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)Well-Deserved Noble Prize
It is good week for those of us in the environment movement trying to educate the World of the danger of Global Warming and Climate Change. I am delighted in hearing the news that IPCC and Al Gore are the winners of the Noble Peace Prize this year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), created by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has been working since 1988 to alert the World of the danger of global warming. IPCC team of scientists have presented us with facts and figures to convince us that climate change is human-made, therefore we can reverse the effects of it by changing behavior of human beings. I want to congratulate Rajendra Pachauri for his excellent work as chairman of IPCC in moving the international communities and governments to take action to deal with global warming, and Al Gore, for his life-long dedications to the global environment issues. He has convinced me of the danger of global warming by his excellent presentation of facts and figures in the film “An Inconvenient Truth”. I have changed my way of living after seeing the film. Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim, the film producer, have succeeded in getting people in the World to change their ways of living to reverse the effects of global warming. As part of a world communities that want to do things differently
to reduce global warming, I try to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in my day-to-day living by driving less. I try to reduce waste and the demand for fossil fuels; to use less heat and air conditioning; to buy energy-efficient products; and to replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs in my home and office. Beyond individual’s effort, there is a need for real action, such as emission reduction, by governments to avoid the grave consequences of accelerated environment deterioration and societal upheaval as a result of global warming.
Successful Leadership On Global Warming
I congratulate the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his success in taking a bold initiative to bring global leaders together on 24th September 2007, before the opening of the 62 General Assembly, for one day meeting to discuss global warming phenomenon. It was an impressive gatherings of people, from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, Arti Mehra, Mayor of New Delhi, to Al Gore, Former United States Vice-President and present world environment champion; a real break through, indeed, on our efforts to deal with Climate Change. Participants included 40 heads of State or government, 9 deputy prime ministers and vice presidents and 70 cabinet ministers from all over the world come together to discuss under three important theme: mitigation, innovating a climate-friendly world through new technology; and financing the response to climate change. It is true what Al Gore said. The old divide between North and South, between developed and developing countries is now obsolete and business cannot continue as usual. At the end of the session at the UN Headquarters in New York, the leaders agreed to take appropriate actions by working together in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, focusing on clean technologies and making massive economic change needed to cut global emissions from industries. Women leaders attended the meeting, gave useful ideas on how we should move ahead on this: German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, suggested that a global carbon-trading scheme, which places a price on industries’ carbon-dioxide emissions, should play a central role in future attempts to fight global warming; Gro-Harlem Brundtland of Norway, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General, and Mitchelle Bachelet, President of Chile, led important plenary discussions on “Mitigation”; United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested that the world must find ways to “transcend” fossil fuels in the search for clean, renewable alternatives; and Meena Raman of Friends of the Earth International gave advice to industrialized countries to cut carbon-dioxide emissions to give more “wiggle rooms” for developing countries to act. Ban Ki-moon succeeded in his aim to “jump-start” and build-up of political support as a momentum for the Bali December 2007’ Climate Change Negotiation. As host, Indonesian President Sosilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that success of the meeting is when we have agreements on what action to take between now until 2012, the end of the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, and action afterwards. He said that the Bali meeting must yield a “new roadmap” that spells out what developed and developing countries agree to do to save humankind and our planet from the looming tragedy of climate change. Ban Ki-moon was certain that we know enough to act, but warned that what we do not have is time.
Filed under Environment, United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)
Tackling Effects of Global Warming: Grass-roots Solutions
We have moved forward a little bit in tackling the effects of global warming when 1700 community activists from 62 countries agreed on the 12-Month Framework for Action on Climate Change. Members of the NGOs and civil societies met last week at the United Nations’ organized Conference focusing on,“Climate Change: How It Affects Us All”. It is good timing for the grass-roots solutions before the problems of global warming become irreversible. The agreed 12-Month Framework for Action at grass-roots level surely is a major step forward to protect our future ecosystems and infrastructures. Since we share one Planet Earth, leaders of each community will have to find appropriate action locally, aiming to stop people’s behavior which will end up polluting the Earth’s environment. Governments and industrial leaders have begun to take concrete action to reduce greenhouse gas or to find alternative sources of energy. Financial and development institutions give incentives to foster climate-friendly technologies towards the eventual phase-out of fossil fuels and nuclear-based technologies. Each community should make their own action plan to face the severity of impact of climate change, which is different from one community to the other, depending on geography and location. For example, sea level rise will affect the livelihood of the people who live along coastal areas or on small islands more than those living on mountain terrains, while the melting of the Himalayan glaciers will affect people in Central and East Asia more than people living in South America. This agreed Framework For Grass-roots Action has given us hope in that, together, we can combat global climate change. We are all responsible to change our own bad habit of excessive consumption, and bad practice of waste of clean water and other precious natural resources. Our positive action can prevent disaster for ourselves and for billions of other people who will face famine, mass dislocations and death that will come from global warming and climate change. This successful last week conference has increased the momentum leading up to the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Meeting to address the leadership challenge of climate change, which is scheduled for 24 September in New York, andthe United Nations Climate Change Conference at Nusa Dua in Bali from 3-14 December 2007.
Filed under Environment, United Nations, World Affairs | Comments (2)Shortages of Freshwater
The World is facing a freshwater crisis. Only 23 years from now the global urban population will reach sixty per cent, placing enormous pressure on the available clean water supplies, which already are very limited. By 2020, the average water supply per person worldwide is expected to be a third smaller than today. Phil Dickie, the author of the report, “Making Water” of the WWF’s Global Freshwater Programme, estimated that 1.1 billion people are at the moment living without adequate water supply, and twice that number without adequate sanitation. The warning also came from 23 United Nations’ agencies working together at the World Water Assessment Programme based in UNESCO headquarters in Paris, that the water crisis is so severe it could take almost 30 years to eradicate hunger and that the “availability of clean water supply” is an issue that can threaten the world’s social stability. We have to create awareness around the world to stop wasteful water consumption. By 2025, The United Nations Environment Programme predicts that the amount of freshwater wasted by different sectors will rise to 1000 for agriculture, 1100 for domestic use and 500 cubic km for industry. Second only to global warming, scientists worldwide said that water shortages are most worrying problems for the new Millennium. Good news is that on 15 August 2007, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development launched a very useful
“Global Water Tool” at the World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, showing where water risks are in the World to guide future action. We need to know the water situation and problem locally in order to manage water supply globally for the survival of all of living beings in this World.