NGO representative lobby for stronger declaration
NGO representative lobby for stronger declaration
JAKARTA (JP): Representatives of international non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) are lobbying for the on-going
Asia-Pacific women's conference to issue a stronger declaration,
sources said yesterday.
The NGOs, who were invited as observers, have presented a
united front in pushing the senior officials in the conference's
drafting committees to rework the communique that will be issued
at the end of the Second Asian and Pacific Ministerial Meeting on
Women in Development.
The senior officials yesterday were busy putting the final
touches to the document draft, to be officially called the
Jakarta Declaration and the Plan of Action for the Advancement of
Women in Asia and the Pacific.
The NGOs are demanding changes in the definition of the
concepts of work, family and the links between cultural and
religious values, and military and economic policies.
The concept of work, for example, should cover both paid and
unpaid work, and include the informal and subsistence sectors as
well as household chores.
This, they argued, would allow for appropriate tools and
methods used to quantify such works and reflect women's total
contribution in the national accounting systems.
The NGOs had already hammered out their common position when
they met at the Asian and Pacific Symposium of NGOs on Women in
Development in Manila last November.
They have since formed the Asian and Pacific NGO Working
Group. The lobbyists are also armed with a document presented by
55 organizations that have formed the Asia Pacific Women's Action
Network (APWAN).
"Women's rights are increasingly threatened and violated by
militant assertions of religious and ethnic identity, in normal
and in crisis situations," the APWAN document said. "While we
advocate multi-culturalism, all cultural and religious practices,
which deviate from universally accepted human rights including
women's rights, must not be tolerated."
On personal relationships and traditional family norms, the
NGOs are lobbying for individual rights, including those of
lesbians,"...to freely choose their partners without prejudice on
the basis of class, religion, sex or sexual orientation, and form
the type of family they prefer."
"Lesbians face systematic physical and psychological violence
from family, society and state institutions," they said.
The NGOs also want the Plan of Action to address the
vulnerability of women during war time, with reference to the
situations in Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia.
"We hope the documents will include these views, to be
eventually implemented by our governments," said Noeleen Heyzer
of The Asian and Pacific NGO Working Group. (anr)