Indonesia's PKK gets UNESCO award

By Santi WE Soekanto

BEIJING (JP): Indonesia's grassroots movement for the welfare of families, known by its local acronym PKK, was internationally recognized yesterday for its leading role in a global campaign against illiteracy.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) granted to the PKK (Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga, or Family Welfare Movement) the Noma Prize in a ceremony marking International Literacy Day. The ceremony was held on the sidelines of the ongoing Fourth World Conference on Women.

The movement's chairwoman, Mrs. Yogie S. Memet, who is the wife of the Minister of Home Affairs, accepted the award from UNESCO Director General Federico Mayor.

The prize, named after the late Japanese literary figure Shoichi Noma, was given to Indonesia for "having created a national movement conducted by the wives of civil servants and dedicated to the education and social welfare of women."

The organization won the award for "having emphasized the fundamental importance of educating women and girls as a means of contributing to long-term family welfare in a rapidly changing world," according to a UNESCO statement.

PKK, it said, has demonstrated "the effectiveness of combining literacy and post-literacy activities with income generating activities as a means of encouraging learning, alleviating poverty and promoting family welfare".

UNESCO yesterday also organized a discussion on the education of women and girls featuring a number of experts and well-known figures, including the agency's Goodwill Ambassador actress Jane Fonda. Indonesia's expert Sjamsiah Achmad and Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak were also speakers at the event.

In his address to the seminar, Mayor talked about "women's empowerment and women in power" and pointed out how the two terms are inseparable from the question of access to education.

"We must empower women to enable them to exercise power ..We must empower women because today some two-thirds of the 900 million illiterates between 15 and 60 years of age are women."

He pointed out that over 60 percent of the 130 million out-of- school children are girls. "Women and girls constitute a large majority of the world's educationally excluded and un-reached."

"Education is empowerment, is liberation, is giving everybody the capacity to decide for themselves," he said. "Equality of opportunity and the reduction of female poverty will only be achieved when women are able to play their full part in the development process, which includes helping to shape it."

Ensuring equal access to all forms of learning opportunities is crucial for women's empowerment and access to decision making. He said 70 percent of those living in absolute poverty, which amounts to some 1.3 billion worldwide, are women.

However, only six percent of government ministers are women, and less than 10 percent of all parliamentarians are women, he said.

The conference proper yesterday was still filled with speeches by leaders from participating countries, including the first ladies of Burundi, Nigeria, Bolivia, and number of representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Patricia B. Licuanan of the Philippines, who chairs the Main Committee in charge of deliberating the conference's Draft Platform for Action and the Beijing Declaration, reported further progress in the committee's activities.

Two working groups, in charge of different sections in the documents, have been able to "clear about half of the total brackets in the statements on human rights and armed conflicts" in the draft.

"Much progress is being made," she said optimistically, pointing out that although the working groups, and the contact groups established to facilitate negotiations, will have to work late this weekend, the committee will be able to convene again on Monday.

"If I'm lucky, the meeting of the committee on Monday will be dull, because it will consist mainly of participating countries expressing approvals" of the various points in the draft, which will be the world's guidelines for the advancement of women.

She admitted that debates were still occurring over issues which were known to be polarizing, such as a woman's right to her reproductive health, which involves the issues of abortion and birth control.

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