NGO wants more protection for women's rights

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)