Lesotho's Gender Minister Mathabiso Lepono. Credit: Bomoon Lee/TerraViva

By Christian Benoni

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 (IPS/TerraViva) Female migrant workers play a critical role in promoting development in their home countries, but continue to face discrimination in host nations, even ones that have policies on the books designed to protect them.

“Most of the immigrant workers are undocumented and when they seek basic services like health care, they are met with negative attitudes from health staff. Some may easily die,” Bijaya Rai Shrestha, a returned migrant from Nepal, told TerraViva.

“There are women who are forced to do sex work, subjecting them to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. It is even hard for them if they have to seek treatment,” she said.

Similar sentiments were echoed by Marieta de Vos, director of the MOSAIC Training, Service and Healing Centre for Women, whose organisation runs a small clinic in Cape Town, South Africa that has been offering services to migrant women. She sees at least 50 in a month.

“We get women who need contraceptives, ARVs or pap smears. They don’t get them at all at public facilities because they are met with negative attitudes from health workers who are already overburdened,” she observed, adding that many health workers do not have the patience to deal with migrants who cannot speak English.

In addition, there are increased cases of gender forms of racism and xenophobia against women migrant workers in South Africa, a country that, according to Vos, has a policy that bans discrimination, and guarantees protection and security of migrants.

A recent International Organisation for Migration survey conducted in the country supports this. The study, ‘Towards Tolerance, Law and Dignity: Addressing Violence Against Foreign Nationals in South Africa’, also indicates that while foreign nationals remain subject to xenophobic violence, women are the most vulnerable group.

Emphasis at the CSW meeting has been on getting governments to adhere to the United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. The international agreement, which came to force in 2003, also stresses the importance of migrants’ remittances in reducing poverty in their home countries.

U.N. studies indicate that migrant women workers contribute to the development of both sending and receiving countries – remittances from their incomes account for as much as 10 percent of the GDP in some countries.

For example, Lesotho, one of the most migration-dependant countries in the world, has over 240,000 people outside the country, most of them women, according to the gender minister, Mathabiso Lepono.

“When the women are not working as farm or domestic workers in South Africa, where they have migrated in large numbers, they are engaged in other activities like hawking or sewing, to earn more money to fight poverty in their families back home,” she said.

In many countries like Lesotho, remittances from migrant women are used to buy food, and pay for schooling and medical care, but there is also a need to help women learn to save and invest their earnings.

A U.N. study launched at the CSW, ‘Migration, Remittances and Gender-Responsive Local Government’, highlights the need for migrant women to ensure sustainability of their remittances through investment. It calls on governments to ensure protection of women migrant workers, and to provide policies that “link remittances with sustainable livelihoods”, at the same time building social capital.

Margot Wallström, special representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, says that women's security is the best measure of national security. UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Marguerite A. Suozzi

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 (IPS/TerraViva) There is little disagreement among United Nations member states that involving women in peace processes is crucial to their success.

But despite of this consensus, manifested in the unanimous support of Security Council Resolution 1325, passed in October 2000 and which addresses the impact of war on women, challenges remain for the international community to debunk many prevailing attitudes about gender, and to achieve gender parity in conflict prevention, resolution, and peacekeeping efforts.

In January, the gender statistics of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) indicated that women constitute just over three percent of peacekeeping personnel in its 19 missions, employing nearly 97,000 male military and police personnel, versus less than 3,000 female personnel.

In Nepal, women have been largely left out of peace negotiations since 2006, according to Bandana Rana, the regional coordinator of the South Asian campaign for gender equality and the executive president of Sati Organisation, an NGO working on violence against women and children in Nepal.

After Nepal’s 13-year civil war, where women constituted approximately one-third of the armed rebel army, it was not until the last stage of drafting Nepal’s new constitution that four women were included in the drafting committee.

“All the peace agreements and peace negotiations and the talks that took place between different political parties did not see women’s participation at all,” Rana said.

“Women were more or less perceived as passive victims of war, rather than active agents of change, where they had actually gathered and got a lot of knowledge and expertise and experience,” she said, “That was not recognised.”

At the most rudimentary level, sustained threats to women’s dignity and security hinder their active participation in the peace process.

In her first presentation as Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Margot Wallström cited the Democratic Republic of Congo as the epicentre of the crisis of sexual violence against women.

 ”My message to the guardians of global public opinion in the global peace and security sphere: rape is never inevitable, it’s a crime of concern to the international community. And the U.N. estimates that over 200,000 women have been raped during 12 years of war in the DRC,” she said.

“In my view, women’s security is the best measure of national security,” said Wallström.

“Strategies to protect women, are also strategies to protect women’s participation. If women are unable to safely access fields, or go to the well, marketplaces, or polling booths, if girl’s are unable to safely get to school, then social-economic recovery will be stalled.”

Maria Suarez (center) after being presented with an award for her activism.

Credit: Stop the Traffik website

By Chryso D’Angelo

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 (IPS/TerraViva) — Maria Suarez was 15 years old when she crossed the Mexican border and entered the U.S. legally to live with her sister in the states. A few months later, she was a slave.

“A man bought me for 200 dollars,” Maria told TerraViva. She was lured to his house by a woman promising work. “He told me that if I ever tried to leave, he’d kill my family. He said he knew witchcraft, then he cut my long hair and made dolls and put them around the house and in the cemetery. He said the only way I would get out was dead…and I believed him.”

After enduring five years of rape, torture, and emotional turmoil, Maria’s captor was killed by a neighbour, but she was arrested for the crime and sentenced to 25 years to life. 

There is no way of knowing exactly how many people like Maria are bought and sold on the black market. According to Soroptimist International, A Global Voice for Women, the numbers are estimated to be between 12.3 and 27 million.

However, representatives of the group sent a message of hope on Monday at a conference titled “Stop Trafficking – 44……Action, Advocacy and Progress Around the World Through Local and Global Efforts” during the 54th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, which runs from Mar. 1 to 12.

One sizeable triumph against human trafficking is the improvement of legislation, according to Leigh Ellwood-Brown, president of Soroptimist International for the Federation of the South West Pacific.

The number of countries that have implemented the U.N. Protocol Against Trafficking in Persons has doubled over the last few years, according to the United Nations Global Report on Human Trafficking, 2009. The number of convictions against traffickers has also risen.

“Those countries that have implemented the appropriate legislation are moving the trafficking and Commercial Sex Industry (CSI) out of their borders,” Ellwood-Brown told TerraViva.

Maria Suarez agrees that law enforcement has come a long way since her capture in 1976. The 50-year-old was freed in 2004 after her case was reopened and she was acquitted in a new trial. Today, she speaks to groups throughout California that include victims of trafficking, police, fire officials, and district attorneys in an effort to educate.

Ellwood-Brown stresses the importance of women sharing their stories, as long as they feel safe to speak out. She referred to the success of a Soroptimist programme in Thailand during which former slaves returned to their villages to talk to men and women about the harsh realities of human trafficking.

“The presence of these women in the villages sent a powerful message because there was a visual – a real, human story about what traffickers do to women – to that woman standing right there,” Ellwood-Brown told TerraViva.

But, there is still a long road ahead. Ellwood-Brown noted the growing organised crime network run by both male and female traffickers, which are becoming even more deceptive.

“If a victim of trafficking is offered ‘release’, it is usually on condition to go home to their town/village and recruit a specific number of new members,” she said. “They usually have blackmailed them with the security & lives of their families.”

Norma Ramos, Esq., executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, added that many programmes strive to generate income for women by teaching them a craft or skill so they can avoid prostitution to survive, but it’s not enough to fix the problem.

“Ending poverty helps, but there will always be a demand and there will always be greed,” she said. “So as long as that triangle exists, there will be trafficking.” Ramos called for more people to come forward and speak out.

Maria Suarez is answering that call – and taking it seriously. “My dream is to make videos in different languages and go to villages where people don’t know about human trafficking,” she says. “I want to do something productive for people who are in the same shoes I was in thirty years ago when all my goals and dreams as a teenager were taken away. I want girls to have a good life and not be like me. The only way I can keep living is to keep working and educating others to make sure this ends.”

Women wearing the traditional Hijab attend the Commission on the Status of Women conference at U.N. headquarters. Credit:Bomoon Lee/IPS

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4, 2010 (IPS) – The status of women in a predominantly male-chauvinistic Arab world continues to fluctuate from one extreme to another.

The political and cultural life in the region, by and large, has been characterised by the good, the bad and the ugly.

On the one hand are child marriages and honour killings (deemed barbaric) in the rigidly conservative countries, and on the other, are the appointment and/or election of women to high office (hailed as impressive success stories) in the relatively liberal countries.

“Women can already been seen in greater numbers in our parliament, ministries, judiciary, armed forces and police, and they have also assumed very senior positions in both public office and the private sector,” says Hala Latouf, head of the Jordanian delegation to the Commission on the Status of Women.

She also proudly notes that Jordan now has women governors, mayors, judges and ambassadors, in addition to women chief executive officers (CEOs) in key industries and businesses, consultative bodies and chambers of commerce and industry.

“The new draft law on elections is expected to allocate even greater number of (parliamentary) seats for women,” she declared.

On an equally positive note, Dr. Jouhaina Sultan Seif El-Issa, vice chairperson of Qatar’s supreme council for family affairs, points out that Qatari business women account for more than 50 percent of the total equity investors and dealers in the Doha Stock Market.

At the same time, the number of women-owned companies in Qatar now amount to nearly 1,500.

She said Qatar has established two Foundations: one, for child and women protection, and the other, to combat human trafficking.

Still, says Nadya Khalife of Human Rights Watch, most governments in the region discriminate against women in personal status laws which govern their everyday lives, including issues of marriage, divorce, custody and guardianship, and inheritance.

In an interview with IPS, Khalife said that some provisions in penal laws also allow for perpetrators of so-called honour crimes to receive a mitigated sentence or be exempt from punishment based on “family honour”.

“These crimes are typically committed in cases of adultery or sex outside of marriage,” she said.

And some countries in the region, she pointed out, do not have laws to protect women from domestic violence.

“Women are often not encouraged to report abuses to police and find difficulties in seeking redress,” she added.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Thursday that most of the 5,000 honour killings reported to take place every year around the world do not make the news, nor do the other myriad forms of violence inflicted on women and girls by husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles and other male and sometimes even female family members.

“In the name of preserving family honour, women and girls are shot, stoned, burned, buried alive, strangled, smothered and knifed to death with horrifying regularity,” she added.

Although she did not identify any countries by name, Pillay said the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that in a number of countries domestic legal systems, including through discriminatory laws, still fully or partially exempt individuals guilty of honour killings from punishment.

“Perpetrators may even be treated with admiration and given special status within their communities,” she added.

A study released by the Washington-based Freedom House early this week singles out 15 countries in the region as having recorded “some gains in women’s rights” over the past five years.

Kuwait, Algeria and Jordan saw the most significant progress while Iraq, Yemen and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories – enduring internal conflicts and/or religious extremism – are the only countries to record overall decline.

Nadia Hijab, an independent analyst who works on gender, human rights, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, told IPS that Arab women are constantly making progress in securing political, economic, and social rights – but it is slow and incremental.

The obstacles are huge: women’s rights are tied to the struggle for democracy, defining the role of religion in the state, and the drive for equitable development, she said.

“That there is progress is a testament to the increasingly sophisticated and determined efforts of women’s groups that are pushing the boundaries of debate in all these areas,” she said.

Hijab said that as in many other parts of the world, the key is recognition that women are equal partners within the family and under the law.

This is why it is such a success when women gain the right to grant their nationality to their husbands and children, as they have in Algeria: it is recognition of their equal status at home and in the public sphere.

Similarly, the fact that there are women judges in Morocco and Lebanon sends a very powerful message in a region where some countries still consider women legal minors, Hijab declared.

She said the region is also heavily impacted by internal and cross-border conflicts that set women back.

In Lebanon, progress made by women’s groups ground to a halt recently when the country was in a political stalemate over the election of a president and formation of a government.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, gains women made in political development and economic empowerment have been set back as Palestinians struggle against the occupying Israeli forces’ encroachment on their lands and rights, Hijab said.

(END)

A mother comforts her child as he receives tetanus and diphtheria vaccinations provided by the World Health Organisation. Credit: UN Photo/Sophia Paris

By Marguerite A. Suozzi

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 (IPS/TerraViva) Women in Haiti are more vulnerable than ever to attacks on their dignity and gender-based violence after the massive Jan.  12 earthquake crippled the already struggling nation. Continue Reading

Taina Bien-Aimé heads Equality Now, which reports that more than 25 countries have either repealed or amended laws that were clearly discriminatory against women. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen

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UNIFEM Executive Director Ines Alberdi says the fund has channeled 30 million dollars to projects that combat gender violence. Credit:UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 1, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – The 45-member Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), presiding over one of the largest gatherings of women at the United Nations, listened Monday to dozens of speakers spelling out the successes and failures of gender empowerment worldwide.
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Secretary-General Addresses Event on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment. UN Photo:Paulo Filgueiras

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 18, 2010 (IPS) – The statistics relating to the world’s socially and economically-distressed women are staggering.
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Since 2000, gender equality and women’s rights advocates have been saying that progress on normative frameworks and agreements has been steady, but that implementation has lagged far behind.

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By Charles Fromm

WASHINGTON, Feb 4, 2010 (IPS) – The U.S. House and Senate introduced new legislation Thursday that addresses the plight of women around the world who are victims of violence.
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