There is growing
recognition by the international community that women human rights defenders
are best placed to respond to violence against women and a crucial force for
peace; but the international protection
framework needs to be made more accessible to those in need, says Jennifer
Allsopp.
“Women
human rights defenders are passion holders, speakers, people with a vision, we
hold the front-line.” - Betty Makoni
The first time I heard the term Women Human
Rights Defender (WHRD) it was a bit of revelation to me. It was at an
international conference
held by the Association for Women in Development (AWID) on women transforming
economic power. A group of women from across the globe were gathered in a
workshop convened by Jenni Williams of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WoZA)
to discuss strategies to protect themselves from state violence.
The session was extremely practical. Participants
wanted to share concrete answers to challenges they are facing more and more in
their day-to-day work: arbitrary detention, police violence and infiltration. I
was struck by the commonality of many of the struggles of the women in the room
and also by the enormity of their fight: these women are the new freedom
fighters; activists holding the front-line in the movement for equality and
human rights in the face of multiple forms of gender violence.
Recent years have seen the increased targeting of
WHRD and a corresponding increase in attention given to WHRD as a category by
the international community. 1998 saw the establishment of a UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and in 2004, EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders followed. The EU now mandates all 100 EU
diplomatic missions to regularly monitor and assist situation on the ground,
including through the provision of temporary shelters for WHRD in need. The third report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders,
published in December 2010, focused exclusively on the situation of WHRD and
all those working on gender issues. WHRD, it stated, are “more at risk of
suffering certain forms of violence and other violations, prejudice, exclusion,
and repudiation than their male counterparts.”
Partly in response to the visibility of women’s
role in defending women’s rights in countries in transition, as witnessed
during the Arab Spring, the international community has begun to scale up its
work protecting WHRD in the past year, investing in women as a primary force
for peace. The protection of WHRD is, for example, fundamental
to the commitment made by the UK Department for International
Development (DFID) to improve responses to violence against women and
girls in humanitarian and emergency situations. Yet work is still to be
done.
Thousands of women remain at risk.
A recent conference
held by Peace Brigades International with the support of GAPS-UK, Womankind and
Amnesty International UK and the British
All Party Parliamentary Group on
Women, Peace and Security, ‘Women Human Rights Defenders: Empowering and
Protecting the Change-makers’ invited WHRD from across four continents to share
strategies to strengthen the international protection framework and foster an
enabling environment on the ground.
In her opening speech, Betty Makoni, Zimbabwean
activist and founder of Girl Child Network, was sensitive to the uniqueness of
each woman’s struggle. She also acknowledged the commonality of the fight for
equality led by WHRD and of the “extraordinary risks” they face on ground, both
from state
and increasingly non-state actors. Of these, common thematic challenges include
stigmatisation, criminalisation and poor access to justice.
Women spoke first hand of gender specific forms
of stigma and abuse in response to their work defending the human rights of men
and women, including verbal abuse, rape and sexual abuse. Activists from Iran,
Nepal and Kenya reported that accusations of ‘prostitution’ and related forms
of sexual torture were especially targeted at women defending reproductive
rights. Naomi Barasi, an activist working with Amnesty International to protect
women’s rights in the slums of Nairobi, told participants of a friend who is
still recovering having even had broken bottles inserted in to her vagina by
police.
Shyam Sah, an activist in Eastern Nepal working
on cases such as witchcraft accusation, domestic violence, rape, dowry demands
and polygamy, cited the lack of trust in the police as the main reason why
women have pragmatically positioned themselves to protect women’s human rights.
In Nepal, she said, “society has never accepted us”. Most threats to their work
come from families, community and illegal armed actors which may be linked to
police. When she intervened in a polygamous marriage she was attacked in full
view of the police, with one officer commenting, “you deserve what you get, you
are doing unnecessary work here.”
In addition to abuses of power at the local
level, in recent years, state machinery and legislation has adopted new means
of criminalising the work of HRD nationally through the employment of terrorism
and national security charges in addition to public morality and blasphemy
legislation. In Iran, Shadi Sadr, an Iranian lawyer, HRD and journalist,
explained that it has become a criminal offence to simply criticise the regime
to an international audience. Two years ago, on their return from the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, the border police took the
passports of two Iranian women and took them to prison where they were
interrogated for 2 hours. They have now been released on bail and are still
awaiting a decision, charged with “taking action against national security and
espionage”.
Judith Maldonado Mohica, Director of the Lawyers’
Collective Luis Carlos Perez in Northeast Columbia reported how in Columbia, as
in Mexico,
HRD are increasingly being linked to drug trafficking and guerrilla groups as a “strategy of persecution”. There is an
irony that whilst new charges are being trumped up against WHRD, the law is
slow to recognise crimes against women. In Columbia, for example, forced
disappearances were only recognised as a crime in 2001, whilst sexual violence
was only recognised in 2004.
It is well-documented that the criminalisation of
WHRD is fuelled by judicial impunity for those who abuse women’s human rights and by
a parallel lack of state accountability. Shadi drew attention to the situation
of female political prisoners in Iran where, despite the fact that almost all
female political prisoners report one or more cases of torture or sexual
harassment, not a single case of judicial investigation has taken place to
date. In Columbia, Judith Maldonado Mohica stressed that it is indigenous women
who are most often ignored, especially when seeking to denounce paramilitaries.
This is partly due to a lack of awareness of human rights frameworks, she
explained, but also due to a lack of courts dealing with such cases – just 3 to
cover 120,000 cities and townships. This inability to access justice poses
significant challenges to their human rights work in opposition to land grabs
and other forms of environmental degradation.
Such work is crucial, but as explained by Dolores Infante Cañibano,
human rights officer at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights, it is heavily repressed worldwide: “environmental defenders are
one of the groups most at risk … then you add indigenous, rural, woman and what
you have is a multifaceted discrimination”.
The international community seems far from
proposing an adequate response to the human rights abuses faced by indigenous
women in Columbia. Current attempts to reform the law nationally are being
thwarted, says Judith Maldonado Mohica, by a conflict of interest. The last
three reforms of the Columbian justice system were funded and commissioned by
the World Bank and focused on terrorism, drugs, trafficking and illegal mining
with an accent on legal security for foreign investors. As such, they were far
from a response to the protection needs of indigenous women. Naomi Barasa cited
a similar conflict of interest experienced in her work lobbying against the
eviction of 20,000 slum dwellers in Nairobi which could be traced back to EU funding
for a new road. Faced with such scenarios, the EU must do more to not just prove
the force of its Guidelines but to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of its
strategy for protecting human rights on the ground. There is a further need for
the international community to develop a comprehensive response to new forms of
persecution by non-state actors, including private security companies and Latin
American land corporations, as recommended by Margaret Sakaggya, the UN Special
Rapporteur in her 2010 report.
More must also be done to
ensure that the current international protection framework - which has a
crucial role in securing justice and saving lives - is more accessible to those in need,
including access to diplomatic protection and emergency funding in addition to
international criminal courts and other justice channels. As it stands,
participants lamented that the UN Women system is simply too long: “if you
follow that procedure you’ll get killed”, said Samira Hamidi, former country
director of the Afghan Women’s Network, “I know a woman who appealed to this system
for help - she’s now in India in a very bad situation”.
The issue of reprisals faced by
those seeking to access international protection frameworks was also raised as
a worrying global trend, with more work needed to remedy the high personal
costs of accessing justice, including risk of murder. In Kenya, Naomi reported
that a number of people who went to talk to the Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial
Killings were shot dead.
Faced with these numerous challenges we need to
think seriously about what a gendered protection system looks like in practical
terms, both at the local and international level.
Women human rights defenders are constantly coming up with their own
strategies for protection which the international community must be ready to
support: forging internal relocation strategies, as in Afghanistan; building
professional alliances with doctors, media and lawyers like Naomi and her
colleagues in the slums of Nairobi; or establishing satellite projects in
neighbouring countries like members of the Girl Child Network who have set up
‘girls empowerment villages’ in Swaziland, South Africa, Uganda and Sierra
Leone based on an initial Zimbabwean model: “there is no need to reinvent the
wheel”, says Betty Makoni, “the wheels are already moving, we just need to take all
the people on board.”
In this context we must we wary of imposing
monolithic definitions of WHRD and take full account of their diverse needs in
order to offer comprehensive support to their work. In a plea to representatives
from the UN, EU, DFID and British Foreign Commonwealth Office present at the
Peace Bridges conference, Shyam Sah stressed that WHRD do not simply fit into the
standard development paradigm but have specific needs: women may be financially
dependent on family, they may not be able to work because of the threats they
receive or they may have to work from exile.
The international community is certainly moving
in the right direction of travel in its support of WHRD, and crucially, in its
recognition that WHRD are best placed to respond
to violence against women and girls and a crucial force for peace. This
is something to celebrate on 29 November, the 6th annual International
Women Human Rights Defenders Day. However
only time will tell if states are prepared to take on a facilitator role
and
let grass-roots women take the lead on the ground. Most WHRD I have met
are far from
the
casques bleus of UN peackeepers or the freedom fighters of old, yet
they are working tirelessly for peace at activism’s front-line. In the final
address of the conference, Samira Hamidi said the following of her own activism
in the warzone of Afghanistan: “please take the issue of WHRD seriously. I
don’t want to link my life to international troops, I want to make sure women have
a better life in Afghanistan…” If we are able to truly commit to the work of
WHRD we have a lot to gain for peace and for the human rights of all: the
elevation of an alternative way of addressing violence against women and of forging
peace in opposition to militarism.
News reported.
News reported.
… شیخو
پورہ کے علاقے نارنگ منڈی میں کھیتوں میں کام کرنے والی 5 لڑکیوں سے 8
افراد نے اجتماعی زیادتی کردی، پولیس نے مقدمہ درج کرکے 2 ملزموں کو گرفتار
کرلیا جبکہ 6 ملزم ابھی تک مفرور ہیں۔ پولیس کے مطابق بوٹا چنگڑ کی فیملی
15 دن سے موضع کرنو میں نجیب میر کے ڈیرے پر مونجی کی کٹائی میں مصروف
تھیں، جمعرات اور جمعے کی درمیانی شب ملزمان ظہیر اور تصدق عرف ماڑا جٹ
وغیرہ 8 افراد نے خاندان کی خواتین، مردوں اور بچوں کو رسیوں سے جکڑکر ایک
کمرے میں بند کردیا اور ان کی 5 لڑکیوں کو دوسرے ڈیرے پر لے جاکر مبینہ طور
پر اجتماعی زیادتی کا نشانہ بنایا، پولیس نے اطلاع ملنے پر لڑکیوں کو طبی
معائنے کیلئے اسپتال منتقل کر دیا اور 4 نامزد اور 4 نامعلوم افراد کیخلاف
مقدمہ درج کرکے ظہیر اور تصدق عرف ماڑا جٹ کو گرفتار کرلیا ۔ پولیس کا کہنا
ہے کہ باقی ملزموں کو بھی جلد گرفتار کرلیا جائے گا ۔
کے میں بھی گیس بند رہے گی۔
ہیں۔
اسی بارے میں
کراچی…محمد رفیق
مانگٹ…پاکستان سمیت ترقی پزیر ممالک کی مارکیٹوں میں فروخت ہونے والی دس فی
صد ادویات جعلی یا نقلی ہیں۔انہیں نقلی ادویات کی وجہ سے حالیہ سالوں میں
پاکستان اور چین میں ہلاکتوں کی تعداد سو سے زائد ہو ئیں۔ چین اور بھارت
نقلی ادویات تیار کرنے میں سرفہرست ہیں۔ ملیریا کی ایک تہائی ادویات نقلی
ہیں۔ دنیا بھر میں جعلی ادویات کے کاروبار میں سات سو فی صد اضافہ دیکھنے
میں آیا۔ دنیا بھر میں سب سے زیادہ جنسی ادویات کی نقل تیار کی جاتی ہیں۔
امریکی اخبار’واشنگٹن پوسٹ‘ نے عالمی ادارہ صحت اور یورپی یونین میڈیسن کی
رپورٹ کے حوالے سے بتایا کہ ترقی پزیر ممالک میں10 فی صد سے زائد جعلی
ادویات تیار کی جاتی ہے اور ان ممالک کی مارکیٹ میں فروخت ہونے والی وہ
ادویات اصل نہیں ہوتی ۔سرحدوں پر سب سے زیادہ غیر قانونی طور پر اسمگل شدہ
ایشیاء میں جعلی ادویات کی مقدار سب سے زیادہ ہے ۔ 2010سے 2011کے دوران
قبضے میں لی گئی جعلی ادویات میں سات سو فی صد اضافہ دیکھنے میں آیا۔ جعلی
ادویات کا کاروبار دنیا بھر میں پھیل چکا ہے اور یہ خاص جرائم پیشہ گروہ یا
اوسطاً درجے کی لیبارٹریوں کی ناقص پیداوار کی وجہ سے ایک منافع بخش
کاروبار کی شکل اختیار کرچکا ہے۔ یہی وجہ ہے کہ اس کے خطرناک نتائج پاکستان
اور چین میں دیکھنے میں آئے ۔ رپورٹ کے مطابق رواں برس انہیں جعلی ادویات
کی وجہ سے پاکستان میں ایک سو سے زائد افراد موت کے منہ میں چلے گئے
جب40ہزار سے زائد دل کے مریضوں کونقلی ادویات دی گئی۔2008میں چین میں خون
کو پتلا کرنے والا عنصر ہیپارن سے81اموات ہو گئی۔ماضی کی تحقیق بتاتی ہے کہ
ملیریا کی ایک تہائی ادویات جعلی ہیں۔ اس گھمبیر صور ت حال کے باوجود
عالمی ادارہ صحت کہتا ہے کہ کئی ممالک میں میڈیسن کے متعلق کوئیقوانین نہیں
۔ زیادہ تر جعلی اور نقلی ادویات بھارت اور چین میں تیار کی جار ہی ہیں۔
جن ادویات کی زیادہ تر نقل تیار کی جا رہی ہے ان میں جینٹورنری37فی صد،
انٹی انفیکشن12فیصد اور اعصابی نظام سے متعلقہ ادویات 12فیصد ہیں۔
ٹ کو ہیک کرلیا، پی ٹی اے ذرائع کا
کہنا ہے کہ ویب سائٹ کو ری کنسٹرکٹ کرکے بحال کردیا گیا ہے۔ انٹرنیٹ سروس
پرووائیڈرز کے مطابق ای بی او زیڈ نامی غیر ملکی ہیکرز نے گوگل پاکستان ویب
سائٹ کو ہیک کیا گیا، صرف گوگل انٹرنیشنل کا سرچ انجن کام کررہا ہے۔ آئی
ایس پی کا مزید کہنا ہے کہ صارفین کئی گھنٹوں تک گوگل پاکستان سرچ انجن تک
رسائی حاصل نہیں کرسکے۔ جبکہ پاکستان ٹیلی کام اتھارٹی نے بتایا ہے کہ گوگل
پاکستان کی ویب سائٹ کو ری کنسٹرکٹ کرکے بحال کردیا گیا۔