The Pope Versus Condoms and the Pills
The Holy See, by having an observer status at the UN unlike many other religions, has made it possible for the Catholic Church to play active roles in many international conferences organized by the United Nations. During the last two decades of my work with the United Nations, I had seen delegations sent by the Vatican, energetically involved in the negotiations of Plans, Programmes or Platforms of Action of key UN Conferences since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, the 1995 World Summit for Social Development, and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women which I was officially assigned to work in the preparatory process. The Church took high profile position at the 1995 Bejing Conference on Women to influence representatives of the governments, non-governmental organizations and the media by propagating the text of the encyclical “Humanae Vitae”, a conservative Church dogma created by Pope Paul VI in 1968 aiming to ban birth control. The Vatican delegation fought tooth and nails with many progressive NGOs and women’s groups when they promote the use of condoms and birth control pills in family planning programmes and campaigns to prevent HIV/AIDS. According to “Humanae Vitae”, using artificial birth control such as the pills and condoms works against the Church’s concept of “marriage” which is to “foster love between partners in order to produce children”. All through the two-year process of preparations of the World Conference on Women, Vatican Spokesmen tried every means to influence the negotiated text of the Platform for Action, a document that the participants agreed to issue to the World when the Conference ended. They targeted for attack the agenda items on reproductive healths, reproductive rights, women’s rights and gender equality. Three months before opening of the Beijing World Conference on Women, Pope John Paul II sent a letter the Conference’s Secretary-General, Gertrude Mongella, to make a strong point that according to the Church’s outlook, “Women and men have been called by the Creator to live in profound communion with one another, with reciprocal knowledge and giving of self, acting together for the common good with the complementary characteristics that which is feminine and masculine. No response to women’s issues can ignore women’s role in the family or take lightly the fact that every new life is totally entrusted to the protection and care of the women carrying in it in her womb”. In the same letter the Pope continued to say that “in order to respect this natural order of things, it is necessary to counter the misconception that the role of motherhood is oppressive to women, and that a commitment to her family, particularly to her children, prevents a woman from reaching personal fulfillment, and women as a whole from having an influence in society”. On this subject, I recently read an article by John Allen Jr., the senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and the author of “The Rise of Benedict XVI, on the Pope vs. the Pill . I disagree with him when he said that Catholicism can and does change. For me, I see no evidence that the Church can change. It seems to me that Catholic Church authorities would rather look the other way than face the facts that, in following the Church’s teaching against the use of condoms and pills, youth around the world are dying every day because of HIV/AIDS, and millions of women are sinking deeper every day into a blackhole of poverty because of producing too many children to feed and care for.
Filed under United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)“Ruffling Feathers Is Part of the Job Of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights”
This is what Louis Arbor of Canada, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said before she left the office in June. Coming to this position from her previous job as Chief Prosecutor to the UN War Crimes Tribunal, she was known to have ruffled some feathers by taking a tough stance on the human rights record of some countries, especially those sitting on the Human Rights Council. Judge Navanethem Pillay of South Africa, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s nominee as the new High Commissioner for Human Rights, has just been confirmed by consensus by the United Nations General Assembly to begin her work in Geneva on the 1st of September. Qualification for this post, according to the General Assembly, is that a person has to be of high moral standing with personal integrety and possess expertise in the field of human rights and the general knowledge and understanding of diverse cultures necessary for impartial, objective, non-selective and effective performance of her duties. Judge Pillay will carry on her new job within the framework of the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Ruffling Feathers” is nothing new to her seeing from her background. She had many years of experience in fighting against Apartheid, domestic violence and other human right abuses in her country. She was put under South African Police surveillance when she successfully appealed to the provincial court which gave Mandela and his fellow inmates some very basic legal rights. Her new job as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights will require more international diplomacy on the occasions that she will be called to defend victims of human rights abuses by their own government. She will be expected to make the existing human right machinery work in order to renew public confidence in the United Nations. As a global advocate for human rights, she has an important task to strengthen governmental and non-governmental institutions created for human rights education and training. The High Commissioner for Human Rights job is one of the most difficult jobs in the World with high expectations from all levels of society from local, regional and global. I want to join others in congratulating her for this important appointment and to wish her well in her important task of promoting values, beliefs and attitudes that encourage all individuals to uphold their own rights and those of others.
Filed under United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)Feminization of HIV/AIDS
The feminization of HIV epidemics has been steadily on the increase globally. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 75 per cent of young people infected by the disease are females. Experts cite the lack of information on how female adolescents can protect themselves from HIV/AIDS, and sexual coercion and violence, and lack of sex and health education as major problems. The International Women’s Tribune Centre’s Women Ink Program is doing an excellent job in raising an awareness on this issue globally. This month, the issue of a monthly e-mail bulletin issue #77 is focused on the intersection between gender and HIV/AIDS. A book on “You, Your Life, Your Dreams and “Get the Facts”, a flipchart are printed for adolescents are produced by the Family Care International. The book on HIV and AIDS, edited by Alice Welbourne and Joanna Hoare, gives useful information on the analysis of the key challenge by HIV/AIDS on gender perspective in Cambodia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Papua New Guinea, the positive action by HIV positive women themselves, and community support. Gender Equality & HIV and AIDS: A Challenge for Education Sector, edited by Sheila Aikman, Elaine Unterhaiter & Tania Boler, to be released in August, will help those working on gender issue and HIV/AIDS in the field of education. The book gives new guide on the education of boys against violence against girls, and on teachers against sexual abuse of girls.
Filed under Gender Issues, World Affairs | Comment (0)“Responsibility to Protect”/ Nargis Cyclone Victims
To speed up global assistance for the victims of the Nargis Cyclone in Myanmar, the UN Secretary-General Ban Kee Moon will travel to the country this Wednesday. Diplomatic persuasion is the best way to handle the sensitive situation in Myanmar. Many people have rightly criticized the behavior of the Myanmar’s military leaders in their reluctant to allow foreign aid volunteers, or “the Good Samaritans” to come into the country to help with this gigantic emergency situation. But we must understand that there is pride involved here. Government officials want to show that they can handle the distribution of foods, tents, clothes and medicines to the people themselves with only the help of neighboring countries like India, Thailand and China. It is their right to decide to do things their way. I am certain that the United States Government would behave the same way in this kind of situation. Just imagine, a planeload of Chinese Buddhists and Indian Hindus insisted on flying into New Orleans to help the people directly during the Hurricane Katrina. I am quite certain that the US Government would not let them into the area without its permission. And yet, right now, we see the US and French navy ships sailing off the coast of the Irrawaddy delta. The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner ignited a firestorm around the United Nations by invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” principle to force the government of Myanmar to accept humanitarian aid. The “Responsibility to Protect” principle does not apply to “natural disaster” or as some people called “the Act of God”. Countries that accepted this principle of intervention by international community only when it applied to crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. We will have chaos if one country can barge into other countryon any emergency without the permission of national authority, no matter of what form of government the country has. Respect of International Law and country’s sovereignty are key elements of the United Nations Charter.
Filed under United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)Macho Stereotype Behavior
The return to power of Silvio Berlusconi as head of the Italian Government is not the occasion for women to celebrate. For many years, I have been following his macho behavior, his stereotype remarks on women, and his jokes on female prostitutes as a part of my “men study”, the other side of the coin of the “women study”. Berlusconi has failed miserably, both as owner of media establishment and as a government leader, in the promotion of a balanced and non-stereotype portrayal of women in the media and society as a follow-up action to the Beijing Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women, which his country, Italy, had voted for in 1995. His appointment of four women into the cabinet is fine but he based his selection of them on their good looks. He recently criticized the Spanish government as “being too pink” because Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has appointed more women than men in the Spanish cabinet, and has actively promoted a policy of gender equality. Berlusconi’s sexist comment upset both women and men, not only in Spain, but also in many countries, who are trying to make some changes towards gender equality. Italian women should confront him on this kind of unacceptable macho behavior since it was them that elected this kind of a man to lead the country.
Filed under Gender Issues, World Affairs | Comment (0)Polygamy’s Children
I feel sorry for the 436 Texan children who were separated from their polygamist parents earlier this month, for they are the real victims in this raiding of the polygamists compound. Their mothers themselves are victims, as young brides given by their religious leader in a polygamist marriage to much older men. The women are brainwashed to believe in the superiority of the men as preached by the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Both mothers and children need a re-education program on human rights, citizen’s rights and self-reliance to get out of their blind religious faith which they follow the preaching of an American man, Joseph Smith Jr. from his sudden divine revelations in 1830 when he wanted to take young girls as his new wives. The West Texas incidence reminds me of what Christopher Hitchen said in his book “God is not Great” that religion poisons everything. He has a chapter on “Is Religion Child Abuse?”. To which my answer is yes, as in the recent case, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints has abused the 436 children and their mothers. They are just a small example of millions of children around the world who are psychologically maimed by various religious teachings. Hitchen is right in calling this kind religious practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young as a moral terrorism.
Banazir Bhutto, Pakistani Women’s Flawed Icon?
I could not agree more with Emily Wax’s piece in the Washington Post this week, “Pakistani Women’s Flawed Icon”. By the way that the late Prime Minister Banazir Bhutto had conducted her life, it is true that she was a brave woman, and political leader, but she had raised expectation for advancement of women in a Muslim society, and largely failed to fulfill them. Internationally, she was a controversial figure among feminists and democratic social activists. She went to the UN-organized International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, talking about women’s rights and family planning, but she did little, while in power, in following through with action in her country. She became pregnant one after the other while in office, that many people made a joke about her in that PPPP stands for “Pakistan Perpetually Pregnant Prime Minister”, rather than her leadership in the PPPP, a Political Party, the Peoples Party of Pakistan. She had taken many risks of putting her own life on the line when out speaking in the public places under warnings. She did not take these risks for women’s right in Pakistan, or for democracy. In a feudal way, she did it for her own and the Bhutto family’s place in the political history of Pakistan. I am sorry that, in the end, she had to pay with her own life to achieve that ambition.
Filed under Gender Issues, World Affairs | Comment (0)Dignity and Justice For All
In six days, we will be celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And yet last month we heard disturbing news on human rights abuse in Saudi Arabia.. a 19 years old girl, identified as “Qatif girl”, has to spend six month in jail and suffered 200 lashes because she was gang raped. This action by the Saudi Court is violence against women. I join friends in the Human Rights Watch around the world to urge the Saudi King Abdullah to void the verdict and drop all charges against “Qatif girl” and other rape victims. Human rights issues include women’s right, arbitrary detention, and discrimination on the ground of sex. On 10 December, the Human Rights Day, Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General will ask all of us around the world to take part in the campaign to celebrate 60 years that the world has come together to recognize the importance of respect of civil and political rights of each person, including economic, social and cultural rights. There are many ways for all of us to join in this campaign and bring about dignity and justice to women and men, no matter where they live. There are more than 50 ideas for commemorating the Universal Declaration of Human Right. Any of us can pick and choose to act from them as suggested by the human rights educators from five continents at their 1997 meeting. We can celebrate 2007 Human Right Day by joining force to help the Saudi woman fights gang rape ruling.
Filed under Gender Issues, United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)The Bali Meeting on Climate Change
Actions by the people and all states are very important to mitigate and to adapt to climate change The intergovernmental process in the context of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol begins on 3 December in Bali. Negotiations by 180 country representatives, with the help of world scientists, and with facilitation by United Nations staff will continue for two weeks ending on the 14th. China, India and the United States are three biggest contributors to the problem of climate change. People around the world expects them to make changes in their policies to play a constuctive role in the negotiation to come up with a new treaty to follow-up Kyoto protocol, which will end in 2012. Their constuctive participation in the meeting will result in heading off forcast by the scientific communities that our world will face catastrophic floods and droughts resulting from the melting of the ices and glaciers in the North and South Poles. Developing countries need assistance to avoid these disasters which will kill millions. I join others in hoping for a success outcome when participating government representatives agree to sign a new Climate Change Treaty. I wish the Indonesian Government best wishes in organizing this important global meeting.
Filed under Environment, United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)Suu Kyi of Burma (Myanmar)
It is hard to believe that Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Price Winner and head of the Burma (Myanmar) national movement for democracy is still under house arrest. It was 12 years ago on September 2, 1995, when I listened to her video speech to 4000 women and men in a packed main hall of the NGO Forum on Women at Huairou in China, a parallel event to the United Nations Fourth World Conference in Beijing. She said then that intolerance breeds insecurity and without security there can be no lasting peace. At that time, I thought, that after receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, soon she would be free. I join women and men around the world pleading for her freedom. We never thought that our global campaigning for her release still have to go on to these days without any success. After Ibrahim Gambari, UN Secretary-General envoy recent visit to her and to the members of Myanmar Military Government, negotiations between the two sides have resumed. The Military Government has set some conditions for her release but has rejected the demand from the Security Council to stop arresting people for wanting democracy, and has refused a visit by the International Red Cross official to talk to detainees. The situation in Burma (Myanmar) continues to be very bad for the people, not only inside the country but for its neighbors. It will not be improved without a stronger intervention from other members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China and India, which have benefit from trade relations with the Myanmar Military Regime. All these years, I don’t see how ASEAN could tolerate aggressive/suppressive behavior of one of its members towards their own citizens.
Filed under World Affairs | Comment (0)