NGO wants more protection for women's rights

JAKARTA (JP): A seminar urged the government yesterday to include protection of women's rights in the curriculum of advanced studies for civil servants to eliminate discrimination against women.

"It is necessary for government officials to have knowledge of efforts to protect women, children and families, as well as other relevant information," K. Soepardjo Roestam, an executive of a women's organization, the Partnership in Development Forum, told the Second National Workshop of Human Rights.

Women's rights was among the issues discussed in the three-day workshop opened by President Soeharto on Monday.

Roestam called on the government to provide the necessary knowledge on the subject not only through scientific workshops and seminars, but also professional upgrading courses, as well as other advanced studies for officials.

She said that discrimination against women was widespread due to the lack of public awareness about their rights. Underlining the need to improve awareness among both men and women, she said that she once new of there a husband who locked his wife in the house whenever he left home. The woman accepted such treatment because she was unaware this was a violation of her rights.

Earlier yesterday Payaman Simanjuntak from the Ministry of Manpower lashed out at discrimination against women in the workplace.

He said there were companies which did not provide the same benefits for men and women. In other cases, some working women have to resign because their companies do not permit the marriage of employees of the same firm.

In a discussion on how to eliminate poverty, Satjipto Rahardjo, a leading sociologist and member of the National Human Rights Commission, pointed out that law enforcement in the country often favored the rich and the powerful.

The principles of equality before the law do not work because the first thing the authorities ask is who the accused is, instead of what the accused has done, Rahardjo pointed out.

"Such practices, however, have never been exposed because doing so would be considered inappropriate," he said.

Poverty can only be eliminated if law enforcement in the country favors the oppressed, he said. In this case, "law enforcers must be not only honest and respectable, but also benevolent".

By half

The government is determined to cut the current number of people living under the poverty line from 27 million by half within the next five years.

One of the government's efforts to eliminate poverty is by providing loans for poor villagers. Under the program, each village is granted Rp 20 million in loans to be distributed directly to the villagers.

Mubyarto, an expert of the National Development Planning Board, however, expressed pessimism that all of the money will reach those who need it.

He also said that the rate of failure of the program might be as high as 30 percent.

Among the other speakers at yesterday's workshop was T. Mulya Lubis, chairman of the Center for the Study of Human Rights, who discussed the protection of rights in the country. He pointed out that rights could not be fully implemented due to the corrupt judicial institutions, the lack of lawyers' independence and press freedom, the weakness of the House of Representatives and the restrictions put by the government on the activities of non- governmental organizations.(sim)