NGOs launch campaign to save women's lives

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.