This week, the United States signed a new Declaration on Women’s Participation. Next year, we should each announce the steps we are taking to break down economic and political barriers that stand in the way of women and girls. That is what our commitment to human progress demands. -President Obama’s Address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 21, 2011 (White House)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the Equal Futures Partnership on behalf of the United States along with 12 other founding members (Australia, Benin, Bangladesh, Denmark, Finland, Indonesia, Jordan, the Netherlands, Peru, Senegal, Tunisia, and the EU). Multilateral stakeholders including U.N. Women and the World Bank and leading businesses and non-profit institutions have also pledged support for the partnership.

Additionally, global health issues affecting children were at the top of the international agenda. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated that eradicating polio is at the top of his second-term goals, and he expressed optimism about achieving it in the next few years:

“We have reduced polio by 99% worldwide,” Ban said during the UN General Assembly, and he called on leaders to help Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan eliminate the last remaining cases. Timothy E. Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, called it “the most important international meeting on polio eradication in the last 20 years.” (Google/The Associated Press)

Another important task before the General Assembly was coming up with a strategy for creating a new set of international development goals once the MDGs expire.  The MDGs were a set of eight global health and poverty eradication goals world leaders agreed to at the U.N. in 2000; however, they expire in 2015. The international community has begun to nail down the details of a post-MDGs global development agenda. “We need a clear post-2015 development agenda — an agenda with shared responsibilities for all countries, with the fight against poverty at the fore and sustainable development at the core,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (AlertNet).

In his address titled,  “A Call to Ambition,” to the 67th session of the U.N. General Assembly, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated,

“Still, we must raise our levels of ambition.  Poverty and inequality remain rampant.  Ecosystems are reaching the breaking point.  The world’s best science is irrefutable:  we must change course.  That is why I have urged world leaders to press ahead with initiatives on sustainable energy, education, nutrition and women’s and children’s health. The economic crisis should not be an excuse to default on commitments to the basics that all people need.”

AUTHOR: Cassandra Clifford
URL: www.bridgetofreedomfoundation.org and http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: Cassandra [at] btff.org

Here is a true story of dalit women who was tied in a pole and was disrobed, severely beaten, her face painted black and her head tonsured, all done in full public view, but none come to her rescue. The poor lady begged for mercy, but the hatred and vengeance was all pervasive had she had to face the humiliation all alone.

This horrible incident took place in Jayaghanta village under Dhama police station in Sambalpur district of Odisha. The dalit woman Subidha Buda (45) was punished because her 18 year old younger daughter eloped with a local boy Sudam Mahanand, who later died in a freak accident.

The accident took place on August 12, when Subidha’s daughter and Sudam were traveling in a bus from Sambalpur to Jharsuguda a suitcase kept on the overhead luggage carrier of the seat down on Sudam’s head. This left him unconscious and was declared brought dead at the government hospital in Jharsuguda.

When the news of Sudam’s death reached the village, his relatives became boisterous. They assembled other villagers and staged a protest with the body. They blocked the main road and demanded a probe into the incident and the arrest of the culprits. They went to Subidha’s house and accused her of murder and also asked her and the family to leave the village

Terrified by the developments, Subidha and her daughter fled from Jayaghanta village to another nearby village called Baunsara, where her elder daughter lived. Her aged grandmother was left behind to look after the goats and sheeps in the house.

As soon as they left the village, one person named Khatu Khandayat took advantage of the situation and found it convenient to steal two of their goats. When Subidha came to know about it she returned home to bring back the goats.

As she went to get her goats from Khatu Khandayat’s goat shed, he became angry and dragged Subidha to the main road and punched her. Subidha tried to run for cover and looked for shelter in one Daktar’s house, but his wife refused and drove her out.

Subidha then tired to seek refuge in a nearby local club house. However, this place too did not provide her any security. She was dragged out and was tied to a pole in front of the club house. She was disrobed and beaten, face painted black and her head tonsured.

All this happened in front of the women folk of the village. They not only watched this brutal act but also kicked and punched her. They even helped in the tonsuring her head. The poor woman begged for mercy but none felt pity on her.

This is a pithy story of oppression against the dalits and minorities that quite often happens in some places in the country. The police made the arrests on the basis of a FIR filed by Subidha in Dhama police station. Ten persons were arrested on the basis of the victim’s complaint. Cases were registered against eighteen persons and efforts were on to nab the others involved.

In this particular story there was no angel of caste or class struggle. So no case was registered under the SC/ST Atrocities Act as both the complainant and the accused belonged to the same caste. Nonetheless, it portrays a very ugly facet of the rural society, generally thought to be an oasis of peace.

India villages are cluster of house which is neatly segregated into areas where a particular caste inhabits. Each locality within the village is an island on its own. The upper cast is concentrated in one part of the village and other localities are demarcated according to the caste hierarchy. The dalits normally do not find a space within the village and are settled in a near distance. This stark reality is pervasive in the entire rural landscape of the country.

AUTHOR: Mujtaba Syed
URL: http://mujtabas-musings.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: syedalimujtaba [at] yahoo.com

In a recently update it has been reported that thousands of women are stranded in Nepal Embassy in Kuwait with no options except to be deported due to different forms of exploitations and harassments. In this outcry the Nepal government has restricted women bellow 30 years of age from working as housemaids in gulf countries.

One of the research of the UNIFEM quotes, “Labour migration is now perceived as the most important economic growth factor for Nepal in the next 10 to 15 years. As the numbers of Nepalese leaving the country increases each year, Nepal has also increased its reliance on remittances from migrant labourers to keep the economy afloat. An estimated remittance income of NR70 billion (approximately US$927 million) in remittances are poured into the economy by the migrant labour force annually.”

Especially migrant women workers face increasing challenges and concerns in both their home and host countries. As due to the current mobility rights they can travel to specified countries through different channels and are vulnerable to exploitation. Despite legislation and international agreements on human rights, the rights of migrant female workers are daily violated and exploited in one or the other form.

According to a report published by My Republica, “There are more than 300 Nepali brokers who are involved in trafficking of undocumented Nepali female workers to Kuwait and their non-cooperation has impeded the efforts of Nepali mission there to make the workplaces safer and systematize the recruiting process.”

Reality is the mobility rights of Migrant women workers has helped boost the women exploitation and harassment cases as women migrant workers would go through different agent channels where they were vulnerable with no mechanism to check and balance their rights or identity. Such policies have implicated the rates and number of cases in exploitation where in most case women aboard have no voice.

“UN Women coordinating inter-agency efforts with relevant ministries, and, with Pourakhi, had lobbied with the Foreign Minister and the media for an Embassy in Kuwait to support its 40,000 Nepali workers of which 80% are women. Moreover, UN Women sits on government committees including the committee to establish safe homes, which have enabled support to the embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and U.A.E to establish temporary safe houses for women,” Source Migration.com

Looking at the past, a ban on migration of women to the Gulf countries was imposed by the Nepali government in 1998 after increase in cases of sexual abuse and harassment, but was partially lifted in 2003.From then destination countries, including Israel, and most notably, Hong Kong, have imposed strict visa requirements and restrictions for Nepali workers. With the recent lobbying of UN women and Pourakhi Kuwait was opened in last November under the Mobility rights of migrant women.

According to the Department of Foreign Employment, about 70,000 Nepali women have reached Kuwait in the last two decades. Currently, 65,000 Nepalese are believed to be working in the Gulf nation and among them 90 per cent are domestic workers.

Likewise, the US State Department Report on Trafficking in Person has placed Kuwait as a high-risk country for the sixth consecutive year and still the country was open with respect to no counter mechanism.

The Himalayan times quotes, “Government sources said the new age bar will apply only to those women who want to work in informal sectors that are not covered by the host countries’ labour laws. The job of housemaid falls under Kafala system prevalent in gulf countries which allow the employers to hold their employees’ travel documents, restrict them from changing jobs and returning to their home countries at their will. Most of the Gulf countries have not signed ILO conventions.”

The current tendency of the Human resource outsourcing practices lacks a system that checks and balances the rights of these workers. During the recruitment process most of the outsourcing companies fails to provide pre-departure training and focuses less on updating the migrant workers about the rights where the migrant workers are stranded in the country once they are place in their jobs.

Ground level Channel

Recruiting Organization ——Agents ——Migrants Workers

Similarly, in the policy level the international government agencies with support from the local non government agencies lobbies policies that are impractical and lacks future prospects. The Mobility rights to migrant women worker has proven to be one of the cases where in due respect to the above listed information Kuwait was opened as a free destination for worker which was listed as one of the most high-risk country.
Policy level Channel

Regulator ——INGOs ——NGOs

Reality is most of these women who try abroad lack access to formal recruitment process and have no formal working contracts hence end up with poor working conditions, lower wages and high discrimination, but have little recourse for action. Basically lack of effective monitoring mechanism,

Lack of access to social services and low literacy levels are the major hindrances in this industry. The Foreign Employment Act of 2007 has removed gender-discriminatory provisions, and has added social protections for women migrant workers, including reimbursement of pre-departure orientation fees, establishment of safe homes in countries of employment, government –issued insurance, free legal aid, and scholarships and child-care centers for migrant workers’ children.

Thousands of women had gone to work in Gulf countries, and half of whom were for informal sector jobs. Now the question is who is to be blame for the INGOs or NGOs that lobbied the policies or the government that approved such polices without evaluating future consequences.

AUTHOR: Shreedeep Rayamajhi
URL: http://www.rayznews.com
E-MAIL: weaker41 [at] gmail.com

Samdach Akak Moha Sena Padey Techo Hun Sen (Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia), H.E. Sar Kheng (Deputy Minister, Minister of Interior), H.E. Kep Chuktima (Governor of Phnom Penh Municipality), Lokchumteav Ing Kuntha Phavy (President of Cambodian National Council for Women (CNCW), Minister of Women Affairs)

Dear Samdach Akak Moha Sena Padey Techo Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia, H.E. Sar Kheng, Minister of Interior, H.E. Kep Chuktima, Governor of the Phnom Penh Municipality, and Lokchumteav Ing Kuntha Phavy, Minister of Women Affairs,

I am William Nicholas Gomes, Human Rights Ambassador for Salem-News.com.

I am expressing my deepest concern along with Cambodian and International Civil Society Members,I call for the dismissal of Phnom Penh Deputy Police Chief Phuong Malay based on his unacceptable, facetious and offensive reaction to the lawsuit taken against him for his alleged role in the miscarriage of a female protester who was kicked in the stomach by a member of his police force.

On 27 June 2012, the pregnant woman, Bov Srey Sras, had joined a group of supporters in attempting to march to the Court of Appeal where the BoeungKak 13, amongst them her sister, were having their case heard. Despite the supporters acting within their rights, a violent clash with police took place. Not only was Bov Srey Sras brutally mistreated by officers in this clash, causing her to lose her baby, but when she announced that she was suing the three men she believes responsible, amongst them Phuong Malay, the Deputy Police Chief publicly insulted and degraded her. In yesterday’s edition of The Phnom Penh Post newspaper (01 August), Malay is quoted as follows:

“Is the victim old or young, and does she sue me to return her kid? I want to tell her that if she wants to get back her kid, I am also young.”

I would like to inform the Prime Minister, H.E. Sar Kheng, H.E. Kep Chuktima, and Lokchumteav Ing Kuntha Phavy whose Ministry oversees law enforcement, that Cambodia is a party to the United Nations (“UN”) Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (“CEDAW”), which requires the State to take measures to suppress all forms of gender discrimination. Article 31 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia (the “Constitution”) incorporates CEDAW into Cambodian law, by obliging the Royal Government of Cambodia (the “RGC”) to recognize international human rights provisions. Article 26 of the Constitution stipulates that once a human rights treaty is ratified, it will automatically become Cambodian law. Article 31 also demands the equality of all Cambodian citizens, regardless of race, colour, religion, political beliefs, class or gender, and Article 150 requires state institutions to directly conform to constitutional provisions.

The function of law enforcement in a democracy is providing a service to civilians. The UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials (1979), which was adopted to apply to the Cambodian police forces, requires that, “in the performance of their duty, law enforcement officials shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human rights of all persons.” It is the role of the police to serve the community and to protect all persons against illegal acts. The Cambodian police authorities have a legal and ethical responsibility to the people of the nation, to uphold their human rights and their dignity.

If Deputy Police Chief Phuong Malay believes it is acceptable to make such offensive and discriminatory remarks, he is clearly incapable of the high degree of responsibility required by his profession. As Deputy Chief it is also important that he is not permitted to set such a deplorable example to his subordinates. We, the undersigned Civil Society groups, therefore call for the immediate dismissal of Phuong Malay from his position and for an assurance from the RGC that Cambodian police will in future be properly trained and equipped with the skills and the knowledge to respect and protect the human rights and human dignity of all Cambodian citizens.

AUTHOR: William Nicholas Gomes
URL: www.williamgomes.org
E-MAIL: williamgomes.org [at] gmail.com

• The human rights defender Margarita Martínez reports on the situation of violence against women human rights defenders and journalists in Mexico before the CEDAW Committee. 
• Martínez has been tortured and repeatedly attacked for her work,  and despite protective measures mandated by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, continuous threats have forced her family to flee Chiapas.  
• In Latin America, Mexico has the highest number of attacks against journalists and the second highest number against women human rights defenders.

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

This high profile case caught the imagination of the people who were debating on issues like bigamy, inter- religion marriage, kidnapping, pregnancy, conversion, etcetera.

The above incident is just the tip of the iceberg, if one believes the data released by the National Crime Records Bureau regarding kidnapping of women and girls in 2011. At a glance at the statistics maybe shocking, but digging deep into it tells a different story that relates to the changing social profile of the country.

According to National Crime Records Bureau report, UP tops in the all-India list of kidnappings of women including girls with 7,525 cases, followed by West Bengal 3,711 and Bihar, the kidnap capital of the country with, 3,050 cases.

In contrast to north Indian states, the southern states have far less figures relating to kidnappings of women and girls. Tamil Nadu recorded 1,743 cases, followed by Andhra Pradesh at 1,612, Karnataka at 1,395 and Kerala with 299 cases.

The highest number of cases in Tamil Nadu was from Villupuram district (187) followed by Salem (rural) (108) and Cuddalore (100). Chennai with 41 cases and Coimbatore with 39, fare better than most other districts of the state.

Numbers, of course, don’t tell the whole story always. The alarm that could arise out of the dramatic figures calms down when it is revealed that majority of the cases is about elopements and not really of kidnapping as registered in the police records.

This phenomenon is growing at its own pace and needs to be analyzed in order to construct a different picture of India that is slowly negotiating with modern life style in this globalize world.

A deep look at such cases concludes that such incidents should not be merely treated as regular crime cases of abduction but these in fact reflect the changing social mores in the country.

In the modern environment, there are far more opportunities of social interaction that one may have thought out some two decades ago. The internet, mobile phone, social networking sites, various other forums, gives opportunity for far greater social discourse.

These days’ young women are becoming financially independent and socially secure. Many prefer to make their own decisions and they often decide to select life partners by themselves.

The other social dimension is the bane of dowry system. Young girls foresee that their parents may not able to pay huge sum required for a decent arranged marriage and they may remain unmarried for want of it. This forces some of them to choose their own partner and a few tread the path of elopement.

This often leads to stiff resistance from the elders. The first response from the agitated parents is to accuse the other party of kidnapping. They immediately approach the police and record the incident as a case of abduction. It is only after the couple are traced and a cross checking is done with them that the real truth comes out from them.

In this statistics there is also an alarming trend where young girls below the age of 18 are lured into relationships during their school days and such cases are treated differently.

In cases involving minors who eloped with older man, a kidnapping case is registered and the person is arrested. The girl is brought back and reunited with her parents and counseling is given to both.

There are also cases of kidnapping for ransom in the figures mentioned above. Recently, a five-member gang was arrested in Coimbatore who kidnapped a 25-year-old woman and demanded a ransom of 1 crore from her father, a textile merchant.

However, such cases are miniscule when compared to the elopement cases that are reported as kidnapping. Most of the cases are usually settled amicably between the parents and the other parties involved, with police acting as a mediator.

However, some have the ugly side of the story as well. Rizwan ur Rehman case, Bibi Jagir Kaur case are some ugly truth that searches an answer to this phenomena.

Violent reactions, leads to crimes like honor killing and becomes more of a problem then solution. A sound parenting and interactive guardianship of the children could be the best possible remedy for such issues. However, a change in outlook of the elder generation is needed to handle such issues. They have to accept the reality that the happiness of the couples is the only way forward in such cases.

AUTHOR: Mujtaba Syed
URL: http://mujtabas-musings.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: syedalimujtaba [at] yahoo.com

Between 2 July – 18 July, NL-Aid is enjoying a summer recess. From 19th July, you can read articles of our authors again. Untill that time, we have selected Youtube videos in which development thinkers are centered. In this episode: Isabel Allende.

AUTHOR: Hans Sluijter
URL: www.NL-Aid.org
E-MAIL: info [at] www.NL-Aid.org

Guatemalan anti-mining activist Telma Yolanda Oqueli Veliz. Photo: James Rodríguez, mimundo.org

One generally overlooked feature of the Guatemalan government and military’s 36-year (1960-96) genocidal counterinsurgency campaign against the country’s Mayan population is the strategy of targeting women with violence.

Rape, mutilation, sexual slavery, forced abortion, and sterilizations were just some of the sadistic tools used in a systematic practice of state-sponsored terror to crush the surviving population into submission through fear and shame via the suffering of their mothers, sisters, and daughters.

In 1999, UN-backed truth commission, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), declared that during the war, “the rape of women, during torture or before being murdered, was a common practice aimed at destroying one of the most intimate and vulnerable aspects of the individual’s dignity…[and] they were killed, tortured and raped, sometimes because of their ideals and political or social participation…”

Glen Kuecker, professor of Latin American History at DePauw University, said that the gender specific violence was and continues to be part of the government’s counterinsurgency program aimed to destroy the fundamental social fabric of Mayan communities.

“The goal of counterinsurgency is to undermine the cohesion of a community that is needed for resistance,” said Kuecker. “Gender violence not only terrorizes women in the community, but it also disrupts traditional patriarchal gender relations by sending the message to men that they are not capable of protecting women.”

According to Emily Willard, Research Associate for the Evidence Project of The National Security Archive writing in Peace and Conflict Monitor this April, “The military’s strategies of targeting women reached such a large portion of the male population, normalizing rape and violence against women. The residual effect of these genocidal policies and strategies can be seen in the rate and type of violence in Guatemala today.”

In 2010, 685 women were assassinated in Guatemala, compared to 213 in 2000. And while there were more than 40,000 complaints of violence against women filed with the  Guatemalan Public Ministry, only 1 percent of those registered by the Judicial Department resulted in sentencing, according to a report published June 1 by the Nobel Women’s Initiative and the Just Associates (JASS), “Caught in the Crossfire: Women on the frontlines in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala.”

The report, co-authored by Nobel Peace Laureates Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Jody Williams, was the result of a fact-finding mission led by them in January 2012 to investigate violence against women in these three countries.

In Guatemala, the report singles out the civil war’s legacy of violence and impunity, the increased militarization resulting from the War on Drugs, land and resource conflicts, and the influence of foreign governments and businesses – specifically from the United States and Canada – as major contributing factors to the ongoing violence directed at women, and the targeting of women as a tactical and deliberate tool of political repression. The report states that the phenomenon of femicide has “reached crisis dimensions.”

Guatemala’s Civil War: No Justice, No Peace

“The crises in Guatemala are not internal crises,” Grahame Russell, co-director of Rights Action, a community development and anti-mining solidarity organization, told Toward Freedom. “They are global struggles.”

Guatemala’s Civil War serves as a perfect example. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, in an uncharacteristic moment of historical honesty, apologized to the Guatemalan people back in 1998 for the U.S.’s role in overthrowing democracy in the country and contributing political, military, and financial support to genocidal counterinsurgency programs which successive dictators carried out on the Mayan population.

“It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression…was wrong,” said Clinton.

The war left over 200,000, mostly indigenous civilians, murdered, while tens of thousands were raped, tortured, disappeared and displaced. But in the wake of the war, as many an estimated 98 percent of those responsible for war crimes and genocide (both Guatemalan and American) remain free.

“In Guatemala, the surge in femicides demonstrates that peace is not just the cessation of war,” the JASS report states. “The lack of justice for crimes of the 1980s has left victims without redress, and culprits in power.” Amnesty International noted that in the last 10 years as many as 5,700 women have been murdered.

The position of recently elected president Otto Perez Molina that there was no genocide in the country is a perfect illustration of how impunity persists. However, Perez Molina, a former general and CIA asset who was trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, is taking a position that is self-serving, not just racist and revisionist. He led a military battalion in the early 1980s in the country’s northwestern highlands where some of the bloodiest massacres occurred. In addition, as Annie Bird, journalist and co-director of Rights Action pointed out in a profile of the president this year, Perez Molina ran a “secret torture center” for political prisoners while serving as head of the country’s military intelligence in 1994. One of Perez Molina’s past bosses, former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, unleashed a scorched earth campaign against the country’s Mayan population between 1982-83, wiping out entire villages in the process. Thirty years later Rios Montt, who was a very close ally of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, is just now standing trial, and is accused of being responsible for “1,771 deaths, 1,400 human rights violations and the displacement of 29,000 indigenous Guatemalans.”

Sandra Moran, a Guatemalan feminist, lesbian, artist and activist working on women’s rights and human rights in Guatemala City, is a member and co-founder of Colectivo Artesana and Alianza Politica Sector de Mujeres. She lived in exile in Canada for 14 years after participating in the country’s student movement in the early 1980s. After working tirelessly abroad to build transnational solidarity, Moran returned to Guatemala to participate in the Peace Process and to help rebuild a more peaceful, just and humane country.

“During the war it was State Policy to target the bodies of women as part of the government’s ‘Counterinsurgency Plan’. Although the war ended, this violence against women has continued,” Moran told Toward Freedom. Her office has been targeted and broken into in the past, with spilt blood left, and she has received numerous death threats as a result of her work. “The way some murdered and mutilated bodies have appeared [in recent years] are the same way they appeared during the war,” added Moran.

Amnesty International submitted a briefing on Guatemala to the UN’s Human Rights Committee in March, voicing concern how “female victims often suffer exceptional brutality before being killed, including rape, mutilation and dismemberment.”

Moran added that these misogynistic forms of violence and torture are social problems that have been taught at both institutional and individual levels. Many of the teachers of this violence are working with the government, military and police, and are often those same people who committed these types of crimes during the war. Moran also singled out the heads of private security industry, which according to the JASS report, has ballooned to an estimated 28,000 legal and 50,000 unregistered private security agents in the country.

In 2007 Amnesty International issued a report noting the presence of “clandestine groups” in the country, comprised of the “the business sector, private security companies, common criminals, gang members and possibly ex and current members of the armed forces,” who were then, and continue to target human rights activists in order to maintain impunity and an unjust and patriarchal social order.

“Guatemala’s peace-making process never moved into a necessary peace-building process that could assure strong institutions and practices,” the report states. “The government typically fails to conduct investigations or prosecute the perpetrators of women’s murders.”

The Guatemalan government’s embrace of  ex-war criminals and current criminals, combined with the support of international political and business actors, sustains what Rights Action’s Russell calls, “an unjust, racist, and violent social order” and  “maintaining business as usual and politics as usual.”

Business as Usual

In 1954 the CIA, at the behest of United Fruit Company, coordinated the coup which overthrew democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Reasons behind this act include the fact that he rewrote the country’s labor code and initiated land reforms, acts deemed unacceptable by United Fruit Company and Washington. The idea of Guatemala being solely a source of cheap labor and a place to extract resources with low costs and even lower oversight has been a continuum in the country’s history. The lack of justice and weak governance appears to be seen as a comparative advantage for the country. For example, Amnesty International, in its briefing to the UN this past March, also pointed out how “[t]he failings of the state continue to be relied on by companies, in particular mining companies, who prefer the lower national standard to international human rights standards.”  

One example the JASS report points out is Perez Molina’s refusal to respect the 55 community consultations held throughout the country in indigenous communities, which overwhelmingly rejected so-called development projects involving mining, oil and hydroelectric dams. According to ILO Convention 169, the international law which Guatemala is a signatory of, indigenous communities must provide free, prior, and informed consent to any projects that would impact their land and communities. Other “failings of the state” include the refusal to investigate and prosecute those responsible for violence against activists who challenge the status quo by demanding that their human rights, such as those enshrined under ILO 169, are recognized and honored.

The JASS delegation led by Menchu and Williams listened to testimony from women who shared stories about the violence during the war and the violence associated with what might be described now as low intensity conflicts surrounding land and resources. Their report stated, “They described that today’s intent is subtler: to force communities out of areas where mineral and other types of resources are coveted. But the methods are very similar: rape, murder, imprisonment, division and harassment…Women presented testimonies and evidence of many cases where army and private security presence is associated with putting down local protests against mining operations and other development projects that displace and disrupt communities to exploit natural resources.”

Less than two weeks after the report was released, Yolanda Oqueli Veliz, a community leader from the municipalities of San Jose del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc working against the widely unpopular Canadian gold mining project owned by Radius Gold, was shot by assassins and is now in the hospital in critical condition.

While criticism of the Guatemalan State is necessary and warranted, the Canadian government deserves the same treatment. Lawmakers in Ottawa have consistently aided and abetted such behavior by their industry due to what at best could be considered indifference, but is more likely a deliberate disregard for the human rights and environmental rights of communities affected by Canadian mining companies.

A perfect illustration of this was the failure to pass Bill C-300,  a modest, if not flawed piece of legislation, which would have empowered the Canadian government to investigate human rights complaints and strip guilty companies from taxpayer subsidies through the Canadian Pension Plan and Export Development Canada. Apparently murder and gang-rapes linked to Canadian mining projects in Guatemala (not to mention similar acts throughout the hemisphere and around the globe) are not enough to encourage lawmakers in Canada to pass legislation that would hold their country’s companies accountable for these crimes and human rights abuses.

While women are being targeted for their social justice leadership roles in these conflicts, it is modest progress in the realm of rights and empowerment that has allowed women to assume such roles.

“Since the war ended women’s leadership in their communities and with community struggles have increased. More and more women have realized that they have rights and that they must defend their rights.  And this is part of the reason why violence against women has increased,” said Moran. “An act of violence against a woman is not just an act against the individual, but against all women. It is a message that if you leave your house, if you continue to organize or raise your voice, that this can happen to you.”

The War on Drugs: Militarization and the Criminalization of Dissent

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams suggested in the JASS report that in Guatemala, “The war on drugs and increased militarization…is becoming a war on women.”

The report suggests that there is a direct correlation between increasing U.S. military aid and regional security strategies that seek to export the “Plan Colombia” model through Mexico and Central America via policies such as the Merida Initiative and its increasing and disproportionate impact on women.

“Drug-trafficking is being carried out in Guatemala, now, by organized crime. However, many of the people involved in organized crime are also ex- and current politicians, members of the economic elite, high-ranking officers in the Army and Police, members of the judiciary, etc.,” said Russell. “These are some of the same people and sectors that planned and carried out the campaigns of State terrorism and repression against their own population, in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s, in the name of ‘fighting communism’ during the Cold War.”

But just like the Cold War wasn’t exclusively about fighting communism, the war on drugs also has alternative motives: it serves as a counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to quash any dissent that challenges Northern geopolitical and business interests.

Mario Godínez, university professor, member of the MNR (New Republic Movement) and of the environmental organization Ceiba, which works with mining resistance in Guatemala, told Uruguayan analyst Raul Zibechi last year that this increased “militarism [is] at the service of big multinational firms.”

For example, in May, Perez Molina sent the military and police into the town of Santa Cruz Barillas, Huehuetenango, declaring a “state of siege” after protests, sparked by the murder of a local community leader in the resistance against a hydro-electric dam, resulted in violence. Perez Molina accused the protestors of being narco-traffickers, and recently accused communities resisting mining and dam projects of being part of a conspiracy involving international organizations and the mob. This parrots the strategy of his former superior Rios Montt, who while president dismissed any criticism of his barbaric “counterinsurgency” as being part of an “international communist conspiracy,” with organizations such as Amnesty International being singled out.

The increase in the number of women being targeted is as much a brutal legacy of the past as it is a reaction to the subtle progress being made for women’s rights and roles in society.

Walda Barrios-Klee, a former guerrilla who currently is a professor of social sciences and a social investigator at the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Guatemala’s told Toward Freedom that, “In Guatemala it has been proven that as more women participate politically and socially, it brings out more repression. An example is the recent attempt on the life of [the aforementioned anti-mining activist] Yolanda Oquelí.”

The JASS report provides concrete recommendations on how governments and countries can work to address and fix this crisis. “We must try to have an effect in the places where the decisions are made so we can at least have a more humanitarian and responsible way of treating the environment and the people,” said Barrios-Klee, who was also a participant in the JASS fact-finding delegation.

But if history is any indicator, expecting institutionalized changes in Guatemala, as well as in the United States and Canada, may be a fool’s errand. DePauw’s Kuecker said that this is the legacy of Guatemala’s truncated flirtation with democracy and building civil society between 1944-54.

“The 1954 coup meant that Guatemalans would never have the chance to build the institutions and political culture necessary for preventing such atrocities from happening today and assured the continued domination of foreign economic interests,” said Kuecker. “The genocide of the civil war followed by the peace without justice leaves Guatemala with little capacity for exiting this contemporary social crisis, and makes Guatemala exceedingly vulnerable to further domination, manipulation and expropriation by transnational corporations and elites.”

This leaves a colossal task for Guatemala’s social movements, which are increasingly led by women. Yet struggling for such justice and peace is necessary for building a democratic and humane social order in Guatemala.

First published in Towards Freedom.

AUTHOR: Cyril Mychalejko
URL: http://upsidedownworld.org
E-MAIL: cmychalejko [at] gmail.com

A 3-year-old girl with severe malnutrition finds care in a medical tent in Niger on May 31. West Africa is in a food crisis. Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Children of the Earth summit — 1992 and 2012
As young people weigh in with their impressions of the ongoing Rio+20 conference, this documentary series, Zero Ten Twenty, looks back on the lives of children born in 1992–the year of the groundbreaking Earth Summit.

Working to include women in development recipe
The United Nations is hosting events this week at the Rio+20 conference aimed at ensuring that governments not only recognize the essential role of women in sustainable development but also integrate women more fully in future policies. “Culture is difficult to change. There is not a recipe,” said Michelle Bachelet, executive director of UN Women.

Women’s rights in Afghanistan again at fore
The campaign for the Afghan presidency by Fawzia Koofi, a young mother of two, is not only endangering Koofi’s life on a daily basis, but crystallizing in a public way the issues facing women in the country, at least according to this article. The justice minister recently alleged that women’s shelters led to “immorality and prostitution,” a statement rejected by the Afghan office of the United Nations.

Eradication of polio threatened by cases in 3 countries
Polio cases in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan threaten efforts to eradicate the disease, according to the World Health Organization. The number of new infections, while small, is creeping up, and budget cuts at the WHO could endanger the campaign. “Polio eradication is at a tipping point between success and failure,” said WHO spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer.

Breaking the cycle of poverty, hunger in Ethiopia
A photo essay depicts the divergent lives of two women in Ethiopia living only 100 miles apart. One mother collects and sells rocks because of drought that has left her fields fallow and cattle and oxen dead, while another — as part of a food-for-work irrigation project — is able to feed her five children even during the long dry months.

Actor starts discussion of sex selection in India
Media coverage of female feticide and infanticide in India has increased after actor Aamir Khan broached the issue in the debut of his TV show, “Truth Triumphs.” Although newspapers and magazines have addressed the issue, India’s movie and TV industries have largely been silent. 

Making progress on preventing child deaths
The United Nations Foundation and private and public representatives are meeting to find ways to reduce and eliminate preventable child deaths, writes Kathy Calvin, CEO of the UN Foundation. “In recent decades, the global community has made significant progress in saving children’s lives….Yet, too many children continue to die, and we have more work to do, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where child mortality rates are the highest,” she writes.

Clinton, Affleck back effort to save children
More than 60 organizations from 40 countries are supporting an international campaign to prevent childhood deaths by promoting breast-feeding, vaccines, and other care, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced. She was joined by actor Ben Affleck, whose Eastern Congo Initiative has worked to prevent child deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They appeared at the Child Survival Call to Action conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., hosted by UNICEF, the U.S., Ethiopia, and India.

Afghan girls intimidated into abandoning schools
Poisonings and arson are leading to school closings across Afghanistan. Afghan intelligence says some of the attacks are carried out by the Taliban, with others by students who are threatened by the Taliban. Those most affected are girls.

Child-health forum a chance to showcase mHealth
A mobile messaging program developed in part by the Health Alliance has been shown to boost child health in Bangladesh and serves as the kind of “replicable, scalable and sustainable” innovation that should be emphasized at the Child Survival Call to Action forum next week in Washington, D.C., writes Kathy Calvin, head of the United Nations Foundation.

Death as a way out of forced marriages in Iraq
Young women in Iraq are shooting themselves and setting themselves on fire at a high rate in the northwestern Sinjar region. The women are trying to avoid arranged marriages–often to their relatives. Officials say that some of the suicides are actually honor killings.

AUTHOR: Cassandra Clifford
URL: www.bridgetofreedomfoundation.org and http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: Cassandra [at] btff.org

UNPFII logo

Feminist researcher Bina D’Costa and I were recently discussing a range of obstacles faced by the Jumma [1] women’s movement as well as all indigenous women’s movement today. D’Costa observed that one of the challenges that confront women’s political activism and rights based movements is to forge meaningful alliances and re-build linkages with indigenous human rights and women’s groups that the latter could also embrace as their own. Although in recent years a lot of mainstream Bengali women’s rights activists have spoken out about violence against indigenous women, there are still some communities, like the tea plantation workers and Saotal and Khasi women, whose issues have only been very sparsely addressed. And this is reflected in a lot of the national and international reporting on women’s rights.

The other side of this is of course how the indigenous leadership, including women leaders, has persistently failed to include women’s voices in high level forums. This year, despite the increasing number of cases of violence against women and girls in the indigenous areas in Dinajpur and in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, there were no indigenous women representing at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). Also, of course the debate is much larger than the Forum itself. It is just a symptom of the crisis in the women’s movement, a crisis that plagues all nationalist or even issue-based movements. It reminds me about how some men, demonstrating for their own democratic rights at Tahrir Square during the ‘Arab Spring’, had swooped on women journalists and sexually assaulted them, about how, questions about race and gender marginalization continue to be raised at present in America’s Occupy Wall Street movement.

Kalpana, a feminist activist had recognized the sexual/gendered politics within her own community much earlier, as Meghna Guhathakurta observes in her article ‘Kalpana’s lasting contribution’ (New Age, June 12, 2008). Guhathakurta writes, “…in most nationalist or ethnic movements the gender question becomes a subtext to the larger ‘national’ one.”

In a similar vein, D’Costa in her recent book Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia (Routledge, 2011) notes that “structural factors and strategic choices have shaped the outcomes of particular policies followed by women’s movements within the country.” Perhaps this is also true of the Jumma women’s movement.

Kalpana was ‘vanished’ 16 years ago on this day, a day before the national parliamentary elections. Her brother Kalicharan recognized the military officer Lieutenant Ferdous Kaiser Khan of Kojoichari Army camp who, accompanied by 7-8 others in plainclothes, came to their house at 1:30 in the morning, blindfolded her and her brothers, and took them away. Her brothers returned. Kalpana is still ‘missing’. Despite overwhelming evidence against the Army officers, numerous calls for justice from national and international human rights activists, and several layers of ‘investigations’, there has been no development.

Kalpana was the general secretary of the Hill Women’s Federation, a student at the Baghaichari Kachalang College. Friends who knew her talked about her outspoken protest against army occupation in the CHT. After her death, the discovery of her diary and letters exchanged with comrades of the movement revealed her single-minded determination to fight against Bengali colonialism through militarization. Sixteen years after her disappearance Raja Devasish Roy speaks to New Age about meeting her, about her life and the investigation of the case and the effect of her struggle, in life and ‘disappearance’, on the Jumma women’s movement of today.

Raja Devasish Roy is the chief of the Chakma Administrative Circle, an official body, and the traditional raja of the Chakma community. He’s also an expert member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) for 2011-13. Barrister Devasish Roy is an advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.

HSA: In her life and in her disappearance, Kalpana Chakma has become an icon of the Jumma feminist movement. Her fights were not just against military oppression, but also the discrimination within the greater Jumma movement led by men. What do you think were the strongest areas in her struggle?

RDR: Three things, among others: (a) her deep insights into internal and externally-originated gender-based and other discrimination (b) her conviction, despite the odds, to struggle against the denial of the right of self-determination and against gender-based discrimination at the same time and (c) her moral courage to speak out and act based on those beliefs and convictions.

HSA: Please tell New Age readers a little about your interactions with her.

I met her only once, and briefly, at the house of the headman of her village in New Lalyaghona, which I was visiting, along with my (now late) wife and family, some months before her disappearance. She had joined the local people in welcoming our entourage and being hospitable to the guests.

HSA: How do you think her ideology and struggles are relevant to the Jumma women’s movement today?

Her courageous stand is a source of inspiration to Jumma women today to not give up the struggle, and to stay focused on the goal of ending discrimination against women, within their own society and overall, and of struggling for self-determination against racist and discriminatory forces.

HSA: I feel that the strength of the Jumma women is not the same as it was before the 1997 CHT ‘Peace’ Accord. This is reflected in the fact that the prevalence of sexual violence against Jumma women has grown, but there seems to be little in the way of retribution. Is it because of a crisis within the Jumma women’s movement or is it something else? What are your thoughts on this?

RDR: The Bangladeshi state is yet to learn to deal in context-specific ways with the pervasive discrimination practiced against Jummas and other indigenous peoples in general, and against Jumma women in particular. In combating sexual violence against indigenous women, there is a need for context-specific measures on prevention, deterrence, punishment and rehabilitation through legislative, judicial, executive and programmatic acts. Awareness-raising of communities is also essential. The aforesaid measures need to be informed by enquiry, assessment, analysis. The primary responsibility lies with the state. However, civil society as a whole shares this burden too. Jumma society as a whole has done little in this regard. Before the 1997 CHT Accord, women’s groups, such as the Hill Women’s Federation, had its own distinct identity, and relative autonomy, from regional political groups. This is no longer the case, both with regard to women’s organizations and those of students and youth. The Hill Women’s Federation – of which Kalpana was an office-bearer – in the case of both the Jana Samhati Samiti (JSS) and the United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF) are now little more than passive adjuncts to the aforesaid parties. Some of the women’s groups that are not affiliated with any political party have done admirable work. However, their work is limited to the urban centres, partly a result of insufficient support from national and regional political parties and human rights groups.

HSA: What do you think human rights activists generally and the Jumma women activists should do to put national and international pressure on the Government to solve the case of Kalpana Chakma’s disappearance? As a lawyer, what do you think are the legal loopholes and how can they be overcome?

RDR: The Bangladeshi state has not learnt to take effective measures against its errant security personnel when they have violated human rights, particularly if the matter concerns incidents in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Legally, there are no impediments to take punitive measures, as there is no limitation for such crimes, and security forces are not legally exempt from prosecution in such cases. If Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination can be pursued decades after the event, so should it be in the case of crimes against others from humbler origins and acuter situations of disadvantage. And it can be so.

However, we cannot overlook the fact that the law is prevented from taking its own course on account of the lack of political support to end this culture of impunity, where members of the security forces and others are implicated. The intervention of the Supreme Court may be sought. The jurisdiction of the international human rights mechanisms can also be invoked, combined with media and other campaigns within and outside Bangladesh. I feel that a combined approach is necessary.

In the long run, I am confident that justice will prevail. For Kalpana, for Sagori, for Sujata, Alpana, Bishakha and countless others. We cannot and should not give up.

[1] The hill people identify themselves as ‘Jummas’ collectively, which refer to their use of shifting cultivation (Jhum cultivation).

AUTHOR: Hana Shams Ahmed
URL: http://hanashams.wordpress.com
E-MAIL: hana.shams.ahmed [at] gmail.com