IWA

First thoughts and figures on the integration of a gender perspective

at the conclusion of the first two rounds of the

Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council

 

The Human Rights Council has just ended the examination of the first 32 states selected for this first round of this new Council mechanism, which is intended to be a peer review of the Human rights situation in ALL States.

It would be interesting to share some preliminary facts and figures which were gathered by the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights (CLADEM) for a study they are undertaking.

These provide a first snapshot of the integration of a gender perspective in the first two rounds of the UPR which just ended last Friday (13 June).

• Women represent more than half of the world’s population and yet only in 10 of the 32 delegations of States under Review made up at least 50% of the total number of delegates.
• In average, only 35% of the total number of interventions in the interactive dialogue made reference to women’s rights in the first round but in the second round the percentage reached 43%.
• Regarding the quality of interventions, there was a large amount of very broad references praising the State under Review for the progress made in the situation of women. Violence against women was the issue that attracted the highest number of mentions [1] (152), followed by trafficking (79)[2] and laws that discriminate against women (74)[3].
• Generally, economic and social rights were less prominent: the right most mentioned (right to work) was raised only 27 times in both rounds.
• There was a deafening silence on reproductive and sexual rights, an issue that was raised in practically every civil society compilation but remained very marginal in the Working Group - a group of 3 States selected by lottery to examine the report of the Sate under review[4] and propose recommendations.

Member and observer states need to seriously reflect on this situation and ensure better coverage in the next UPR rounds if they wish to be credible.

Another NGO concern is the repeated reference to women as a ‘vulnerable group’ in need of protection, placed together with children and the disabled in one sentence.

These three groups face totally different situations and need to be dealt with treated in different ways to increase the quality of the questions during the review process; this would surely generate a better set of recommendations to the States under review and ensure a more appropriate treatment of the problems faced by each of these groups.

The performance of Slovenia[5] need to be highlighted and celebrated as that State has made the highest number of interventions on women’s rights, covering also a remarkable broad range of thematic issues.

All member and observer states should be encouraged to fully integrate gender issues in the next UPR rounds, through well-thought-out interventions that genuinely contribute to advance the rights of women and girls in every country.

Finally, it would also be a definite improvement if all states could achieve gender parity in their own delegations during the future UPR rounds.

Here is the calendar of the UPR Review  (2008 in the first column).

All IAW members are strongly encouraged to ensure they participate in their national UPR process as States are REQUIRED to consult NGOs.

 

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[1] 73 in the first round, 79 in the second

[2] 42 in the first, 37 in the second

[3] 20 in the first, 54 in the second

[4] 4 mentions in the first round, 7 in the second

[5] 31 interventions in the first round (the 2^nd state was Canada with 12); 50 interventions in the second (Canada was again second with 25).

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY MAKE THE DIFFERENCE!

WE ARE THE DIFFERENCE!

Some ground has been broken here because the following is a joint statement between INGOs, such as the IAW, in consultation with ECOSOC and a coalition of newer organisations and groups outside of the ECOSOC framework.

In any case the message is a powerful one and it is a truthful one. All our members should be made aware of the great challenges that lie ahead of us, to get the Member States of the FAO, of the World Food Programme and the International Food and Agriculture Development Programme to change their policies as soon as possible, from a policy which provides genetically modified (GM) Food Aid, GM Agriculture totally dependent upon pesticides etc. (this type of agriculture now includes crops for biofuels) and providing credit to farmers only on the basis that they accept GM agricultural practices.

Without our help and support in an active way under our Plan of Action hungry women and their families. will continue to live “hand to mouth.” The numbers will increase. Can we accept this?

Now is the Time for Food Sovereignty

Platform for Collective Action

Forum Terra Preta, Rome June 4, 2008

The serious and urgent food and climate crises are being used by political and economic elites as opportunities to entrench corporate control of world agriculture and the ecological commons.  At a time when chronic hunger, dispossession of food providers and workers, commodity and land speculation, and global warming are on the rise, governments, multilateral agencies and financial institutions are offering proposals that will only deepen these crises through more dangerous versions of policies that originally triggered the current situation.  Actions by some governments and top UN leadership at the High Level Conference on World Food Security, Climate Change and Bio-Energy (the FAO Summit) constitute an assault on small scale food providers[1] (among whom women are in the forefront) and the natural commons.

At a similar food and energy crisis in 1974, political and economic elites fragmented existing international institutions at the time, thereby disempowering peoples and governments to respond with knowledge and practices appropriate to local contexts. World Bank-IMF designed structural adjustment programs laid the conditions for recurring food crises through liberalization policies that undermined local and national capacity for food self-sufficiency and appropriate policies.

Since then, food crises have been exploited by agribusiness companies, local and global elites to concentrate control over farming, fisheries, land and territory, water, forests, seeds, breeds, transportation, distribution and energy sources. The rapidly emerging and cumulative climate crisis is being exploited by the same elites through market transactions such as carbon trading and emission offsets, and profitable techno-fixes such as agro-fuels and patented technologies, including synthetic biology.  Some multilateral agencies are creating policy conditions to enable corporate conglomerations across energy, agribusiness, bio-technology and automotive industries.

Today, the corporate sector is far more powerful than 30 years go and controls a large part of global food and energy systems.  As it stands now, the UN High Level Task Force on the Food Crisis will facilitate further convergence of the most powerful actors from private finance, technology and business sectors to extract profits in the name of crisis management.  Wisdom of proven sustainable small-scale food provision, and the findings of the IAASTD[2] that call for a significant move away from research on chemically-dependent agriculture towards more agro-ecological, non-proprietary practices, are being deliberately ignored.

We, more than 100 organizations - coming from 5 continents - participating at Forum Terra Preta[3], held in parallel with the FAO Summit, propose a different, sustainable way of addressing persisting ecological and food crises and climate change and forge solutions that strengthen our capacities, valorise women’s centrality in food production, protect our ecologies, and reclaim our communities, societies and economies. We reject the corporate industrial and energy-intensive model of production and consumption that is the basis of continuing crises. We affirm that the paradigm of Peoples’ Food Sovereignty forms the guiding framework for our future actions and the survival of humanity.  Our analyses and positions are already articulated in numerous declarations and calls for action.[4]

We commit to the following actions:

1. Never compromise the Right to Food.

 2. Establish small-holder agro-ecological farming, fishing and pastoralism as the foundation of food provision, soil carbon regeneration, restoration of natural and farm habitats for carbon sequestration and water security and management of the climate change emergency, in particular supporting certified and uncertified organic farming.

3. Resist corporate control of food and agriculture by:

• Combating financial speculation and futures trading on food;
• Ensuring that the UN Special Rapporteur and other relevant international mechanisms take action against all violations of the right to food;
• Continue to build our capacities to fight Free Trade Agreements;
• Developing solidarity campaigns amongst social movements and other allies;

 4. Capture adaptation and mitigation funds for low-carbon, sustainable small holder food production, and ensure that these funds do not contribute to violation of the right to food. In particular insist on government and multilateral financing for small-scale food providers.

 5. Include agriculture that supports food sovereignty in the framework of future climate change negotiations, particularly the post-2012 Kyoto commitments being negotiated in 2008 in Poland and 2009 in Denmark. At the same time we will build our alliances at the January 2009 World Social Forum.

6. Promote and push for comprehensive agrarian reform as a prerequisite to protecting our lands, territories, water, biodiversity and knowledge.  Especially:

• Affirm agricultural workers’ rights under ILO Convention 118;
• Oppose all institutions, policies, corporations and the underlying paradigm that threaten the rights of access to land and water among small scale food providers, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, youth and the rights of workers;

• Resist the commoditization, privatization and speculation of the natural commons;
• Promote and protect the rights of women recognizing their critical contribution as food providers and strongly support the right to access land for youth.

7. Organize against the production and export of agro-fuels as promoted and controlled by the corporate sector and facilitated by some governments and multilateral agencies, including at proposed international conferences for example in Brazil (November 2008), as well as in future climate change conferences, in Poland and Denmark.

8. Engage with national governments and  multilateral agencies to support policies that strengthen the right to food sovereignty and the right to adequate food, including:

• Educational work with local populations, schools and policy makers;
• Engagement at the international level with supportive institutions and instruments (for example, the voluntary guidelines on the Right to Food and the office of the High Commission on Human Rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Commission on Sustainable Development, the IAASTD, etc.)

9. We will chart a new model of international food and agriculture governance whose central purpose is to promote and advance food sovereignty. To this end, we will provide collective input to the FAO conference on the Independent External Evaluation at the end of this year, and monitor the outcomes and recommendations.

Our immediate tasks are to:

• l Demand that governments pursue justice for the victims of the food emergency, by bringing to account, through criminal proceedings, corporations and institutions (including governments) whose actions, profiteering from agricultural inputs and products, have denied communities their right to food.
• l Set up a Commission on Food Sovereignty, under the auspices of the United Nations, constituted by representatives of governments and organizations of fisher folk, peasant and small-scale farmers, pastoralists and Indigenous Peoples, to identify, document and advance collective strategies for solving the food and climate crises.
• l We will expand our abilities to build collective knowledge, analysis, and our capacity to make change and organize ourselves to monitor the outcomes of this FAO Summit.

Small-scale food producers are feeding the planet and we demand respect and support to continue. Only Food Sovereignty can offer long-term, sustainable, equitable and just solutions to the urgent food and climate crises.

 

THERE WILL BE NO SOLUTION TO THE CLIMATE AND FOOD CRISES WITHOUT US!

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[1]     These include women and men, peasant and family farmers, pastoralists, fisher folk, forest-dwellers, Indigenous Peoples, agricultural workers and migrants, and other food providers on every continent.

[2]     International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development

[3]     Terra Preta (named for the “black soil” in Portuguese, which is the incredibly fertile soil created by Indigenous Peoples in central Amazonia.  Even today it continues to regenerate itself though no research has been able to uncover how this happens) is organized by and represents social movements, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations and civil society organizations, supported by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty.

[4]     See for example, Declaration of Nyeleni 27 February 2007 and No More Failures-as-Usual!; www.foodsovereignty.org

Word just arrived from Frieda Werden, Spoken Word Coordinator (CJSF Radio) via Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt (Barrister, Human Rights Lawyer and resource member of the IAW Commission on Violence against Women) that UN Radio is wishing to pull the plug on the program Women from the English service.  There is no other program focused on women coming out of UN media.  It can be found for streaming and downloading on the website http://radio.un.org/
Women has been going for decades, but the UN has starved it back.  It’s been down to 14 minutes every 2 weeks, or even less, for ages - that is not enough.  If the program were longer and weekly, it would be easy to schedule, and Werden, herself a radio maker, feels sure many more stations would air it regularly.

A tremendous amount is happening in the UN involving and affecting women, but nowadays campus media, community media, and women’s media are denied press passes to cover press conferences and events put on by the UN.

The contact for your letters of feedback or support is: Ms Diane Bailey, Chief of the English Language Unit  United Nations Radio
United Nations, Room S-850F New York, NY 10017  baileyd@un.org

Naturally IWA has a reaction to such news.  For years informative and outspoken radio programming on women’s issues has been cut, even as it has attracted a following.  I remember wistfully the useful Everywoman programme of the BBC World Service, shuffled from time slot to time slot until it was finally discontinued.  Other programmes (for example Mona Lisa on television in Germany) have lost their edge and become simple magazines for everyone instead of for women in specific.  In the case of the UN, Bettina Corke, a media expert and IAW’s representative at the FAO in Rome, has made a most succinct response to this and other issues plaguing the UN in its response to women’s situation in the world as well as in the organisation.

“The social, political and educational advancement of women has been obstructed by the BAD practices put in place by the so called U.N. “reform packages”, first put out by Boutros Boutros Gali and then entrenched by Kofi Annan and agreed upon by various UN General Assemblies.

The Institute for Training & Research on the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) was the first developmental Institute set up by Women at the UN.  It was the first in a third world country and the first to look at the newer political issues for women emerging throughout the world.  It was set up by WOMEN at the First World Conference in Mexico City.  The UN decided that it should be one of the first examples of downsizing of an instrument set up by women to advance the Cause of Women.  INSTRAW was mismanaged and misled by the UN headquarters to the point of elimination by the UN throughout the 1980s…now it is to all intents and purposes inoperative in the Dominican Republic.

The second onslaught came when it was decided to move the Division for the Advancement of Women from New York to Vienna… and then back again to New York in the male game of host country politics.  Most of this, so-called budget saving and consolidation was done at the behest of the one remaining superpower of the 1990s.  A superpower which is one of the few countries which has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women CEDAW (at the 2002 meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, the leader of this country’s delegation said that she believed that CEDAW spread Socialism because it advocated that women work outside of the home… ) and YET at every meeting in which the crucial issues of most importance to women on matters of health, freedom of movement, education, etc. are being debated and voted upon this superpower insists on playing a leading role in the outcomes of the meeting.  This usually means a stalemate or a continuation of the “status quo” of inadequate implementation of our Plan of Actions at the UN and national levels.  As an internationalist it saddens me to have to write this… but I can back up all these comments with documentation.

Since the non-acceptance of the New Information Order of 1975 and the downsizing of UNESCO it has become quite clear that the setting in place of effective, well-funded UN information outlets and communications channels has been low on the UN list of priorities…so frankly, this last strike to eliminate the English Women radio programme comes as no surprise to me.  All that remains to be done now is to eliminate the Division for the Advancement of Women….which they can do, because everything can come under the heading of “gender” single issue programming and apolitical…. UN agencies can slot it in some programme or other… and then we shall be called upon to educate the other side of this “contrived” gender story - the men… on our sad, tragic and ever worsening but worthy - of course - cause!

The remaining obstacle to the complete removal of our political, social and civic issues at the UN is the Commission on the Status of Women.  In the manipulations which took place regarding the UN reform packages and reviews of the 1990s, the framers of those reform package ideas were unable to “touch” the Commissions because to do so would have meant that that the General Assembly would have had to amend the UN Constitution.  At that time the framers were not prepared to do that!

On the one side, we women have a brilliant record of good democratic practices and UN World Conference outcomes.  We have ten years of Decade research on Women, Peace, Equality and Development.  On the other side from the male establishment we have bad, undemocratic, self-serving bureaucrats and delegates from the North and from the South, quite happy to serve the special national ideological interests of the worst kind.

In spite of all these bad practices, our UN approach based upon our integrity of purpose under the UN Charter is still intact.  We must make sure that the Commission is strengthened, not weakened, and that our efforts are promoted, our actions recognised and the tragic events of the last ten years of war, civil conflict and hardships are truthfully addressed without imposing any further distress and misfortune on women.  We have won our right to speak, guide and work to implement our Plan of Actions and the men should be delighted to have us do so.”

The IAW Secretary General has passed along an appeal to all European Affiliates and Associates.  She wrote “A French organization - ONG GIPF - has initiated a European campaign against trafficking in women and children.  The background is that France takes over the Presidency of the European Union on July 1 and that the Human Rights Declaration celebrates its 60th anniversary later in the year.  I suggest that we - as affiliates and associates of the IAW - support them by joining the campaign.  May I also suggest that we encourage the individual members in our countries to support the campaign as well?”

This is the text from ONG GIPF http://www.ong-gipf.com/ (Groupe International de Paroles de Femmes):

“CALL FOR THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT TO SAY
‘STOP THE PROSTITUTION SLAVE TRADE’

On July 1st, 2008 France will take over the Presidency of the European Union.  On December 10th it will be the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Even so things are not right!
In spite of the signing on December 2nd, 1949 of the “Agreement for the repression of the human slave trade and of the prostitution business “, which proclaims that “prostitution and the evil which accompanies it (…) is incompatible with the dignity and value of the human person”.  The reports on the human slave trade for sexual exploitation are terrifying.

HOW CAN WE STILL TURN A BLIND EYE?
500 000 women are victims of the slave trade every year, how many more will be necessary to make Europe react firmly?
We have written a report about the current situation in Europe in regards to this issue.
It focuses on the human slave trade for the means of sexual exploitation, to make the politicians aware of one of the worst forms of exploitations of fundamental human rights.
We also call upon France to do its best during its European presidency to fight this business.

Finally, we also want to remind the French President of his commitment that,
“Every time a woman is tortured anywhere in the world, France must be on her side”
Each year 120,000 women are victim of this people traffic in direction to the European Union…

In order to mobilize and spread awareness among the public within the European Union, and to incite the implementation of a strong policy against this traffic, we will launch a European campaign to say “Stop to the human slave trade for sexual exploitation “, Starting this June and running through to March 2009.
We aim for this campaign to have a severe impact, to generate a collaboration between the men and women who are involved in the fight against the slave trade, in the defence of fundamental human rights, and in respect for the human being, so that it can create general awareness, and can lead to a political commitment from every member state of the European Union.
Please join us to support this campaign.
You can contact us on: campagne-traite-humains@ong-gipf.com
The name of your association will appear on the posters of the campaign and the press releases, Furthermore you will receive the campaign’s logo, and we can send you, at your demand, the report concerning “the human slave trade for sexual exploitation in Europe” that we have carried out (in French).
Abysse Royant - President Founder of the GIPF”

IWA is, of course, against sexual slavery as she is against any other form of exploitation of human beings, i.e. for labour or for body parts.  She was an active participant in the UN.GIFT Forum, as readers of the blog know.  Trafficking is an evil of our time, as it has been historically.  The issue of prostitution as such is, however, still a point of controversy in the IAW.

While IWA is still reeling under the impression of having any resolution against Violence against Women fail in a UN body, she realizes that there were other things to report from the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. Let us, as promised in the previous entry, look at the resolution on crime in the inner cities.

Brazil, which will be the host of the Twelfth Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (you will be spared a report on the hefty debates on the proposed agenda) tabled a resolution on Prevention of urban crime: public safety and the role of citizenship. (English, Français)  Most cities of the world over a certain size (and that size is not all too large, anonymity makes crime more feasible in the eyes of criminals) are plagued by various forms of criminality.  Brazil’s original resolution put its main emphasis on the role of the local community in any prevention efforts and to that end wanted the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to develop and share practical tools to identify places and populations vulnerable to crime or victimization and see how the population could be helped through local crime prevention action plans.  They desired a training curricula for crime prevention for both the authorities and local groups, all subsumed under the name “crime prevention practitioners” – probably not accepted languages, but IWA was, unfortunately, not at the initial debate on the topic.  It could mean street workers and neighbourhood associations, which as NGOs are not what the Commission’s governments always have in mind or wish to empower when they are writing resolutions.  The UNODC was also called upon to help assess crime prevention initiatives and do a whole lot of good and probably expensive things, like develop a list of best practices in urban government, strategies to prevent revictimization, models of community partnerships for the promotion of security and educational and professional programmes targeting at-risk youth and released offenders

Operative paragraph 4 signalled the death knell of the resolution as it stood – it requested funds from the regular budget be used to carry out a programme of urban crime prevention.  Now this would not be an extraordinary thing – to have the Office on Drugs and Crime be asked by the Commission on Crime Prevention etc. to work on , well, crime prevention.  It is definitely within its mandate.  But there are watchdogs from various governments that seem to attend the meetings only to be sure no money is spent on such things, unless it is donated by individual member states.  Thus this resolution wound up being passed, but in an extremely curtailed form.  The role of citizenship disappeared from the resolution, which will now be found wandering through the process towards the UN general assembly under Strengthening prevention of urban crime: an integrated approach, as did the extensive list of things the sponsors thought would be useful in prevention of urban crime.  Finally the call for funds for this effort, as wishy-washy as it now was, the UNODC was requested “to explicitly address the crime prevention component in its programme of work and reporting including, where relevant, good practices”, was turned into the phrase called “the mantra” which “Invites Member States and other donors to provide extra-budgetary contributions”.  As debate on another resolution (trafficking in cultural property) showed, not having regular funds for some work, such as a conference of experts, means that work will simply not take place, no matter how often the Commission resolves it.

As a bit of an excursion from the topic at hand: the use of the Sanskrit word mantra for this killer fiscal phrase seems to me to be a gratuitous abuse of a sacred concept.  Mantras are prayers and to pray to Member States for a rain of money injures my sense of propriety.  And why is this resolution on a feminist topic?  Because women are often the victims of the violence of the cities, rape is rampant; lawlessness also leads to impunity for domestic abusers; the process of earning a living and taking care of one’s family is made much more difficult.  Urban juvenile gangs are mostly male, but not exclusively.  In a misguided form of “emancipation” more girls are also forming or becoming active members of existing gangs.  Gang activity affects the lives of family members not only of the victims but also of the perpetrators.  But as with other issues, women would also have a major role to play in combating the problems at the grassroots level.  They are the citizens who have disappeared from the resolution in its final form.

 The Thematic Discussion at the 17th Session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) dealt with a topic dear to our hearts - Violence against Women.  Last year at the 16^th Session, it was touch and go whether the topic was going to be allowed to stand alone, or have to share the time (a whole 6 hours!) with another.  But finally, wise heads prevailed and consensus was reached that the topic was so enormous, that it could rightly be the sole topic.  In fact, one could talk about aspects of this crime in all its variations for weeks on end, so a mere quarter of a day hardly can do it justice.  IWA was not in the Plenary Tuesday to hear the “discussion” but both NGO reps and Government reps alike said, that was no exchange of ideas, merely a long series of uninspiring country reports. There were, from what I heard, not even any new ideas proposed.  It may be that we activists have been working on this topic for so long that we have heard it all and our creativity in ways to deal with the problem has been exhausted. 

However, there are some good practices that have not been tried around the world, and they were part of a draft resolution that Namibia and Thailand presented for discussion and passage.  After numerous informal meetings, for which experts of many government delegations had journeyed to Vienna, actual consideration of a revised version E/CN.15/2008/L.3/Rev.1 began on Friday (!) morning, now also sponsored by Bolivia, the Philippines and China.  The resolution began with some 14 preambular paragraphs, most citing relevant UN documents, like the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.  The number of operative paragraphs, those in which some action was suggested to the Member States of the UN was a whopping 24!  There were lots of good things in there to warm an activist’s heart.  There should be an end to impunity for perpetrators, the special needs of women in the criminal justice system needed to be accounted for and women victims of violence themselves accused of violence against their abusers should have their suffering and the possible act of “self defence” taken into consideration.

The trouble began almost immediately.  First, the title, Strengthening crime prevention and criminal justice responses to violence against women and girls which posed a problem because some languages, in the case in point, Arabic, have no word for “girl” - a foot note with a definition “female under the age of 18″ was required and re-demanded every time the phrase came up. Then first word in the first paragraph, even though it had already been resolved in this form by previous commissions, was suddenly too strong for the delegate of Iran.  One could not “reaffirm” the various UN Declarations on the topic; at most one could merely note or recall that they had once been the way the UN agreed on the issue of violence against women.  Supported by the delegation of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan the ambassadors dug in their heels and refused phrase after phrase of the resolution (the debate only got as far as the second preambular paragraph in the Committee of the Whole).  Iran wished to see every reference to “gender equality” replaced by “gender justice”.  When one knows the status of women in the Islamic justice system, one could see where that was headed.  The delegations in support of the resolution and women’s rights fought that off with the argument that it was not agreed-upon language - the gold standard:  any change is dangerous; it could even be an improvement (which in this case it was not) but by all means let us stick to the “agreed upon language”!  When one considers verse 34 of Surah an-Nisa one could see why the delegates of Islamic countries have a problem condemning violence against women in all its forms.  The Surah recommends a man beat his wife if other forms of getting her obedience fail.

While researching the topic, I came across this comment on the Surah 4:34 by the Islamic activist and feminist Asra Q. Nomani: “The Koran also talks about slavery and slaves, but the Muslim world didn’t continue that practice (except perhaps in the underbelly of society). We have allowed for contextual understanding of many verses of the Koran, including the literal readings that tell us to slay the “pagans” and never befriend Jews and Christians. If we allow ourselves, we understand that those words were written at a specific political time of tribal and political rivalry. As I wrote in the article, 4:34 was progressive for the 7th century. Let’s continue that progressive spirit to the 21st century and say “zero tolerance” to any physical discipline of a woman, gentle or not. And I think that is in fact the spirit of what the scholar Fazlur Rahman encouraged us to do. I believe the essence of the sura was to improve the condition for women in the 7th century to a standard that men of that time could accept. We have now risen to a higher standard.”  The interview  was in the Washington Post in 2006.

As the debate on the resolution continued to revolve upon itself, the Ambassador of Spain observed that it would seem that the international community was not mature enough to discuss the topic of violence against women.  No amount of striking of good paragraphs, including those with previously agreed upon language or those with self-evident texts, like “Recalling the inclusion of gender-related crimes and crimes of sexual violence in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court” and “Recalling Security Council resolution 1325 (2000)…on women, peace and security, in which the Council recognized the serious impact of armed conflict and the resulting violence directed against women and girls in such situations,” helped.  More than two hours after the 17^th Session of the CCPCJ was to have ended, the Ambassador of Namibia, her voice choked with frustration and disappointment, announced that no resolution would be possible.  She managed to stave off postponing the debate on the topic for another year - there had been a day-long thematic discussion and women of the world were expecting a result from the body.  In the end - 21:30 in fact - a draft decision, comprised of a mere four preambular paragraphs and five operative paragraphs was accepted and 30 nations became co-sponsors.   At least it requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to convene an intergovernmental group of experts to review and update, where appropriate, the Model Strategies and Practical Measures on the Elimination of Violence against Women in the Field of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice and to make recommendations on addressing violence against women and girls.

I have another cautionary tale about how good resolutions are made insignificant, but that is for another day.

IWA has been away for a month and meanwhile reports from the Commission on the Status of Women have arrived in the e-mail in-box.  They are in the two languages of the IAW, so there will be some repetition in the next series of blog entries.

“On Sunday February 24, 2008 we attended the NGO consultation about the Commission of the Status of Women (CSW) at the New York University Medical School Center. There, Mr Olivier Belle, President of the CSW Bureau presented us the 52^nd CSW event.

Mr. Belle said that the substantial support of NGOs is very important so he wanted them to participate more into the debate and promised to do his best that they should make comments within the official part of the debate, and not at the end as usual. He kept his promise the first week and some NGOs were able to deliver their statements then.

In the afternoon we broke out into groups to prepare the work for the Commission. We joined the group on resolution 1325 on peace and security, a group to which we took part during the session. (We elaborated a statement and the language we lobbied for was kept, but the reference to Resolution 1325, asked for by Canada, in the agreed conclusions was not included).

On February 25^th, at the opening of the session Secretary General Ban Ki Moon launched a campaign to “end violence against women”.  This campaign will last until 2015.  He said that one out of every three women are abused or victims of other violence.  He added that violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, and never tolerable.  He counted on states to carry the message, and urged them to review and, when necessary, revise or create applicable laws to ensure that violence against women was always criminalized. His speech was followed by a concert of whistles and flashes of light from all the NGOs in the room who wanted to push the Secretary General’s campaign.”

Of course the NGOs are eager to push the campaign, but are the governments of the world, largely in the hands of men, often violent men, really committed to wiping out this violence which is in a large part a result of an imbalance of power?  Indeed some patriarchal power structures have enshrined violence against women in their sacred texts and are unwilling to depart from this path, despite the fact that moral thinking on the issue in much of the world has evolved.  When I see how far we have come with the Millennium Development Goals, I see us in 2015 right where we are today on this topic.

 Valentine’s Day - a relatively harmless day, in which the florists make a good part of their year’s income and the chocolatiers get into the act as well.  Suddenly it has become controversial because some Islamic leaders have decided it is unislamic to give your sweetheart something on this “western” day of love and affection.  The measures taken against any such transactions were varyingly dramatic.  The colour red, the colour of hearts and roses, was banned for the day and the diplomats at the UN Vienna Forum were amused.  If there were ever problems in the world of men and women, Valentine’s Day is not one of them.

Trafficking in Persons, and 80% of these persons are women and children, is a pressing women’s issue.  Thus the UNODC launched a Women Leader’s Council and held a plenary discussion focused on the “Strategies to promote Women’s Leadership in the fight against Human Trafficking”.  Spearheading the issue is the First Lady of Egypt, Suzanne Mubarak.  Already in the opening Plenary Session she had placed strong emphasis on the role of women in this field, not only as victims, but also as NGOs out working against the causes and effects.  A social scientist by education she also established a women’s international peace movement.

Other political figures on the list are First Ladies of the Domincan Republic, Ecuador, Poland, Ministers and former Ministers of India and El Salvador. Parliamentarians like Dr. Mongella, president of the Pan-African Parliament, and representatives of the UK and Austria join with entrepreneurs (Ford Models - particularly important as many girls are tricked with offers of modelling jobs abroad) and heads of NGOs swell the ranks of women leaders.  The celebrities were those women I mentioned in a previous blog.

The UN places high hopes in the activities of these various women leaders: “The Women Leaders’ Council will assist in informing UN.GIFT on emerging global and national challenges particularly in reference to the strategic and interrelated areas on human trafficking to which women and children are most vulnerable.  Their commitments range from public awareness raising events, innovative government policies, fund-raising support, business strategies, and other cross-sectoral collaborative efforts, which will be instrumental in securing global commitment in the fight against human trafficking.”

If these leaders manage to do half what they propose, the best Valentine’s Day gift ever will be given to the women of the world.

 In the underground world of trafficking, whether in persons, weapons, drugs or whatever, it is hard to know how one is doing.  Are more or fewer transactions being made, are more traffickers being stopped than new ones appear, is the care of victims rehabilitating them, is sufficient care even available?

At a workshop at the Vienna Forum ways to quantify human trafficking, its impact and the responses to it were presented.  The most lively presentation was by Thomas Steinfatt of the University of Miami, who posited that attempts to collect data from victims was not efficient, one only got a microscopic view of the problem, getting information from the traffickers themselves would give one the broader pictures.  His slogan was “follow the money”.  Every industry with a product to sell depends upon advertising.  However those “girls, girls, girls” ads in the papers do not tell one the whole story.  He suggested that a much more useful source would be the local cab drivers, they get around town, know where to take a customer who wants what traffickers are selling (indeed may even get a cut from the bordello owner for carting in the John = customer in English slang).  Indeed, once the locations are known, with some well planned questions and a good story it is possible to find out from the last purchaser of human beings for sexual exploitation, how many women (girls or boys) are available, how “fresh” they are, how much “freedom” they are allowed (if they can go out to customers unattended, the chances are smaller that they are under great duress) and what countries or regions they come from.  All this is very useful information in advance of a raid (assuming that a raid will take place and the police are not in cahoots with the pimps and traffickers).

Even when the police act with integrity, a lack of communication may hamper not only action against traffickers but even knowledge of what is going on in the various districts of the country.  Andrea Querol from CHS - Capital Humano y Social Alternativo, Peru described a very fine system called Reta which attempts to quantify data with a website accessible from some 1300 police stations across the country pulling information together along a toll-free line.  Developed using free software, the system was set up in an amazingly short time (less that a year - anyone who has dealt with customizing software knows how long it can take).  Training has occurred for some 390 officers, meaning the coverage is currently incomplete.  The data collection is managed by the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of the Interior.  Data protection is provided by firewalls and passwords and the officers in the individual precinct only have access to the forms (developed jointly by officers an NGO and the ministry) to report a case and some overview of the immediate area, larger traffic flows are only visible to the higher ups.  Comparisons of the stories of the victims, as they manage to reach the police, can be compared, patterns discovered and arrests and prosecutions carried out.  It is a very promising system and hopefully it will be shared with neighbouring countries.

A system that was conceived as a network for neighbouring countries was presented by Enrico Ragaglia of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development. In this case, working together with the UNODC and the countries in question, a set of two databases was developed, one for victims and one for perpetrators, for South-Eastern Europe.  It was a great challenge to find forms that would be in conformity with all the different local laws (but possibly it could spur some nations to upgrade their laws at all:-).  The Anti-Trafficking Net is now available in all the local languages but is not yet running. The data bases are housed in the different ministries of the countries involved, for example victims in the social ministry or the justice ministry and traffickers in the justice ministry or the ministry of the interior.  At the moment issues of national sovereignty are in the way of doing cross border comparisons, working out patterns or analysing the trade routes.  Maybe later.

Time constraints prevented me from attending the whole discussion on quantifying the results and efficiency of victim assistance.  How does one go about seeing if the victims were really helped in the course of a fiscal year and how does one divide the general running costs of an institution designed to help victims to get the per victim rehab cost for reporting purposes?  This is a problem, not just for social services for trafficking victims, but also for rape crisis lines and women’s shelters who have to give provide an accounting to money givers. The women’s counselling centres in Austria are faced with the prospect of financiers telling them how long an individual counselling session should last (circa 30 minutes) rather than having the length determined by the need of the individual client.  This if fine for cost control, but makes for bad results for the client.

 An interesting paper was picked up by Anje in one of the workshops she attended. It came from Nigeria and was entitled “The Use of Voodoo (Juju) in Trafficking in Persons and its Effect on Victims of Trafficking in Criminal Justice Administration”.

It would seem that victims of trafficking, before they are sent off on what they think is a legitimate job, are taken to Voodoo practitioners where they leave hair or nail clippings with the “priest” and vow before him to be loyal to the person arranging the job, i.e. the trafficker.

The oath is, on the strength of the belief in the power of the practitioners, absolutely binding and severely limits the psychological freedom of the victim to do anything to escape her or his condition or to aid the police in investigation of the traffickers. Both victim and trafficker are convinced that the priest can punish the victim long distance if the contract is breached.  Indeed, sometimes an oath may be administered in the destination country if some personal objects belonging to the victim are made available to the practitioner.

The authorities in Nigeria, on the other hand, are hard put to pressure the Juju priests to give evidence, as many have no idea what the traffickers were intending to do with the person who swore the powerful oath.  On the other hand, some Juju adepts may also be available to help victims get over their harrowing experiences (possibly releasing them from a previous oath?) and the authorities in working against trafficking in persons. Other faith based groups are also available to help in these matters and the NAPTIP (National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and other Related Matters) welcomes their assistance.