NGOs launch campaign to save women's lives

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Activists and health experts are joining hands for a nationwide campaign to increase awareness, particularly among decision-makers, of the high rate of mortality and abuse suffered by Indonesian women.

Initiated by the Coalition for a Healthy Indonesia and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communications Program, the three-month-long Saving Women's Lives campaign was kicked off on Wednesday.

"By constantly disseminating information we expect the full support of decision-makers and all parties in the community," coalition coordinator Gefarina said during a media conference held at the Kusuma Bangsa Foundation's Family Clinic in Pisangan Baru, East Jakarta.

Violence against women, either at home or in the workplace, has reached staggering proportions. In Jakarta, a woman is raped every five hours, mostly by their husbands or close relatives, according to data from 1999.

A lack of access to information, health facilities and individual control over their reproductive organs leaves women prone to cervix cancer and breast cancer, and makes them two to four times more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS compared to men.

In 1997, the mother mortality rate in Indonesia was the highest in Southeast Asia with 343 deaths per 100,000 births, and it has not gone down significantly since.

Aisyah Hamid Badlowi, a member of the House of Representatives Commission VII for people's welfare, said the existing regulations were insufficient to protect the rights of women and children.

She acknowledged that many people were still reluctant to accept gender equality, and that not all lawmakers and government officials responsible for crafting regulations had adequate knowledge or understanding of the issue.

Indonesia ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in Law No. 7/1984.

But very few laws and decrees have been enacted to implement the convention. Those that have been enacted include a 1992 law on health, a 1997 law on manpower and a 1989 ministerial decree that protects women from being dismissed from their jobs because of marriage or pregnancy, Aisyah said.

"But the implementation of the convention here has not been adjusted according to local culture and norms, and has not protected women as some of the regulations are actually contradictory to the convention's substance.

"We need laws -- along with a serious commitment to their implementation -- to save women's lives," she said.