Women UNlimited

Jane Gabriel

The next session followed immediately and was announced as an ‘UN Action Event’. Under the title of ‘Stop Rape Now’ the UN is launching a new cross-UN initiative to take action against sexual violence in conflict. 10 UN agencies are working together and say they are “committed to end all forms of gender-based violence”.

Fatou Bensouda from the ICC spoke of last weeks naming of the first two suspects in the Darfur War Crimes Case. Two men are charged, with 51 counts of war crimes. The case is of a group of young women who were taken to a military garrison, tied to trees with their legs apart and raped continually through the night. The women’s testimony is now a public document. As deputy Prosecutor at the ICC Fatou said “we can’t talk publicly, but you can together send the message that there is no longer impunity for these crimes”.

Commander Daniel Opande, UN force Commander, Liberia and Sierra Leone, spoke next. He called for an end to the ‘diplomatic language’ and said that this war against sexual violence will only be won when the UN spells out clearly to every peace keeping mission that it is a key responsibility at all times, a mandatory task to be undertaken by all peace keepers. He called on all troop contributing countries not to compromise by protecting their own perpetrators. He ended by saying “this war must be won”.

Sapana Pradhan Malla, Director of the Forum for Women Law and Development spoke next. She told of the rape women in Nepal have suffered from the both the Maoists and the Security Forces. She said now that the Peace Accord has been signed, and international Peace Keeping forces have arrived, rape is still being used as a weapon of war.

“Now is the time for us to speak out in Nepal. I’m really feeling a deep pain talking about these de-humanising experiences. There will be no enduring peace without justice. We are different but we are equal”.

Sapana demanded that the UN challenge patriarchy and the culture of violence. “Protect the right of survival . Enough is enough.Stop sexual violence in conflict“.Eve Ensler then read from the Vagina Monologues - which she wrote as a result of the young Bosnian girls who were returned from a ‘rape camp’ in 1994. Yes, you read this correctly, from a ‘rape camp’.

Continue reading ‘No more impunity for sexual violence in conflicts’

Jane Gabriel

The first session I attended was ‘Violence against Women and the girl child:Urgent issues and Solutions’ hosted by the Italians.

Maria da Penha is a biochemical pharmacist who was shot by her husband in 1983 as she lay asleep in bed. He had disguised himself as a burglar in the hope of getting away with trying to kill his wife. It took Maria la Penha more than twenty years to find justice. She is now a paraplegic. She wrote a book called “Survived: I can Tell”. She was not silenced. She was not a victim.

In 2001 Brazil was widely criticized for its failure to have a law specifically dealing with domestic violence. It was then the only country in Latin America without such a specific law. Today, because of people like Maria da Penha’s refusal to be silent, it has one. When the audio on the video of her testimony broke, we watched it in silence. The sub-titles in english made even more poignant by the silence in which we sat ‘listening’ to her speak to us. It was a silence that Dr Chonchanok Viravan (who was chairing the session) said was symbolic of the issue: the silence surrounding domestic violence that makes it so hard to confront.

The urgent solution the session was trying to find is this: Break the Silence.

Jane Gabriel

“You are absolutely the last one!” said the woman trying to control the queue into the UN press and ID centre as she slammed the door behind me and locked it firmly. She glared at all of us and shouted “And don’t unlock the door under any circumstances”!

As I squeezed into the crowded room I thought, just for a minute, that word was spreading that journalists were turning up to cover the CSW. But I was wrong, everyone else seemed to be from an NGO and the press room inside was empty. Valerie Semplicino said the only journalists who had asked for accreditation were from Spain, Korea, the Netherlands and Iran. The only male journalist in the world here covering the CSW is from Iran.

When Valerie started her job in 1999 she told me that the journalists formed a “line that never stopped, it went on for days and days, it was constant, it was crushing”. They’d had to move the press accreditation office outside into a trailer in the garden in order to deal with everyone”. Those days have gone she said “but I cannot even begin to guess why”.

As you enter the main lobby of the UN the first thing you see is an exhibition called “I am powerful” - but read the text below and it says “a celebration of women’s potential - and a call for action”. My heart sank again; the irony must surely be lost on the exhibition’s organisers: the wording could have been from 1946 when the CSW was first created.

As I headed off for my first two sessions called ‘Violence against Women and the girl child’ and ‘Stop Rape Now’, I thought ‘Yes, we are powerful, but we certainly do not have the power’. I suddenly thought about what would happen if this UN meeting was the Commission on the Status of Men. The journalists would surely come flocking and Valerie would be out in the the trailer like before. I for one, would queue all round the block for as long as it took for the chance to report on the status of men - and what needs to be done…

More later from the two sessions on violence against women and girls.

Jessica Reed

Isabel Hilton wrote a piece for the Guardian’s Comment is Free titled “Forgotten Women”, which questions the motives behind the CSW’s lack of coverage. You can read it here.

Just imagine that it was possible to get 4,000 women and 200 girls together, along with hundreds of NGOs and representatives of 45 governments to talk about real ways of protecting young women and girls from violence and improving the status of women. Surely such an event would be of interest?

So why, when 45 governments, 4,000 women and hundreds of NGOs do get together to focus on these issues do none of the conventional media pay the slightest attention?

Sad but true: a quick search in Google News shows less than a dozen of articles about the Commission, a good amount of them published by pro-life groups considering abortion as the “greatest crime against women and children in this generation” (and as Solana pointed out, they have active delegates at the CSW):

Millie Lace (Arkansas), Licensed Professional Counselor and Director of the National Helpline for Abortion Recovery says that if CSW is truly pro-woman and truly wants to protect women, they should call upon governments to protect girls (and boys) from the moment of conception.

We have however found good company in the blogosphere: a couple of brilliant women’s blogs have picked up openDemocracy’s efforts and commented: Women’s Space, Feminist Law Professors and the F word.

Solana Larsen

What timing. 50 protestors at a women’s march were roughed and arrested yesterday in Tehran. Read the excellent account on Global Voices. You can see their photos here. If you haven’t already, please sign the “One Million Signatures” petition of behalf of women in Iran. We need to let them know the world is watching.

The blog Women’s Space/The Margins also mentions that a group of Iranian women were denied visas to attend the CSW. I’m not sure of the context, or whether they represented the Iranian government. Either way, I wonder how many delegations may have been affected by the entry requirements of the United States. This is a recurring problem in most global meetings. I wouldn’t speculate that this was a general policy of the United States. (At least the Iranian government presumably agrees with the American on abortion)

A little trivia: In case you ever need a visa to attend a UN meeting, you should know that the application is free, unlike for other visas.

Pinar Ilkkaracan

On Friday, the informal meetings that provide the space for a discussion of the  proposed  resolutions and the conclusions have finally started. At these meeting, the  delegates representing their countries can make proposals to add, delete or revise,  agree or fight over the text. They are usually much more exciting (!) than the formal sessions.

The first informal meeting on Friday morning focused on the resolution titled “Forced and Early Marriage”, aiming at developing various strategies at the national and international levels. Turkey, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico and the EU made several proposals to strengthen the resolution. Turkey brought in a proposal to provide comprehensive sexuality education to address the needs of girls and young women regarding family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention, which was opposed by the Iranian delegate who stated that they “couldn’t support the proposal as sexuality has a lot of different meanings in Iran”.  

The Turkish delegate, a professor of public health and obstetrician-gynecologist, defended the term “sexuality education,” emphasizing that sexuality has many dimensions that include social, psychological, human and medical that reach far beyond the biological dimension - therefore the wording is exact and appropriate, and should be used.

However, there seemed to be quite a consensus among the delegates until the end of the meeting, and everybody hopes that it will go on like this.  

This isn’t directly related to the CSW, but it might give you cause to look at a map of Africa. Wait, don’t look yet. First see how many African countries you can remember in 10 minutes.

Solana Larsen

openDemocracy’s editor Isabel Hilton comments on the lack of press coverage for this year’s CSW on the Guardian website, Comment is Free. “Is Britney Spears’ shaved head or celebrities not wearing underwear more important than the fate of half the world’s population?”

Solana Larsen

Sorry to keep going on about the American stuff, but I got an email from Condoleeza Rice that I wanted to share with you (OK, it was a press release).

The US Department of State announced the appointment of three individuals to their delegation for the CSW. Who are they? Lisa Guillermin Gable of Upperville, Virginia, Darlene Bramon of Hailey, Idaho, and Pia Francesca de Solenni of Washington, D.C.

Bramon is a major fundraiser for Bush, and so is Guillermin Gable. Both are succesful business women, and Guillermin Gable is a member of Women Corporate Directors. Ooh well, that should make them qualified to take democratic global decisions on women in poverty, shouldn’t it?

The real star is Pia Francesca de Solenni. She won an award from the Vatican for her pHD thesis. Guess what it’s about.

If you think your rights as a woman are secure, you are kidding yourself.

Jessica Reed

Women UNlimited’s very own blogger Solana Larsen was interviewed for the weekly openDemocracy poDcast. In the United Nations’ hallways Solana interviewed a “girl child” - one of the 200 invited at the United Nations to discuss their situation in their own countries. A girl-ambassador of Malawi, she talks about her eagerness to go back to her school to tell her friends about what the UN can do for her and her friends.

You can listen to Solana’s report here: low resolution / high resolution , or visit our poDcast page here.