Abuse of women addressed
By Santi WE Soekanto
BEIJING (JP): As the city gears up for the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women today, preliminary discussions touched on several inadequately-addressed issues, including the violence and abuse inflicted on women.
Meetings on Saturday and yesterday between a handful of the 2,300 registered journalists with officials of the United Nations and other bodies conceded that even the fight against violence against women, when discussed by such a great number of people with diverse backgrounds, might not easily come to a conclusion.
In Indonesia, cultural factors and ignorance are often blamed for the lack of support for battered women and the severely inadequate programs to address the issues.
Several observers to the meeting agreed that the case may be the same with several other countries.
"An official once rejected a plan by an international body to study the issue in Indonesia, saying 'there's no violence against women in the country'," Syamsiah Achmad, assistant to State Minister for Women's Roles Mien Sugandhi, said here Saturday.
She expressed concern with the ignorance that generally surrounds the issue.
Other issues important to Indonesia include the poor protection of women workers, both in the country and abroad.
Officials, including Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief, have admitted that poor law enforcement is the main reason why Indonesian female migrant workers are continually mistreated by their employers.
In yesterday's meeting, Executive Director of UNICEF (United Nations' Children's Fund) Carol Bellamy, agreed that violence against women, both domestic and in armed conflicts, is one of several issues that the conference must urgently address.
Regarding armed conflicts, where women and children are victimized, Bellamy expressed incredulity over what she described as "cents of absurdity".
People worldwide, she pointed out, waste an estimated US$40 billion annually on golf, $400 billion on cigarettes and $800 billion on military expenditures, whereas only $13 billion is needed to meet the basic health and nutrition requirements for children worldwide.
Some 10,000 participants from 178 countries will attend the opening ceremony of the conference. United Nations Secretary- General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, however, will not be able to inaugurate the event as scheduled; instead, he will be represented by his Senior Advisor, Ismat Kittani.
An official release said Boutros-Ghali has been forced to cancel "due to illness involving high fever".
He has also been forced to cancel his planned official visits to Japan and South Korea.
The session, however, will still be "star-studded" with the presence of, among others, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, President Vigdis Finnbogadottir of Iceland and Prime Minister Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh.
United States First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will attend a colloquium on women and health security tomorrow. First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings of Uganda and Princess Basma Bint Talal of Jordan will be among the participants.
While the tightly-guarded Beijing International Convention Center, the venue of the gathering, was relatively sedate yesterday, things were moving at a faster pace in Huairou, where thousands of non-governmental organization activists gathered.
A session on women and violence was held on Saturday in the suburban city some 50 kilometers away from the capital by the Asian Women's Human Rights Council to offer women "the opportunity to express their anger, anguish and suffering".
Speakers at the gathering told of the violence they have encountered, which included stories of war-time rape and the trafficking of women. A former "comfort woman" during World War II, for instance, spoke out against the crimes committed by the Japanese army in that war.
"Please continue to work together on this issue and never give up," she pleaded to the gathering.
Another woman told of how she survived an attack in a Lebanese refugee camp, and how she was raped and beaten several times by soldiers.
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