[Fwd: cyber-fem: Women's Conf. Decries Lack of Progress]

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As this post shows, trafficking is a widespread phenomenon -- it's
happening all over the world, from Africa to Pakistan to the Caribbean
-- and opposition to it is hardly limited to those who wear the Emperors
Clothes.. It is a very mainstream cause, if in some ways controversial
(not all prostitution is coerced) and has been for a number of years.
One can of course debate the potential effectiveness of any one course
of action --  but I doubt anything feminists are doing is less effective
than expressing a wish on an internet list to quote Wordsworth to each
and every sex slave in Britain!
  It is a bit irritating to have men on a feminist list who are so
ignorant of what women have been busy doing, and what the issues are,
and what is being done or not done. And I think it is also contrary to
the spirit of feminism to enlist the issue of sex slavery -- a worldwide
phenomenon -- in the cause of Serbian nationalism. Of all things!

Katha

cyber-fem wrote:
>
> ** cross-posted from <women-health@xxxxxxxxxxxx> **
>
> Copyright 2000 Chicago Tribune Company
> Chicago Tribune
>
> WOMEN'S CONFERENCE DECRIES LACK OF PROGRESS SINCE 1995
> By Patrick Cole, Tribune Staff Writer.
> NEW YORK
>
> When Meaza Ashenafi attended the UN Conference on Women five years ago
> in Beijing, she had great hopes that the government of her
> native Ethiopia would crack down on the abduction of and trafficking in
> women, and eliminate the practice of female circumcision.
>
> Yet today those problems persist, and she wonders whether the aims of
> that conference were just a bundle of fragile hopes.
>
> "The progress women are making is incremental--it's not a radical
> change," said Ashenafi, 36, founder of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers
> Association. "I now realize that women everywhere have a problem, not
> just in my country."
>
> Like thousands of other women from almost 180 countries, Ashenafi came
> to New York this week to assess the progress--or lack of it--since the
> 1995 conference and to discuss the daunting task of advancing women's
> rights in areas from health to business.
>
> Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Thursday heightened the urgency
> to curb trafficking in women when she called for a global effort to
> eliminate the practice.
>
> "This rapidly growing criminal enterprise has gone global," Albright
> said at a special session of the General Assembly held to review
> progress since the Beijing conference.
>
> Trafficking, she said, was "distorting economies, degrading societies,
> endangering neighborhoods and robbing millions, mostly women and
> children, of their dreams," said Albright, who had just returned from
> the Middle East.
>
> The five-day conference, called "Women 2000: Gender, Equality,
> Development and Peace for the 21st Century," was sponsored by the United
> Nations. It has attracted women from all walks of life and professions.
> Events and seminars ranged from a speech by First Lady Hillary Rodham
> Clinton condemning gender-based violence to an Academy Award-nominated
> documentary about Vietnamese and American widows struggling to cope
> after the Vietnam War.
>
> Yet many participants have been frustrated by the tedious process of
> drafting a unified plan of action for women's rights, which is scheduled
> to be released Friday.
>
> "The debate about language on violence against women has been
> difficult--there has been some disagreement about [defining] what is
> violence," said Susana Fried, an adviser and consultant to the UN
> Development Fund for Women, who attended the conference.
>
> "People I talk to aren't happy with this meeting," said Sapana Malla, a
> lawyer from Nepal. "They feel that women are moving backward on many
> issues."
>
> Monique Widyono, co-executive director of Equality Now, a New York-based
> women's rights organization, said it's a difficult struggle making
> governments implement many of the reforms discussed at the conference.
>
> "What's lacking is a political will for change in governments. Here we
> are five years after the Beijing Conference and what has happened?" she
> asked.
>
> Days before the conference, the UN released a report on the global state
> of women, which showed, among other things, that hundreds of thousands
> of women are recruited or abducted annually to work in legal or illegal
> businesses.
>
> The Asian Coalition against Trafficking in Women estimates that 200,000
> Bangladeshi women have been sent to Pakistan during the past 10 years.
> The Washington-based Center for the Study of Intelligence estimated that
> 45,000 to 50,000 women and children enter the U.S. annually as slave
> laborers or sweatshop workers.
>
> The problem also persists in the Caribbean, as 50,000 women from the
> Dominican Republic work in the sex trade in Latin America and Europe,
> according to estimates from the International Organization for
> Migration. Sex work in the Dominican Republic is viewed as an
> "alternative for young women who were unable to find job opportunities
> at home," the organization said.
>
> Ashenafi said hundreds of women are sent from Ethiopia illegally to
> neighboring countries and to Middle Eastern nations such as Lebanon.
> Ethiopia passed a law in 1998 forbidding this practice, but enforcement
> has been difficult.
>
> "Once the women get there, their passports are taken away from them, and
> they can't get back home," she said.
>
> As Ashenafi told her stories during a panel discussion this week, Malla
> listened. Malla, a Delhi University-trained lawyer, has been lobbying
> her government to aggressively enforce a law it enacted in 1987 that
> prohibits trafficking in women.
>
> "We have strong legislation, but enforcement is weak," said Malla, the
> founder of the Forum for Women, Law & Development, a Katmandu-based
> women's rights organization.
>
> "Trafficking [in women] operates like organized crime."
>
> As a result, about 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese women are sent to India
> annually, mostly as prostitutes, she said. The Forum for Women estimates
> that about 220,000 Nepalese women are living in India as a result of
> trafficking.
>
> Besides trafficking, Ashenafi and other women at the conference decried
> female genital mutilation and circumcision, which persist in Ethiopia
> and other African countries.
>
> "After I had my baby, I thought about what it would mean for her," said
> Ashenafi, who has a young daughter. "It's very hurtful to think of
> mutilating my baby like that."
>
> An estimated 2 million women and girls undergo genital mutilation each
> year, and about 132 million have been mutilated in 28 African countries,
> according to the World Health Organization.
>
> But Ashenafi, who will return to Ethiopia next week, is optimistic that
> her country will continue to eliminate discriminatory laws and
> practices, albeit slowly. "I am hopeful that things will be improved for
> my daughter," she said.