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NEWS & LETTERS, April 2004International Women's Day 2004In many parts of the world, International Women’s Day 2004 was marked with rallies against domestic violence and sexual harassment, along with demands for equal rights. AFGHANISTAN While President Hamid Karzai reported that girls and women had begun to return to school and the workforce, UN special representative Jean Arnault used IWD to deplore recent attacks on girls schools in a region where they were banned under Taliban rule. Women in burkas gathered outside Kabul’s 90-year-old Wolayat Prison as UN and Women’s Affairs Ministry officials held the first IWD celebration giving the 41 woman inmates gifts and flowers. It was considered a symbolic move towards ensuring women’s rights with the message "you are not alone." Many of the young women were imprisoned under the Taliban, where women had no rights forcing them to commit "crimes" as a last desperate alternative. The prison still lacks adequate space and medical care. ZIMBABWE Women staged marches in Harare and Bulawayo after the arrest of three women for organizing protests against food shortages. SRI LANKA Women celebrated IWD throughout the country. While the government and non-governmental organizations focused on "a better world, with equal rights for women," independent women’s liberationists used the occasion to demonstrate against injustices ranging from discrimination to rape. In the Jaffna district, the theme was "We want our land," and the Jaffna District Forum Against Sexual and Other Violence on Women organized parades and cultural events related to women’s liberation. THAILAND Women in Bangkok called for greater awareness among women about HIV/AIDS, saying lack of attention to women's rights is fuelling the HIV epidemic. IRAQ In her IWD greetings this year, Yanar Mohammed, head of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, reported: "Although burdened by veil, insecurity and deprivation, almost 1,000 demonstrators (mostly women) gathered in Baghdad’s Al Fardawse Square to demand secularism. While the Governing Council convened to sign the constitution that jeopardizes the lives of millions of Iraqi women, activists announced to the whole world that they will not recognize a constitution that is mainly based on religion. March is our IWD and we will not agree to change it into a newly invented Islamic day that isolates Iraqi women from the international women’s movement." CANADA Outside the Manitoba legislature, aboriginal groups demanded that more public attention be given to finding the more than 500 aboriginal women that have vanished over the last decade. There are missing women in every major Canadian city. In Vancouver, more than 60 women have disappeared and one man faces 22 charges of first degree murder. In Ottawa about 30 aboriginal women chanting "Remember our sisters!" marched on Parliament Hill. Dawn Harvard, Ontario president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, questioned whether the cases would get more attention if so many of the missing women weren’t poor, substance abusers, or working in the sex trade. "If 500 white women went missing from Toronto and Montreal," said one journalist, "I think there’d be absolute panic and outrage." |
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