Diabolic Digest
Peace
unto woman kind
Khaled Diab
March 8th is International Women’s Day. However, this year it is planned to be more than just a symbolic gesture.
March 2000
This year’s International Women’s Day is to mark the launching of a massive worldwide campaign. Women from all round the world are banding together to send the international community a clear and powerful message.
An international public mobilisation and
publicity effort, involving over 3,000 NGOs, is being launched on March 8th
to promote The World March of Women 2000.
The slogan of the march is the elimination of poverty and violence against
women.
There will be two main rallies: the first will
be on October 15th in Washington DC, where protesters representing
the participating countries will march on the World Bank and IMF and submit
their demands. The second will be on October 17th in New York and
protestors will gather outside the UN building where they have requested an
audience with UN Secretary General Kofi Anan and to be given time on the agenda
of the UN General Assembly on the same day.
The initiative for the march originated with
the Federaton des Femmes du Quebec, who invited women’s rights activists from
around the world to attend a prelimenary session in November 1997 where the
principles of the march were agreed. The idea for the march is an extension of
the Women’s March Against Poverty, which took place in Quebec in 1995. Since
then, over 3,000 NGOs from 143 countries have come onboard and are planning
local rallies, petitions and awareness raising campaigns in the run up to the
main October marches.
The organisers of the rally admit that poverty
affects both men and women. However, they contend that it hits women the
hardest. According to Farida El-Naqash, president of the Forum for Women in
Development, “When poverty becomes acute, women are harmed the most. Out of one
billion malnourished people around the globe, 700 million are women. Often a
mother will go without to provide more food for the rest of the family. This is
despite the fact that 31% of families in Egypt are supported [solely] by
women.”
On the issue of poverty, the demands being made
include the cancellation of Third World debt and, as a temporary measure, the
dropping of the debts of the 53 poorest countries; the collection of a tax on
stock market operations to be placed into a social development fund and the
allocation of 0.7% of the GDP of wealthy countries to be given as aid to poorer
countries.
In order to make economics more humane, the
rally will call for an end to welfare cuts and the discontinuation of the
economic restructuring policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank, stating
that individual governments, according to their needs, should formulate their
own policies.
These demands are not unique and they come in
the wider context of action being taken to address the growing disparity
between rich and poor, and North and South. Take the massive protest marches in
Seattle that broke up the G7 meeting in October? 1999 or the Jubilee 2000
campaign, sponsored by key celebrities, calling for the immediate cancellation
of the poorest countries’ debts.
The World Trade Organisation with its fixation
on ‘free trade’, the World Bank and the IMF are widely perceived, especially in
the Third World, as rich men’s club. Economic reforms and restructuring
policies, although they may, in certain cases, have improved macro economic
indicators have hit societies hard.
According to the UN’s 1998 Human Development
Report, some 100 countries have experienced serious economic downturns, with
some 70-80 having per capita incomes that are lower today than they were 10 to
30 years ago. That has meant that, in developing countries, 1.3 billion people
live on less than US$1 a day.
The statistics are frightening and make
sobering reading, but, in a way, many have learnt to live with and insulate
themselves against them. Nevertheless, there is a tolerance threshold and the
spread of abject poverty, even in the advanced world, has triggered off a sense
of public revolt that has stirred many into action. Mass communications is a
double-edged sword and has thus helped start world movements on a grassroots
level.
Violence, like poverty, is not exclusively
directed against women. According to the 1998 UN Human Development Report,
regional armed conflicts, fuelled by the rampant arms trade, have affected
almost 100 million people and about 50 million have been forced to flee their
homes. The biggest victims are women and children (of whom two million have
been killed in armed conflicts over the past 10 years).
However, there are certain types of violence of
which women are predominantly the victims, such as domestic violence and rape,
especially in times of war. On the issue of violence, the rally is calling for
government recognition, in the form of legislation, that violence against women
is a human right’s abuse, and that all governments become signatories of UN
treaties and protocols denouncing violence. Furthermore, the rally is calling
for a campaign to combat the trade in women’s bodies. This includes the white
slave trade and, to a lesser extent, how women are depicted in advertising and
the media.
The Arab presence in the preliminary sessions
and involvement in the march has been minimal. Only seven Arab participants
from five countries (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon and Jordan) took part in
the preparatory sessions. “There is no way Saudi Arabia and other Gulf
countries would have taken part. The women’s civil movement in these countries
are weak. They are also very much in the state’s hands,” explains Jihan
Abu-Zeid, vice-president of the Forum for Women in Development.
Nevertheless, the Arabs involved with the
campaign are determined to have their voice heard, both within the preparatory
conference and on a wider public stage. “We [the Arab participants] had to have
a clear position on issues that were not suitable to our cultural reality... That
means that one should adopt those parts of the treaty that are useful and
applicable locally,” emphasised Abu Zeid. “We asked for modifications to be
made to the demands to make them more culturally sensitive on a local level,”
she added.
However, that was more easily said than done:
“To draw attention to the fact that there was an Arab presence at the
conference, we stood up and sang Beladi
Beladi [the Egyptian national anthem], the only song all the Arab delegates
there knew, at the top of our lungs until we had complete silence. I don’t know
quite where we got the energy from,” recalled Abu-Zeid. Moreover, they have set
up a co-ordinating body that includes NGOs from countries that were not at the
preparatory sessions and all five participating countries are planning massive
campaigns in their countries.
The main changes the Arabs pushed for was to to
highlight the fact that the demands pertaining to sexual freedom, such as the
rights of lesbians to enter the armed forces, was not practicle in the Middle
East, and to include an item pertaining to the rights of women in occupied
territories.
“We lobbied for the inclusion of an item
stating the rights of women living in occupied territories, and that [they]
should not be subjected to any abuses. Because women in occupied territories,
such as South Lebanon, the Palestinian territories or the Golan Heights, are at
risk of being assaulted, imprisoned and raped,” explained Abu-Zeid. She went on
to add, “We also lobbied for the rights of women living in countries under
sanction, which, at the time, included Libya and Iraq.”
On the domestic front, women’s NGOs are set to
start a massive national campaign that starts on March 8th and
culminates with the start of the main marches in October. “In Egypt, we have
named it the Campaign Against Poverty and Violence due to the government’s
acute sensitivity to demonstrations and protest marches. There will be a rally,
but it will be a component of this campaign,” said El-Naqash.
She went on to outline the broad framework of
the campaign, “The campaign will run on three basic levels: the local (in every
village and small town where we can mobilise support) where they will deliver
their demands to their local council. Secondly, is the governorate level...
Thirdly, on the national level, we will combine and refine the demands made in
the other two levels and present them to the People’s Assembly.”
“We will also talk those slogans and demands
made at the international level that are relevant to us, such as the right to
clean water... Our efforts are in the context of the more general demands for
the cancellation of Third World debt and the curbing of the role of the WTO.”
Those involved in the campaign across the globe
are confident that it will make a difference. “Rallies usually have longer term
objectives. They act as a wake up call to society,” stresses Abu-Zeid. “When so
many people call for the reduction of poverty and violence against women, this
puts governments in an embarrassing position.”
She expounds that “[Through public pressure] we
can utilise the international balance of power to force, say, the World Bank to
make a country’s record vis-a-vas women’s rights conditional to aid and loans.
The international community [if it chose] is capable of putting pressure on
Israel to stop its forages into the Occupied Territories. It is capable of
pressurising the US into lifting the sanctions on Iraq that are hurting
millions of women and children daily. The international community can play a
powerful supportive role to back up the UN,” she adds. Come October, we will
learn whether the international community has the willpower to fulfil its
calling.
This article appeared in the March 2000 issue
of Egypt’s Insight magazine.
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