PRESS CONFERENCEON WOMEN’S RIGHTS BY EQUALITY NOW

 

With profound concern, Equality Now was marking the tenth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, which found discriminatory laws still in force around the world, actress Meryl Streep, a member of the women’s rights group, said this morning at a Headquarters press conference sponsored by the Permanent Mission of the Netherlands to the United Nations.

Moderating the press conference, Ms. Streep recalled that 189 governments had adopted the Beijing Declaration 10 years ago, reaffirming their fundamental commitment to the equal rights and inherent human dignity of women and men, and the Beijing Platform for Action, expressly pledging to “revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex”.  During the 2000 General Assembly special session that conducted the Beijing+5 review, governments had reaffirmed their pledge to fulfil that commitment by 2005, but they had failed.

Renewing Equality Now’s call for the revocation of discriminatory laws, she stressed that now was the moment of reckoning.  Only 13 out of 45 countries included in the group’s 1999 report on discriminatory laws had repealed or amended the laws highlighted in it.  While equality in law did not automatically translate into equality in life, it was the most formal expression of public policy.  By allowing discriminatory laws to remain in force a government endorsed them and actively perpetuated inequality.  When women were unequal under the law, they had no formal recourse when they faced discrimination.  Moreover, the message was conveyed to all that they were second-class citizens.

Describing the impact of such laws, she said a woman could not vote in Kuwait or drive in Saudi Arabia; she was barred from working on military submarines in the United Kingdom or working at night in Bolivia, except as a nurse or public servant; and if raped in Pakistan, she must have four Muslim adult male witnesses or herself be considered guilty of fornication.  Married women faced discriminatory laws that systematically subordinated them to their husbands, including wife-obedience laws in Algeria, Sudan, Yemen and northern Nigeria.  In Haiti and Syria, men could kill their wives with legal impunity in the name of honour and Japanese women, unlike their male counterparts, were barred from remarriage for six months.

Also participating in the press conference were Taina Bien-Aime, Executive Director of Equality Now; Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamas, Director of the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, Jerusalem; Susana Chiarotti, Regional Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), Argentina; Sapana Pradhan-Malla, President of the Forum for Women, Law and Development, Nepal; and Jessica Neuwirth, President of Equality Now.

Ms. Bien-Aime welcomed the legal reforms made by the 13 governments that had repealed or amended discriminatory laws, saying that their efforts demonstrated a commitment to equality and respect for the commitments made at Beijing and other international legal obligations.  Several other countries were in the final stages of law reform.  The amendment and repeal of discriminatory laws bore no financial cost to governments and were a question of political will.

Ms. Abu-Dayyeh Shamas said that, while women could be judges or witnesses on an equal footing with men in the occupied Palestinian territories, that was not the case in the religious court system.  And in Israel, where rabbinical courts were responsible for judging family matters, Jewish women were denied the right of divorce.  Discriminatory decisions by those courts were sanctioned by State law.  Elsewhere, family law allowed polygamy in Algeria, Mali and Tanzania.

Ms. Chiarotti said that many countries, including India and Malaysia, excluded marital rape from their penal codes, allowing men to rape their wives with impunity.  Equality Now was also highlighting countries that exempted men from punishment for pre-marital rape.  Under their laws, men were not subject to penalty if they subsequently married their victims.  Those countries included Brazil, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Lebanon and Uruguay.  However, those laws had been amended in Brazil and Ethiopia, where they were awaiting presidential assent, while in Argentina a man charged with pre-marital rape could negotiate the penalty with his victim provided there had been a previous relationship between them.

Ms. Pradhan-Malla said that, in many parts of the world, women were denied the right to confer their citizenship on their children or their spouses.  In Nepal a new initiative recognized a daughter as a legal heir of the family, but she was required to return inherited property once she was married.  No initiative had been taken to amend the citizenship law that denied the existence of a woman and mother as an independent citizen of the country.  In Lesotho, immovable community property was not registered in the name of a married woman, while in Monaco, Bangladesh, Kenya and the United States, the law promoted barriers to citizenship based on the sex of a parent or a spouse.

Ms. Neuwirth, stressing the urgent need for a new mechanism to carry forward the Beijing Platform for Action and end legalized discrimination, called upon the Commission on the Status of Women to appoint a special rapporteur on discriminatory laws.  While the Commission on Human Rights had more than 20 special rapporteurs, the Commission on the Status of Women had none of the mechanisms that the latter had to help it carry out its mandate.  Several former chairs of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women had expressed support for the appointment of a special rapporteur as had several members.

Asked to comment on the amendment proposed by the United States seeking to ensure that the Beijing Platform of Action did not guarantee the right to abortion, Ms. Bien-Aime said that Equality Now, speaking on behalf of many non-governmental organizations, was extremely concerned about the United States position on renegotiating or opening discussion based on its anti-choice agenda.  This was a time for the United Nations and MemberStates to look towards implementation of Beijing rather than renegotiation.  It was unconscionable that the United States would hijack such an important meeting to discuss an extremely narrow issue.  In any case, the term “fundamental right to abortion” did not appear anywhere in the Platform for Action or any other text related to Beijing.

Ms. Streep told a correspondent who asked about her involvement with Equality Now that she had been involved with the group for about eight years for a personal reason.  Her grandmother, a New York City resident with three children, did not have the right to vote even in a school board election.  The problem of women’s rights was not restricted to exotic locales; it was a human story that crossed every culture.

Asked about conservative Arab claims that Beijing was a Western cultural imposition, Ms. Abu-Dayyeh Shamas said that was an excuse to avoid the debate on social policies.  Arab women’s human rights and dignity were no less important than those of Western and other women.  Those using such excuses were basically trying to undermine the very important struggle to examine government social policies in the Arab world.

To a question about how so many women in the United States could support an administration that basically undermined women’s rights, Ms. Neuwirth replied that it was clear that the women’s movement had never controlled the outcome of elections in the country, although she wished it did.

She told another correspondent that, while Equality Now supported the right to abortion, the group did not see it as an issue for negotiation in the final document at the present conference.  Different countries had different positions and laws while others were changing their laws.  The Platform for Action contained a very carefully negotiated consensus statement on abortion that talked about unsafe abortion, women’s lives and trying to prevent unwanted pregnancies, a goal upon which all governments could agree.

Asked about changes in laws relating to female genital mutilation (FGM), she said that, in the 10 years since Beijing, more than a dozen countries in Africa had started to introduce and adopt laws against the practice.  Concomitantly with grass-roots activism, young women were taking advantage of those laws to protect themselves against FGM and looking to government authorities to protect them under the law, which did not exist in many countries 10 years ago.

Regarding whether Nepal’s political upheaval had any bearing on women’s rights, Ms. Pradhan-Malla said that the crisis had a significant effect on women’s lives.  Due to the insurgency there was a lot of sexual violence perpetrated with impunity by both sides.  Because there was no parliament at the moment, the entire national budget was focused on security at the expense of social issues.  The country had more than 100 discriminatory laws that could not be reformed owing to the political crisis.

Another correspondent asked about the signs emerging out of Iraq, given the special position that the former regime had accorded to women in a region widely known for its conservatism.

Ms. Abu-Dayyeh Shamas said it was unfortunate that the more conservative interpretation of religion was currently being promoted in Iraq’s family law, which used to be one of the most progressive in the Arab world.  Previously, the same law applied to all sectors, and though based on Islamic society, it had an open interpretation and guaranteed the rights and protections of women.  However, the law’s present interpretation was very conservative, and its application was differed according to specific communities, which divided society further and set family relations back.  Legally speaking, women had it easier under the former regime, she said.

Ms. Neuwirth noted that, in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, a constitution was a mere piece of paper unless given meaning.  While Afghanistan’s constitution had a wonderful provision on equality, the Chief Justice had a Taliban-like ideology.  He had personally spoken out strongly against women’s rights and taken actions that indicated that he did not believe in them, despite the constitution.

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