DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES WOMEN TO RECOMMIT TO REALIZATION OF EQUAL RIGHTS OF MEN AND WOMEN AS ENSHRINED IN CHARTER

WOM/1039
5 March 1998

International Women's Day Panel Focuses on Women and Human Rights

Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette today urged women to recommit themselves to ensure that the equal rights of men and women as enshrined in the Charter became a reality. She was opening a panel discussion on "Women and Human Rights", held at Headquarters to commemorate International Women's Day (8 March).

The United Nations had set a common standard to measure progress in achieving a balance between men and women, she said. It had helped shift national and international attention to equal rights for women as a way of addressing global problems, such as sustainable development. Investing in women led to higher economic growth, better health and higher education for entire nations. Achieving the goals of the women's movement required a truly global partnership of solidarity.

Participants in the panel, which was moderated by the Assistant Secretary-General for Public Information, Samir Sanbar, were the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson; the Chairperson on the Commission on the Status of Women, Patricia Flor; Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, Angela King; the General Secretary, World Young Women's Christian Association, Musimbi Kanyoro; and the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Radhika Coomaraswamy.

Mrs. Robinson said it was important to make the link between violence against women and their social and economic rights. Many of the women who knew nothing about International Women's Day were the victims of gender- based violence in the home and the community. "We are the fortunate ones, free to be here and express ourselves. We should recommit ourselves to those who were not so fortunate and help them to secure their future", she added.

During a question-and-answer session, several participants voiced their support and concern about the human rights situation of women worldwide, particularly in areas of conflict. Several participants congratulated the panellists for putting a human face on women's suffering. Others spoke out about the oppression and suffering of women in their own countries and continents -- including in India, Africa, Afghanistan, Algeria, Jordan, Iran, and Iraq -- and drew attention to the devastating effects on women of military occupation and aggression, and economic sanctions.

During the event, Mr. Sanbar was presented with a certificate of appreciation by non-governmental organizations. He said that one of the biggest challenges facing his department had been the opening up of the United Nations -- not just for the dissemination of information -- but conceptually for the advancement of causes such as women's human rights. Opening the Organization had not been a job, but a commitment and one which he would take with him wherever he went. The very important role of non- governmental organizations and the media in promoting the work of the
Organization process should be fully taken into account.

He said that the present convergence of important events concerning women's rights and human rights provided a special opportunity to show the world that women's rights were human rights, and that the problems faced by women worldwide lay at the heart of the global agenda. Until those rights were achieved, the world's most difficult problems could not be solved.

Statements

LOUISE FRECHETTE, Deputy Secretary-General, said that International Women's Day was an occasion to take stock of where women were, to celebrate what had been achieved thus far and for a recommitment to the pursuit of goals until they were fully met. The movement of women's rights was one of the most momentous in the history of humankind. The relationship between nongovernment organizations and governments was often adversarial. It need not be so. Achieving the goals of the women's movement required the building of a truly global partnership of solidarity, a partnership which came alive at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing.

This year marked the fifth anniversary of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, she said. That Conference was a watershed in the recognition of women's rights as human rights and human rights as women's rights. Violence against women was a human rights issue. With the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, the world saw the first truly comprehensive plan on 12 areas of critical concern to women's advancement. Non-governmental organizations were instrumental in crafting sections on women's rights in a process that generated a new international sisterhood. There was no going back from the Platform for Action.

The United Nations had long helped set a common standard by which to measure progress in achieving a balance between men and women, she said. The continuous advocacy and analysis by the United Nations helped shift national and international attention to equal rights for women as a means of addressing global problems, such as sustainable development. Investing in women led to higher economic growth, better health and higher education for entire nations. It had been said that to educate a boy meant educating a human being. Educating a girl, was educating a family. It was time for women to recommit themselves to ensuring that equal rights of men and women as enshrined in the Charter became a reality. Towards that goal, inspiration could be once more awakened by the landmarks achieved at Vienna and Beijing. Everyone must work together to tell the world that the advancement of women was the advancement of all humankind. MARY ROBINSON, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said she wished to mark International Women's Day by speaking about the link between the issues of violence against women and the economic and social rights of women. Many women did not know about Women's Day. They were the victims of gender-based violence which took many forms. Violence against women in the family included battering and physical and psychological abuse, the most common form of violence. It also included sexual abuse and incest against girls, violence associated with dowries, marital rape -- which few countries had laws against -- and female genital mutilation. Violence in the community included sexual harassment and intimidation in the work place, rape and violence associated with forced prostitution. Violence against women by the State included rape as an instrument of war, gender-based violence by police, torture of women prisoners and violence against refugees and internally displaced women.

She said as the former President of Ireland she had supported rape crisis centres in her country. Recently in Cambodia, she had seen the effects of violence against women working in sex brothels. She had spoken with a 15year-old girl who believed she was coming to Phnom Phen to work in a clothing factory, but was forced into prostitution until she managed to escape. There were thousands and thousands of young women in such positions around the world and they should be on everyone's mind on Women's Day. In 1992, in Somalia, she had seen women at the food centres with their babies. In the United States the death penalty had been carried out recently against a woman, and there were issues regarding women in detention and those of indigenous women. The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) had been carrying out very good programmes against violence against women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The question facing women today was how to ensure their social and economic rights, she continued. They were looking to the Commission on the Status for Women and other bodies for benchmarks and practical guidelines. Talk of a special rapporteur on the economic and social rights of women could be very beneficial. Women in the United Nations had made significant contributions. The Office of Communications and Public Information had reached the goal of fifty-fifty gender parity at the Professional level. However, it would be difficult to reach overall parity within the Organization by the year 2000 without changes and increased efforts. "We are the fortunate ones, free to be here and express ourselves. We should recommit ourselves to those who were not so fortunate and help them to secure their future", she concluded.

PATRICIA FLOR, Chairperson, Commission on the Status of Women, asked how much progress had been achieved since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 50 years ago. Trafficking in women was a form of modern slavery, and at the brink of a new century, that phenomenon was on the rise. It was likely that the incidences of violence against women were also rising. The Charter had also embodied the principle of non- discrimination against women, but had it really been implemented? There was clearly a long way to go to achieve that objective.

She said that the Commission had played a key role in advancing and empowering women. The Convention on All Forms of Discrimination against Women was a key achievement; the Beijing Platform for Action was another. The Commission's role was to facilitate and promote the implementation of the Platform. The principles of equality had been in place for decades. It was time to go forward with action-oriented and concrete proposals, and the Commission was dedicated to that path.

The current session of the Commission was discussing the following four critical areas -- the human rights of women, the girl child, women and armed conflict, and violence against women, she said. It would determine how to translate the spirit of Beijing into the next century and how to evaluate the progress made so far. A question that had been discussed concerned the need for a convention to eliminate violence against women. The dominant culture of international human rights instruments did not address women's concerns, and often viewed human rights through men's eyes. Specific women's issues were lost in that process. Women's rights should be placed on the agenda explicitly, not only implicitly.

She said that while both men and women faced restrictions on the enjoyment of their human rights derived from the State, women faced additional restrictions derived from systematic discrimination, and implicit, non-written rules imposed by society and by family members. Until just five years ago in her own country, Germany, a husband's agreement was required for the wife to take up a profession.

A combination of economic and social factors, as well as the implicit image of girls and boys, had led parents to give priority to educating their sons, she said. The tragedy of women was that in the past they had helped created those roles and images that now imprisoned them. All legal and regulatory frameworks had to be changed in order to promote real equality. Women must set themselves free by changing their awareness and self-image, by knowing their rights and claiming those rights. Men needed to perceive the benefit of gender equality as well, leading to the creation of a society that was less violent. Women's human rights could not flourish without the creation of an enabling environment. The year 2000 should serve as the turning point to forge a new social contract between men and women. It was unclear what such a society would look like, but it was clear that it could not be developed solely within the confines of the United Nations.

ANGELA KING, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, spoke about the roles of the Commission on the Status of Women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, in promoting women's human rights. She said the Commission, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary last year, had proved its first concern of establishing in international law the norms of equality between men and women. It had set up the political and conceptual climate for international standards and norms that formed a critical base to protect and legislate for women's human rights.

The Convention, which came into force in 1981, was a veritable bill of rights for women, she continued. The Committee, established under the Convention to monitor progress, had proven that legal instruments alone did not make change. It took time, effort, creativity and careful systematic monitoring. The Convention had been very successful in encouraging States parties to adopt a wide range of legislation, to eliminate discrimination and to advance women's rights. However, much was needed to bring a great deal of that legislation from a de jure to a de facto realization. Recently, nongovernmental organizations and civil society had played an increasing role in setting national agendas and fostering the type of climate to realize those targets. Hopefully, women's organizations, hand in hand with human rights organizations and other groups, such as parliamentarians and regional intergovernmental groups, would encourage their members that had not done so to ratify the Convention or report on a regular basis.

She said the Convention had been used to draft affirmative action legislation all over the world. It had allowed activists in the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court to press for reaffirmation of the 1949 Geneva Convention's special protection of women in armed conflict and for the recognition of rape as a war crime. It had also sparked the move towards micro-credit to empower women economically. It had spurred the work on the optional protocol to the Convention, which the Commission just might complete by next week. A protocol would mean that women as individuals or in groups would have the right to petition the Committee with their human rights complaints. It had underlined the indivisibility of all human rights.

Finally, she called on participants to remember women who were suffering from the deprivation of human rights, particularly in countries where their rights were deliberately reduced or eliminated -- such as women and girls in Afghanistan.

MUSIMBI KANYORO, General Secretary, World Young Women's Christian Association, emphasized the importance for young women to participate in forums and leadership positions. The United Nations, governments, agencies and non-governmental organizations should ensure that young women had a place to speak out about what would make a difference in their lives. Both men's and women's organizations excluded young women from their structures.

It had been five years since women advocated the inclusion of women's rights in human rights instruments, she said. Yet, the human rights of women, especially young women and the girl child, were not yet an integral part of human rights. As such, the relentless burden of poverty on women continued its vicious cycle, especially on the girl child, and violence against women continued to make its mark. What was most important right now was to share those practices and programmes that had sustained efforts in the promotion of women's rights. She highlighted some of those programmes that had aimed to build young women's self-esteem and educate them about their own rights.

Continuing, she said that young women needed to be trained in leadership in order to give them a voice to enable them to stand on their own. They needed training that removed the element of fear and empowered them to find ways to counter cultural practices which oppressed them.

RADHIKA COOMARASWAMY, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, said human rights and women's rights were the two most important movements of the twentieth century. Until the 1960s, the women's movement had focused on such issues as improving women's employment and educational opportunities and their health care. In the late 1980s, the focus had turned to such issues as their human rights and violence against them. Similarly, the human rights movement had begun to focus on social and economic rights and the rights of marginalized groups. The women's movement had energized the human rights movement. It had focused attention on violence against women by non-States actors -- those in the home and the community. It had made the State accountable for taking action against perpetrators of violence against women. States now had to take "due diligence" in dealing with violence against women -- the duty to ensure women were not battered in the home and raped. Women's rights were challenging the very concept of human rights.

The push for both human rights and women's rights were grass-roots movements, which was part of their strength, she continued. Women's Day was a time for reflection. As a Special Rapporteur, she had been transformed not only by her work, but in the way she saw life and the capacity for human beings to endure pain and suffering. In Rwanda, she had visited a church where a glass cage contained the skeleton of a women with a pole thrust up her vagina -- it was next to the most beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary. The skeleton was a vivid testimony to the terrible effect of ethnic violence in Rwanda. In Poland, she had met a young girl who had been forced into a life of brutal prostitution and had only gained the confidence to approach the police after the birth of her child. In Brazil, she had spoken with a woman whose husband had tied her to a chair and beaten her. The woman had finally entered a secret shelter, because even her own family was frightened of the man. In South Africa, a professional women was raped on a street as people passed by. In Japan, she had listened to hundreds of former "comfort women", now in their seventies, who were seeking to regain their dignity by bringing attention to their plight.

The human rights movement posed many ethical problems, she said. The problem facing those working in the field was how to listen to the violations and problems and work to right them without causing more pain, and without being caught up in the pornography of violence. The problem facing human rights workers was "how to reconcile what we hear with what we do". A new United Nations language and a culture of sensitivity were needed in dealing with human rights which matched the growing dominance of the language of efficiency.

Exchange of Views

During the exchange of views that followed the presentation, several participants voiced their support and concern about the human rights situation of women worldwide, particularly in areas of conflict. Several participants congratulated the panellists for putting human faces on women's suffering. Others spoke out about the oppression and suffering of women in their own countries and continents -- including in India, Africa, Afghanistan, Algeria, Jordan, Iran and Iraq. They drew attention to the devastating effects on women of military occupation and aggression, and economic sanctions.

A speaker from Africa decried the traditional means of conflict resolution, stressing that conflicts were resolved not just in the Security Council but also on the ground. The United Nations must continue the struggle to ensure that African daughters would inherit a beautiful future.

Also highlighted was the gender-specific violence experienced by Algerian women who were habitually raped, and who had their breasts cut off and foetuses ripped out of wombs. Despite the latest election in Iran and the excitement by European countries and the United States that the situation of Iranian women had improved, women, in reality, had experienced an increased number of executions by stoning, among other violent acts.

Another participant, also a schoolteacher, said that despite repeated calls for access to education, she often met young people, particularly young women, who were forced to leave school because they could not afford to stay. Many countries only gave lip service to their commitment to education. The reality on the ground was that it was becoming increasingly difficult for young people to receive an education. Some young girls even resorted to prostitution to be able to pay for school.

Ms. KING, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, said that the Commission on the Status of Women was currently reviewing a report containing an analysis of 91 national action plans. Most of them gave very high priority to education and had set such goals as national priorities. Moreover, yesterday was a historic day in the Commission, which heard statements by two girls for the first time in its 51year history. Their participation had enriched the debate and had advanced the idea for a revised agenda.

Ms. KANYORO, General Secretary, World Young Women's Christian Association, added that education not only involved building schools and kindergartens, it also involved the invaluable work being done by nongovernmental organizations at the grass-roots level to educate communities. Those organizations were hoping to convene an international conference in Geneva on the role of informal education.