| |
| |
| |
TALLRITE
BLOG |
Published on Wednesday 8th
March 2006 (International Women's Day) by
© |
Transcripted from the
original subscription-only article here |
We need strong voices to break the silence
on gender-based violence |
At last, International Women's Day can offer hope to the abused and tortured, writes
Mary Robinson.
A cloak of silence covers one of the world's most widespread and persistent human rights abuses. The perpetrators are seldom brought to justice. In some societies, they are even granted impunity.
The abuse is gender-based violence. The victims are mainly women and children. The root causes lie in the imbalance in power relations and gender inequality.
Today - being International Women's Day - offers an opportunity to reflect on gender-based violence: Why is it that so few want to talk about it? And why does responding to it meet with complacency at all levels in our global society?
The scale of gender-based violence and failure by the international community to respond adequately do not sit comfortably. It is a global crisis. In Thailand, 14 per cent of GDP comes from prostitution and sex trafficking. There are 15,000 dowry deaths in India each year and most are kitchen fires designed to look like accidents. In Liberia, three out of every four women were raped during the conflict. About 50,000 women and children are trafficked into America each year from poorer countries. In Russia, 36,000 women are beaten on a daily basis by their husband or partner.
The fact that women have been absent from positions of power and decision-making for so long has contributed to a failure to prioritise action on gender-based violence.
Even those of us in positions of power have not adequately mobilised the political will necessary to tackle this issue.
Without strong voices willing to tackle this issue - at community and highest political levels - we will never see sight of an end to these human rights violations.
Some months ago, arising from an Amnesty International initiative, a consortium of Irish humanitarian, development and human rights NGOs - in partnership with Irish Aid in the Department of Foreign Affairs - asked me to work with them to help make Ireland a global leader in tackling gender-based violence.
Together we discussed how individual actions will never succeed in ending violations. Instead, co-ordinated and systematic action is needed. The challenge, we agreed, is daunting.
Gender-based violence takes many forms: rape, trafficking, and domestic violence pervade every society in the world. Forced labour and harmful practices - like female genital mutilation - are widespread.
In conflict zones, rape is used as a weapon of war. Apart from the psychological pain of that abuse, many victims have been left with serious health consequences, including HIV infection. As I learned when I visited Rwanda, up to 500,000 women and girls were raped during the 1994 genocide. Of those not subsequently murdered, 67 per cent are now HIV-positive.
In humanitarian situations - even under the "protective" eye of international organisations - women and children are forced to trade sex for safe passage and access to basic necessities such as water, food and shelter.
The perpetrators of these crimes are often in positions of trust and have been found to include teachers, army, police and humanitarian agency staff. In some cases, the abuses are unofficially endorsed and promoted by governments.
While the scale and prevalence of gender-based abuses seem overwhelming, I am hugely optimistic that the organisations who have made this challenge a core objective will make a significant difference. Indeed, since this consortium was launched in November, more organisations have signed up.
There are now 13 Irish organisations working together to lead the global fight against gender-based violence. One of the newest members - I am proud to say - is the Defence Forces.
As part of the ongoing need for awareness raising and education on gender-based violence, the UN special rapporteur on violence against Women, Dr Yakin Erturk, and Minister Conor Lenihan will launch a photographic exhibition and educational CD today.
From here on, aid agency staff, departmental officials and members of the Defence Forces who take part in humanitarian programmes will learn about gender-based violence before they embark on missions.
Over the coming months, the consortium will prioritise investment in programmes that seek to eliminate inequality and discrimination. In the field, there will be greater co-operation among Irish agencies to help identify and tackle abuses.
All the while, a persistent campaign will be mounted at UN, EU, national and local levels to secure acknowledgement that widespread violations are taking place.
This way, real and meaningful response can be developed and implemented.
This year, International Women's Day offers hope to those who are abused and tortured. I am very proud that Ireland is taking this lead in seeking to end gender-based violence, and I feel privileged to be associated with the challenge.
This Women's Day, I urge you to become more aware of gender-based violence by visiting www.gbv.ie or drop by the Broken Bodies, Broken Dreams photographic exhibition at Filmbase in Temple Bar which runs until March 20th.
Mary Robinson is director of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative.
She is special adviser to the Irish Consortium of NGOs and Government Agencies on Gender Based Violence.
The consortium includes: Action Aid Ireland, Amnesty International, ChildFund Ireland, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Defence Forces, Dtalk, Glencree Centre, Goal, Irish Aid (Department of Foreign Affairs), Oxfam Ireland, Self Help Development International, and Trócaire.
© The Irish Times |
You can write to blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
Now return to the Tallrite
Blog |
|
|
Gift Idea
Cuddly Teddy Bears
looking for a home
Click for details
“” |
Neda Agha Soltan;
shot dead in Teheran
by Basij militia |
Good to report that as at
14th September 2009
he is at least
alive.
FREED AT LAST,
ON 18th OCTOBER 2011,
GAUNT BUT OTHERWISE REASONABLY HEALTHY |
|
|
BLOGROLL
Adam Smith
Alt
Tag
Andrew
Sullivan
Atlantic Blog (defunct)
Back Seat
Drivers
Belfast
Gonzo
Black Line
Blog-Irish (defunct)
Broom of Anger
Charles Krauthammer
Cox and Forkum
Defiant
Irishwoman
Disillusioned Lefty
Douglas Murray
Freedom
Institute
Gavin's Blog
Guido Fawkes
Instapundit
Internet Commentator
Irish
Blogs
Irish Eagle
Irish
Elk
Jawa
Report
Kevin
Myers
Mark
Humphrys
Mark Steyn
Melanie
Phillips
Not
a Fish
Parnell's
Ireland
Rolfe's
Random Review
Samizdata
Sarah
Carey / GUBU
Sicilian
Notes
Slugger O'Toole
Thinking Man's Guide
Turbulence
Ahead
Victor Davis Hanson
Watching Israel
Wulfbeorn, Watching
Jihad
Terrorism
Awareness Project
Religion
Iona Institute
Skeptical Bible
Skeptical Quran
Leisure
Razzamatazz
Blog
Sawyer
the Lawyer
Tales from Warri
Twenty
Major
Graham's Sporting Wk
Blog Directory
Eatonweb
Discover the
World
My Columns in the
|
What I've recently
been reading
“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy
Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told
through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a
household lemon tree as their unifying theme.
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as
See
detailed review
+++++
This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in
the Gulf of Mexico.
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous
acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless
cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term
technical sustainability.
Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in
refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in
Russia.
The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that
had become poisonous and incompetent.
However the book is gravely compromised by a
litany of over 40 technical and stupid
errors that display the author's ignorance and
carelessness.
It would be better
to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying.
As for BP, only a
wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will
prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once
mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history.
Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo
in
May,
June, and
July 2010
+++++
A horrific account
of:
|
how the death
penalty is administered and, er, executed in Singapore,
|
|
the corruption of
Singapore's legal system, and |
|
Singapore's
enthusiastic embrace of Burma's drug-fuelled military dictatorship |
More details on my
blog
here.
+++++
This is
nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s
incredible story of survival in the Far
East during World War II.
After recounting a
childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen,
Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on
Germany in 1939.
From then until the
Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr
Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall
of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror.
After a wretched
journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless
garrison.
Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in
1941, he is, successively,
|
part of a death march to Thailand,
|
|
a slave labourer on the Siam/Burma
railway (one man died for every sleeper laid), |
|
regularly beaten and tortured,
|
|
racked by starvation, gaping ulcers
and disease including cholera, |
|
a slave labourer stevedoring at
Singapore’s docks, |
|
shipped to Japan in a stinking,
closed, airless hold with 900 other sick and dying men,
|
|
torpedoed by the Americans and left
drifting alone for five days before being picked up, |
|
a slave-labourer in Nagasaki until
blessed liberation thanks to the Americans’ “Fat Boy” atomic
bomb. |
Chronically ill,
distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the
British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s
is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this
unputdownable book.
There are very few
first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese
brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical
document.
+++++
“Culture of Corruption:
Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”
This is a rattling good tale of the web
of corruption within which the American president and his cronies
operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both
a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and
sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP.
With 75 page of notes to back up - in
best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing
allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with
the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife.
Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett,
Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris
Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book.
ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community
organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine
it is.
+++++
This much trumpeted sequel to
Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment.
It is really just
a collation of amusing
little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour
and situations. For example:
|
Drunk walking kills more people per
kilometer than drunk driving. |
|
People aren't really altruistic -
they always expect a return of some sort for good deeds. |
|
Child seats are a waste of money as
they are no safer for children than adult seatbelts. |
|
Though doctors have known for
centuries they must wash their hands to avoid spreading infection,
they still often fail to do so. |
|
Monkeys can be taught to use washers
as cash to buy tit-bits - and even sex. |
The book has no real
message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and
try to look for simple rather than complex solutions.
And with a final
anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in
its tracks. Weird.
++++++
A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie
to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics.
It's chapters are
organised around provocative questions such as
|
Why does asparagus come from Peru? |
|
Why are pandas so useless? |
|
Why are oil and diamonds more trouble
than they are worth? |
|
Why doesn't Africa grow cocaine? |
It's central thesis
is that economic development continues to be impeded in different
countries for different historical reasons, even when the original
rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
|
Argentina protects its now largely
foreign landowners (eg George Soros) |
|
Russia its military-owned
businesses, such as counterfeit DVDs |
|
The US its cotton industry
comprising only 1% of GDP and 2% of its workforce |
The author writes
in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to
digest.
However it would
benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative
points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide
natural break-points for the reader.
+++++
This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles
of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation.
The author was
a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to
harass Japanese lines of
command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide
intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of
India.
Irwin
is admirably yet brutally frank, in his
descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a
prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing
in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness.
He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of
Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved
authority of the British.
The book amounts to
a very human and exhilarating tale.
Oh, and Irwin
describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF
Brennan.
+++++
Other books
here |
Click for an account of this momentous,
high-speed event
of March 2009 |
Click on the logo
to get a table with
the Rugby World Cup
scores, points and rankings.
After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
SOUTH AFRICA
England get the Silver,
Argentina the Bronze. Fourth is host nation France.
No-one can argue with
the justice of the outcomes
Over the competition,
the average
points per game = 52,
tries per game = 6.2,
minutes per try =
13 |
Click on the logo
to get a table with
the final World Cup
scores, points, rankings and goal-statistics |
|
| |