This is my last day and the packing and sorting of piles of paper is in full swing. To my chagrin this hotel does not recycle!! Should I bring the paper and the empty yoghurt containers home to recycle?? Maybe not. As you can see I collapsed several days into this one report. I got slower and slower over the week with the weight of the content, but strengthened by those moments of hope, extra-ordinary commitment and resilience in the face of adversity and suffering and the humour shown by many.
The 8am ecumenical morning worships helped sustain me through this week and I looked forward to them for their sense of community and as a way to prepare for the day. One energetic celebratory worship was led by the World Student Christian Federation with dancing and singing in the aisles. Another day it was the Salvation Army with tambourines and song. Friday, International Women’s Day, it was the United Methodist Women who led us in song and dance, telling us their stories of resilience in different countries like The Clothesline Project http://www.clotheslineproject.org. Or how the women of Okinawa Japan are protesting US military bases on their island which cover almost 20% of it.They have documented 139 reported incidents of violence against Okinawan women by members of the US military over the past 40 years, including rape, murder, sexual assault, and common assault. Militarism is impoverishing humanity and the earth.
The Canadian government delegation meets daily at 1pm in the lobby of the UN to brief Canadian civil society representatives about how the negotiations of the Commission’s final document are going. On Thursday officials asked the NGO Ecumenical Women (EW) http://ecumenicalwomen.org (of which our delegation is part) for some suggested language. So Canadians and others from EW met to go over the current draft conclusions to highlight language that is in keeping with what Ecumenical Women wants in the outcome document. The government officials were grateful for our careful work and told us things were going slowly (surprise surprise !!??) but that there was a positive feeling in the room with states ready to compromise on wording for a positive outcome. Language sticking points between states included around sexual and reproductive rights (no surprise there), ‘harmful’ practices vs ‘customary ‘ practices, ‘forced’marriage vs ‘child’ marriage, ‘service’ vs ‘programs’, among others.
My very last session on Friday was put on by International Indigenous Women’s Forum, which is known by its Spanish acronym FIMI. Indigenous women from six countries spoke. A woman from Kenya, Agnes, described the situation for young women from pastoral communities which raise cattle. Many girls are taken out of school and forced into marriage so the father can receive the dowry of several head of cattle. (The chain of events are: climate change, drought, death of cattle, poverty, forced marriage). In Agnes’ work she encourages girls to set a goal for themselves and then to say to their fathers – please don’t marry me off but give me five years and I will study to be a doctor / nurse /teacher and will be able to buy you more cattle than you would get from a dowry. If the girl wants to be a doctor, for example, she is encouraged to start calling herself ‘Dr Mary’ right away because “she has the doctor in her and she has to start living it now”. Agnes said this week 2 girls phoned her in NY from Kenya to say they are going to continue their educations, although they are not sure how they will pay for it. Agnes said she will find it somewhere, and I believe she will.
The UN Commission continues for another week. May all the states find it within themselves to do 'more than they can ask or imagine' to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls. And to the civil society sisters and brothers who remain for another week, I wish you all continued courage for the road ahead. As Dr Pam Rajput from India said there are more than enough declarations, resolutions, frameworks, studies. We want mechanisms, we want action from the UN, not just another Human Development Report. We must engage collectively”.
No comments:
Post a Comment