE AMANI – Women News Network – WNN – Tues 23 Sept, 2008

Members of the first Majlis - Oct 7, 1906 - June 23, 1908

The Iranian “Family Protection Bill,” which is anything but protective of families, has brought together one of the largest coalitions to oppose a bill since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In response to the efforts of this coalition, the Iranian parliament (known in Iran as the Majlis) has removed the two most contested articles of this bill, Articles 23 and 25, postponing the bill’s floor discussion indefinitely. In addition, Iran’s parliament will send the bill back to the Parliamentary Judicial Committee for further revisions.

This rare and temporary victory has energized young women activists in Iran.

Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, has called the Family Protection Bill a sign of the Iranian government’s regression to many centuries ago. In an interview with the editor of the website Change4Equality, Ebadi said she and her colleagues would stage a sit-in at the Parliament (Majlis) Building should the bill be discussed on the Majlis floor.

On Sunday August 31 approx 100 women leaders and activists from various women’s groups such as the One Million Signatures Campaign, Meydaan Zanan, Kanoon Zanan Irani, along with Shirin Ebadi and Simin Behbahani, Iran’s “brave and popular” Iranian woman poet, met with members of parliament and expressed their opposition to the bill.

Simin Behbahani, in an interview with Iranian web publication, The Feminist School, summed up the meeting, “Today, we had a duty, and our duty was to voice the concerns of the women in our country to the representatives. Our visit to the parliament and our objection was because we don’t want future generations to wonder why we did not protest such a bill. So, visiting the parliament and meeting with the MPs was important and necessary.”

Although articles 23 and 25 of Iran’s Family Protection Bill were not the only two articles which brought the large and diverse coalition together, articles 16, 17 and 18 also elicited protest by womn activists.

One of these articles, that is a major concern for many Iranians, impacts Iranian women who marry foreign nationals. According to existing family law, citizenship cannot be passed to children from their mothers. Many Iranian women who have married Afghan and Iraqi men cannot get birth certificates for their children; hence these children cannot go to school. It is estimated that there are 100,000 children today in Iran without birth certificates who are denied their basic human right to education.

Women adjusting hair on streets of Tehran to comply with public dress code. Image: Farshad Ebrahimi April 23, 2007

The Family Protection Bill imposing even stricter penalties upon women who marry foreigners, stipulates a harsh sentence, up to 9 months in detention, for women who marry foreign nationals prior to getting government permission.

Family and reproductive laws are very important global issues for gender equality activists. Women in Iran, as well as other women living under Moslem laws, are particularly focused on family law, as these laws define and redefine the position of women in society.

Religious fundamentalists/extremists of all religions often focus on gender as they construct and maintain gender differences as the core policies of their political identities.

Whether it is the Family Protection Bill in Iran, or debates related to reproductive rights in the US, religious extremists actions have resulted in taking away what women human rights activists have gained. Fundamentalist Iranian women in favor of easing polygamy laws in Iran, and US presidential candidate Sarah Palin, on the US Republican ticket for the 2008 presidential election, have a lot in common. Both parties rely on the most regressive religious interpretations of women’s issues within their faith.

In a country where there is a significant gap between the demands for rights and the regressive laws imposed upon women related to polygamy and other discriminatory legislation, denial of rights will not go unchallenged. More than 60% of higher education students are female, yet their testimony in court counts for only half of a man’s testimony. Human rights defenders and women activists in Iran demand equality and dignity – nothing more and nothing less.

Where more than 500,000 Iranian bloggers, many of them women, are active in cyberspace recording narratives of their lives, while at the same time needing their husbands’ permission for obtaining passports, they face institutionalized discrimination that makes them second class citizens in divorce, inheritance, child custody and other aspects of life.

Iranian women activists and their male allies are well aware of the fact that they need to keep their guard up and keep moving forward until all discriminatory laws against women in Iran are eliminated.

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US media journalists, Matt Lauer and Richard Engel (with NBC news) outline current conditions for Iranian women, September 2007. 

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For more information on this topic go to:

Change4Equality (english)

One Million Signatures Campaign (Wikipedia english)

Meydaan Zanan (farsi)

Kanoon Zanan Irani (farsi)

The Feminist School (farsi)

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Special correspondent for Women News Network – WNN, Elahe Amani, is director of Technology for Student Affairs at California State University. She is also a 2007 Lillian Robles Award winner for her outstanding community service, social education efforts and feminist activism and is chair of Women Intercultural Network (WIN).

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©2008 Women News Network – WNN

LYS ANZIA – Women News Network – WNN

“The strategy used in women’s prisons now is one of humiliation rather than rehabilitation,” said Jane Evelyn Atwood in her 2007 Amnesty International video documentary, “Too Much Time.” For nine years, Atwood photographed and documented the conditions for women in 40 women’s prisons worldwide including the US, Europe and Eastern Europe.

In numerous locations around the world the plight of women in prison is going unheeded.

Conditions of improper touching by persons of authority, sanctioned sexual harassment, unnecessary strip searches, lack of proper medical attention or proper food exists in numerous global prison locations. In addition to this, psychological coercion and/or threats of sexual assault by persons in authority create a constant, unending and intense universal pressure on many incarcerated women.

Gate of US Pennsylvania Eastern State Penitentiary which closed in 1971. Image: P.K. Baker

“Women in prisons all around the world are at risk of rape, sexual assault and torture,” said a recent June 2008, Quaker UN Office – Human Rights and Refugees Publications report.

In some of the most grueling prisons in the world, women in Afghanistan are commonly punished for “moral crimes.” These crimes of morality are considered crimes against the dignity of the family. Many of the crimes include adultery, running away from a husband after abuse, having a relationship without being married or refusal to marry. Women who have made public charges of rape have also been known to have been placed in detention at the same time only one wing away from their assailant. Elopement with someone else not chosen by the family after a dowry has been paid is another legal reason for arrest.

The unheated women’s section in the crumbling penal facility known as Pul-e-Charkhi, in the capital city of Kabul, was a place where women were often denied their most common basic needs. Known for its extreme torture and 1970s war atrocities, women and their children whe were housed at Pul-e-Charkhi were kept together in crowded unlit, often unsanitary rooms. Medical treatment and proper nutrition was almost non-existent. Conditions of severe hardship in the prison, including sexual assault with fear of reprisal, has caused numerous women loss of all personal dignity. In many instances the extreme conditions at Pul-e-Charkhi encouraged numerous suicide attempts among women prisoners.

In April 2008, women prisoners were moved from Pul-e-Charkhi to a new facility in Kabul. Even though the walls are new, the women are still only given one hour of sunlight each day. Continuing administrative denials in the mismanagement of Afghanistan prisons points to a need for vast improvement.

The desire to direct prisons to approve and manage facilities that exist strictly “for punishment only” crushes any future hope for programs that might focus on rehabilitation.

Afghan women prisoners, suffering from extreme poverty and lack of education, are trapped along with their children inside Afghanistan’s system of criminal jurisprudence. Without fair and equal representation, or any legal recourse to their needs, women flounder as they stay locked up for years under charges that would not stand up one day in most legal courts systems around the world.

In Pakistan, “The number of women in prison at any moment…soared from as few as 70 in 1980 to as many as 4,500 in 1990,” said Human Rights Watch in a 1999 report. Women in Pakistan are charged under the “Hudood Ordinances,” ordinances enacted in Pakistan in 1979 after General Zia-ul-Haq brought a decade of military rule to the country.

Under the current Pakistan Penal Code, women can be charged for a variety of crimes relating to extra-marital sex, or “zina.” Misrepresentations of rape crimes under the laws of zina have caused women in prison in Pakistan to be charged for numerous crimes they have not instigated or caused.

Many women in prison in Pakistan who have alleged they have been raped have been charged themselves under “Tazir” law if the rape cannot be prosecuted. Punishment under Tazir law can include incarceration up to twenty-five years, a fine and 20 lashes with a whip. Human Rights Watch, along with many women’s rights activist groups inside Pakistan have been appealing for years for these Hudood Ordinances to be repealed and replaced with just and fair legislation.

The Patarei prison in Tallinn – Kalamaja, Estonia. Image: Kalev Kevad

In the US and Canada, many African American, Native American and Aboriginal Canadian women are often severely marginalized as they are disproportionally jailed. “Suicide rates among women (prisoners) are more than twice as high as in the general Canadian population,” said a 2004 report from CAEFS – Canadian Associations of Elizabeth Fry Societies. Native American women, too, have a higher than average rate of suicide in penal institutions as a result of racism and ethnic isolation.

According to the US Dept of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, “African American women (with an incarceration rate of 205 per 100,000) are more than three times as likely as Latinas (60 per 100,000) and six times more likely than white women (34 per 100,000) to face imprisonment.”

Dangers of violence against women inside prison is a matter of grave concern for most women prisoners in the US. A century old story of violence and beating in the State of New York paved a path that is still being endured by many imprisoned US women.

In January 1825, Rachel Welsh arrived at the Auburn Correctional Facility in New York State (US). One year after her arrival and six weeks later after delivering her baby inside the prison she was dead. On investigation, it was discovered that Rachel had received intense whippings and beatings. Beatings she received while incarcerated. Even with this evidence of abuse, state commissioners at the time determined the result of her death was not connected to these beatings.

“Women are the fastest growing prison population world wide and this is not accidental,” said Kim Pate, at the July 2005, Melbourne, Australia conference – “Is Prison Obsolete?”. The global acceleration in the imprisonment of women is proof that women are at increasing risks of incarceration. With this comes increasing risks for abuse, neglect and sexual assault while in prison.

As the US leads the world in the building and management of prisons, it also leads the world in the largest number of national crimes per capita. On June 30, 2007 criminals in the US have reached a record number of 2.3 million. The numbers for women prisoners are also startling. According to the Institute on Women and Criminal Justice (2006), the number of women in US prisons has risen 757%, from 1977 to 2005. The December 6, 2005 statistic for women prisoners by the US Bureau of Justice is 104,848 incarcerated women nationally.

US women who are charged with violent crimes, including murder and attempted murder, have many times landed in prison after violently fighting back from years of unbearable domestic rape and/or psychological abuse. The cycle of abuse does not always end against these women inside prison facilities.

A recent Aug 26, 2008 report, by the US Deptartment of Justice Review Panel on Prison Rape, gathered statistics from public hearings held in Spring of 2007, outlining that, “Rapes in prisons can be reduced if the prison staff adopts a zero tolerance attitude toward such crimes and developed a system that identified and protected inmates who could be potential victims.”

Ongoing injustice in the US prison system often only offers out-worn policies with little protection.

1940s Tartu Prison door on display at the Museum of Occupations, Tartu, Estonia. Image: Andrew Hyde

Impartial prison rape investigations which are completely fair and unbiased are very rare today in most global women’s prisons.

In May 2006, a politically motivated law enforcement operation in Atenco, Mexico resulted in the detainment of 47 women in Mexico’s Santiaguito State Prison. On the way to the prison (a trip that should have taken two hours but instead took six), 26 of the 47 women arrested later made charges that they were placed under extreme sexual torture, intimidation and rape.

“In the case of women from San Salvador Atenco, the fact that more than 3,500 police officers participated, and that the women had their faces covered during their detentions and attacks, makes it extremely difficult to identify those individuals responsible,” said Amnesty International in an August 2006 report made before UN CEDAW.

“From our point of view, the detained women affected in the police operation were victimized in multiple ways, not only because of the conditions in which the police intervention was carried out, but also because of the sexual abuse and violence they experienced while in police custody, solely because they were women,” continued Amnesty International’s report.

Today, the charges of sexual torment against the women detainees of Atenco are in legislative limbo. A number of police, directly involved with the case, have either had their charges dropped or greatly decreased.

“Life in prison is difficult physically as well as morally: you have to work hard, even too hard, so that sometimes there is no time even for simple things like bathing and laundering. But you simply must hold on. The main thing is not to let yourself go, not to lose interest and the will to live, otherwise you are overcome with a wave of prison indifference, not caring where, when and how you live, solely concerned about petty matters such as whether you have tea and smokes, only looking to the end of each day,” said author, Liudmila Alpern, on the Orlov Penal Colony in Russia in 2004.

Known as a stop-off for the Soviet NKVD/KGB deportation of Estonian prisoners on trains to Siberian gulags in the 1940s, and a place where prisoners were routinely and gruesomely tortured, many Estonia prisons are still in a vast state of disrepair and decay. “Prison conditions remained poor,” said the US Department of State on Estonia in 2007.

The first modern prison to be rebuilt in Estonia in 2002, Tartu Prison, houses women who are in remand, awaiting trial, for what can be up to one year. Instances of children, under the age of three, staying with their mothers inside the prison has been documented.

In spite of its new building, Tartu prison policies have far to go.

A 2006 report on conditions at Tartu Prison by the Quaker Council for European Affairs states, “Remand prisoners are entitled to one shower a week. They have to pay for toiletries (toilet paper, shampoo, soap, sanitary towels) themselves. The adult prisoner that we spoke to said that she found it difficult to afford these things. . . Remand prisoners have no direct contact with NGOs and cannot go to the church services at Tartu. However, prisoners can arrange to speak with the chaplain if they want to.”

Even with efforts for prison reform in Estonia, all adult women remand prisoners in Tartu Prison have no access to work or education. Women are still only allowed to enter areas away from their cells, for one hour a day. Some prisoners try to deal with the 23 hours of cell lock-up by staying asleep day after day. Sleeping this way in surroundings of incarceration can and does lead to severe depression and can result in attempts of suicide.

“A person may be held in pre-trial detention for 2 months; this may be extended up to a total of 9 months by a court order. Occasional violations of these norms are the result of a poorly trained police force which is being reorganized,” states a 2008 report on the protection of human rights by the Estonia Institute.

A universal trend of excessive hardship and lack of advocacy exists with women trapped inside the Tartu Prison in Estonia. Penal institutions in Canada, Austrailia, Russia, Mexico, Bolivia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the United States also have great needs for programs that will bring improvements for women prisoners. Women are too often left juggling harsh and unrelenting conditions in prison. Left without voice or power, without legal advocates, without opportunity or education.
 
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In Pakistan, women serve sentences that exist as a litany of neglect and injustice. 60% of these women engage a pilot program, the Women’s Legal Aid Office, to help them in their cases. For them the stigma of prison life is unbearable. The charge of unlawful sex is a common charge. Many women live under incarceration along with their young children.
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For more information on this topic go to:

Quaker Council for European Affairs – “Fact Finding Visit to Tartu Prison – Estonia,” June 22, 2006 

Jane Evelyn Atwood – “Too Much Time – Women in Prison,” Phaidon Press 2000 

Quaker UN Office, June 2008 report – “Human Rights and Refugees Publications – Women and Prison”

Ipak Images – Manka Juvan – “Afghanistan Women’s Prison 2001”

Amnesty International – State Violence against detained women in San Salvador Atenco/ Report before CEDAW August 2006

CAEFS – Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies – “Canadian Women in Prison, 2004” 

CEDAW – “CEDAW Shadow Report – Pakistan,” March 8, 2007

Human Rights Watch 1996 report – “All Too Familiar – Sexual Abuse of Women in US State Prisons” 

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Sources for this article include WUNRN – Women’s UN Report Network, the Council of Europe, Institute on Women and Criminal Justice, WILPF – Women’s League for Peace and Freedom, Peacewomen, Quaker UN Office, US Department of Justice, The Denver Post, Human Rights Watch, SPR – Stop Prisoner Rape, Sisters Inside, Amnesty International, Cayuga Museum for History and Art, The New York Times, US Deptartment of State, Women’s Prison Association, National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, Quaker Council for European Affairs, CRIN – Child Rights Information Network, Pajhwok Afghan News, Estonian Institute, CAEFS – Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, CEDAW reports, and the Christian Science Monitor.
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©2008 WNN – Women News Network
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SALLY CHIWAMA, Zambia correspondent with Lys Anzia – Women News Network – WNN

Fighting teacher-student rape in Zambia

A sex-safety school poster for students in Lusaka, Zambia. Image: Joshua Treviño

Lusaka, Zambia – In Feb 2006, only three months before the Zambian government ratified the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, a young girl student was calculatingly raped by her greatest authority figure, her own school teacher.

The minor and her guardian sued the teacher, along with the school and the Zambian Ministry of Education one year later, achieving a first ever court victory in Zambia on June 30, 2008.

During the case presiding Judge, Philip Musonda, made his assessment in the High Court of Lusaka. “The government is responsible for all school going children in the care of its agents — such as teachers, school authorities and any other person in it’s employment during the time the schools are in session,” he said. The case brought a K45m award (approx $13,000+ USD and $45million Zambian Kwacha) to the plaintiff, a girl who was only 13 at the time of the crime.

Children trust their teachers

According to a CARI – Children at Risk in Ireland Foundation – 2006 report, Submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Child Protection, “Perpetrator psychological rehabilitation is an extremely important prevention strategy; for example, a sexual aggressor who begins abusing during adolescence and is not rehabilitated is estimated to commit an average of 380 sexual offences during his lifetime.”

13 yr old Kalenga Mutale (not her real name) was like all children and pupils who idolize their teachers. When she was about to begin work on her ninth grade final exams, she innocently asked her instructor if she could see her past test papers. “Conveniently,” Kalenga’s teacher, Edward Hakasenke, forgot the papers, even after being asked more than three times. When it suited him, he told the girl to “come and get them from his home” after class.

In innocence, Kalenga followed instructions and went to her teacher’s home. There she found him listening to music. After being asked to “take a seat,” Kalenga, was told she needed to go and get her test papers from another room. Unfortunately, she followed instructions again to gather her papers from the other room. Even though she admitted in court that she was uncomfortable and scared in her teacher’s home.

When Kalenga went to go into the other room she froze in her feet. When she opened the curtain (in place of a door) she found she was looking into a bedroom. That’s when she turned to go back but “Teacher” was standing in her way blocking her from passing as he began to tell Kalenga she was pretty and that he wanted to marry her.

Sexual Assault

The US Deptartment of Health and Human Services outlines the definition of sexual assault stating, “Sexual assault can be verbal, visual, or anything that forces a person to join in unwanted sexual contact or attention.”

Many girl-children, teens and young women do not know that sexual assault does include activity such as nonphysical verbal abuse as well.

A 2000 report on rape in neighboring South Africa by the Medical Research Council pointed to the seriousness of teacher-student rape and exploitation outlining, “Girls reported routine sexual harassment by teachers, as well as psychological coercion to engage in “dating relationships.” In some cases, girls acquiesced to sexual demands from teachers because of fears that they would be physically punished if they refused. In other cases, teachers abused their positions of authority by promising better grades or money in exchange for sex. In the worst cases, teachers operated within a climate of seeming entitlement to sexual favors from students. A medical research study found that among those South African rape victims who specified their relationship to the perpetrator, 37.7 percent said a schoolteacher or principal had raped them.”

Terrified, Kalenga asked her teacher what he was doing. Instead of an answer she was pushed on the bed. Before she knew it she went blank and tried to scream, but her assailant put his hands firmly over her mouth.

Like so many survivors of sexual assault, Kalenga was told, in the face of this crime, that she was not to tell anyone – or else. If she did she would be chased from school and her “Teacher” would lose his job.

Kalenga contracts an STD

When she went home Kalenga told no one. Not even her Auntie who is her legal guardian. Alone with no one to turn to, she soon realized she was hurting and itching and beginning to show signs of disease. Alone and silent, she decided to go to a clinic, got examined and was diagnosed and given medicine.

Once there she still remained silent and told no one, but in a bout of courage and fear she went to tell “Teacher” of her condition and health treatment.

In response, he scolded her saying, “How come I am not getting sick myself?”.

The situation on its own was not getting any better.

The silent young girl did not know what to do or where to go. Finally, in an act of desperation she decided to tell the Deputy Headmaster of her school what had happened. To her surprise the Headmaster already knew the whole story.

He knew what had been going on because he had been a roommate, sharing a house with Kalenga’s “Teacher.”

It was then it was decided. Enough was enough. There must be an end to this.

Kalenga’s performance dwindles at school

As the trauma started sinking in, Kalenga’s performance in school started dwindling. This is a common occurrence for children who have been abused by authority figures at school.

Once a very good student at school, Kalenga started getting low marks. The children at school in Kalenga’s class, who began hearing about her struggle, started talking about Kalenga behind her back. Her friends bullied her. Some would even write notes to her telling her she was a “bad” girl. Others said she was lying. Others blamed her for spreading school rumors, saying that she was falsely accusing her teacher.

“It was really traumatizing for me,” said Kalenga in a recent interview for Women News Network. “My friends were bullying me and telling me that I was just making up this whole thing. That I just wanted to put the teacher in trouble. Many days I would go home crying,” said added.

Education for all

CAMFED, an international NGO which started in 1993, is dedicated to eradicating poverty in Africa through the education of girls and the empowerment of young women. Using a platform of “Education for all,” CAMFED has recently released the “Child Protection Policy” (updated April 2008) recognizing that, “girls are especially vulnerable to abuse and that they require special protection.”

All of Zambia’s children deserve safety in educational environments.
Photo image: US Embassy, Zambia / Lubuto Library Project Opening

“Empowering girls is the foundation for enabling them to be less vulnerable to abuse of any kind. A key element of our programme policy is that girls develop the confidence to reduce their exposure to abusive situations,” states CAMFED in its policy talking points.

The responsibility for education leaders in Zambia to insure the safety of its students has finally been brought to the public in Kalenga’s case. Many times girls abused by an authority figure from their school, or by school mates, stop attending school all together after they have experienced their abuse. The hardest part is that assistance for their suffering goes unattended as they often remain silent.

Time to tell

After facing her struggle alone, Kalenga tried to tell her Auntie what had happened but she couldn’t. It was then her headmaster put her to task and told her that if she didn’t tell immediately he would tell her aunt himself.

Scared, without knowing what would happen next, Kalenga went to a pay phone. She dialed her home number. Her aunt answered. When she tried to speak tears made Kalenga’s throat swell. The words just would not come.

On hearing this, Kalenga’s headmaster at school quickly picked up the phone and spoke to Kalenga’s “Auntie” himself urging her to listen to what her niece had to tell her as soon as she came home.

When Kalenga arrived home her “Auntie” was waiting pensively for her.

After hearing Kalenga’s story she said later, “I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t know what to do. The first thing that came to my mind was to confront the teacher at school.”

Why do most teachers never confess rape?

As part of a Nov 2006 YWCA Zambia campaign, “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence,” a report outlined an alarming statistic. An average of eight cases of girl-rape per week was revealed coming into the YWCA centre in Lusaka for help.

Teacher-student abuse has now been found to be a hidden and significant contributor to this statistic.

A 2002 Human Rights Watch investigation in Zambia found that Zambian teachers all too frequently have placed certain girl-students in positions resulting in exploitation. This exploitation is dependent on non-disclosure by the perpetrators as well as the survivors of abuse.

“Sexual abuse and exploitation in school environments was all too frequent. Some of the perpetrators were teachers who prey on vulnerable girls, exchanging answers to tests or higher grades for sex. Most abuses by teachers are not reported, and few teachers are penalized. A more typical outcome is that the teacher is cautioned and possibly transferred.

In some cases, parents negotiate for the teacher to marry the girl. Advocates for girls’ education have tried to get stiffer penalties against teachers who abuse students, and to ensure that those found responsible are dismissed. However, the onus is on the girl’s parents, not the school, to report the case to the police so criminal charges can be made.

School administrators sometimes interfere with the process by transferring the teachers elsewhere, which makes it extremely difficult for the case to proceed,” said Human Rights Watch in their 2002 report, “Suffering in Silence: The Links between Human Rights Abuses and HIV Transmission to Girls in Zambia.”

Meeting with the Deputy Headmaster

The next morning, Aunt and niece decided to go school to make a formal report to the Headmaster. A meeting was called. The Headmaster, another senior teacher and Kalenga’s teacher, Edward Hakasenke, were present at the meeting with Kalenga and her aunt.

The Headmaster told Kalenga’s Aunt that he could not blame the girl for anything that happened as she was a minor. He reminded Kalenga’s teacher of a previous relationship he also had with another of his students. When the Edward Hakasenke was asked if he felt Kalenga was a “girlfriend,” he answered in the affirmative. The headmaster then asked him if he knew how old the girl was when the incident allegedly occurred and if he committed the rape. The teacher admitted that he thought the girl was 14 years old, but would not answer the last question.

“Teacher” gives his defense in Kalenga’s case

Verifying in court “Teacher” did testify that, yes, he knew Kalenga. He said that she was his pupil. But he denied any sexual assault.

He testified that Kalenga had started spreading rumors that she was his girlfriend. Adding that on Valentines Day, the young girl followed him with a bunch of flowers along with some chocolate and a card. But, he tried to avoid her as he realized that the whole thing would get him in trouble. He said that the young girl requested to talk to him on several occasions but he had declined.

He also said that the girl wanted to have a relationship with him but he declined. However, on cross examination in court, Kalenga’s teacher admitted that Kalenga did not proposition him. He admitted that he called the girl his “girlfriend” because he thought there was a relationship.

A guilty verdict

On June 30, 2008 the High Court of Zambia released a verdict of guilty to Kalenga’s teacher, Edward Hakasenke.

In concluding remarks Judge Philip Musonda outlined the reasons he chose “guilty” in the court decision:

“A teacher has moral superiority over his pupils. A girl saying that she loved a teacher does not mean that she consented to sex, when she is below 16 years of age. This teacher manipulated the girl by deliberately forgetting her past examination papers in order to create an opportunity to sexually abuse her at his home. There can be no consent by a child under 16 years of age.

To characterize a (child’s) valentine card as consenting, is legally, morally and psychologically flawed. Such a person (who interprets a young girl this way) undermines section 138 of the (Zambian) penal code. It is contrary to the ethics of a teacher to sleep with school girls. It is psychologically wrong. A child under 16 is not cognitively developed enough to consent to sex.

When children are left at school a teacher becomes a parent. The standard of care, managed by a headmaster of a school, is one of a careful father toward his own children.

The chances of millions of girls being infected with a (HIV/AIDS) ‘death sentence’ by unscrupulous teachers and/or headmasters cannot go unabated. Diseases (in Zambia) such as HIV/AIDS, have no cure.”

Zambia belongs to the world

Legislative Solutions

As legislative solutions are coming into focus in Zambia, factors to reduce the incidence of teacher/student abuse are moving forward.

A 2000 World Health Organization – Geneva report, “World Report on Violence and Health (Chap 6 – Sexual Violence)” states, “Action in schools is vital for reducing sexual and other forms of violence. In many countries a sexual relation between a teacher and a pupil is not a serious disciplinary offence and policies on sexual harassment in schools either do not exist or are not implemented. In recent years, though, some countries have introduced laws prohibiting sexual relations between teachers and pupils. Such measures are important in helping eradicate sexual harassment in schools. At the same time, a wider range of actions is also needed, including changes to teacher training and recruitment and reforms of curricula, so as to transform gender relations in schools.”

Kalenga wins

With a verdict of guilty, the High Court of Zambia awarded Kalenga and her guardian aunt $13,000+ USD (equal to $45,000,000 in Zambia) for damages.

“I want to ensure that such a situation does not happen to any child, because the emotional scars do not heal,” said Kalenga’s “Auntie” who fought closely by Kalenga’s side in court.

Thankfully, Kalenga was also told after testing by the clinic she did not have HIV/AIDS.

“I feel like a hero for coming out in the open because most girls tend to keep quiet when such things happen to them,” said Kalenga. “I want to urge young girls not to trust any strangers and to report any cases of sexual abuse against them,” she added.

“We Zambians, especially activists, must translate this landmark judgment, with clear illustrations, cartoons and posters, into simple English and the seven official local languages (of Zambia) so that every person who can read or see learns from it,” said Zambian gender activist Sara Longwe, in a recent call to protect girls reproductive and sexual rights.

“Now I am my own ambassador,” said Kalenga, “because now I am a role model. Some girls even come to me for advice. Like the girl from school who came and told me that her uncle had defiled her and asked me what she should do. I advised her to tell a family member or see her pastor at church right away.”

“This judgment (also) protects the girl-child from the sexual abuse that customarily follows enforced child marriages,” added Ugandan attorney, Laura Nyirikindi, soon after learning the outcome of the case. “Women’s NGOs now have a precedent which they can use to lobby for legal and policy reform,” she explained. “Errant staff suspensions (inside the schools) is not enough. More in-depth measures have to be taken, especially preventative ones.”

“I also tell my friends not to trust any strangers. That they should speak out when something of that sort happens,” added Kalenga.

“We value education and as such will not take kindly to any girl being stripped of her right to education and a secured bright future,” said YWCA Director, Ktembu Kaumba. “The teaching profession is a noble one and all bad eggs must be removed from the education sector and exposed. The message we are sending is a zero tolerance one.”

“We have to fight this scourge together because a potential defiler can be anywhere, at school or at home,” added Kalenga with a big smile on her face.

Questions remain

A large question still remains as the Zambian public realizes what this landmark case really means. Will stronger legislation be supported throughout Zambia’s governing committees to help limit teacher-student abuse in the future? Will this case cause parents and guardians of abused children to begin to sue the Ministry of Education itself at increased levels?

The biggest question yet to be answered is: Will Zambia’s Ministry of Education pay for all upcoming defilement cases or will they put measures in place to curb this “vice” inside the education sector before it hits the courts?

Even with a landmark case like this winning in court, Zambia may have much more to go before teacher-student rape cases show a sharp decline.

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This story of Cindy by CAMFED shows the great opportunities girls in Zambia can experience in school. Protection for girls is vital to make sure educational programs for girls can go forward without interruption or problems. CAMFED is helping in these areas.
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Sally Chiwama, Women News Network – WNN correspondent and gender specialist reports from Mporokoso, Zambia. As part of the Zambia Media Women Association (ZAMWA) Secretariat, Sally has represented ZAMWA in Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa. In July 2008, she had a chance to interview “Kalenga” in person for this story.

Humanitarian journalist, Lys Anzia, is Director/Editor-at-Large for Women News Network – WNN.
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©Women News Network – WNN 2008
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Campaign for Women Rights – Iran

Attorney, Shirin Ebadi, speaks at WSIS – World Summit of Information Society summit 2005
Image: Rik Panganiban

“The Iranian government has been asked to drop charges against four women’s rights defenders facing imminent trial, and set aside other convictions for peaceful activities to promote equal rights for women in Iran,” said humanitarian defender, Human Rights First, in a July 17 plea.

On July 14, human rights defenders Nasrin Sotoudeh and Mansoureh Shojaee appeared before the Revolutionary Court with their attorney, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. Nasrin Sotoudeh is an attorney who has represented a number of the activists involved with the One Million Signatures Campaign, which was launched in August 2006 to raise awareness about gender discrimination in Iranian laws. Sotoudeh and Shojaee have been charged with acting against Iran’s “national security” by having unauthorized relations with “Iranians outside the country.”

Two other activists facing charges are Raheleh Asgarizadeh and Nasim Khosravi, who have been summoned to appear before the 13th Branch of the Revolutionary Court on Monday, July 20. Both women were arrested on February 14 while collecting signatures on behalf of the One Million Signatures Campaign at Daneshjoo Park in Tehran and were detained for about two weeks before being released on bail.

“The Iranian government should immediately drop all charges against these women and end the official campaign of repression against peaceful activists like them,” said Matt Easton, Director of the Human Rights Defenders Program at Human Rights First.

In addition, on July 13, student activist Bahareh Hedayat was arrested and taken to Evin Prison. Hedayat had previously received a two-year suspended sentence for participation in a women’s rights demonstration on June 12, 2006. Hedayat’s arrest is one of nearly two dozen in connection with the anniversary of the July 1999 student protests.

These arrests are just part of a crackdown against women’s rights activists that intensified two years ago with the violent break-up of a demonstration in support of gender equality on June 12, 2006. The trend has continued with the repression of individuals active with the One Million Signatures Campaign, including 44 arrests.

Human Rights First is deeply concerned about a series of recent judicial proceedings taken against human rights defenders, notably the recent conviction and sentencing of a 21 year-old student, Hana Abdi, to a prison term of five years. Abdi, a member of Azarmehr, a women’s rights organization in the Kurdistan province who was also involved with the campaign, has been detained since November 4, 2007, when she was arrested by seven security officers from her grandfather’s home in Sanandaj. She was charged with “gathering and colluding to threaten national security” under article 610 of the Islamic Penal Code. Her sentence, one of the harshest to have been meted to a women’s rights activist, is the maximum sentence allowed in such cases.

“The actions of the Iranian government violate the rights of defenders and intimidate others from further action,” said Easton . “The One Million Signatures Campaign is a non-violent way to seek much-needed change, not a threat to law and order.”

Timeline of events:

June 12, 2006

Demonstrators gathered at the Haft Tir Square in Tehran to raise awareness about gender discrimination in Iran. The peaceful demonstration was violently disrupted by the authorities; 42 women and 28 men were arrested and charged with “participation in an illegal assembly.” Prior to the June 12 demonstration, Iranian judiciary summoned and interrogated several women’s rights activists: Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmassebi, Zohreh Arzani, and Fariba Davoodi Mohajer. Fariba Davoodi Mohajer was interrogated for 10 hours by the judiciary agents.

June 19, 2006

Of the 70 protesters arrested during the June 12 demonstration, only Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoini, a former member of the parliament, remained in custody. He was detained for over four months and tortured.

June 2006

Delaram Ali and other injured demonstrators filed a complaint against the police for brutally beating demonstrators during the June 12, 2006 demonstration. In October of 2007, a court dismissed all charges against the police officers present at the demonstration.

Aug. 2006

Campaign to collect 1 million signatures is commenced calling for an end to discrimination of women in Iran.

Aug. 27, 2006

The official launch of the One Million Signature Campaign is blocked by the authorities; however, activists continued to collect signatures.

January 5, 2007

Jila Baniyaghoob was charged for “acting against national security by participating in an illegal gathering,” due to her presence at the June 12, 2006 demonstration. The presiding judge subsequently dropped charges.

January 2007

Nasim Sarabandi and Fatemeh Dehdashti were arrested while collecting signatures on the metro in Tehran. They were sentenced on August 12, 2007 to six months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years.

Feb. 2007

30,000 women have signed the petition since the official Campaign kickoff in August of 2006.

March 4, 2007

26 prominent women’s rights activists were arrested during a gathering marking the International Women’s Day. Two days later, the women started a hunger strike while Shahla Entesari was being held in solitary confinement.

March 4, 2007

33 women were arrested during a silent protest in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran where four women were prosecuted for their involvement with the June 12, 2006 demonstration. Following international pressure, all of the women were released, the last two on March 19, 2007.

March 6, 2007

Eight youngest detainees arrested on March 4, 2007 were released without being charged.

April 11, 2007

Azadeh Forghani was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for “acting against national security by participating in an illegal gathering.”

April 15, 2007

Mahboubeh Hosseinzadeh and Nahid Keshavarz, two women’s rights activists, were released out of prison following a two week incarceration. However, additional 11 activists were summoned by the Revolutionary Court and charged with “violating national security,” “publicity against the Islamic Republic,” and “participating in an unauthorized demonstration.”

April 18, 2007

Fariba Davoodi Mohajer and Sussan Tahmassebi were sentenced on April 18 to four years’ imprisonment for “collusion and assembly to endanger the national security” and “acting against national security,” respectively. The courts have suspended three years of Davoodi Mohajer’s sentence, leaving her to serve one year in prison. Sussan Tahmassebi’s sentence has been shortened from two years to six months. Presently, both women are free on bail pending court appeals.

April 23, 2007

Two more women’s activists were sentenced to prison, reportedly charged with “gathering and colluding to disturb national security,” “disturbing public order” and “disobeying the orders of officials.”

April 24, 2007

Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Shahla Entesari, and Parvin Ardalan were sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for “collusion and assembly to endanger the national security.” The courts have suspended two-and-a-half years of each sentence, leaving all three to serve six months in prison.

May 14, 2007

Activists protested the arrest of Zeinab Peyghambarzadeh, a women’s rights activist, journalist and student leader, who was arrested on May 7, 2007.

June 2007

Delaram Ali was sentenced to 34 months imprisonment and 10 lashes on charges of “participating in an illegal garthering,” “propaganda against the system,” and “disrupting public order and peace.” Due to domestic and international outcry, her sentence was temporarily stayed by the Head of Judiciary on November 10, 2007.

July 11, 2007

Amir Yaghoub-Ali, a 20-year old student, was arrested and held for a month for collecting signatures as part of the One Million Signature Campaign.

August 27, 2007

The One Million Signature Campaign celebrated its first anniversary.

2006 protest sign - “We Condemn Any Kind of Discrimination”

September 2007

Due to his presence at the June 12, 2006 demonstration, Bahman Ahmadi Amou’I, a journalist, was sentenced to six months’ prison term, suspended for two years.

September 15, 2007

Reza Dowlatshah and 24 other people were arrested during a raid on his home where he was hosting an educational workshop for the One Million Signature Campaign. He was beaten, held for three days, and finally released.

November 18, 2007

Maryam Hosseinkhah was arrested for her involvement with the Campaign’s website. She was released on January 2, 2008 along with Jelveh Javaheri, who had been arrested on December 1, 2007. Both women were released on bail in the form of a bank check guarantee in the amount of approximately $5,500.

January 2008

Ronak Safarzadeh and Hana Abdi were arrested in October and November of 2007. As of February 2008, they continue to be imprisoned without charges or trial. As of January 2008, the One Million Signature Campaign’s website had been blocked by the authorities at least seven times. Official permission to hold public meetings has frequently been denied.

February 2008

Zanan, Iran’s premier women’s magazine, was shut down by Iranian authorities. President Ahmadinejad said that Zanan showed Iranian women in a “black light” and was a threat to the psychological well being of Iranian society.

February 14, 2008

Raheleh Asgarizadeh and Nasim Khosravi were arrested and charged with “propaganda against the state” for collecting signatures at Daneshjoo Park, following a street play about polygamy, which was performed as part of the International Fajr film festival. They were initially detained at Vozara Detention Center, with bail set at $22,222, which they were not able to pay. They were then transferred to Evin prison’s public ward, and after 13 days in captivity, the bail was reduced to $11,000 and they were released on February 26, 2008 on a third party guaranty.

February 20, 2008

Ehteram Shadfar, a member of the Mothers Committee of the One Million Signatures Campaign, is sentenced to 6 months suspended prison term for collecting signatures.

February 24, 2008

The One Million Signature Campaign was launched a year and a half ago. Since the launch, the cost of pushing this social movement forward has been the issuance of temporary detention warrants for 43 Campaign activists (ranging from one day to five months), and the issuance of suspended prison sentences (a total of 18 months). Acts of harassment and persecution happen during signature collection in public, following educational workshops, after small or large gatherings in Tehran and the provinces, and sometimes due to dissemination of news about the Campaign through its website.

March 3, 2008

Journalist and campaign organizer Parvin Ardalan is removed from a flight at Tehran International Airport, just as she is about to travel to Stockholm, Sweden to be awarded the 2007 Olaf Palme Prize for her work on gender equality. The authorities seized her passport and served her with a summons to appear in court.

April 19, 2008

The Sixteenth branch of the Revolutionary Courts issued a suspended sentence of two years in the case of Zeinab Payghambarzadeh, who was among the March 4, 2007 arrestees. Payghambarzadeh was found guilty of illegal gathering and collusion intended to disrupt national security.

April 23, 2008

The Thirteenth Branch of the Revolutionary Courts issued a suspended sentence of 6 months and 10 lashings in the case of Nahid Jafari, women’s rights activist and member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, also among the 33 women arrested on March 4, 2007. Jafari was found guilty of illegal gathering and collusion intended to disrupt national security. During her arrest, Jafari was beaten, and lodged a complaint against arresting officers, for excessive use of force. Jafari, along with her lawyer, Zohreh Arzani, intends to appeal her sentence.

April 30, 2008

The Thirteenth Branch of the Revolutionary Courts issued a 3 year suspended sentence of 6 months and 10 lashings in the case of Rezvan Moghaddam, another of the March 4 arrestees and active member of the One Million Signatures Campaign. Moghaddam was found guilty of illegal gathering and collusion intended to disrupt national security. She intends to appeal the sentence, which is suspended for the period of 3 years.

May 13, 2008

Maryam Hosseinkhah, woman’s rights activist and a founding member the Campaign was summoned to the Revolutionary Courts. Hosseinkhah, who had also participated in the March 4, 2007 protest, was initially to appear before the courts in November of 2007. At the time, however, she could not appear in court, as she was being held on security charges related to her activities with the Campaign’s website, Change for Equality, as well as the site Zanestan (the webzine of the Women’s Cultural Center).

May 17, 2008

Jelveh Javaheri, women’s rights activist and member of the Campaign, who had previously been arrested on December 1, 2007 and spent a month in prison before her release on bail, was summoned by the 13th branch of the Revolutionary Courts. Her trial is scheduled for August 2, 2008.

May 25, 2008

The Tehran Revolutionary Court sentences Amir Yaghoub-Ali, a student and a member of the One Million Signatures Petition Campaign, to one year of imprisonment for “endangering national security”. Mr. Amir Yaghoub-Ali had been arrested on July 11, 2007 as he was collecting signatures for the Campaign in a park. On July 15, he had been transferred to the Section 209 of Evin Prison, in Tehran. He remained in custody for 29 days and was then freed on bail on August 8, 2007. Eleven charges were pending against him, though no information has been obtained on the other charges. Mr. Yaghoub-Ali intends to appeal this decision.

May 26, 2008

Activist Mahboubeh Hosseinzadeh was summoned to court for trial on May 26, 2008. Hosseinzadeh was arrested on March 4, 2007 along with 32 other women’s rights activists, during a protest held before the Revolutionary Courts. Both Hosseinzadeh and her lawyer, Abdulfateh Soltani appeared in court on May 26 for the scheduled trial, but the trial was rescheduled due to the fact that the prosecutor was unable to appear in court. A court date in relation to this case has been scheduled for Hosseinzadeh for Tuesday July 1, 2008.

June 12, 2008

Women’s rights activists plan to commemorate the second anniversary of the June 12 2006 demonstration. The gathering is threatened by security forces and 9 women who had arrived at the event anyway were arrested. The women, Nafiseh Azad, Jila Baniyaghoob, Alieh Eghdamdoost, Farideh Ghaeb, Jelveh Javaheri, Sarah Loghmani, Nahid Mirhaj, Aida Saadat, and Nasrin Sotoudeh, were taken to the Vozara Detention Center, and released 8 hours later, after third parties signed for their release.

June 13, 2008

Mahboubeh Karami, a member of the Campaign was arrested in Tehran, near Mellat Park.

June 18, 2008

Judge Tayari in Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj sentences Hana Abdi, a 21 year-old student and women’s rights activist to a prison term of five years in exile in West Azerbaijan province, on charges of “gathering and colluding to threaten national security” under article 610 of the Islamic Penal Code. According to Abdi’s lawyer, Mohammad Sharif, Abdi who had been in prison since around November 4, 2007, was interrogated by Intelligence Ministry officials during her incarceration. Abdi spent two months of her imprisonment in solitary confinement. Sharif was refused access to his client during the interrogation process, which formed the basis of her conviction. Abdi’s attorney plans to appeal the decision.

June 25, 2008

Mahboubeh Karami informs her family, via telephone, that she has been transferred to the women’s ward of Evin Prison.

June 28, 2008

Campaign members Raheleh Asgarizadeh and Nasim Khosravi, have been summoned to the Revolutionary Courts. According to the summons they have to appear in the 13th branch of the Revolutionary Courts on the 20th of July, 2008. The two were arrested while collecting signatures on February 14, 2008, and have been released on bail since February 26, 2008. The July court date is in relation to charges pending against them since that arrest.

July 9, 2008

Zeinab Bayzeydi, a women’s rights activist and member of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan and active with the One Million Signatures Campaign in the city of Mahabad in Kurdistan Province is arrested. According to Bayzeydi’s family, Zeinab was first interrogated on Saturday July 5th for several hours, and was released. She was summoned again on July 9, and when she appeared, she was transferred to a detention center in Mahabad.

July 12, 2008

Two prominent human rights defenders, Nasrin Sotoudeh and Mansoureh Shojaee, receive summons to appear within 3 days. Sotoodeh is an attorney who has represented many of the activists involved with the Signatures Campaign and has also been active on the issue of juvenile executions. Shojaee, a member of the Signatures Campaign, is also a member of a women’s cultural center and sits on the editorial board of the website “Feminist School.” Reportedly, the summons they have received does not provide any information on the charges against them. Human rights defender and Nobel peace prize recipient Shirin Ebadi will be representing the two women.

July 12, 2008

The attorney representing Mahboubeh Karami, Houshang Poorbaaba’i reports that he referred to Branch 2 of security courts and discovered that his client’s bail has been set at 100 million tomans (in excess of $100,000) – an amount her family is unable to pay. Karami, was arrested on June 13th and while detained in the women’s ward at Evin prison, participated in a hunger strike with 9 other detainees to protest their detention and detention conditions.

July 13, 2008

Bahareh Hedayat and Mohammad Hashemi, two members of a reformist student organization (the “Office to Foster Unity”) are arrested and taken to Evin prison. The two reportedly stand accused of having relationships with “illegal and anti-revolutionary groups outside the country.” In addition to being involved in the student movement, Hedayat had been among the activists put on trial for her participation in the June 12 2006 demonstration. In that case, she had been charged with “acting against national security, “disturbing public order,” and “propaganda against the state.” For her participation in the protest, Hedayat was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence in effect for five years.

July 14, 2008

Nasrin Sotoudeh and Mansoureh Shojaee appear before the Revolutionary Court with their attorney, Shirin Ebadi. The two are charged with taking actions against Iran’s “national security” by having unauthorized relations with “Iranians outside the country.”

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This video/film covers the history of the One Million Signatures Campaign for women in Iran. 4:03 min.

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To help with this campaign go to:
Change4Equality
Human Rights First
Amnesty International
UNPO – Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization
Women’s Learning Partnership

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New crackdown on women activists in Iran

- Elahe Amani, Special Correspondent – Women News Network – WNN

 
Photo image: Khashayar Elyassi

While the global community marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with a year-long celebration of “Dignity and Justice for All,” there is neither dignity nor justice for women in Iran . And there are certainly no rights, either.

On June 12, the third anniversary of National Day of Solidarity of Iranian Women, nine women’s rights activists were arrested outside the Rahe Abrisham ( Silk Road ) Gallery just before the start of a small, peaceful assembly planned to commemorate the day.

Aida Saadat, Nahid Mirhaj, Nafiseh Azad, Nasrin Sotoodeh, Jelve Javaheri, Jila Baniyagoub, Sarah Loghmani and Farideh Ghaeb were arrested by Tehran security police, along with photographer and reporter Aliyeh Mohtalebzadeh. Of these nine women, five were journalists. All nine were released the following day in the early morning hours.

On the same day, a small group of women decided to go hiking on a local trail to commemorate the day. They were threatened, harassed and stopped by police forces.

On the following day, Mahbobeh Karami, a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign demanding changes to Tehran’s discriminatory laws, was arrested. Her family has not heard from her since and can’t even find out to which detention center she was taken.

June 12 is an important day in the history of Iranian women and the struggle for equality and human rights. It was on this day in 2005 that thousands of women gathered in front of Tehran University and demanded changes to the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not since March 8, 1979, when 20,000 women gathered to object to a compulsory hijab, had women organized a large demonstration. In 2005, the failure of reformist policies, along with a historical opportunity, laid the groundwork for various women’s groups, networks and organizations within the movement to come together and protest violation of their rights.

June 12 has been chosen by Iranian women’s rights activists as the National Day of Solidarity in the struggle to change discriminatory laws against women and girls, and to change the societal structures that have denied full and equal citizenship to women. Many consider this day to be the day the women’s movement declared her independent existence and identity as a social movement, one which often has been marginalized by political parties.

In 2006, during a peaceful gathering on the first anniversary of the June 12 Day of Solidarity, 70 women activists were arrested, and many others were sentenced to up to six years in prison, all for demanding changes to discriminatory laws for divorce, polygamy, child custody, inheritance etc.
The government of Iran claims that these activists are a threat to the country’s national security!

It has been reported that since June 12, 2006, women’s rights activists have been arrested 156 times, and collectively been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison, with a collective bail set at approximately $1.6 million. This is the price that Iranian women have to pay for demanding their rights.

Just in the last two months, during the crackdown on enforcing “Islamic Social Norms,” 1,098 women were arrested, accused of not fully observing the Islamic dress code. Women deemed inappropriately dressed are usually hauled to a moral detention center, where they must sign a written pledge not to repeat the offence, and are forced to await family members to bring them more modest clothing.

Photo image: Khashayar Elyassi

The Iranian people face many challenges in their daily life. Basic freedoms such as the right of assembly and freedom of speech and the press are shattered; there are more than 10 million people living under the poverty line; and the safety and security of women fighting for human rights is more fragile than ever: Women are being harassed and undignified in public for not observing the Islamic dress code; women’s rights activists are continually denied the right to freedom of association and assembly; and even meetings in private homes are often broken up by security forces.

Of course, this treatment is not limited to women’s activists only — other activists, be they labor, student, teachers, journalists or ordinary citizens who dare to demand their rights — are harassed, arrested and jailed regularly.

“The way the government is hounding them, and keeping some of them under surveillance, is an indication of its fear of the scale of this movement,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement on June 13. It also reported that at least 14 websites that defend women’s rights were blocked by the authorities last month.

Iran is one of the world’s most repressive countries toward bloggers, and is on the Reporters Without Borders’ list of “Internet Enemies.” It was ranked 166th out of 169 countries in the latest World Press Freedom Index. Many of the bloggers and cyber social justice activists are women.

Shirin Ebadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said in a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper: “Since the world started focusing on the nuclear program, the human rights situation in Iran has worsened every day. The morality police interfere more in people’s everyday lives. They recently announced they would carry out inspections in private homes and companies. In Tehran, there was also a plan to target hooligans on the streets, but it led to a lot of innocent young people and women being arrested.”

But the struggle goes on.

Despite the continuous prosecution of Iranian women activists and human rights defenders, the Iranian women’s movement is one of the most inspiring women’s movement in the world today. Iran’s women continue to challenge fanatic interpretations of Islam, demanding secularism and reforms to strict patriarchal social norms and discriminatory laws in the constitution and leading the way for women in other Muslim majority societies.

Ancient Greek historian Thucydides once said, “Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured.” The support of Iranian men like student Amir Yaghoub-Ali, who was arrested and jailed for working on behalf of the One Million Signature campaign, and the solidarity of other progressive-minded people and organizations around the world that have supported the cause, are statements of the strength of a movement that will just keep moving forward.

As U.S.-Iran relations remain a hot political issue, and the threat of a military strike continues to receive media attention, we must not allow the recent history of Afghan women to repeat itself here. We must remember that in the mainstream U.S. media, there is a short time span between reconstructing the image of brave Iranian women and collateral damage. Learning from their Afghan sisters, Iranian women will never allow the West to make them the poster child for women’s oppression and the justification for a military strike that would “rescue” them from the atrocities of religious extremists in Iran.

Iranian women are bold and brave, confident and hopeful. Their desire for democracy, dignity, justice and respect for human rights will be achieved through the building of a movement inclusive of all men and women who believe in eradicating discriminatory laws, together and with the support of international forces that are taking a stand against militarization, globalization and religious fundamentalism.

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This Jan 2008 Everywoman TV – Aljazeera news production – covers the daily life and human rights struggles for women in modern Iran. 11:51 min.

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- Humanitarian special correspondent and Director of Technology for Student Affairs at California State University, Elahe Amani, is a 2007 Lillian Robles Award winner for her outstanding community service, social education efforts and feminist activism. -

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©2008 Women News Network – WNN

Lys Anzia – Women News Network – WNN

World Food Programme delivers food to Haitian women – Image: Peter Casier /UNWFP

The fight for women against hunger and malnutrition isn’t getting any easier.

Rising food prices and lower food assistance programs worldwide are causing the ability to help women and their families reach the lowest levels of output since 1961.

As food prices increase, the biggest losers are the ones who “have not.”

Global women suffering under severe poverty are often cut short in receiving food allotments worldwide as they try to feed their children and themselves.

The women of Haiti’s Port-Au-Prince are in their own battle against hunger. With 80% of the Haitian population below the poverty line, women are the section of the population that have been hit the hardest. Recent riots in Haiti, protesting the shortage of food, prove crisis levels of desperation and hunger has begun to seep deep into the community at Port-Au-Prince.

To help the situation, the women of Haiti have tried to come up with a solution to the, as yet, unsolved problems of food shortage. Mud cakes or cookies, made from the yellow clay of Haiti’s central plateau region are the recent answer for many of Port-Au-Prince’s poverty stricken women. Providing the cheapest food available, the cakes are made palatable by adding salt, flavoring and shortening.

These cookies are made by women in an attempt to replace the dwindling and often expensive supply of rice in Haiti. They have now become a common staple for many Haitian families caught in the cycle of poverty and malnutrition.

But the cookies come with a hidden price. Eating the cookies up to three times a day may eventually harm the health of both women and their families, as bellies are filled and bodies go unnourished. While the cookies are filling, this dirt is not what it seems. Some of the clay that is trucked in from the outer regions of Hinche may in fact be hazardous. Not to mention, the soil itself has little food value.

While the cookies are consumed regularly to stave off daily hunger, a woman and her children may be exposed to dangerous heavy metals or parasites from the soil used to make the cookies.

Studies of the sites where the clay is harvested to make the cookies does need more assessment. On soil safety Dr. Gerald N. Callahan, with the Department of Microbiology, Pathology and Immunology at Colorado State University states in the report, “Eating Dirt,” that, “Dirt can pose a health threat, especially near sites of industrial contamination.”

“Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it,” said Executive Director of Health Ministry in Haiti, Gabriel Thimothee.

The mud cookies of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

Today, worldwide food shortage is at an all time high in many countries. As food production goes down, crisis proportions of hunger related disease and death is rising at an alarming rate. Since 1996, international food production and distribution has lessened steadily. As a result, hunger among women and their families has risen proportionately and steadily each year for the last 12 yrs.

Humanitarian Air Service flights for the UN World Food Programme to Darfur, Sudan in June 2008 have, also, just been cut as the fees for flying delivery helicopters increase. Nearly two-thirds of the 77 million dollar budget for food assistance programs in crisis locations worldwide has been unfunded to date. This leaves many women at the very bottom of a sinking program, with a diminishing chance to receive any aid for food.

Women suffering in the wake of this global disaster are specific victims of an ever increasing danger. The danger of long-term excruciating, unsolved one-way starvation.

While hunger itself is not gender specific, many victims of hunger are caught in the denial of food based on their gender. Out of 854 million people who do not get enough food to eat, 70% are women. This means that close to 598 million global women live today with daily lives of hunger.

Shortages of water or contamination of water, along with lowered crop production, also contributes greatly to food production decreases. Natural disasters, too, are destroying crops as hurricanes increase in one area and droughts affect another region. The effects of carbon based fuels on climate change, too, are altering the ability for food production to maintain previous levels.

As the availability of imported foods from global markets declines, food sources that are more scarce are being made available only to the most prosperous industrialized nations. The production of non-petroleum, ethanol based, fuels has also begun to divert the current world stash of corn and other grains – all staples in diets across the world.

In Mexico, corn tortillas are a standard staple of the diet. Up to ten tortillas are eaten each day by many in Mexico. As the food crisis reaches all corners of the world, women of Mexico, who once paid 30 US cents per corn tortilla, are now paying close to double that figure to supply themselves and family with food. This places women suffering at the lowest level of poverty in Mexico to go completely without one of the most important food sources in their diet.

Tortilla shop in La Noria, Mexico – Image Mathew Hickey 2008

On the scale of problems arising from food scarcity, girl toddlers and infants have separate conditions that make food shortage often more severe in their case.

Under tragic circumstances of neglect and abandonment based on gender, many girl-children worldwide are often held back from receiving their due share. Often the dwindling supply of family food is kept from the girls as their male siblings receive a larger quantity of any food available. Many times the males in the family also receive the higher quality of food.

It is common in many areas of rural Central India for girl-children to often be the last ones fed. Mothers, too, often feed themselves last after all their children have eaten, as they try to feed their children first on what little food is available. As children receive less and less food due to the worldwide shortage, mothers attempting to feed their children, many times, receive no food.

In trying to understand the main causes for global food shortage, can we find a way to help solve the problems of world hunger and its backlash against women? The history of the decline in food production and solutions to improving food distribution and safety can all be found in the public record.

Use of pesticides, new agrochemicals and biotechnological seeds has produced a devastating effect on women and their families worldwide. According to a 2003 Environmental Health Perspectives report by the US National Institute of Environmental Health Science on the effects on women on the use of increasing pesticides with crops states, “Hormonal changes in puberty and menopause increase a women’s risk of autoimmune diseases linked to pollution.”

Pesticides on food crops create greater exposure, especially for women in global rural areas, that reach levels that are often too high and too toxic. Chemicals used to treat the soil or dust on crops has been proven to have harmful effects on the reproductive system of women. Children under 12 yrs of age are especially vulnerable to pesticide poisoning coming from farmers clothing and/or from food crops.

“Hunger and diminished access to health services, including reproductive health care, are also taking a heavy toll on women, adolescents, and other vulnerable groups across Southern Africa,” said UNFPA Zimbabwe Representative, Etta Tadesse, in 2003.

In rural Zimbabwe, malnutrition due to food shortage makes pregnant mothers much more likely to experience miscarriage, infection and other reproductive failures. Without food availability or safety, women are placed at health risks unequal to women living in the industrialized world.

In 2007, two years after the onset of the severe food crisis in Niger, Maimou Issoufou from the village of Sanam, died before delivering her second twin. Even though she received help to get to the nearest hospital as soon as possible by the assistance of two members from MercyCorps, Maimou could not survive.

Hunger had caused Maimou’s body to become so weak she did not have the strength to deliver her second baby. Because of this, Maimou and her second twin died on the way to the hospital in Filingué.

By MercyCorps last estimate, 10% of Niger’s 12 million people are under-nourished.

Women at the food bazaar Null, India – Image Akshay 2008

The UN World Food Programme estimates that 50% of all pregnant women in developing countries are suffering from food related deficiencies that can be fatal. Iron deficiency has been indicated as a cause of death for 315 million global women who have died during childbirth. Instead of food scarcity, pregnant women need an even greater supply of food during pregnancy, supplying more nutrients, to keep themselves and their developing baby well and alive.

In 2006, approximately 4,000 “crop widows” were created in Andhra Pradesh, India as cotton farmers killed themselves in record numbers due to the severe pressures of debt and crop failures. Cotton has not been the only crop to cause women to lose their husbands to suicide. Farmers growing food crops like soy, onions, sugarcane, groundnuts, spices and grapes have also committed suicide in India in record numbers, leaving their wives to pick up the pieces.

In the small state of Kerala, as many as 150 grape farmers committed suicide in 2007 as farmers succumbed to lost crops and rising bank debt.

Hardships for many other farmers in India has created desperate measures. Bad weather along with the rising costs of fertilizer and equipment have caused farmers to face incredible losses. Even the new bioengineered seeds, which came with the promise to create more bug resistant crops, ended up creating fields that have not been able to re-seed automatically.

India’s National Crime Records Bureau, 2002 – 2007, now estimates that the sucides of farmers has created, at the smallest count, – 87,567 widows.

Because of these deaths, a new generation of women farmers has now been forced to take over fields with soil that is heavy with bank loans. The crisis has left crop widows in a state of great emergency and change.

These widows face extra hardships as legal sanctions in India give them no rights to their husbands land. If this isn’t hard enough, many crop widows have tried to take on the full responsibility of the debt loans left to them by their husbands. Without legal rights or legal recourse in gaining the land, many widows end up, during this process, with an eldest son or brother-in-law who often legally takes over ownership of the debt-ridden property.

Owning only 1% of the land in Sub-Saharan Africa, women farmers provide 80% of the foodsource today for the Sub-Saharan region. A region where 43% of the population lives on less than $1 USD per day. As women work in all aspects of food production from field to market they are cut short on government assistance. Women farmers in the Sub-Saharan regions receive only 10% of agricultural credits given to small farmers and only 7% of farm extension services.

“In sub-Saharan Africa – and this is equally true of other regions with the persistence of hunger – women bear full responsibility for the key issues in ending hunger: family health, nutrition, sanitation, education, and increasingly, family income. Yet women are denied – and systematically denied – the information, education and freedom of action they need to fulfill these responsibilities,” said Joan Holmes, of The Hunger Project, at the 2003 Policy Forum: Women’s Leadership and the Future of Africa.

What women need today is a “field of their own,” said award winning Indian scholar on women and agriculture, Ms. Bina Agarwal, Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth at Delhi University.
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This short film shows the production of mud cookies by women in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti 2007. Women suffering under severe shortages of food are now using the cookies as a major food source for themselves and their families.
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For more information on the world food shortage:
Food Policy Report No. 18
The World Food Situation – Dec 2007
New Driving Forces and Required Actions
by Joachim von Braun
Link to:
The International Food Policy Research Institute
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Sources for this article include the UN-WFP, US National Institute of Environmental Health Science, UNHRC – Human Rights Council, Global Fund for Women, UN Special Rapporteur – Jean Ziegler, National Geographic, The Hunger Project, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Center for Disease Control, US Central Intelligence Agency country reports, NGO Committee on the Status of Women 2007, PBS news, MercyCorps, CSE – Pollution Monitoring Laboratory, UNFPA, The Institute of Science in Society – ISIS and MaximsNews Network.
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©2008 Women News Network – WNN

By Shuriah Niazi with Lys Anzia – Women News Network – WNN

- Manual Scavenging Girl, India – Matt Corks 2006 image -

“In some urban slums of many major cities of India, and more so in the case of semi-urban areas, dry toilets are a sad part of the common reality,” said Dr. Sam Paul, National Secretary of Public Affairs, All India Christian Council, a human rights organization based in Secunderabad, India, in a recent report for the All India Christian Council on March 28.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UN-HRC), at a 2002 meeting of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, said, “Public latrines – some with as many as 400 seats – are cleaned on a daily basis by female workers using a broom and a tin plate. The excrement is piled into baskets which are carried on the head to a location which can be up to four kilometers away from the latrine. At all times, and especially during the rainy season, the contents of the basket will drip onto a scavenger’s hair, clothes and body.”

In spite of the modernization of many parts of India, the age old custom of using dry – non-flush – toilets have exposed many bio-hazards to women in India who work as manual scavengers. Manual scavengers are, “exposed to the most virulent forms of viral and bacterial infections which affect their skin, eyes, limbs, respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. TB (tuberculosis) is rife among the community,” continues the UN report.

This is only a fraction of the suffering women manual scavengers face today in India. Labor slavery, severe discrimination and lack of the most basic human rights are only some of the challenges.

A 2005, US Department of Health, report states that disease for women manual scavengers can be “passed directly from soiled hands to the mouth or indirectly by way of objects, surfaces, food or water soiled with faeces.”

Women working unprotected are in grave danger of contacting countless diseases through their daily and close contact with human waste. Some of these diseases, in addition to TB, include: campylobacter infection, cryptosporidiosis, giardiasis, hand, foot and mouth disease, hepatitis A, meningitis (viral), rotavirus infection, salmonella infection, shigella infection, thrush, viral gastroenteritis, worms and yersiniosis.

Facing the dangers of daily contact, “Ninety percent of all manual scavengers have not been provided proper equipment to protect them from faeces borne illness,” said a recent, Jan 2007, report on safety by India’s TISS – Tata Institute of Social Sciences. This includes safety equipment like gloves, masks, boots and/or brooms.

The use of hands by women manual scavengers, along with the certainty that they will have direct skin contact with human waste, is a very dangerous combination that is contributing to serious health conditions. Chronic skin diseases and lung diseases are very common among women manual scavengers.

To add to the danger, “Removal of bodies and dead animals is the third most common practice of manual scavenging, preceeded by sewerage sweeping, and the carrying of night-soil by basket/bucket or on the head,” continued the 2007 TISS report.

In spite of its being “illegal” the practice and use of manual scavengers continues in many low-income urban and rural parts of India today.

But the law is clear.

The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrine Act of 1993 states that, “No person shall engage in or employ for or permit to be engaged in or employed by any other person for manually carrying human excreta; or to construct or maintain a dry latrine.”

Legal loopholes and non-enforcement of the law on manual scavenging continues in many parts of India, even as organizations protecting the rights of manual scavengers present detailed reports. At present the ST/SC All India Commission, representing the lowest castes and tribes in India, has much more to do to strengthen legislation on India’s illegal industry.

On the first week of July this year, the United Nations will be hosting two dozen women manual scavengers to tell their life stories to the UN General Assembly. One of them is Usha Chomar, from the town of Alwar in Rajasthan district of Western India.

Remembering her childhood in India at the age of seven, Chomar recounts, “When I was a little child I would often insist on taking a broom from my mother so I could do the scavenging. The disposal of human excreta was the only thought that dominated my mind.”

“The worst part of this primitive toilet system is the method of clearing these human feces. Men and women, often right from their teens, invariably the Dalits of the Dalit do this ignoble job,” continues Dr. Paul in his March 2008 report. “They literally sweep the feces with their hands using two small metal sheets collecting them into a bucket or bin to be eventually dumped into another larger container (sometimes sealed but often kept open) the contents of which is periodically disposed of far away.”

“I remember the first time I had to carry a basketful on my head. I slipped and fell into the gutter. No one would come to pick me up because the basket was so dirty and I was covered with filth,” said manual scavenger Safai Karmachari Andolan, Sept 2006, for The Hindu news magazine – FRONTLINE. “I sat there, howling, until another woman scavenger arrived,” continued Safai. “She hosed me down and took me home. But that day, I felt like the most unfortunate child in the whole world.”

Making up 98 percent of the majority of manual scavenging workers, these women, also known as “Valmikis,” come from the very lowest castes in India.

As India juggles its many traditions, with an incoming tide of new technological advancement from the modern world, legal solutions in the crisis for women manual scavengers are being lost in India’s longstanding “bureaucratic” shuffle.

The 2007 dateline, set by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation to end the practice of manual scavenging in India, has now been reached without success. “2010 might be a more realistic deadline,” admitted Kumari Selja, rural agriculturalist and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister.

Placed on the bottom of the list in India’s legislation, women manual scavengers are trapped by Indian society and caste discrimination, as they endlessly bound in cycles of poverty, inequality and lost opportunity.

According to the 2006 FRONTLINE report by The Hindu Times, “There are approx 50,000 – 60,000 scavengers (both men and women) in Gujarat alone” in the same city that hailed the birth of India’s Mahatma Gandhi.

“Mahatma Gandhi raised the issue of the horrible working and social conditions of Bhangis (manual scavengers) more than 100 years ago, in 1901, at the Congress meeting in Bengal. Yet it took about 90 years for the country to enact a uniform law abolishing manual scavenging,” says Dr. Sam Paul.

– Cleaning the sewers of India –

Inheriting the work of manual scavenging from her mother-in-law for 15 years in the village of Tonkakala in the Dewas district in Madhya Pradesh of Central India, Rekha Bai unwillingly continued her position as a manual scavenger. “I did not like this work. But I was forced to do this to make both ends meet. There was no alternative,” she confided.

Rekha tried to stop carrying night-soil after struggling for years with the hard conditions surrounding manual scavengers in Tonkakala. Finally, she decided to give up her “detestable work.” Soon after quitting she had to resume, due to pressures placed on her to continue by her family, neighbors and community. Today, in spite of the struggles in finding new work, Rekha has been able to change jobs and move on.

The outcome in the case of Laxmi Bai of Devgarh village is not as good. After struggling with the work that “no one wants to do” she quit as a manual scavenger, but resumed her work again after staying away only two months.

Vimla Bai and Dhanna Lal, two other women from Devgarh village, faced many similar dilemmas as they worked for years under detestable conditions. Even though they are still considered to be “untouchable” by India’s society at large, they have managed to push through to finally free themselves from the work of manual scavenging.

The Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh has almost ended the practice of manual scavenging. But it is continuing unabated in other districts of Central India. Even though the “illegal” act of carrying night-soil is steadily on the wane, the basic problems for women manual scavengers remain the same.

Struggling to find the means to a new livelihood in India often makes changes impossible and out of reach for women manual scavengers.

Women working in the “night-soil” industry are often caught in an endless bind of indebtedness to the upper-caste neighbor households they serve. As they accept loans from employers for their “illegal” work, the women are trapped in an ongoing cycle of debt. These “impossible” loans, coming with a standard 10 percent finance charge, often leave the women workers in a state of perpetual obligation, servitude and bondage.

Unable to pay back any loan, with very little money, many women reach a point of great personal crisis. “Their poverty is so acute that, in desperation, some Bhangis resort to separating out non-digested wheat from buffalo dung,” continues the 2002 UN-HRC report.

To shift away from their labor as “night-soil” workers, many women in India try to seek work as farm laborers to help sustain their families. But they are often met with discouraging news. Getting these jobs are not easy. Today charity assistance and some government aide is available to help women locate new jobs. But, unfortunately, the jobs are scarce. Most jobs available are usually reserved for men.

Vimla Bai, who worked many years as a manual scavenger in Devgarh before she broke free, confided, “It is not easy to get any other job after giving up this work. People do not want to employ us due to (our) untouchability.”

Despite prohibitions in India, “untouchability” continues to be accepted as part of the normal cultural landscape.

Not all women manual scavengers are from the Dalit community. The Tarana village of the Ujjain district region use women members from the Muslim Haisla caste to carry night-soil. Using baskets on their heads they work at the same pace in the same way as all other women do in India who gather human waste. There is no formal training in this occupation, but the expectations are clearly outlined.

Even though the usual discrimination against “untouchability” for this job does not apply inside the religion of Islam, the Haisla women are still greatly “set-apart” due to their work as manual scavengers.

“I did not like carrying night-soil. But there was so much pressure of family and society that I had no other option,” said Taslim from Kayatha, India. “However, I decided to give up this work after the social workers persuaded me. It is my endeavor that no other woman in this area may have to do this work again,” she added.

Just how much money do women manual scavengers in Central India get for their work? In one month the usual pay, for removing human waste, averages 20 to 30 rupees – approx 50 cents to a little more than one dollar USD – from each household. On special occasions or festivals, women manual scavengers might even manage to get one sweet roti or some throw-away clothes from those who employ them.

The JanSahas organization of India began eight years ago, in 2000, to help women scavengers find a new life. Starting first by helping women find alternative employment in the rural and urban areas of Dewas, Ujjain and the Indore districts of Madhya Pradesh, JanSahas finds it is an “uphill” climb to help, educate and empower the women.

Assistance for women working in the “night-soil” industry is challenged today by a dichotomy of legislative inconsistencies. According to law, children can receive scholarships for their education only as long as their family continues to work as scavengers. Indian government officials say these scholarships are meant only for the children of people engaged in “insanitary occupations.” But once women manual scavengers quit their work it becomes clear – there are no more scholarships for their children.

“This is the reason that many women have returned to this work after quitting it once,” said Mr. Ashif Sahikh from the office of JanSahas.

“My grandsons and granddaughters were discriminated at school when we used to work. Now that we have quit, we are no longer in a position to send them to school,” said 54 yr. old Mannu Bai from the small village of Sia, who’s population is only 2,500.

In rural Sia, many manual scavengers wait for the ripening of crops to find new work. When the jobs do not become available, women and their families wait again to get permission from Sia’s legislative office to work cleaning sewage from the drains and gutters of the village. After only 15 days, though, according to the rule of law in Sia, even this meager and difficult work must be given to another waiting family.

In 2002, recommendations by the UN-HRC outlined two solutions to improve the terrible conditions facing women manual scavengers in India. The first solution: “The Government of India should press all states to implement The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, and prosecute officials responsible for the perpetuation of the practice.” The second solution: “The Government of India should ensure that all manual scavengers are rehabilitated according to the law in all states throughout the country.”

It’s a shame, after 60 years of independence, after reports, meetings and humanitarian outcrys on the continuing use of manual scavengers in India, that the government of India has still failed to eradicate this inhuman practice. Many of the regional State governments of India have actually denied the existence of dry latrines and the practice of manual scavenging.

Several affidavits and counter affidavits showing the existence of dry latrines and manual scavenging are now due to appear in the 2008 Indian Court.
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This 2003 film, shows the degrading conditions for a Dalit woman manual scavenger. Without protective gloves, masks or shoes she works to clean the dry latrines.
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To see other reports, actions and programs on women manual scavenging:

Safai Karamchari Andolan 2008 report on manual scavenging in India
Public Affairs Centre - Bangalore, India
TISS – Tata Institute of Social Sciences – Ongoing Field Action Projects, Dalit and Tribal Issues
Dalit Freedom Network
Anti-Slavery.org – UN Commission on Human Rights. 2002 report
All India Christian Council – India government report resources

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Journalist Shuriah Niazi is a WNN correspondent based in Central India. In 2006, he received an award recongnition at the sixth Sarojini Naidu journalism awards hosted by The Hunger Project – India. Lys Anzia, is humanitarian journalist and Editor-At-Large for Women News Network – WNN.

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©2008 WNN – Women News Network

by Thingnam Anjulika Samom – Panos correspondent
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Women News Network – WNN

Manipur Children eat kobok, a local sweet. Photo image – Ratan Luwangcha-Drik

When food is scarce in many parts of rural India, girls are fed less than their brothers. But in the north-eastern region it’s a different story.

Tucked away near the Himalayas in the north-eastern corner of India is the state of Manipur. Hitting the national media mostly for its separatist movements, the remote area suffers its share of poverty and hardship.

Struggling to feed the family is a fact of life for many in Manipur and the six other states in the region. Undernourishment in children as a whole is higher than the national average. But there is some evidence to suggest that when mothers enjoy greater equality, their daughters will stand a chance of better health.

Dr. L. Ladu Singh, at the International Institute for Population Science in Mumbai, is one of a team of researchers who studied the weight of 2,469 children aged under three in Manipur and six other north-eastern states. They discovered that, on average, infant girls weighed more than boys the same age.

The research team was intrigued by this finding in a country where girls are often discriminated against. In other areas of India, especially in rural parts of northern states, discrimination against the girl-child starts at birth, and it can lead to denial of food, care and education, as well as practices such as female infanticide.

Dr. Ladu Singh believes a clue to the small weight advantage enjoyed by these north-eastern girls lies in the social status of their mothers.

“Possible reasons for the well-being of the female-child in the north-east could be late age at marriage of the mother, lesser number of children, good traditional feeding practices and greater literacy,” he explained.

Manipur lies close to the border with Myanmar. Here the female literacy rate is higher than the national average – 60.5 per cent according to the 2001 census, compared to the national figure of 53.7 per cent. Its women-run market is said to be the largest of its kind in South Asia. Women’s groups in the state are renowned for their social activism.

In their study published in the Asia-Pacific Population Journal, Dr. Ladu Singh and his co-researchers conclude that the education of mothers is the single most important factor in determining whether children are well-nourished. By contrast, they claim the father’s background seems to have little impact.

At seven months old, Jelly is one of the more recent arrivals in the village of Ningombam Leikai, in rural Manipur. She is already eating the same rice, fish and vegetables that are cooked for the entire family. This is in addition to breast milk and supplementary cereals.

“She’ll eat anything – bananas, biscuits, roasted puffed rice..,” said her 25-year-old mother Olivia, a housewife from the Hindu Meitei tribes who live in the plains of Manipur. She beamed as she fed her daughter dollops of sticky, slightly salty rice. Rice, the staple diet, is the first solid food to be introduced among the Meiteis.

Jelly, it appears, is not being fed more than the boys in her village. Rather, in the absence of gender discrimination, girls and boys in Manipur are being fed the same amount.

“How can the same hand give more to one mouth and less to the other?” asked Ibemcha, of Thanga Ngaram village. Ibemcha has a son and two daughters.

Manipur’s health minister D. K. Korunthang echoed this view: “Why should we feed our daughter less? Boy or girl, they are our children. Why should we discriminate? In fact, among the hill tribes, we are happy when a daughter is born, for she brings wealth. At her marriage we’ll get mithuns (large South-East Asian wild oxen) and so many other things. Having a son means more expenses,” he laughed.

Manipur is not free of gender bias. Some Meiteis admit they would prefer sons.

Forty-two-year-old Angoubi, a government employee in Imphal, waited 20 years hoping for a son to carry the family name. After nine daughters, she gave up.

What’s more, while it is true that women enjoy a relatively high social status in India’s north-east, they also do most of the work in the fields and carry out household chores. Many suffer exhaustion, leaving them depleted of nutrients.

Based on their belief that the status of mothers holds the key to children’s nutrition, Dr. Ladu Singh and his fellow researchers advise that if communities want well-nourished children, they should find ways for women to do less onerous work. They argue it is now “imperative to bring about a change in the occupational practices of the region” to improve the nutrition of mothers and also that of the next generation.
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In many parts of rural India today mothers do feed girl-children less than their sons. This UNICEF report shows nine-month-old twins Devki and Rahul who were brought by their mother to the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre in Kolaras — in the Madhya Pradesh district of India.
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Thingnam Anjulika Samom is a freelance humanitarian journalist based in Imphal, India. _______________________________________________________
 
Click HERE to view human rights reports by Panos-London.
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©2008 WNN – Women News Network

- March 2008 Women News Network – WNN Report / Amnesty International

Violence and extreme poverty in rural South Africa place women at grave risk of becoming infected with HIV, according to a new report by Amnesty International. This undermines the ability of women who are HIV positive to seek and obtain treatment, thus worsening a national epidemic that is one of the worst in the world.

The 124-page report, based on interviews with rural women living with HIV, describes oppressive relationships with male partners, economic marginalization and severe inequalities.

“Rural women in South Africa are disproportionately affected by poverty and unemployment,” said Mary Rayner, Amnesty International’s South Africa researcher and author of the report titled “I Am At the Lowest End Of All.”

“They continue to experience discrimatory attitudes and practices — particularly from male partners and live in an environment rife with high levels of sexual and other gender-based violence.”

The South African government has gradually improved its response to the HIV epidemic through the adoption of the Department of Health’s widely-welcomed five-year plan to combat AIDS, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Still, 5.5 million South Africans are HIV-infected (about 10 percent of the population), one of the highest prevalence rates in the world. Fifty-five percent of those infected are women. South African women under 25 are three to four times more likely to be HIV-infected than men in the same age group.

The report offers specific recommendations to the South African government to address the urgent needs of women with HIV in rural areas. The report calls on the government to urgently intensify efforts to prevent violence against women through stepped up policing and prosecution, and to address the economic inequalities that block HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment and care. Additionally, the report urges the government to widen access to health services for women in rural areas, and help them with the consequences of HIV, including safety concerns, when disclosing their status to male partners.

Many women interviewed by Amnesty International in South Africa said they were often unable to protect themselves against HIV infection because they felt at risk of violence from male partners when they suggested condom use.

One woman told Amnesty International that her husband, a truck driver, spent much of his time on the road. On his days off, he visited her but refused to use condoms when she asked him to do so. After he abandoned the family she became sick, and discovered at the local clinic that she was HIV positive.

Several other women interviewed by Amnesty International described being beaten and forced to have sex by husbands who refused to use condoms.

“Women’s lives in rural South Africa are scarred by persistent violence in their families, homes and in under-policed, unsafe communities,” said Michelle Kagari, Deputy Director of Amnesty International – Africa.

“The co-existence of epidemics of both HIV and violence against women has raised the costs of violence for South African women and girls both physically and psychologically,” said Kagari.

While there are many good reasons to increase testing for HIV across South Africa, the situation is complicated in a context of gender inequality and violence, poverty and social stigma. Women are currently tested in greater numbers than men. When they receive limited psycho-social support, disclosing their status can leave them vulnerable to abandonment, threats of violence and other consequences of stigma and discrimination.

The great majority of rural women interviewed by Amnesty International said that their male partners were reluctant to test for HIV or refused to be tested even when there were strong indications the men might be HIV-infected.

Many of the women faced abuse from their partners when they tried to access health services for HIV-related treatment and care.

“When a woman’s partner is in denial about his own HIV status, he may resent her going to the clinic or taking medication,” said Rayner.

“In the context of pervasive gender inequalities, stigma and violence facing women, particular attention must be paid by those providing HIV testing to anticipate and address possible adverse consequences for women once they disclose their HIV positive status and start treatment.”

Effective treatment for HIV and AIDS requires regular visits to hospitals and clinics for treatment and care. Rural women living with HIV in circumstances of poverty and unemployment face constant challenges in having regular access to food and often cannot afford transportation to health clinics for treatment.

Also hampering treatment in rural areas is the fact that South Africa’s health system is currently facing severe shortages of essential medical and staff necessary for providing a comprehensive service.

Amnesty International USA is currently campaigning in the U.S. Congress for passage of the International Violence Against Women Act, which would provide U.S. aid and support for efforts overseas to prevent violence against women, including medical treatment for victims, economic empowerment for women, programs to change social attitudes, and legal reforms.

“Violence against women is so widespread and deeply rooted around the world that to have an impact the U.S. government must take a comprehensive approach with a consistent vision,” said Maureen Greenwood, an advocacy director for AIUSA in Washington DC. “This legislation could make a difference in places like South Africa, where it is clear that violence against women affects the spread of AIDS with dire consequences.”

To read complete March 2008 124-page report go to: Anmesty International

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- Footage of life in South Africa and an interview with Desiree Boyson, a community AIDS activist who voluntarily serves the people of Wentworth in Durban, South Africa. -

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©2008 WNN – Women News Network

- by SALLY CHIWAMA in Mporokoso, Zambia with Lys Anzia – Women News Network – WNN

Kapenda Buyamba was only a small six yr. old child during the early days of the bloody civil war in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1998. Today, Kapenda is only 16 years old, but she has already been married for three years.

As if that is not enough, Kapenda is pregnant and expecting her second baby. Her first child is two and half years old.

A 2007 Population Reference Bureau data reports that the current average life expectancy in Zambia is 38. Forty-six per cent of the population in Zambia is now under the age of 15. Thirty-five per cent of all girls in Zambia give birth before the age of 18.

These are sobering statistics for one of the most vulnerable part of the refugee population in Zambia – its child-brides.

Today, many refugee child-brides are looking to the future as they sort through choices that will affect the exact home-base location for them and their children for years to come. Just children themselves, these young mothers are facing endless adult decisions. One of them, is where to spend the rest of their lives.

According to a 2007 report by the UNHCR – the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 400,000 Congolese refugees are still living in exile in countries surrounding the DRC. A volunteer repatriation program by the UNHCR was begun on May 2007 to bring Congolese refugees home over a three-year period, but conditions inside the Democratic Republic of Congo may not be safe for women to return.

Kapenda Buyamba, who lives today at the Mwange Refugee Camp in Zambia, is just taking each day one day at a time. She says she got married at the tender age of thirteen and a half after being impregnated by a boy who is now her husband. As a teenage refugee girl from a war-torn nation, Kapenda says that life in the camp today leaves her “not much to do.” But family responsibilities fill her daily routine. At the camp there is little food for her family so Kapenda has had to fend for herself.

The Mwange Refugee Camp, near the northern border of Zambia, was established in 1999 as a refuge for people who fled the often fierce fighting between government and rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This refuge has been especially important to women and their children. Even as recent as 2007, reports of terrible sex-crime atrocities against women inside the Democratic Republic of Congo continue.

After being invited by the DRC government to come and observe in 2007, UN Special Rapporteur on Women and Violence, Dr. Yakin Erturk, reported (in July) that the actions of rebel factions inside the South Kivu Province areas “requires immediate action.” In the first six months of 2007 alone, over 4,500 sexual violence cases have been documented by the DRC government, UN and civil society organizations.

According to Doctors Without Borders, the North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been host to intense violence since August 2007. With little security measures in place, Doctors Without Borders has declared that the Kivu region of the DRC is now under a “permanent state of emergency.”

“Violence against women seems to be perceived by large sectors of society to be normal (in the DRC),” said Dr. Erturk in her recent UN report. The extent of sexual violence against women includes “unimaginable brutality,” said Erturk as she described sexual crimes perpetrated by DRC rebel factions, Congolese security/police forces and even former militiamen in the DRC. Specific actions of violence against women cited by Dr. Erturk include the atrocities of gang rape, sexual torture before family witnesses and even forced cannibalism.

With cooperation of Zambian Ministry of Home Affairs and a commitment by the UNHCR to protect and educate refugee girls, the Congolese refugee women in Zambia are pushing forward in spite of all odds to re-establish and re-heal their own society. Some girls are wishing to return home while many others definitely do not.

Kapenda is not ashamed today to say that she is attending first grade at the Mwange camp. “Nimeowa nilikuwa na myaka kumi na tatu — I got married when I was 13 years old,” she said in Kiswahili, explaining the clear facts of life.

Today, exact figures with the numbers of early marriages in the Mwange camp are difficult to obtain, as so many camp marriages go unregistered and are deemed unofficial. Kapenda Buyamba is probably one of the many girls whose marriage will never be documented anywhere.

In facing the ongoing challenges of Congolese child-brides, sexual and gender based violence has been an issue for discussion at the Zambian refugee camps. Namanda Mateele, Project Manager for HODI — a non-governmental Zambian organization that works to insure food for women at the Mwange Refugee Camp — says that her work in the camp also focuses on issues of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV). Thanks to the combined efforts of UNHCR in cooperation with Zambian officials and society organizations, a 50% reduction in the occurrence of SGBV in the refugee camps has been observed for the year 2007.

“Our organization also addresses issues such as early marriage, rape and gender based violence among the refugee community,” said Namanda Mateel. “We have formed an SGBV youth group with 56 girls and boys after we realized that there was a lot of sex happening among the adolescents.” Mateel added that youths attending the youth groups are encouraged to put their education ahead of anything else at the camp. “One of the most important tasks is to try to convince the girls that have fallen pregnant to go back to school,” she said.

The tenants of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) outline clearly that preventing “too early” marriage is part of a broader approach of building a “protective environment” for children. This tenant is now being encouraged at the Mwange Refugee Camp. This policy in discouraging sexual relationships between children too young also aims to shelter children from further types of exploitation.

From its beginning in 1989, the CRC outlined four basic rights for all refugee children. They are: the right to survival; the right to develop to the fullest; the right to be protected from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation and the right to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.

Two young girls who were raped in the DRC. It is not permitted to show the faces of these young girls.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most comprehensive international instrument that exists today for the definition and enforcement of human rights of children in refugee camps. It is the only international human rights instrument that consistently uses both masculine and feminine pronouns throughout and makes it explicit that the rights contained therein apply equally to all female and male children.

In great contrast to life in the camp, many current conditions today in the DRC are extremely dangerous for women and children. “Nothing (in North Kivu) has improved for people, who continue to flee the violence. The displaced persons often stay close to the area where they live because they continue to hope to return home. They might be two hours walk from home, but are attacked on the roads and in the fields. Rape victims are often attacked while working in or returning from the fields,” recently said Romain Gitenet, Head of Doctors Without Borders, as he worked from an area inside the DRC.

“Nime furahi sana, kurudi kwa shule (Am very happy to come back to school),” said Mitwelle Mwelu, a 12th grade pupil from Mwange Refugee Camp who is married with three children and who also decided to go back to school. Mwelu says she is very happy now writing for her final exams. When she finishes high school she will also be able to work. She says that her husband encourages her to work hard on her studies as he is a teacher at her school.

According to the UNHCR, many girls today are caught in the stigmatization of their society’s inferior views. They rarely have the opportunity to express their own concerns, let alone have their own views taken into account. Many girls are also deprived of their inheritance rights, dragged into early or forced marriages or forced to suffer under many family obligations.

In certain cases, Congolese refugee girls may become targets of sexual predators. Or they become victims of trafficking as they are exploited in the sex-trade and labor markets. The dangers of staying in the camp, though, are small in comparison to the current critical danger of violence for girls on returning to areas like the Kivu Province.

Zambia is currently hosting approx 113,000 refugees. The UNHCR states that, “In any refugee population, approximately 50% of the uprooted people are women and girls. Stripped of the protection of their homes, their government and often their family structure, females are often particularly vulnerable. They face the rigors of long journeys into exile, official harassment or indifference and frequent sexual abuse even after reaching an apparent place of safety. Women must cope with these threats while being nurse, teacher, breadwinner and physical protector of their families.”

Over the past seven years, refugee women worldwide have escaped from areas of war in Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Today, close to 18,000 Congolese refugees are living in the Mwange refugee camp situated 35 kilometers Southwest of Mporokoso District.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is entering a moment of hope after suffering from one of the bloodiest conflicts of the last half century. Four million people have died since 1998 and 1.5 million people remain displaced from their homes today. As refugees return to the DRC from camps in surrounding areas, they face many difficult situations. 

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Additional sources for this article include IRIN Africa, Doctors Without Borders, The Post – Zambia, UN Press News, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ReliefWeb, UN Radio, Reuters Alertnet, PRB- Population Reference Bureau Report 2007, UNFPA – United Nations Population Fund, Center for HIV Information – University of California, UNHCR – the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and The 2007 DRC Country Report of Special Rapporteur — Dr. Yakin Erturk.
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©2008 WNN – Women News Network

- Lys Anzia – Women News Network – WNN

- Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf war -
(Jasper Young/Panos Pictures)

As the sufferings of Kurdish women increase today, acts of self-destruction increase dramatically.

According to a recent (9 Feb, 2008) report by BBC news – Iraq, “This semi-autonomous area (in northern Iraq) is relatively safe, the economy is flourishing and it is regarded in the West as a liberal haven in an often-conservative region. But since the fall of Saddam Hussein there has been an alarming trend – hundreds of women have died after setting themselves on fire.”

Self-immolation, the act of suicide by fire, is an act of terrible desperation. It is also an act of protest. Something Kurdish women have known for centuries.

Suffering doubly today under the conditions of domestic inequality and societal discrimination, many Kurdish women face internal struggles without being able to access help or proper resources.

The history of Kurdish women has documented many generations of strife and renewal.

Divided by the British at the end of World War I in 1918, Kurdistan and the Kurdish people faced conditions that have contributed to the loss of the Kurdish culture. Following the first World War, Kurdistan merged into the regions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. According to a 2003 International Kurdish Women’s Studies Network report, 25 to 30 million Kurds live in the Middle East. In the 1990s, after military conflicts in Iraq escalated, 1.5 to 2 million Kurds left the region.

In Syria, a 1996 Human Rights Watch report states approx 8.5 to 10 percent of the Syrian population of 13.8 million, show that “stateless” Syrian-born Kurds “make up the highest percentage of non-Arabs in the region” while they have, at the same time, been denied the right of Syrian citizenship. Under “foreign” designation, in Syria alone, Kurdish women are not allowed to marry Syrian citizens.

In addition to the sanctions found in Syria and other countries, Kurdish women are not allowed to vote, own property or obtain government jobs. Sanctions against receiving medical treatment at hospitals is also part of the ongoing Syrian discrimination against Kurdish women. Sanctions in other countries surrounding Kurdistan, have also had a history of discrimination, prohibiting even the use of all Kurdish language.

Today, as Kurds have fled from regions that have created vast discriminations and hardships for Kurdish women and their families, the Kurdish diaspora can be found stretching from nation to nation – from regions as far away as Australia to Canada.

The Kurdish diaspora involves a “complex of national, international, and transnational political-economic relations,” quotes the 2007 Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies.

The act of “statelessness” for Kurdish women and girls, who live outside the Kurdish governing territory in Iraq, is a constant cultural issue.

“With Kurdish women being women of a stateless nation, they have always been subsumed under the categories of the dominant state authorities. This situation appears for Kurdish women living in their homeland as well as for Kurdish migrant and refugee women,” said Rotterdam, Netherlands humanitarian pediatrician, Dr. Ayten Adlim, Sept 2005. “Along with difficulties to receive appropriate medication for common diseases, Kurdish women face even more sever problems in finding treatment for disorders resulting from violence,displacement, war and torture,” she continued.

The growing numbers of self-immolation cases among Kurdish women in Iraq, Iran and Azerbaijan, makes a strong statement. It is a clear indicator of the vast degree of internal stress Kurdish women are facing today as they balance struggles between domestic inequality at home and external cultural/social discrimination.

Today, more than 5 million Kurds live in Iraqi Kurdistan. More than half of the region is governed under the direction of the Kurdistan Regional Government. The rest comes under Iraqi government regulation.

- Kurdish population density in the region -

“I think that women do not want to really commit suicide but they want, in fact, to make their cry for help to be heard and say that they are facing injustice,” said Iranian professor, Mohlsen Janghorbani, of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences.

“The way they kill themselves is a real tragedy,” said Chilhura Hardi, manager of the women’s radio station – Radio Khatuzeen – in the northern Kurdistan controlled region of Iraq.

The situation of discrimination for Kurdish women in Europe is also a pressing indicator of stress among Kurdish women.

“A high number of Kurdish migrant and refugee women in Europe suffer from psychological and physical health problems created by the experiences of violence, war and migration; often leading to Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD),” said pediatrician, Dr. Ayten Adlim, in 2005.

“Being isolated and a ‘foreigner’ many women cannot confide to anybody what they have been living through,” added Dr. Adlim, on conditions for Kurdish women living in the Netherlands. “This especially appears for women who are in fear of sanctions either by state authorities or by their own community. The permanent fear of deportation and uncertainty even worsen the situation. Thousands of Kurds being traumatized due to war and torture still have not been recognized as political asylum seekers. Just to give an example: A mother with two children, whose husband was killed by so-called ‘unknown forces’ while she was raped by Turkish soldiers, now has been waiting for 10 years for the Dutch authority’s decision on her asylum application.”

Even under conditions of unending internal and external oppression, while simultaneously embracing the modern and ancient world today, many Kurdish women have attempted to hold on to their own cultural history and memory.

Kurdish women do have a history of pride and accomplishment in social responsibility. As far back as 1919, the Kurdish women’s organization, “Society for the Advancement of Kurdish Women,” was formed in exile in Istanbul by a group of women who had once held positions of authority in Kurdish aristocracy. This organization, while working under harsh circumstances, helped rescue many Kurdish widows and children from the effects of the ravages of World War I. They aimed closely to protect women and children from the forced migrations and Kurdish massacres of post world war.

- Kurdish refugee mother near Suleymaniye, Iraq, March 1991. (image/UN cyberschoolbus) –

In 1999, in a call to action to help women in Iraq who faced various threats from domestic violence to “honour killings,” the Nawa Center for Women in Distress opened its shelter in Iraqi Kurdistan. Its mission is to help women who are suffering under severe psychological stress, following years of domestic violence and oppression.

Founded in June 2004, the KWRW – Kurdish Women’s Rights Watch, a network of Kurdish and non-Kurdish women and men, including community activists, academics, lawyers as well as legal professionals and journalists, works with human rights and women’s rights organizations inside and outside of Kurdistan.

The Kurdistan Women Union – KWU, located in the northern region of Iraq, has also been closely involved in the advancement of Kurdish women. Through KWU promotion of programs, Kurdish women have become more active in Kurdish parliamentary government. The number of Kurdish female lawyers is also on the rise.

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- A short film showing the resiliency of the Kurdish woman. -
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Sources for this article include Kurdistan Women Union – KWU, The Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, BBC News, Human Rights Watch, International Kurdish Women’s Studies Network, “The Solitude of the Stateless: Kurdish Women at the Margins of Feminist Knowledge” by Shahrzad Mojab, Radio Free Europe, Kurdish Women’s Rights Watch, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 2007 and International Free Women’s Foundation – Netherlands.

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©2008 WNN – Women News Network

Shuriah Niazi - Women News Network – WNN

- Because of their caste Dalit women, also known as Scheduled
Caste women, are often given very few equal rights or protections. -

Nineteen-year-old Anita, of Raisen district in Madhya Pradesh in Central India was raped by a group of males, on February 9, 2007, when she was returning home after working in a nearby farm.  Police registered the case and launched a hunt for the accused.

A lower caste woman who was part of India’s “Scheduled Caste” was raped in Chhatarpur district on November 7, 2006 by four men.  According to the report, the woman who was raped had gone to attend to “nature’s call.” Police arrested all four men on the complaint of the woman. 

Pursuing justice is not easy for a lower caste woman in Central India if the crime is rape. It is not uncommon in Madhya Pradesh for women to suffer callous vendettas, including sexual violence, for the actions of their male relatives.

The Scheduled Caste in India, also known as the “dalit” or the “untouchables”, make up only 16.2% of the entire population of India (2001 India Census).

Three years ago, on July 8, 2004, three women of a Dalit (Scheduled Caste) family were allegedly gang raped by thirty men belonging to upper castes at Bhamtola in Seoni district in revenge for a Dalit boy’s elopement with a girl from an upper caste family.  A complaint to the police alleged that about 30 Yadav men raped the Dalit boy’s mother and two aunts, having first paraded them through the village.

These are not isolated incidents. 

Madhya Pradesh has perhaps the highest number of gang rapes in the India.  Shockingly, in the last 1,300 days — from Dec 7, 2003 to June 30, 2007 – 1,217 gang rapes were reported in the state as per the Madhya Pradesh State Assembly records. 

The victims of these rapes were largely women who have minority and disadvantaged status in India. Out of the records, 362 victims were from Central India’s ”Scheduled Castes.”  310 were from the “Scheduled Tribes,” which number 8.2% of India’s total population (India Census records 2001). 381 were from the “backward classes,” comprising only 27% of students in higher education institutions in India (India Surpreme Court finding 2007).  And last, 169 of the rapes listed in the Madhya Pradesh State Assembly were from the “general category.”

“Caste-based discrimination is illegal in our country.  But we see that men from upper castes always treat lower castes like inferior human beings,” said Right to Food Campaign State Convener, Sachin Jain.  “Gang rape is one of the easiest means for men to attack a woman in the villages.  Women belonging to Scheduled Castes and tribes are also coming forward through NREGA (India’s Ministry of Rural Development) and the panchayats (local governing bodies) in the state.  The upper classes take revenge by committing gang rape.  These people once referred to as ‘untouchables’ — have attained positions in local governance but they are still among the poorest and most victimized people.”

A majority of the rape victims are minors that belong to India’s lower classes.  Out of 1,217 cases of gang rape, 726 cases cited minor-aged girls who were victims.  Take the case of 17 year old Kanchan, who was murdered after a gang rape as she was returning from school in Chakki Khamaria in the Chhindwara district on August 10, 2007.  So far on this case police have only managed to arrest one person. 

“Everyone wants to take advantage of (the) poverty of these people. One of the easiest way(s) is rape,” said Shiksha Abhiyan Avinash Jhade, State Coordinator of Madhya Pradesh.

Political analyst and writer Rasheed Kidwai feels that rape is, for the members of India’s rural upper classes, a means to show power rather than sexual gratification.  “It is easy to create dominance through rape on the lower castes.” In a Dec 2005 report from Bhopal for India’s daily news, the Calcutta Telegraph, Kidwai outlined how “a 32-year-old Dalit had her hand chopped off in a village near here (Bhopal) for refusing to take back her complaints of rape against two upper-caste men.”

Madhya Pradesh Chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has stated publically that the government would not spare anyone guilty in cases of mass rape.

But the statistics show a totally different picture.

In 136 cases this year the accused could not be arrested in 64 of the cases.  On state government failures in controlling crime against lower caste women, Ms. Jamuna Devi, leader of the opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, condemned the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government for the increasing incidents of crime against women when she said,  “When such is the state of affairs, how can people of the state feel secure”.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in a written reply to a public question about rape, has accepted the fact that there was a sharp recent rise in incidents of sexual assaults on women in Madhya Pradesh in comparison to earlier years.  Sandip Naik, State Coordinator for The Hunger Project, who currently works among women in the local governing bodies, believes that only a fraction of rape cases are reaching the police.

While mindful that gang rape is among the most horrendous crime for teenagers and women to report to the police, Sandip Naik urged that victims follow through.  Police role in such cases has always been criticized.  Police have failed to nab the culprits in a majority of the cases.  Unfortunately for the victims, they have to run from pillar to post to even get the case registered.

In the case of a 15 yr old Scheduled Caste girl who was gang raped in Shajapur district - a report was made three months after the crime was committed.  The girl was threatened by her attackers and told not to talk about the ordeal.  A police official, too, told her not to mention her rape.  The police first lodged the case only as a kidnapping.  The girl suffered in silence for months but then gathered the courage to come forward.  She then went for a medical checkup.

“It is seen that in most cases the police had been slow to move against the accused because of the pressure from influential people to hush up the case,” said Sandeep Naik on the rape of the 15 yr old minor.  The fear is not merely of the physical assault on the body, but of stigmatization associated in India with the act.  This fear of stigma associated with this sort of crime prevents these women from talking about it.  In many cases the family and the villagers don’t accept the victims.  Usually people avoid all interaction with them.

Sandeep Naik added, “In (the) case of rape, the girl is punished for the crime of which she herself is the victim.  The same society allows the perpetrator of the crime to lead a normal life, without stigma, after serving the required term in jail - if he is caught and prosecuted”.

Sachin Jain is of the view that, due to fear of social ostracism, most of the rape cases in the villages are not reported.  “Sometimes it is the victim who hides the crime,” he said as he added that family members also tended to cover-up the case.  These gang rapes are designed to cause not only as much physical pain as possible, but also, as much emotional pain as possible.  Because there is so much shame associated with rape in villages very few women actually report the crime.  Not only do they think that the rape was their fault, but they believe — and rightfully so — that their families will ostracize them if they report the rape.

Many young girls have been kidnapped, gang raped and tortured in Madhya Pradesh in the last few years.  The physical and emotional pain is certainly unbearable.  It is inevitable that these young girls may fall into a deep depression with, of course, no possibility for treatment.
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- Dalit women and their families in Bapcha village in Shajapur district of Madhya Pradesh are living in fear. The pressure from the powerful is so strong that violence is usually not reported or greatly “under-reported”. This is an NDTV news production Sept 2007 -
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Journalist Shuriah Niazi is based in Central India.  In 2006, he received an award recongnition at the sixth Sarojini Naidu journalism awards hosted by The Hunger Project – India.  As a journalist Niazi focuses on human rights and women’s rights development issues.
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©2008 WNN – Women News Network

- Drea Knufken for WNN – Women News Network

It’s not often that you hear about a small group of female media activists playing a pivotal role in a country’s history. . .

In Nepal, a group that goes by the name ASMITA — which means literally, “dignity” and “identity”— has, for the past 19 years, done just that.  ASMITA has many media forms.  It acts as a print magazine, a media campaign for women’s rights, a research group, a media watchdog, a TV and radio producer and a publisher of educational literature.  Most important, it is a primary advocate for women’s rights in Nepal.  Not bad for a magazine that was permitted to start in Nepal only because women were considered “harmless”.

 
               - ASMITA Magazine Cover No. 65 -

In the 1980s, Nepal was not “journalist friendly.”  The national media was by and large controlled by the state – which was governed through an autocratic system.  When ASMITA began, with its core group of women journalists, women’s rights were just starting to emerge as a topic of national discussion.  Sexuality, rape, abortion rights, property rights and other issues relevant to women simply were not discussed.  A group of young Nepalese female journalists, including one of the (2005) 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize nominees, Anju Chhetri, decided then it was time to take action.  They established the ASMITA Women’s Publishing House in 1988 to fill the communication gap between the burgeoning women’s rights movement in Nepal and Nepal’s public media.

ASMITA was the first-ever public media presence to give voice to Nepalese women’s human rights.  Surprisingly, ASMITA was able to launch its media presence because women’s rights in Nepal at the time were silenced and forgotten.

“Anju (Chhetri) and her colleagues were spared scrutiny because a women’s magazine was considered relatively harmless.  They used the opportunity to espouse democracy, and women’s inarguable role in regaining their basic rights.  While using the media to promote the cause of women’s rights, Anju does not demur from also using it to criticize the women’s movement and make it accountable to the public,” reports ASMITA magazine.

Chhetri began, then, to cover topics that reached into the core of Nepalese society with subjects like language, health, prostitution and rape, sexuality and conflict.

Suddenly, Nepalese women’s issues, previously undiscussed, were brought to light.  Chhetri shared information with mainstream magazines and newspapers.  In addition, ASMITA publications for semi-literate rural women were created with a “picture-heavy” format to help rural women know more about current issues, sanitation and women’s dignity.  ASMITA also began to publish numerous booklets and posters for women, including information on Nepal’s women’s legal advocacy and Nepalese women’s land rights.

As ASMITA grew in its outreach intellectuals and policymakers could no longer ignore the thrust of women’s issues in Nepal — nor the fact that they existed.

In 1996, the Communist Central Party of Nepal, commonly known in Nepal as “the Maoists”, started a long fight to institute a socialist republic to take the place of Nepal’s parliament.  Many disadvantaged women before the war were subject to ethnic or caste discrimination.  The Maoists, though, had a penchant for identifying women’s issues, promising class equality and social justice in exchange for party allegiance.  As a result, they were able to recruit more than 20,000 female guerrillas — an estimated 1/3 of their fighting force.  Most of these women fought on the village level and some became party leaders.

Ten years of bloody conflict ensued with more than 12,000 casualties.  Women fought alongside men and were also subject to torture, imprisonment, rape and murder.  During this time ASMITA kept careful records of Nepal’s women through its articles, reports, and interviews.  They found that the Maoist insurgency was actually producing mixed results for women.  On the one hand, the conflict was creating blood casualties and tearing families apart.  On the other hand, the Maoists were steadily helping to advance women’s rights.

“My hope is that Nepali women, so far excluded from government and decision-making, will have an opportunity to put forth their issues and demands in a constituent assembly.  Rights secured in the constitution and in laws will open new arenas to Nepali women for their empowerment and emancipation.  Ultimately, there must be enormous change in socio-economic structure for women’s upliftment.  I know that this will be achieved in the long run.  Until then, we have to continue our activities for reforms, however small,” said Chhetri in a Feb 2006 interview for WorldPulse magazine.

ASMITA wrote about the issues for women during the war when it said, “Polygamy by men was considered as a matter of bravery and pride before the start of the war.”  (Now) “the Maoists have stopped it not only in practice but also prohibited it by formulating law.”  Before the Maoist conflict women were not allowed to inherit property.  In 2001, a new civil code was put in place that allowed women the right to ancestral land.  Two years later, in 2003, the right to abortion for women in Nepal was also passed.

When Nepal’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, ending the war on 21 Nov, 2006, widows and missing family members were left struggling in the war’s wake.  Single parenthood, with its financial burdens and social responsibilities, had now become much more commonplace in Nepal.

So had the empowered woman in Nepal.

“A lot of change has come among women after the People’s War.  They have become fearless, clever and capable of speaking against grievances.  A political awareness is rising among them.  The untouchability has been demolished from the village,” said Dilmaya Pun, a Nepalese activist of the Chhing village in Rukum in an article by Chhetri and fellow journalist, Manju Thapa in “Samaya” magazine 22 June, 2006.

“More than 13 thousand people have died during the decade of violent conflict.  It is speculated that at least six thousand women have become widows due to the conflict,” said Anju Chhetri in an ASMITA article on conflict engendered widows called “Small Expectations”.

In 2006, as peace agreements were signed between the Maoists and the Nepalese government something was still missing.  Many other women’s rights promises, still, have yet to be delivered. ASMITA reports that “the women who took up arms are hopeful, giving time for a new Nepal to develop.”

“ASMITA has been able to record almost every event of (the) Nepali women’s movement and activities for the past 12 years.”  It is now using this information to create TV documentaries, radio programs and articles to allow the women and children affected by conflict to share their stories.  ASMITA intends to use this documentation to “help punish the guilty in the future (and build) a nation based on the principles of justice and fundamental rights.”

Through its record-keeping advocacy ASMITA has become the most respected archivist today of Nepali women’s history. Covering education, health, employment, environment, human rights, prostitution, rape, violence, discrimination, AIDS/HIV, development policy and planning, women’s movements and feminism, ASMITA has also kept a close focus on the trafficking of women in Nepal. As far back as 1997, ASMITA knew Nepali women were being trafficked, but at the time, nobody knew the scope or implications of this.  In the process, ASMITA sorted through a decade of Nepali trafficking-related media coverage, legal documents and literature to create a report called “Efforts to Prevent Trafficking in Women and Girls: A Pre-study for Media Activism” (June 1998).

In 2000, ASMITA concluded that, “The proportion of Nepali women presently involved in (the) flesh trade at the Indian brothels ranges from 5,000 to 200,000.”  From this information a set of recommendations by ASMITA was given to the public media, the government and numerous international agencies.

“The main problem related to trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation is the perpetual existence of Indian red light areas. As far as the red light areas exist, the problem of trafficking is less likely to end. We found that it is not easy to abolish the red light areas from Indian cities. We came to this conclusion after the discussion with several Indian authorities and political leaders. . . We studied red light areas of four major Indian cities Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune for four months. We discussed the issue of trafficking of Nepali women/girls with several NGOs and activists working the sector of trafficking and commercial sex work. According to the information we gathered from them, there are about 500 gharwalis of Nepali origin in Indian red light areas. Some of them have very simple economic condition and some are extremely wealthy. They are the main culprits of the crime of trafficking. They utilize many poor people from Nepal to function as dalals (agents of trafficking), who involve in alluring innocent Nepali women/girls and taking them to brothels in India,” said Anju Chhetri to 70 participants at a 2005 conference on trafficking in Katmandu on the release of ASMITA’s book, “Writing Against Trafficking”.

“As far as rescue is concerned, there are many women/girls in Indian brothels waiting to be rescued. But, the process of rescue is very much overburdened. The rescued women/girls have to be kept in transit homes for 1-2 months before completing legal procedures and returning them back to their home. Because of the longer time spent in completing court procedures, and resources needed to keep rescued women/girls in transit homes on their returning, the police and NGOs of India are reluctant to be involved in rescue operations. However, some NGOs like Rescue Foundation, STOP and SANLAP have been rescuing Nepali women/girls from time to time. Usually, the women/girls rescued by these organizations are handed over to Maiti Nepal,” added Chhetri.

Today, through a seed grant by The Global Fund for Women, USA, the ASMITA Resource Centre for Women has created a resource library for women that contains over 5,000 national and international documents of interest to women.

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- This film shows the searing issues in the trafficking of Nepalese children. Tom Bell reports for UK Daily Telegraph. Jan 2007. Film 7:12 min -
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Sources for this article include the ASMITA publications, US Department of State, WorldPulse magazine, BBC News, National Geographic, Nepali Times, The Global Women’s Fund, UNESCO culture portal, YouTube and Encyclopedia Britannica.
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©2008 WNN – Women News Network

- WNN – Women News Network editorial release

Keynote speech by Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

At the Council of Europe Conference on “Support Services for Women Victims of Violence”

Strasbourg, 6 December 2007

A week ago I visited a refuge in Cork, Ireland, for women who needed shelter against violence at home. Here women had been received since the mid-seventies for a couple of days or up to several weeks, in most cases together with their children. This refuge had chosen not to operate under secret address but there was always a police car outside. There had been incidents of brutal attacks against the premises.This refuge was now faced with new challenges as a consequence of the immigration to Ireland. The pressure had increased during recent years; language and cultural barriers had made the work more complex. However, the commitment of the staff and volunteers in this centre made it still work.

I talked with an immigrant from Hungary who had come here with her little daughter when the crisis had struck the family and the husband had become violent. The time in the refuge had given her perspective and self-confidence, she had been helped to establish her rights and in her case the marriage could be healed. She was now on a visit to thank the staff and reconnect to those who had become her friends for life.

I have similar experiences from several countries I have visited. The shelters are extremely important as a refuge; they are often run by voluntary organisations and often with economic support from local authorities. Another typical pattern nowadays is that a number of the guests are from other countries.

This was also the case with the shelter I visited in Graz in late May. They had a confidential address and other security arrangements to prevent any risk of gate-crashing. Again, this was a well-run institution in a home-like atmosphere. The problem they raised was that bureaucratic rules for the grants did not allow them to retain a guest more than a set period of time. Typically, the staff now considered to pay themselves for the continued stay of a women whose time was up but the crisis still unresolved.

They have adoptive standards. But the real problem is that it’s not enough.        Thomas Hammarberg                 – Council of Europe -

However, not all cities in Europe have such shelters. I have talked with politicians in power who have argued that “in our country there is no need”. In fact, I have had some clearly negative experiences in talks with leading government representatives in recent times. Not only have they been dismissive about the problem as such; they have volunteered chauvinistic jokes which should belong to the past. This has to change – and it will.

Putting an end to domestic violence is of course very much a question of political will. What should be done in every country is really no secret. There should be a precise and strict legislation; there should be bye-laws or guidelines to enforce the law; there should be a thought-out strategy and an action plan covering both national and local levels; there should be a system for the support services which are aimed at prevention, protection, prosecution but also rehabilitation and rebuilding lives.

Much has been done to implement these obligations, but much remains to be done. Most governments have now picked up the principles, but some are far behind in implementation. These are some of the points which need to be stressed again:

· The legal framework is important and must provide for a wide definition of violence against women, including psychological forms. It must cover preventive and educational measures, as well as protection and assistance for victims and measures against perpetrators.· A good law is the result of a broad consultative process involving women’s groups and experts, including victims, and taking into account the opinions of the civil society.· The laws must be effectively enforced. Detailed guidelines or protocols to establish clear standards, for example for the police to follow when dealing with violence against women, are necessary.· Education of police, social workers, health workers, teachers and the judiciary must include training on how to recognize and deal with violence against women. It is crucial that the response to such abuses is professional and gender sensitive. The rights of the victims to privacy, dignity and full autonomy should be met at all stages and by all authorities.· The governments should support the civil society groups, but they must themselves take responsibility as well for informing the public about this plague. Creating genuine awareness in this field is essential.

Special attention should be given to those most at risk. A sensitive analysis would, for instance, detect the particular vulnerability of migrant women. A migrant woman who is subjected to domestic violence is unlikely to report to the police for fear of losing her residence status, if it is dependant on her husband’s status. Some countries have addressed this concern by allowing victims of domestic violence to apply for permanent residence status irrespective of their spouses support for the application. This is a responsible approach.

Sensitivity to the needs of the victims also calls for comprehensive and accessible services. The victim must be able to overcome all the various difficulties and consequences that violence has caused. Support services must take into account and respond to both immediate and long term needs of the victim.

· Health clinics are often first among services to come into contact with the victims of violence. It is important that health personnel are well trained, gender sensitive and have clear referral systems in place to link to other support sectors. Health care providers must be able to refer the victim to counselling or temporary safe housing, and if needed, to the police.· Intervention centres which combine comprehensive police, judicial, social and health support should be developed in order to avoid the burden on the victims to go from one institution to the next. This is being tried in Austria with positive results.· The service centres are crucial in the efforts to assemble information and data, which are important as a basis for political action to prevent and respond to abuses in future. The services are therefore also tools for planning policy and evaluation.· Services must be provided without prejudices. We know that some women in need avoid to seek assistance because they fear being stigmatized or blamed. Poor and marginalized individuals have the same rights as others.· Essential services also include the provision of information about the rights of victims and access to legal aid.· Hotlines and telephone help services must be set up to provide information free of charge. It is important that those who are at the other end of the line have training in coping with difficult circumstances.· Ensuring that women have access to shelters to protect them from further violence is important. Good shelters also provide a range of other services. Even when the shelters are run by NGOs, the authorities have a responsibility and assist and co-operate. Shelters should be seen as an emergency, short term solution and of course not justify that the victim is the one who has to move.· Decisions to restrain the perpetrator can be decisive. There should be legal possibilities for intrusive barring or non-contact orders.Providing services are essential but they cannot eliminate the need to establish an ethical consensus that violence against women is an absolute taboo. The threshold must be made as high as ever possible.This is why it is particularly important that leading politicians, male and female, do demonstrate that this is a priority issue and that there has to be zero tolerance towards domestic violence.

- A personal story about domestic violence – Patrick Stewart -

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Sources for this article include statements from Patrick Stewart for Amnesty International - Stop Violence Against Women Program and the words of Thomas Hammarberg of the Council of Europe – Women and Violence Campaign 2007 – 2008 via WUNRN – Women’s UN Report Network.

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©2007 WNN – Women News Network

- Lys Anzia – WNN – Women News Network

- Widow of Vrindavan – photo image ©Tewfic El-Sawy, “White Shadows” -

“In many conservative Indian Hindu families, widows are shunned because they’re seen as bringing bad luck. Superstitious relatives even blame them for their husband’s death. The widow can become a liability with no social standing, an unwanted mouth to feed. Often they’re cast out of the family home,” said foreign correspondent Trevor Bormann in a recent June, 2007 interview with Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Dr. Mohini V. Giri, for the ABC – Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Once the widows of the Hindu holy city of Vrindavan lose their husbands their life “becomes zero,” says Dr. Giri, director of the Guild of Service in New Delhi. A widow herself, and tireless activist for women’s rights in India, Dr. Giri works specifically today for the “empowerment of marginalized women and children.”

“According to the Dharmashastra, the sacred Hindu legal text, covering moral, ethical and social laws, widows are expected to devote the remainder of their lives to the memory of their husbands,” says humanitarian photographer, Tewfic El-Sawy, after he visited the poorest ashram of Vrindavan. “By renouncing life’s luxuries and by withdrawing from society, critics of this practice have declared that such women are living a form of suttee, the now-outlawed practice of burning widows alive on the dead husband’s funeral pyre,” El-Sawy added.

“Imagine in front of a group of my relatives as large as this one, my bangles are smashed, my hair is shaved, my bindi removed,” Dr. Giri said before a conference for grief and renewal at the University of New England, Office of Multicultural Studies and Women’s Studies Department in 2005. “They are forced to wear white saris. Saddest of all is that they are often removed from their children and families, and abandoned,” continued Dr. Giri.

For many women in this culture, the loss of a husband can be an upheaval beyond belief. It can be a one-way ticket to isolation, poverty and despair. For thousands of women it can also mean a journey to a place unique in India - to a town considered very holy in India called Vrindavan.

In Vrindavan, India, women of all ages who have become widows are waiting for the moment they, too, will follow their husbands to the fields of death.

The widows in Vrindavan today can be found on the streets, in ashrams and other centers in Vrindavan. Vrindavan has over 4,000 temples today and many ashrams. The approximate number of widows living in the holy city today numbers over 20,000.

The latest national census counts widows living in locations across the Republic of India with numbers that reach millions. The largest number of widows currently living together in ashrams located in northern India are in Vrindavan.

Conditions in some of the ashrams of Vrindavan go from terrible, where sexual use and trafficking of younger widows occurs, to better ashram houses set up by leading women activists, like Dr. Giri and the Guild of Service, that encourage greater dignity for widows through better health care, by gaining learning skills like sewing and weaving and literacy training.

At Mathura ashram in Vrindavan conditions are critical as widows, abandoned on the death of their husbands with no resources of their own, appear with no chance for education, no protection from possible rape and no chance for a better life. They face situations of hunger, starvation and negligence as they try to survive with only one small plate of food a day.

These widows, many times, are deserted and admonished by the families of their husbands, leading them to leave and seek shelter away from their home in the ashrams of Vrindavan.

“It’s unbelievable that families would abandon their mothers. . . ,” said Dharan Mandrayar, a filmmaker who has been criticized by the press in India for the controversial subjects in his movies. His film “White Rainbow,” follows the “real life” story of a Vrandavan widow. “White Rainbow” was created as Mandrayar was “called to action” as he witnessed the living conditions of the widows of Vrindavan.”

Deepa Mehta is another filmmaker who has sought to bring the darker story of the widows of Vrindavan to the screen. Struggling against the protests of the town people of Vrindavan while trying to film, Ms. Mehta continued on with her production and moved the location to complete her movie. Her film “Water,” which was released in 2005 was later nominated for a U.S. Academy award. It shows life searingly through the eyes of an eight year old childbride named Chuyia, who became widowed on the death of her much older husband. It follows, too, the older-yet-young and beautiful widow, Kalyani, who is sold for sexual services as she is finally befriended by a young lawyer, a man who is a student of Mahatma Ghandi.

Although India’s widows today are not forced to die on the death of their husband – in ritual sati – by burning to death on their husband’s funeral pyre, they are still forced to undergo daily ritual humiliations, to beg for alms each day chanting, to live completely apart from society, to live lives of extreme poverty, lonely for their children, alone and hopeless. Younger widows, with no chance of remarrying, face strong cultural disproval within their own families. They often flee dangerous hostile family situations or abuse.

Rising problems with widows and their husband’s family after the death of their husband can sometimes include sexual abuse from a husband’s brother or father, starvation or abandonment.

Once young beautiful widows have arrived at Vrindavan, in some of the bhajanashrams today, they sometimes face the terrible fate of sexual trafficking and sexual exploitation as the ashrams try to produce more money.

The only other alternative, to life in Vrindavan, for many of these widows is a life lived on the streets as a beggar in their own home region living under the humilty of those she knows. Some of the ashrams today are also scattered with diseases like tuberculosis, dysentery and STDs. Most often, in the poorest ashrams medical help is virtually non-existent.  

Most of the widows of Vrindavan are categorized today in India as war widows, political widows or religious widows.

-Widows of Vrindavan – photo image ©Tewfic El-Sawy, “White Shadows” -

“I came here with nothing. Even on the train, I had to sit on the floor and not on a bench,” said widow, May Devi who came to Vrindavan as a widow at the age of 33. “I had to sit by the toilet and slept under the bench on the floor. Since I came, I have never returned home. This is my only home now.”

Even though the right to remarry was placed into Indian law in 1856 and the limited right for widows to inherit was given to women a hundred years later in 1956, widows who come from rurals areas of India have little to no education. Marrying sometimes as young as ten, they have little access to reach their legal rights.

Having the strength to push alone against family, neighbors and local community to receive their earned human dignity is often beyond them.

A recent, July 2007, study of the widows of Vrindavan supported by UNIFEM titled, “Spirituality, Poverty and Charity Brings Widows to Vrindavan” by Ms. Usha Rai ,sheds current light on many of the widow’s conditions today. In the recent study, Ms. Rai found that widows arrived at Vrindavan for numerous reasons. 41% came because they consider it a “place of God,” 20% felt completely without help and alone in their original home environment. 14% had severe problems with members in the home. Others in the study came to Vrindavan to leave life-threatening poverty and hunger. And another also mentioned sexual abuse.

Many of the widows in this study mentioned they had “nothing to go back to.” Living under loss of their property with complete loss of income with no chance to gain more in life, most of the widows arrive with no possessions. Many widows come from the most rural regions of India in West Bengal. Other widows come from the poorest regions of Bangledesh.

Suggestions made to help the living conditions for the widows of Vrindavan in the recent UNIFEM study include: Enacting legislation to make all Indian marriage registrations “compulsory.” This is to help prohibit and lessen the number of child marriages still occurring in India today. To set up more shelters for widows with adequate food and proper health care. To educate the widows about their legal rights. To teach them about the “widow’s pension” and other programs available for them through India’s legal system. To promote a cultural change in attitude about widowhood among conservative Hindus through cooperation of Hindu religious leaders.  And most important, to make skilled training programs available to the widows to create new lives.

In a co-sponsored 2002 study titled, “Status of Widows of Vrindavan and Varanasi – A Comparative Study” by The Guild of Service and The National Commission for Women India, it was found that; of all elderly widows in Vrindavan, aged 70 and older, 52.5% live in rehabilitation homes, 42.5% live in boarding houses and an astonishing 41.5% of all elderly widows live under extreme harsh conditions on the streets of Vrindavan without the support of any dwelling.

Most of the widows of Vrindavan “Come here in search of death, waiting for death. They are waiting on the roads, they are waiting on street corners and ultimately it’s so sad that when they die, there’s no one even to pick up their bodies because a widow’s body is inauspicious,” said Dr. Mohini V. Giri.

Lack of education, lack of literacy and knowledge of basic human rights along with strong cultural beliefs in the conservative Hindu caste system and extreme poverty are the major causes of suffering today among the widows.

“I met widows who were cheerful and feisty but others appeared sick, infirm and miserable. I also witnessed many instances of poignant ‘sisterhood’ moments and genuine affection between many widows,” says photo journalist, Tewfic El-Sawy, in his photo essay, “White Shadows.”

“The situation of widows in North India is worsened by the system of Patri-local residence, whereby widows cannot return to their parents’ home even though they are often rejected by their in-laws,” was a major point made in the study by The Guild of Service and The National Commission for Women India.

“On the one hand, we are celebrating the (2007) election of the first woman president of the country (of India) and on the other, widowhood continues to be stigmatized. Just because they have lost their husbands, their rights are taken away from them. They are discarded by society and Vrindavan becomes their only haven,” said Dr. Mohini Giri.

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See the unforgettable and haunting series of photos on the widows of Vrindava, “WHITE SHADOWS,” by Tewfic El-Sawy.

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- See part of Deepa Mehta’s 2005 Academy Award nominated film “WATER” -
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Sources for this article include UNIFEM – South Asia, ABC – Australian Broadcasting Corporation, BBC News, CNN News, Associated Press, Womensenews, GriefandRenewal.com, The Hindu Magazine, “White Shadows” by Tewfic El-Sawy, CCDS – Center for Communication and Development Studies, Feminist.com, The Guild of Service North-India, Commonwealth National Human Rights Commission, The National Commission for Women India and India News.

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©2007 WNN – Women News Network

- Lys Anzia – WNN – Women News Network

Even after 18 years in and out of house arrest detention since 1989, and 12 years in prison, 62 year old Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, still has confidence and hope. In 1991, three years after her incarceration, Suu Kyi received the Nobel Prize in Peace “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights” in the Union of Myanmar. As Suu Kyi was being kept under house arrest and in detention by the military junta during that time Suu Kyi’s sons accepted the Nobel prize in her absence.

“Her absence fills us with fear and anxiety,” said Professor Frances Sejersted, Chairman of the Nobel Committee in 1991. “But we also have confidence and hope,” he continued.

A year later, in 1992, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi set up a trust to use the 1.3 million dollar Nobel Peace Prize award monies for health and education programs for all Burmese-Myanmar citizens in need.

At the age of fifteen, as Suu Kyi was growing up without her father, the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi came to her, bringing her a deep understanding and commitment to non-violence and fearlessness. Gandhi’s teachings became part of her everyday life as she lived in India, in 1960, during the time when her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, became Burma’s Ambassador to India.

Later as Suu Kyi married the British Tibetan scholar, Dr. Michael Aris, the basic precepts of Buddhist teachings became another integral part of Suu Kyi’s approach to living.

In 1999, under house arrest, Suu Kyi was refused the right by the government of Myanmar to visit her dying husband in London. On March 27, 1999 Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was refused release from incarceration, to visit her dying husband, even though she had not seen Dr. Aris since 1995.

Through the teachings of Buddhism shared by Dr. Aris, Suu Kyi received a special gift, the gift of humility and what she still calls today “a profound simplicity.”

“In the good fight for peace and reconciliation, we are dependent on persons who set examples, persons who can symbolize what we are seeking and mobilize the best in us,” said Professor Sejersted of Suu Kyi in 1991. “Aung San Suu Kyi is just such a person. She unites deep commitment and tenacity with a vision in which the end and the means form a single unit. Its most important elements are: democracy, respect for human rights, reconciliation between groups, non-violence, and personal and collective discipline… During Suu Kyi’s election campaigning in Burma she courageously faced a detachment of soldiers, who lined up in front of her, prepared to fire if she continued to walk down the street, which she did.”

Today Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is still a vital symbol of peace among her people and the world.

“We ordinary people, I believe, feel that with her courage and her high ideals, Aung San Suu Kyi brings out something of the best in us… The little woman under house arrest stands for a positive hope. Knowing she is there gives us confidence and faith in the power of good,” added Professor Sejersted during the 1991 Nobel Prize ceremony.

The recent, Sept 2007, bloody pro-democracy protest in Rangoon between the Tatmadaw – the military police forces of Myanmar – and Burmese Buddhists monks, students and citizens has brought the issues of human rights searingly to the forefront. The government of Myanmar has acknowledged 12 dead and nearly 2,100 arrested, with 700 later released, although other reports indicate that the numbers may be much greater.

The recent 11 Oct, 2007 UN Security Council statement on the Myanmar protest states, “The Security Council emphasizes the importance of the early release of all political prisoners and remaining detainees. It also calls on the Government of Myanmar and all other parties concerned to work together towards a de-escalation of the situation and a peaceful solution.”

“These mass rallies prove that the desire of the majority people is the prevalence of peace and stability in the country and emergence of the new National Constitution,” said a recent 3 Oct 2007 press release from the Permanent Mission of the Union of Myanmar to the United Nations Office, Geneva.

On 2 Oct, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked a UN envoy team to return to Myanmar. UN official Ibrahim Gambari met with Myanmar General Than Shwe and also separately with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at her home in Rangoon. The UN Secretary General has hopes that the government of Myanmar can “make the bold choices” now toward positive change. Ban Ki-moon also said that he was “cautiously encouraged” that Senior General Than Shwe, Myanmar’s top military leader, has made recent statements saying he would meet in person under “certain conditions” with Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi’s history with the Union of Myanmar, previously known as the Union of Burma before 1988, is one of deep personal connection. Suu Kyi’s father, General Aung San, acting as transitional Prime Minister, in 1947, was assassinated by the military junta with several members of the transitional cabinet, including Suu Kyi’s uncle Ba Win, closely after Burma became an independent nation. Suu Kyi was only two years old at the time of the deaths – just months following the second Panglong Conference for Burmese independence.

Beset with internal struggles of country division and questions of equal representation of government, the Panglong Conference aided in the transfer of power from the British. During this time the conference attempted to gather all of the regions and ethnic groups of Burma. The second Panglong Conference changed Burma permanently from its status as a colony of British India to an independent Burmese republic.

Since that time Burma has undergone countless struggles as a nation.

“Unity in diversity has to be the principle for those who genuinely wish to build our country into a strong nation that allows for a variety of races, languages, beliefs and cultures to flourish in peaceful and happy coexistence. Only a government that tolerates opinions and attitudes different from its own will be able to create an environment where peoples of diverse traditions and aspirations can breathe freely in an atmosphere of mutual understanding and trust,” said Suu Kyi in a 1996 letter to the Mainichi Daily News.

In a famous speech given to the National League for Democracy Suu Kyi brought the concepts of Mahatma Gandhi into clear focus when she said:

          “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it… Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavor, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as ‘grace under pressure’ – grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure….

          Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure.
          A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man’s self-respect and inherent human dignity. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man’s self-respect and inherent human dignity.     

          It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.
          The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all the setbacks condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute.

          At the root of human responsibility is the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments.          

          It is man’s vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. It is man’s vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear.
          Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.”

“I always pray for Aung San Suu Kyi and hope that she will be released soon,” said the Dalai Lama to the press in 2006. The Dalai Lama has corresponded regularly with Suu Kyi up until the last three years when Suu Kyi’s contact with the outside world was discontinued. “Aung San Suu Kyi is a person I admire a lot, both for her courage and her sacrifice,” added fellow Nobel Peace Laureate H.H. Dalai Lama.

Today the words of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi ring clear, even through the rising conflict inside the Union of Myanmar today. For many of the citizens of Myanmar Suu Kyi still represents a new world and a greater possibility for peace.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Speaking on Non-Violence

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Sources for this article include The Permanent Mission of the Union of Myanmar to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations – Geneva, Mainichi Daily News, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Pages, Associated Press, CBC news, Reuters news, Wikipedia, Буддийский форум 1998-2007(Russia Buddhist Forum), The Burma Campaign UK, VOA news, Nobelprize.org, UN News Centre, Human Rights House Network and the Daily Yomiuri Online.

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©2007 WNN – Women News Network

- Lys Anzia – WNN – Women News Network

Trafficking of women for forced sexual use is a long standing crime. The United States was also guilty of involvement in these acts immediately following World War II in Japan.

According to an April 25, 2007 Associated Press article about US involvement with Japanese brothels in 1945, by Eric Talmadge, “An Associated Press review of historical documents and records shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution.”

“The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war,” added Talmadge.

On the days of Japanese surrender to the United States after the devastation of World War II and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, records show that Japan’s Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, the Kempeitai, which had been in charge of forced prostitution during the war, set up numerous “comfort stations” for US GIs by order of the office of Japan’s Ministry of Interior on August 18, 1945.

The Kempeitai were founded in 1881 as Japan’s military police force. They numbered up to 75,000 during the war and were the ongoing managers of the Japanese brothel system. 

One brothel called Yasu-ura House “comfort station” in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture was set up immediately by the Japanese Kempetai and Japan’s RAA – the Recreation and Amusement Association using Japanese government funds. This brothel was used for US military men flooding Japan at the end of the war on August 18, 1945.

Numerous other brothels were also created.

At times, the brothels were very crowded with up to 600 men standing in line. The publicly accepted logic, used by Japan’s office of the Ministry of Interior for setting up the prostitution houses, was that a strong barrier between the foreign “winners of the war” and the “good” women of Japan had to be made to save “respected” regular women from the invaders.

In massive numbers women from the Philippines, Korea and China were shipped to “comfort stations” worldwide. Through this forced trafficking of women the continuing betrayal and severe suffering of the women in the brothels went on – even after the war was over.

“Twelve soldiers raped me in quick succession, after which I was given half an hour rest. Then twelve more soldiers followed. They all lined up outside the room waiting for their turn. I bled so much and was in such pain, I could not even stand up. The next morning, I was too weak to get up. . . I could not eat. I felt much pain, and my vagina was swollen. I cried and cried, calling my mother. I could not resist the soldiers because they might kill me. So what else could I do? Every day, from two in the afternoon to ten in the evening, the soldiers lined up outside my room and the rooms of the six other women there. I did not even have time to wash after each assault. At the end of the day, I just closed my eyes and cried. My torn dress would be brittle from the crust that had formed from the soldiers’ dried semen. I washed myself with hot water and a piece of cloth so I would be clean. I pressed the cloth to my vagina like a compress to relieve that pain and the swelling,” said Maria Rosa Henson, a former Filipina comfort woman, in Yuki Tanaka’s 2001 searing book, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation.

On landing in Japan, the overwhelming numbers of US troops demanding sexual service grew quickly causing Japan’s (RAA) Recreation and Amusement Association to use force and coercion to get greater and greater numbers of women for forced sex-use. Another “comfort station” brothel after Japan’s surrender was called Komachien, The Babe Garden. It quickly expanded in size from 38 to 100 women.

When the US Navy landed in Yokosuka Naval Yard, Japan, on Aug. 30 1945, Commander of the Third Fleet Naval Landing Force – US Navy Commander L.T. Malone set the ground rules for all military men going on shore. At that time the “comfort station” in Yokusuka was quickly being set in place for the incoming men by the Ministry of Interior’s office in Tokyo.

On landing, Cmdr. Malone wrote a memo to his men two days before the men stepped ashore stating, “We have been chosen, largely by luck, to represent our U.S. Navy in occupation of Tokyo. There were close to one quarter of a million officers and men in the THIRD Fleet to pick from and we got the nod. We are honored to have this opportunity to represent our Navy in this occupation. Many others will follow us in after we have squared things away but we make the initial impression and, mark you well, it will be one of the great first impressions of history.”

Today this “good” impression of history is being re-written so the truth can be told about the US use of trafficked women in Japan immediately following the war.

In Dec. 6, 1945, Lt. Col. Hugh McDonald, a senior officer with the Public Health and Welfare Division of the US occupation’s General Headquarters, wrote of the US knowledge in the forced use of women as sex-servers. In his 1945 memorandum he wrote on the subject, “The girl is impressed into contracting (the RAA) by the desperate financial straits of her parents and their urging, occasionally supplemented by her willingness to make such a sacrifice to help her family. . . It is the belief of our informants, however, that in urban districts the practice of enslaving girls, while much less prevalent than in the past, still exists.”

“These recruiters were actively assisted by the military police (kempeitai) and local police, to ensure that the girls and women ‘volunteered’.

It is indisputable that these women were forced, deceived, coerced and abducted to provide sexual services to the Japanese military,” states the 1994 report, Japan – Comfort Women: An Unfinished Ordeal: Report of a Mission by Ustinia Dolgopol and Snehal Paranjape for the International Commission of Jurists, Geneva, Switzerland.

The postwar Japanese sponsored brothels serviced US military men for almost a year from August 1945 until General Douglas MacArthur closed the program in the spring of 1946 as occupied Japan began to attempt rebuilding from its 3 million dead and nine million homeless.

Whether it was morning or night, once one soldier left, the next soldier came.

Twenty men would come in one day. . . ” said Korean comfort woman, Pak Kumjoo, of her torture from sex-enslavement at the age of seventeen.

Women forced by the Japanese to service men during the war years were called the “jugun ianfu” – “comfort women.” The place where women were forced to sexually perform was called a “comfort house” or “comfort station.”

On April 2007, previously undisclosed war documents, recently provided by the French, Dutch and Chinese governments, give undisputed proof of the forced use of women as “comfort women.” Brothels in remote locations at the Japanese frontlines included “comfort stations” in Indonesia, China, East Timor, Vietnam and as far away as New Guinea.

From these newly released documents the conditions of the unending suffering of women used as sex-slaves during the war has finally come to light in the public’s eye, especially the eye of Japan.

In an attempt to pander to conservative politicians inside his country, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has given opposite statements on the subject. As recently as March 1, 2007, he said to a group of reporters asking about Japan’s comfort women industry, “The fact is, there is no evidence to prove their was coercion.”

The newly released documents from 1948 clearly prove the opposite.

These documents, filed under the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo, also called the “Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, were released in April 2007 by the scholars from the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal is simply called today by many Japanese citizens the “Tokyo Trials.” Nation participants in the tribunal included eleven judges from the allied powers of the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, Republic of China, the Netherlands, Provisional Government of the French Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, British India and the Philippines.

In the 1948 judgment on war crimes during the tribunal, prosecution document No. 5330, clearly mentions the forced use of women for brothels during the war. This document was quoted recently in a April 18, 2007 article in The Japan Times by Reiji Yoshida, saying, “The Special Naval Police (Tokei Tai) had ordered to keep the brothels supplied with women; to this end they arrested women on the streets and after enforced medical examination placed them in the brothels.” The 1948 document continues, “Women who had had relations with Japanese were forced into the brothels, which were surrounded by barbed wire. They were only allowed on the streets with special permission.”

Jang Jum Dol, Japanese Comfort Woman, was 14 when Kidnapped by the Japanese – image: Chris Steele-Perkins

These and other statements included in numerous tribunal documents and findings caused 28 defendants, comprised of military and political leaders, to be sentenced. Two Japanese defendants died during the trial, one was pronounced insane and put into an asylum, seven were sentenced to death, sixteen more were sentenced to life imprisonment and two to lesser sentences.

In 1948, the US government played a strong position as a member of the tribunal. Only three years earlier US troop use of the atrocious “comfort stations,” were set in place in the late summer 1945 to spring of 1946. During this time these crimes and behaviors were accepted and encouraged the US military.

The Japanese military preyed on the most vulnerable members of society for its sexual slavery system – those who because of age, poverty, class, family status, education, national, or ethnicity were most susceptible to being deceived and otherwise trapped into slavery. The women were drawn primarily from Japan’s occupied and annexed territories, mostly from poor and rural communities,” said the transcript from The Oral Judgement delivered by the Judges of the Women’s International Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery given on Dec. 4, 2001 at The Hague, in the Netherlands.

Today, through recent exposure of tribunal documents, we know that the War Crimes Tribunal specifically cited the forced sexual use of women as an example of war crimes during World War II.

While the US was attempting to legally close the door on war atrocities, along with all other nation partners during the tribunal, it was hiding its own terrible secret – its own direct involvement in sex crimes against innocent women that occurred as US military men reached the shore of occupied Japan in August 1945.

The U.S. position is “hopelessly hypocritical,” said Japan scholar Chalmers Johnson president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, on issues surrounding the history and breath of the atrocities during World War II.

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Sources for this article include the Associated Press, The Japan Times, Time Inc., ZMagazine, Amnesty International, KoreaisOne.org, International Commission of Jurists – Geneva, Switzerland, University of North Carolina – Caroline Brendt report – Endeavors magazine, ABC News, The Washington Coalition for Comfort Women, the NavShips History Ring, MSN News, The Washington Post, Wikipeidia, VAW-NET (Violence Against Women in War – Network Japan), Comfort-Women.org, the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility and Yuki Tanaka’s 2001 book – Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II & the US Occupation. / Photo images in this article provided by Comfort-Women.org and Chris-Steele-Perkins of Magnum Studios.
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©2007 WNN – Women News Network

- Drea Knufken – WNN – Women News Network

   A CHILD IN DANGER

                IS A CHILD

           THAT CANNOT WAIT. . .

           - Former UN Sec. General Kofi Annan -

 Colombia is a land of contrasts, as anyone who’s read Gabriel Garcia Marquez can attest. It is the largest country in South America, with a 2005 population of 45.6 million, and known for its rich economic resources and its guerilla fighters, its natural beauty and its syndicated crime, its high-quality heart surgeons and its drug traffickers. The economy is doing well under the leadership of President Alvaro Uribe, and, as of 2000, it was home to two thirds of the world’s kidnappings.

A volatile country, if anything. A colorful country. Colombia is attracting increasing numbers of tourists as well, as the World Tourism Organization, which is having its November 2007 conference in Colombia, can attest. And underneath it all, in the shadows of the cartels, the syndicates, the beauty and the wars, are more than 1 million girl-children earning a living by selling their bodies.

Children become prostitutes for a variety of reasons. Poverty is often at the core: families prostitute out their girls in order to have enough income to survive; others sell their children to brothels and trade networks for the same reason. Other children independently flee abusive domestic situations for the promise of a better life and find themselves in the sex industry; still others were soldiers or otherwise affected by one of Colombia’s wars and, now displaced, find themselves with few options for surviving. Still others are kidnapped, or refugees from other regions.

Prostitution takes on different guises here. Some children end up in local brothels; others are placed into regional and international prostitution trade networks. These networks are often run by bigger syndicates also involved in narcotics, weapons, and counterfeiting. Children may be traded to neighboring countries like Venezuela, or to markets in countries as distant as Spain or Germany.

Whether instigated by adverse conditions at home or involuntary actions, child prostitution in Colombia is insidious as it is widespread. Colombia is known as a human supply company for prostitution networks abroad, the country itself is a known sex tourism destination, and prostitution is firmly embedded into the economy as a means of making a decent living wage. Still, as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the CRC, which Colombia signed and ratified in 1989 and entered into force Sept. 2, 1990, suggests, children need to be protected. This is not only for their own well-being—child prostitution is correlated with illness, infertility, post-traumatic stress disorders, homelessness, and other afflictions—but for the good of the entire society.

While the U.S. government helped to write sections of the CRC, the U.S. Senate has still not completely ratified the international treaty on the Rights of the Child because of ongoing contentions concerning sections of the Convention which prevent jurisprudence and sentencing against children under the age of 18. Currently inside the United States, numerous separate states continue today to charge and sentence children under the age of 18, which clearly goes against tenants of the treaty itself, leaving the U.S. laws far behind and outside the guidelines and jurisdictions of the CRC.

The Colombian government, in contrast, seems publicly to realize a greater need for the guidelines provided by the CRC. National Police have rounded up child prostitutes on several occasions and brought them to the Renacer Institute, a nonprofit organization which offers child prostitutes room, board, and education in exchange for a promise to stop working. Established as a nonprofit in 1994, the foundation has two houses that can support around 60 children. The Colombia Journal cites the example of Carolina and her sister, who ran away from their impoverished Bogota neighborhood in their mid-teens in order to escape familial abuse. It wasn’t long before the two girls were working the streets of Bogota, making an income as prostitutes. Several months later, they were rounded up by police and taken to Renacer. The National Police also run “Colombia Without Prostitution,” a prevention program aimed at preventing child prostitution through community and family education. The government has also collaborated with various NGOs to create a Plan of Action on Child Sexual Abuse in relation to its signing of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. (gvnet.com)

That said, the government’s role though has been unpredictable, fluctuating between support of the children, neutrality, and enmity. According to Human Rights Watch, police have periodically been suspected of waging war on street children rather than helping them, sometimes even shooting them on the streets. The government is also a major donor to Renacer, but has significantly cut funds in the past.

Despite difficulties, Renacer continues to be devoted to the cause of getting child prostitutes off the streets. Stella Cardenas Ovalle, Founding Member and Director of the Renacer Foundation, has, since 2001, been working hard to influence government policy and to steady law enforcement policies. Ovalle is building a long-term alliance of child protection organizations, like Renacer, that are only now beginning to network together. Using the power of numbers and statistics, the network will keep legal policy informed and work steadily to stimulate public aware