The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre
Thursday 9 September 2004
Presentation by Ms Irene Khan, Secretary General, Amnesty International
MS IRENE KHAN: Kate, Lowitja, Elizabeth and friends, I begin
informally, because, having been in Adelaide for about 10 hours, I
already feel very much at home. Let me start by acknowledging the Kaurna
people on whose land we meet today.
I think the issue that we have here today is one that affects us all
around the world, and what I would like to do is perhaps bring that
global picture to here in South Australia. A nation is like a bird with
two wings: if one is broken the bird cannot fly. That was something that
Semas Humma, a woman human rights defender in Afghanistan, told me last
year when I visited Kabul; and in a sense we have a world today, I would
say, with one broken wing. I am going to tell you the story of five
women that I have met in the last 3 years during my time as Amnesty
Secretary-General. They will almost seem like parables, because from
each one of them I think we can draw a certain lesson.
Let me start, first, with the story of Jemila. Now, Jemila, when I met
her last year in Kabul, was 16 years old. I met her in a women's prison
in Kabul, and that prison was full of women who were accused of having
committed adultery or who wanted to marry the man of their choice or who
were fleeing brutal husbands. 95 per cent of the women there were there
for those reasons.
Now, Jemila told me that at the age of 15, a year before I met her, she
had been abducted from her home. The person who abducted her wanted to
force her into marriage. She told me that she didn't accept the
marriage, her hands and feet were bound during the marriage ceremony,
that he then abused her, raped her, attacked her, and then finally she
couldn't bear it any more so she ran away.
The police found her, brought her back, she faced more abuse, she fled
again, and this time round the police took her to the prison and put her
there for protection
She said to me the only thing that she really wanted to do was to go
home to her parents, but she was afraid that if she went home her father
would kill her because she had tainted his honour; or, she said, if he
didn't kill her certainly the people who had abducted her would kill
her. And her fears are not unfounded, because in March last year
President Karzai of Afghanistan actually gave amnesty to 20 such women
and released them from prison, and one of them was killed by her own
family as soon as she was released and a number of others have
disappeared. So that is Jemila's story.
Let us not forget that when military action in Afghanistan was
undertaken, there was a lot of talk in the international community about
how the Taliban had treated the women in Afghanistan and what the world
would do to restore the rights of these women.
The second story that I would like to tell you is of Rosie. One of the
first tasks that I did when I became Secretary-General of Amnesty was to
go to Durban in 2001 to the World Conference Against Racism. Now, when I
went there - it was a huge, big conference, as these are, with lots of
Government delegations, air-conditioned rooms, convention halls and so
on - I wanted to see a bit of South Africa. So my colleagues from
Amnesty took me with them to a township outside Durban and to a women's
centre that had been set up there to talk to the women there.
Of course, what I found when I went there were really stories of
domestic violence. The counsellors told me all the problems that were
taking place there. I met an elderly lady who had taken in eight
children whose parents had died of AIDS, and then, of course, one of the
counsellors told me the story of Rosie. Now, listening to stories of
domestic violence it is important to keep in mind that South Africa
actually has introduced one of the best laws against domestic violence
in the world, so it has a fantastic legal system.
The counsellor told me that Rosie had been married for about 15 years,
she was the mother of five children, her husband was extremely brutal
and had beaten her several times. She had had to be hospitalised, she
had broken her ribs, she had broken her arm, and then one day he beat
her so badly that she actually died.
So, having heard about the domestic violence Bill and then Rosie's
story, I asked the counsellor (under the South African domestic law all
a woman has to do now is to seek a protection order from the magistrate
and the man would be denied access to the home), so I said, "Why didn't
Rosie ask for that protection order; what went wrong in Rosie's case?"
And the counsellor told me that what went wrong in Rosie's case was that
she didn't have the $2 that she needed to take a bus from her village to
the magistrate's court, so her life had gone because of the missing
rand.
Then let me tell you the story of Francine. Now, I met Francine in
Eastern Congo last October, and that is a part of the world which has
witnessed some of the worst atrocities in a war that has made the rape
of women a tool of military strategy. I went to a women's centre. Now,
what that women's centre actually consisted of was a plastic sheet in a
parking lot on tarmac, but hundreds of women were coming there to talk
to each other, basically to share solidarity at that moment. There the
women talk about their problems, about children that are born out of
rape, about how they have been rejected by their families, what problems
they have in terms of HIV AIDS and so on.
Francine is a teacher, 28 years old, and she told me that she was
attacked and raped by the opposite faction because of the political
activities of her husband. Her husband has now abandoned her, because he
thinks that she has been tainted by rape, stigmatised. She has a
10-year-old daughter who keeps asking her whether she will die of HIV
AIDS, and Francine told me that frankly she was too scared to find out.
She thought she probably had been infected, but she just couldn't bear
to find out.
In that blue tent I met dozens of women who came and talked to me, and
the one thing that they said to me was, "We want you to hear our story.
We've walked all these miles to come and tell you our story, so that you
can carry it out to others and tell them how women are becoming a tool
of war, how militarisation is affecting women." Sudan, where I will be
going to soon, is again another story of rape being used as a tool of
war.
Then let me tell you another story from another part of the world -
Paloma. Now, I never met Paloma, but I heard her story from her mother.
Paloma is one of about 370 women who have been killed in Ciudad Juaraez.
This is a small town on the border of northern Mexico, just across from
El Paso. When I went there, you know, where the door is, where the exit
sign is, that is where I could see the skyscrapers of Texas, and on this
side are the poor slums that have come about.
Because of tax regulations, American companies are setting up assembly
plants across the border in Mexico, attracting a lot of cheap labour
from poor parts of Mexico, and, of course, the cheap labour happens to
be largely women coming to work there, and most of these women are
coming there to improve their lives. But it is also a town of great
violence, organised crime, drug smuggling and so on, and many of these
women who work in the machilladoros - machilladoro meaning assembly
plants - have been victims of violence for the last 10 years and the
police, the local authorities, have done nothing to investigate those,
and Amnesty had taken up their case.
I met with President Fox. His first reaction to me was, "Yes, what you
are saying is correct, I don't dispute your facts, but I have no
authority to intervene in a state matter; I am part of the Federal
Government." Finally, we did manage to bring pressure on him, and we
brought pressure on him not only because of Amnesty; we actually brought
pressure on him because of the mothers of Ciudad Juaraez. The women had
organised themselves and for the last 10 years they have been fighting
to draw attention to these cases, because they want justice. So here, in
northern Mexico, you have a situation where women are actually
contributing to the global economy, helping to fuel the global economy,
but that economy, that society, has failed to protect them.
My last, fifth, story is about Esperenza. Now, Esperenza I met in Spain
in Madrid. She is a women's activist there. She set up a centre for
women who were suffering from domestic violence, and she is campaigning
now in Spain to strengthen the laws. Spanish society, like so many other
societies, tends to be very macho in its approach, and she is trying to
really address the prejudices there.
I listened with great admiration to the story that she was telling me of
the work that she was doing and so on. Then, as she was leaving, she
turned to me and she said, "I have an apology to make." I said, "What do
you want to apologise about?" And she said, "Actually, you know, my name
is not Esperenza." Esperenza in Spanish means hope, and she said, "My
name is not Esperenza. I cannot use my own name because my husband has
threatened to kill me, and so I have to work under a false name." So
here in Madrid - this is Western Europe - in the heart of Western
Europe, women are living with false names because the state is unable to
protect them from violence.
So, from these stories, there are many lessons that we can draw, but I
would like to make five points from the five stories. First, that
violence against women is a global problem. We say human rights are
universal. Now the human rights abuses that women suffer make
universality a shame in this particular case. It is a global scandal,
and I think what that also makes us remember is that it is not something
that just happens over there. As I was listening to you here earlier,
Kate, it is the realisation that happens here, everywhere, in our homes,
in our own communities.
The second point, of course, is that violence against women is very
severe. One in three women around the world - these are UN statistics -
will suffer some kind of severe violence in their life: sexual violence,
attack, assault or sex. Now, if you look around this room, you have six
people sitting at each table - one in three. Statistically, two of us
have suffered an incident like that.
What is also awful is that here in Australia, for example, one in four
women experience violence in their intimate relationships; and 35 per
cent of women in Australia experience violence from their partner after
separation; one in eight is subjected to violence from their partner
while pregnant here in Australia. I was listening earlier to a women
from an institute in Cairo, and she told me that in Egypt as well they
have discovered that violence actually increases when women are
pregnant.
The third point I want to make is that violence against women is hidden.
Women are too ashamed and afraid to report it or they are not taken
seriously if they do. Sometimes they are threatened if they do. So we
actually only know the tip of the iceberg. In the United Kingdom only
one in four attacks on women is ever reported, and that is a trend. I am
using the UK as an example, but it is a trend globally.
My fourth point is that violence against women takes many forms.
Domestic violence is, of course, a very common form that we all know
about; but sometimes it is issues like female genital mutilation; at
other times it is rape during war; there is bride burning in India. In
my own country, in Bangladesh, there is a growing practice of throwing
acid on the faces of women. So there are many different ways in which
violence occurs.
My fifth point is that violence against women is so perverse; it is so
global, it happens because of impunity, because of inequality and
because of apathy. It happens because Governments turn a blind eye to
them. In many countries the laws do not protect women. Seventy-nine
countries in the world have no laws on domestic violence; 127 countries
in the world have no laws against sexual harassment; and only 16
countries in the world have specific laws on sexual assault; and, even
where there are laws, they don't work. I just mentioned to you the
situation in South Africa, for example.
There are in many countries laws and policies that specifically
discriminate against women. At least 54 countries in the world have
laws: under the law the woman is unequal. Earlier, Kate talked about
Rwanda. In Rwanda women have no access to land, or did not have access
to land until after the genocide when a lot of men were killed and the
women couldn't till the land because they didn't own it; they couldn't
own the land.
So, very often violence against women happens because women do not have
equal access to economic and social rights, and there is increasingly
what economists call the feminisation of poverty, and what that means is
that more and more of the poor today are women. We see this, and this
has been reinforced more and more because of the global economy that has
been created.
Finally, violence against women happens because we allow it to happen. I
think it is very important to take responsibility here, and I say this
as a human rights activist: the tendency is, of course, to look at state
responsibility. And we do look at state responsibility here, but we've
got to look also at the responsibility of society. We allow it to happen
as women. We are too afraid or ashamed to speak of it. As men, they deny
it, and as society we tolerate it, and that is the real problem about
it.
Now, what do human rights bring to this issue? Because, of course,
violence against women is something the women's movements around the
world have been campaigning against for decades now, and they have had
remarkable achievements. I think what human rights brings to it, first,
is the notion that the right to be free from violence is a universal
right that belongs to every woman, every man, every person, because they
are human beings. And that means you cannot use culture, custom, any
excuse, to justify violence against women.
The second thing that human rights brings to it is accountability. Human
rights are based on the notion that if someone has a right someone else
has a duty, and therefore it places obligations on the state. Violence
against women is not something that is just a private concern; it is
actually a public concern, and society and state must take
responsibility for it, even where the violence is perpetrated by a
private act.
The third issue that I believe human rights do is to empower those who
have those rights. They empower the women themselves to stand up, and
this is actually what has been happening. If we have seen progress in
this area, it is because of women, because of people like you and others
around the world, who have organised themselves to resist this.
The fourth thing that human rights bring to this debate is that they
bring to it the standards of non-discrimination, of justice, of
equality. These are fundamental human rights standards that can be used
to put the women's issue very centrally on the human rights agenda.
Women's rights are human rights. It might seem very obvious to us today,
but that point was made really very forcefully for the first time only
in 1993 at the Vienna World Conference on Women: not so long ago; just
over a decade ago.
Now, as some of you may know, Amnesty has launched a campaign to stop
violence against women, and actually the Australian campaign was
launched here at WOMADELAIDE earlier this year, and it is the campaign
that we started in cooperation with women's movements around the world.
We believe that we are there to support them, and what we hope to bring
to it is the human rights community. The human rights community is made
up of both men and women, and it is very important that in discussing
this issue and trying to tackle it we draw men to it.
Mara Moustafine, Director of Amnesty Australia, has told me that at
WOMADELAIDE, when Amnesty opened its banner and asked for people to put
their handprint on it, the first person who rushed to do so was a man,
and he put his handprint and he signed underneath it, "For Mum." That is
what we would like to do. We would like to see men come on board,
because they have to be part of that solution.
In our campaign we are focusing on three key areas. The first is
challenging discrimination. We see that as a major issue, because that
is really at the root of a lot of the violence, and next year will be 10
years to the Beijing conference. There was a platform of action at
Beijing Women's Conference, where commitments were made by Governments.
We would like to put those commitments to test there and demand change.
We hope that in that context Australia would adopt a national plan,
because this is a country where not only is there a high incidence of
violence against women, but there is a disproportionately high incidence
of violence against indigenous women, and something has to be done about
it. Adopting a national plan, by making it a national priority, I think
Australia will also be setting itself up as a role model for this region
where, of course, this problem happens to be very severe, and I'm
talking about the Asia Pacific region.
The second project that we want to focus on is to challenge impunity
against violence in armed conflict situations. Now, the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court that was adopted recently has made one
very important contribution to international law, where rape has been
identified as a war crime and a crime against humanity. That is a signal
that no impunity should be allowed for violations against women in armed
conflict situations, and we would like to take that up very strongly.
The third aspect of our campaign is about what we call making women's
rights a reality: bridging the gap between rhetoric and reality. And
here we would like to focus on the responsibility of the state, of the
Governments, their responsibility of due diligence; that they ensure
that they have done everything possible to make sure that women are
protected against violence, no matter what the source of it. There we
hope to have a strong focus on domestic violence, violence that happens
in the privacy of the home, because that is a very peculiar type of
violence that you don't normally see in human rights abuses. Because
there is a strange relationship between the victim and the perpetrator,
it makes it very difficult to address that violence; and yet that is the
most pervasive, the most difficult one that needs to be addressed.
The final aspect of our campaign is actually to change ourselves. For
Amnesty International it is the first time in our history of 40-odd
years as a human rights organisation that we are taking up a human
rights abuse in which the victims and the perpetrators are also within
Amnesty and not just outside. So we have got to change ourselves as an
organisation, because we recognise that we have to change ourselves
before we can change the world.
I think if all of us would look at this issue in that way, this is an
issue that touches us personally, all of us, in many different ways. We
have either suffered violence or we know people who have, and the key
lies also with us in changing our attitudes in the way in which we
respond to this issue and in the way in which we draw others to come and
join us in this.
So I wanted to put out to you some of these stories and to remember the
women in Eastern Congo who said to me, "Carry our stories around the
world so that other women will not have to suffer what we've gone
through." I know that here, when I see a room like this fill up with
women, you are not only talking about what is happening here in South
Australia; you are actually reaching out to women around the world. And
it is through that solidarity that we will make sure that the broken
wing is healed.
Thank you
QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE
QUESTION 1: Irene, I can't pretend to be any sort of expert in this
area, but I just wonder about the dreadful R word. It seems to me a lot
of the world's religions endorse the devaluing of women and perhaps some
of these attitudes are rooted in beliefs. I am just interested in your
comments on that.
MS KHAN: You have put your finger on it, and that is why I think a human
rights approach to this issue is so important to underline the
universality of it and not specificity or relativity. What I think is a
very dangerous trend that we see now is the wave of fundamentalism -
Christian fundamentalism, Muslim fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism -
that is actually affecting women's rights. So, whether it is the
Christian right that is talking about control over women's bodies or
whether it is Islamic leaders that are talking about women's rights, the
tone is very similar, and it is a very dangerous tone.
Now, I have often been asked by journalists around the world, who know
that I am a Muslim, and they usually ask me the question, "Don't you
think the Sharia law is a barrier to women's rights? As a Muslim how do
you justify in your own mind what you are doing in this campaign?" My
answer to them is that if you look at Islamic countries - Sharia law
also, as many of you might know, forbids the taking of interest
financially. Now, Muslim countries have no problem in adjusting
themselves into the modern economy, despite Sharia law.
So why is there a problem in adjusting to modern society and giving
women equal rights under Sharia law? So, to me, it is not a question of
religion; it is really a question of power. And what we are talking
about here when we are talking about violence against women is the
imbalance of power in society and in politics and in the economy between
men and women that allow this to happen, and religion is used as a cover
to push that issue forward. So I think we've got to shift away from
religion and look at global values that bring us together, and here is
the value of human rights in trying to put this issue as a universal
right to be free from violence regardless of whether you are a man or a
woman.
QUESTION 2: Irene, I just wanted to make two quick comments about your
presentation, just additions really, and then to ask a question. The one
is that in a lot of the countries - and this goes for the Southern
African example - the situation is complicated by the fact that
relationships are often polygamous rather than just monogamous, and this
has a compounding effect, particularly in the AIDS problem, and I have
noticed that a lot of the examples do not stress that. The other thing
is that, on the positive side, I have seen that a lot of the young
women's magazines in Australia at the moment are actually stressing no
respect, no relationship, and I think that is an interesting message to
be communicated.
My question is: there is a lot of stress on physical violence in the
campaign that you have outlined, and it seems to me that one of the
important areas for Australian women - and, I'm sure, for women in many
countries - is the area of psychological abuse. It often accompanies
physical abuse, it is often the element that lasts long after the
physical abuse has ceased, and it is also very common in workplaces, and
it is perhaps at the base of what Kate had pointed out to us in terms of
denying access to women to senior and executive management level, for
example. So I just wondered about your comment on that important
psychological abuse element.
MS KHAN: Yes, you are right about polygamous relationships - it is one
of the aspects which I didn't mention, because obviously in 15 minutes
there is only so much you can talk about - and the whole issue of
sexuality and sexual rights. This is an area which is absolutely
critical when you are talking about violence against women, for this is
an area on which there is very little discussion. This is an area where
there are a lot of divisions when you come to the issue of reproductive
rights, issues of abortion and so on.
There are many different views on it, so it is a very controversial
area, you know, and you move into prostitution or pornography and so on.
There are many different views, even among the women's movements, on how
to address those issues. But the fundamental thing is women's control
over their own bodies. Research has actually shown, for example, that
the prevalence of HIV AIDS increases in those situations where there is
violence in the family, because women then have less ability to
negotiate safe sex.
So there are all kinds of implications of horrendous proportions when
you think about the AIDS pandemic that are related to the situation of
violence against women, and in a sense it is putting this issue more
centrally on the agenda today. So in that sense we hope that will create
greater realisation and, therefore, a greater urge to get action. You
were talking about respect in relationship, and that comes back to the
point that I was making about society, about social issues and social
attitudes that have to change on this issue of violence. It is not only
laws that will make the difference here; it is how we treat each other;
how we look at women in our societies. The relationship between boys and
girls is absolutely fundamental to that.
On mental health you are again very right: psychological abuse is
absolutely a fundamental. In fact, the definition of violence against
women actually includes - when I use the term, the international
definition includes mental and physical abuse, so it is actually a very
broad definition of violence, although it might be most manifest in
physical abuse. Mental abuse is absolutely integral to it, because it is
a question of power: you exert power through the mind, not only through
the body.
My final point about women and power, and I do want to make this point,
because it is a very important one. You know, I've been trying to push
the issue of violence against women in business situations at places of
work, and I wanted to bring it up at the World Economic Forum. So I went
to see the head of the World Economic Forum, and he said to me that he
had been trying to get powerful women, like Carla Forine, for example,
women who have made it to the top of business, to take this issue up;
and he said that he actually found resistance precisely from the women
who make it to the top, because they don't want to be associated as
being seen as women's issues. So I think there is more than just putting
women in positions of power. It is changing our attitude to this issue
that is also fundamental.
QUESTION 3: I just want to give a brief introduction. This is a question
about the basic right to identity and to be respected for who we are.
Each child has two parents, one male, one female, and a child has
inherent rights to identity links to both parents. Is Amnesty doing
anything about the discrimination against children of mothers compared
to children of fathers regard their identity and citizenship rights?
MS KHAN: Under international law and the Convention on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women, men and women have equal right to hand
nationality to their children. So it goes without saying that this is an
issue that we take up, because in many, many situations children at
stateless precisely because only the father has the right to hand
citizenship. And in many countries, even in Western countries, the law
does discriminate on that particular issue, so this goes without saying.
QUESTION 4: I'm just from a refugee camp in West Africa. I want to know
what your organisation is doing towards the protection of women in our
African countries, because our African leaders are very brutal to women
there and there is nothing done. I hear you talking about global
protection for women, but it does not extend to African women. We in
Africa are suffering unjustly and there's nothing done. Our Governments
are not doing anything to protect us. We are going through a lot of
violence. What is your organisation doing to address that situation?
MS KHAN: From what I have said, you will see that at least two of my
five stories were about African women, about South Africa and about the
Congo. And precisely through those stories, global is not something that
is abstract up there. Global is about what is happening down here in
many different places, and what is happening in Africa is happening
because African leaders allow it to happen. African society allows it to
happen. If things are improving in Africa, it is because African women
are organising themselves.
If you look at West Africa, you will probably know the story in Senegal
where women's groups have organised themselves from village to village
through education programs and awareness programs to tackle the problem
of female genital mutilation, and they have actually succeeded in
reducing it through their efforts. So there are fantastic stories of
women's groups.
In South Africa I have met women activists, women's groups, that are
actually coming together to address the situation of HIV AIDS in Africa,
because AIDS in Africa actually affects women more than men now, and
particularly young women, because of this myth, in South Africa, for
example, that having sex with a virgin will cure you of HIV AIDS, so you
find very young girls being raped. It is women's groups that are coming
together to fight that story.
So it is not about Amnesty coming and doing anything, and I want to make
that absolutely clear. I don't think anyone can come from outside to
change things; the change happens from within. And in Africa it is
African women that are standing up and saying this has to stop, and they
are succeeding. What we need to do is to support them to push for
change.
MS HO: Thank you, Irene. I just have a couple of things to say in
relation to Irene in thanks. Irene has given us the benefit of an
incredibly broad understanding of what is going on in the world, but she
has given it to us in a way that brings out, I think, her sense of
humanity. That really struck me last night and has struck me again
today, because the stories are very personal, and then she moves us into
the reality of international law, into the reality of the systems and
the structures that we need to change in order to achieve the human
rights which organisations like Amnesty International work so hard to
achieve.
As I said, she leaves us today to go from this very pleasant, relatively
safe environment, and she goes into the Sudan, which we all know is in a
very, very difficult state. In memory of us, I have here a small gift.
It is a brooch inside this box, and I'm going to explain what it is. It
is actually a gum leaf. We thought that perhaps, Irene, you might wear
this, because the gum leaf is a symbol of survival against odds. We hope
that perhaps, when you go to the Sudan, it might be symbolic that there
are many women, men and children who may survive as a result of your
intervention.
The brooch has been made by Ida Maglai. She was born in 1964 in Hungary,
she arrived in Australia in 1987, and she describes her work, "To see
beyond ourselves, to encompass our deeper thoughts and the universe
beyond our dreams. This is the driving force behind my work." So I would
just like to issue a very, very warm thank you from all of us for being
here today.
Thank you
Back to RESPECT program
