Six Pacific Nations Included In Dirty Dozen Countries

March 8, 2005 -(Pacific Magazine) Six Pacific Island Countries have been included in the list of what’s been described as the “dirty dozen” countries that have no women representatives in parliament.

A report in the Guardian newspaper identified Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu as Pacific Island nations without any women members represented in parliament.

The other six countries are Bahrain, Kuwait, St Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Guinea-Bissau.

United Nations member countries had pledged at the women’s conference in Beijing ten years ago to put more women in decision-making positions and set a target of having 30 percent of government and public administration jobs filled by women.

But the report said 10 years later “not much”' has happened, noting that only five countries had reached 30 percent in 1995, 10 in 2000, and 15 in 2004.

“Across all regions, women are often still considered unequal to men - in the workplace, at home, in government - and assigned roles accordingly'” the report said.

The majority of the world's poor are women, and since Beijing “women's livelihoods for the most part have worsened, with increasing insecure employment and less access to social protection and public services.”

The gist of the report was that many women are worse off today than they were 10 years ago, women around the world say in a new report that accuses governments of failing to keep their pledge to achieve gender equality.

Governments worldwide have adopted a “piecemeal and incremental”' approach to women's rights that cannot achieve the goals in the landmark platform of action adopted at a 1995 U.N. conference in Beijing.

The report is the work of women's rights activists in 150 countries. Compiled by the Women's Environment and Development Organization, an international advocacy group based in New York, it was released Thursday to coincide with a high-level U.N. meeting on implementing the platform.

The message was clear, starting with the title: “Beijing Betrayed.'”

“The women of the world don't need any more words from their governments - they want action, they want resources and they want governments to protect and advance women's human rights,” the report said.

The women's report sounded very different from the speeches this week at the U.N. conference, where governments have been touting their records on women's rights.

Advocates of women's rights have stepped up their activities around the globe and have pressed governments to change some discriminatory laws. The number of countries that ratified the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women rose from 146 a decade ago to 179, though the United States has still not done so.

The goal of giving every girl and boy an elementary school education by 2005 is likely to be met everywhere but sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, the report said.

Violence against women remains an “acute problem”' affecting some two-thirds of women in relationships worldwide, the report said.

For example, in Kazakhstan, over 60 percent of women have suffered from physical or sexual violence at least once in their lifetime.

In the United States, 31 percent of women report being sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend. And in 2000, 44 percent of married women in Colombia suffered from violence inflicted by a male partner, the report said.

While trafficking of women and children into bonded labor, forced marriage, forced prostitution, and domestic servitude has become a global phenomenon, governments don't appear to be making significant efforts to combat these crimes.

According to the report, up to 175,000 women from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are being lured into the sex industry in Western Europe every year, and there has been “a dramatic increase”' in the number of Soviet bloc women trafficked to North America.

One goal of the 10-year-old platform was to make reproductive health services available to women everywhere. But access and affordability are still obstacles, ``compounded by cultural and religious fundamentalism,'' the report said. Women and girls also face the highest risk of getting HIV/AID, ``primarily because of continued patterns of sexual subordination.''

From: http://www.pacificmagazine.net/pina/pinadefault2.php?urlpinaid=14704