GAMCOTRAP trains community facilitators

The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP) on 26 October 2010 held one-day training for its community-based facilitators.

The daylong session was meant to equip participants on how to use monitoring tools to collect information at community level regarding Female Genital Mutilation.

The session, held at Gamcotrap's new head office in the Kanifing Industrial Area, was attended by facilitators working with various women's rights NGOs.

The training also aimed at creating a favourable environment for the Committee's work at the community level to enhance its objective of eradicating female genital mutilation in The Gambia.

The training attracted security officers, key stakeholders, community-based facilitators, community leaders, religious leaders, teachers and school authorities.

The training was also meant to create opportunity for participants to share field experiences as community-based facilitators.

In a power point presentation Ms Amie Bojang-Sissoho, programme coordinator of Gamcotrap, said: "A base-line study is needed as an entry point in order to understand the initial situation and to assess the process that has been made by the end of the project."

Mrs Bojang-Sissoho added that the training would also help Save the Children (SCS) to understand "the particular situation for each partner".

A base-line study that was provided by UNIFEM would be a key part of the project, she said.

"A base-line study shall be carried out before the project starts, or shortly after it has started, as well as at the end of the project," Mrs Bojang-Sissoho said, adding that the same study will be done again by the end of 2012.

She revealed that the base-line study aims at collecting data related to the objectives of the project. "It consists both of general data linked to different areas of the project, as well as predefined indicators," she noted.

She also told participants: "The data fields which you find in document 'Base-line Study Template' are mandatory. Each partner is encouraged to add other fields which are relevant in order to give a good picture of its specific context/situation."

Motherhood Is A Choice, Say Activists

For years, Kanako Nashimura longed to have a child, but was diagnosed as having a blocked fallopian tube. Encouraged by her husband and in-laws, she tried various fertility treatments, but not one of them worked.

Now 55, Nashimura has since divorced her husband and is living alone. She recounts, "The treatment was hard on me physically, but the mental agony of facing disappointment after disappointment as I was told by doctors over the years that I was not pregnant was far worse." 

But she adds, "My sadness has eased somewhat now as a realise today that Japanese women are under huge pressure socially to become mothers. That is not the way it should be." 

It’s a view shared by activists at Friends of Finrrage, a network of women that was first in Japan to put forward the notion that infertility is part and parcel of discussions on women’s reproductive rights. 

But as Japan’s ageing population continues to worry policymakers, the discussion regarding infertility in this country is getting more and more narrowed down to being about all about treatments to help women who are unable to bear children. 

Left out in such discussions are questions such as the willingness of a woman to have a child in the first place, and her readiness to take such a responsibility. 

Says Keio University professor and Finrrage member Satoko Nagaoki: "In reality our movement, which focused on infertility not only as needing treatment but also as a right of choice for women, has grown weaker these past few years. We are up against a growing campaign to increase birth rates from a national and medical standpoint." 

As it is, she says, Finrrage’s membership has dwindled from its original 1,000 when the network was launched in 1991 to the current 200. 

With a birth rate of 1.2 children per woman, Japan in 2009 had a mere 13 percent of its 127 million people aged 14 years and below. By contrast, those 65 years old and above made up about 22.7 percent of the population. This has put more pressure on Japanese women to have children – and for those who are infertile to seek treatment. 

In 2005, the Ministry of Health and Welfare even began extending subsidies to support fertility treatment that covers in-vitro fertilisation. The programme attracted 17,000 women during its first year. By 2009, that figure had shot up to almost 90,000 women. 

Indeed, reproductive rights activists also link the weak support for the use of the contraceptive pill in Japan to government policies that they say view women as "baby machines" rather than individuals who may have dreams other than being mothers -- and who should be allowed to make informed decisions about whether or not they want to have children. 

The pill, which is often seen as a symbol of "feminist progress", was introduced in Japan only in 1999, or decades later than other countries. 

To this day, it is available here in gynaecology clinics, and at steep prices at that. Its use is not covered by health insurance, and pills can cost women as much 1,000 dollars a year, excluding fees for tests women need to undergo before they can get a prescription. 

Only three percent of women between the ages of 16 and 49 use the pill in Japan, compared to 43 percent among women in the same age range in France. 

Not surprisingly, the condom has become the most popular contraceptive in this country, a development that reproductive rights activists say only reinforce old-fashioned gender roles where women have to depend on men for family planning. 

Recently, though, the notion that women are happiest when they have children has been reinforced by the high-profile media coverage of one of Japan’s most prominent female legislators. 

Seiko Noda, who has been active in Japanese politics since she was 26, has announced that she has finally conceived at age 49, through reproductive technology, using the donated eggs of a 20-something woman from the United States. 

Years before, she had written a book about her failed attempts to have a child with her then partner by undergoing numerous fertility treatments. Now with a new partner, Noda told the Japanese media this month, "It’s a mystery (to carry a child). The universe is here (in my belly)."

Interestingly, Noda has never been formally married, in protest of Japanese laws that stipulate that husband and wife choose one surname – either his or hers – not but do not allow each to keep his or her own after marriage. That had partly sealed her public image as a woman who is able to defy norms in a macho society. 

The fact that Noda began to try having a child only at age 40 also struck a chord among Japanese career women who are marrying later and planning pregnancies when they are in their 30s or 40s. 

But Finrrage’s Nagaoki laments that Noda’s story has contributed to the concept of infertility as a treatment issue, eclipsing the more important aspect of women’s reproductive rights. 

Kunio Kitamura, director at the Japan Family Planning Clinic, himself predicts that the "need" for infertility treatment would only grow in this country. Like Finrrage’s members, though, he stresses the importance of having better reproductive education that incorporates the rights aspect for women.

Rape Is Not Adultery

Darfuri refugee: a national coalition is seeking to reform Sudan's law governing rape to empower women to seek justice for sexual violence.  Credit: HDPTCAR/Wikicommons

Women in the Sudanese region of Darfur have been raped with impunity since the start of the conflict there in 2003. Now a campaign to reform the rape law is gaining momentum in the country, promoted by Alliance 149, a national coalition born in late 2009.

Under Article 149 - the portion of the Sudanese Criminal Code of 1991 which pertains to rape - the crime is defined as "zina", intercourse between a man and a woman who are not married to one another, without consent.

The legislation states that a woman needs four male witnesses to prove that this act was "without consent". If she reports a rape and cannot obtain such evidence, she will be charged with adultery and punished with 100 lashes, if unmarried, or with death by stoning, if married.

"The reformed law will be a success to all Sudanese women as adultery and rape will be separated and the criminal will receive a long sentence," said Amro Kamal, a lawyer volunteering for the Sudan Human Rights Monitor and an Alliance 149 board member.

The Sudanese Criminal Code "is supposedly based on shariah laws, but the fact that Article 149 doesn’t distinguish between zina and rape is problematic and un-Islamic," he said.

The western region of Darfur deserves a different approach. The ongoing conflict between non-Arab rebels, the Sudanese military and Arab Janjaweed militias has resulted in 300,000 civilian deaths and more than two million people internally displaced.

The Alliance suggests the adoption of international humanitarian laws to better suit the needs of victims of sexual violence in Darfur.

Women living there continue to face the risk of rape and forced displacement daily. Many have left their homes and live in government-established camps - some remain in these camps for years.

"It is not easy for a woman who has been raped in our community, especially when a baby is born from the rape. The community will not accept this baby," said Mahbouba Abdur Rahman Ali, of the Women Empowerment Organisation

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended a 21-year conflict between the Arab Muslim north and the Christian black south in 2005 requires legal reform to comply with international human rights standards, according to the Alliance.

"Sudan is not a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)," a source from the Family and Child Unit told TerraViva. "This makes it difficult to reform current laws related to women because there is nobody responsible for women’s affairs."

Alliance 149 is slowly gaining the attention of legislators. When it launched its campaign, in January, it attracted officials from the Ministry of Interior Affairs, the police forces, parliamentarians and representatives from political parties.

"It was great to see women’s groups and representatives from the government and the judiciary working together for such a great cause," said Fahima Hashim, an Alliance board member and director of Salmmah Women’s Resource Centre. 

Female Factor Key to Human Rights

Private Linda Mensah patrols the city of Buchanan with the Ghanaian Battalion of the United Nations Mission in Liberia.

Gender training for peacekeeping operations "is not something you do for two weeks before you go for deployment," says Florence Butegwa, UNIFEM representative to the African Union (AU) and U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

The growing international recognition of the value of female peacekeepers has spurred efforts by the AU, with support from UNIFEM, to increase the number of women in its peacekeeping operations.

Nigeria is leading the way in terms of African women’s presence in the deployment of peacekeeping forces, and is hoping to increase numbers in line with the global effort launched just over a year ago to raise the proportion of women in United Nations Police (UNPOL) peacekeeping operations to 20 percent by 2014.

This would be just over double the current 8.7 percent - 1,218 UNPOL women deployed around the world - according to the U.N.

Other African countries are following suit. Rwanda will be deploying 130 women under the joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping force in Darfur later this year.

Excerpts of Butegwa's interview with TerraViva follow.

Q: What specific efforts are being made to ensure the recruitment of more female peacekeeping officers? 

A: This is part of the ongoing conversation at the African Union and with the member countries, because the recruitment is the responsibility of the member country. In countries like Rwanda we are partnering with the Ministry of Defence and the police forces to ensure that the country increases its own recruitment and focus on women in the armed forces.

The idea is to ensure that there is not only an increase in the numbers of women in Rwanda’s armed forces but also, when they contribute to U.N. or AU operations, those women who are very well trained will be deployed and that they will be of a level of seniority to make a difference.

Q: How have member states responded? 

A: It varies from country to country. In Liberia, the effort was to have well-educated armed forces that understand human rights. Many women could not qualify, partly because of the general level of education of women in the country.

The government was able, with the support of the peace-keeping mission and U.N. organisations, to come up with a special curriculum for accelerated qualification for women and young men.

Q: The AU Commission is developing a gender-training manual for peacekeeping operations. How will the manual be used and by whom? 

A: UNIFEM is supporting the Gender Directorate in this regard and the manual will be available for use both by the AU institutions and, most importantly, the troop-contributing countries. The idea is that gender should be integrated in the curriculum for training armed forces.

It’s not something you do for two weeks before they go for deployment. For effectiveness it must be part of the culture of training.

Q: What effect have women in peacekeeping missions had on peace and security in conflict zones? 

A: It depends. For instance, I worked in Liberia [where] the whole idea is that women survivors - particularly of gender- based violence - feel more comfortable opening up to some of these women peacekeepers.

But dealing with and responding to gender-based violence as well as knowing how to understand the gender relations in a conflict area should be the responsibility of absolutely everyone.

Q: How is the opening of the application process to women likely to affect the nature of training which is perhaps viewed as having a very ‘masculine’ ethos? 

A: I don’t know, because this is the beginning of a process. So far, in some countries they see a change, but obviously I think the underlying values of the command structure being masculine in nature also has to be interrogated. There has to be some conversation because it’s not just about passing on information and if the structures do not allow a soldier to respond accordingly...

The training obviously should not just be for rank and file [soldiers], because if the senior commanders are not able to integrate gender sensitivity in their command structure, then you don’t have an impact.

Q: Won’t women in peacekeeping forces themselves be vulnerable in any way to gender-based violence? 

A: Without institutionalized gender sensitivity there is always a risk of that, but we have countries that have had soldiers who are women. For example, in the U.S. there are occasional cases of sexual harassment and abuse.

The important thing is that it is clear policy that this is unacceptable and that there is a mechanism for redressing that. So we hope that African governments take [it] seriously and the same kind of models are put in place. 

GAMCOMTRAP officials granted bail

     Africa » Gambia

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Top officials of the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP), Dr Isatou Touray Executive Director and Amie Bojang Sissoho program co-ordinator, were yesterday granted bail in the sum of D1.5 million each to be provided by sureties with landed property within the Greater Banjul Area.

This development at the Banjul Magistrates' Court followed another bail application made by defence counsel led by Amie Bensouda yesterday.

The case attracted a large crowd, including members of civil society organizations.

It would be recalled that Dr Isatou Touray and Amie Bojang Sissoho were first arraigned before the court on Monday 12th October charged with theft, a charge they denied. They were subsequently remanded first at police headquarters, then at the remand wing of the Mile 2 state central prison.

During Wednesday's court sitting, Amie Bensouda told the court that the police had confirmed to the court that their investigation into the case had been completed.

Since 12th October 2010, she said, the court had ordered the police to expedite their investigation, and that the police prosecutor, Superintendent Joof, confirmed to the court that the investigation was completed.

Counsel added that it would not be proper to further remand the accused persons after the police had confirmed to the court that the investigation was completed.

"If the police think that the accused persons should be further remanded in custody, pending the outcome of the case, it would not be fair to the accused persons, whose rights have already been violated," she stated.

"The police have completed their investigations since May 2010 by recovering 23 documents from GAMCOMTRAP office, and yet still they are opposing bail to the accused persons without any grounds," counsel told the court.

She said that any further indulgence without granting bail to the accused persons would be tamtamout to the violation of their rights, and cited section 24 of the CPC, urging the court to grant the accused persons bail.

The prosecuting officer, Superintendent Joof, had earlier told the court that the prosecution was maintaining their earlier objection to bail for the accused persons.

Superintendent Joof told the court that, though the investigation into the matter was completed, the prosecution still fears that the accused persons can interfere with the case.

He added that the prosecution wanted to proceed with the case, but witnesses were not in court. He, therefore, urged the court to remand the accused persons in custody.

Principal Magistrate Emmanuel Nkea in his ruling stated that the court had gone through the previous ruling it delivered on 12th October 2010. He said the reason why the court did not grant them bail during their first appearance was due to the fear that they might tamper with the investigation.

"Since the police prosecutor has confirmed to the court that the investigation was completed, it will be unwise to further remand the accused persons in custody," Magistrate Nkea told the court, before granting bail to the accused persons.

The case was adjourned to 3rd November 2010 for hearing.

According to prosecutors, the two women's rights activists, Dr. Isatou Touray and Amie Bojang-Sissoho, sometime in the year 2009, in Banjul and diverse places in the Gambia, jointly stole the sum of 30,000 Euros being money provided by the YALOCAMBA SOLIDARIDAD of Spain to GAMCOTRAP, which is a local non-governmental organisation actively campaigning against the practice of female genital mutilation in the Gambia.

India's Female Peacekeepers Inspire Liberian Girls

By Tamasin Ford and Sonnie Morris*

Indian peacekeepers drilling in Liberia.  Credit: Christopher Herwig/UN Photo

MONROVIA, Oct 24, 2010 (IPS) - It is break time at the Victory Chapel School in Congo Town. Children dressed in their royal blue uniforms with bright yellow and white trim fight to get under the shade of the only mango tree in the yard. It is the start of the dry season and the scorching sun will soon be almost unbearable to stand in.

This small school, on the outskirts of Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, is much like any other in the city until you see what stands beside it. More than a hundred female peacekeepers patrol the grounds of a big white fenced compound, the first all-female unit of UN police in history.

The women are an arresting sight: dressed in their blue army combat uniform, black boots, the signature United Nations blue cap and each carrying an AK-47. But the school children are so used to their presence they barely give them a second glance.

"It surprised me at the beginning because it is my first time to see different people come around me," says Wokie Sarchie, a fifth grade student at the school.

The Indian peacekeepers arrived in Liberia in 2007. Their main role is guarding the president’s office on Capitol Hill on the other side of the city. When they are not protecting the president, they are often here helping the teachers at the school.

According to Jickson Sargeor, the principal of Victory Chapel School, the Indian peacekeeping contingent provides the children with medication, lessons on using computers and Indian dance and self defense. In addition, the principal believes the Indian women have brought a much more important message to the children.

"It has made the girls to believe that they are not just people to sit at home, they are people to get out there," he says.

Sandra Weah, an eighth grade student, toyed with the idea of following her peacekeeper role models into the security field, but her new love for dancing and music made her change her mind. "For me I wanted to be an army woman but then when I saw my friends doing music, I decided to leave the army to go and be a musician."

The female contingent of peacekeepers came to Liberia in response to the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Liberia is the first African country to complete a National Action Plan to implement the resolution.

Fourteen years of civil war in the West African state saw some of the worst atrocities women and children have ever experienced on the African continent. More than 60 percent of women say they were raped, according to the U.N. Mission in Liberia, UNMIL.

When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first female president, took office in Liberia in 2005, increasing the number of women in the country’s security services was one of her top priorities.

The numbers speak for themselves. Five years ago, one in 20 police personnel was a woman. Now, nearly one in five is female. According to UNMIL, applications from women to join the police force tripled the year after the female Indian peacekeepers arrived.

There is still some way to go with the armed forces, where women make up less than one in ten. But Carole Doucet, the U.N. Gender Advisor in Liberia believes this is still an achievement.

"It is still an improvement from the one in one hundred figures from 2005," she says.

There are still many challenges facing the full implementation of Resolution 1325 in Liberia, especially in the rural areas. Poverty, access to education and the lack of economic power put women in a difficult position. A recent article in one of the capital’s newspapers found children as young as ten were having sex with men for as little as three U.S. cents.

But in Congo Town, at the Victory Chapel School, there is a feeling that the next generation of Liberians are growing up with the view that women can do anything and everything men can do.

Schoolteacher Gloria Adjer, a young women herself, believes the peacekeepers are giving women the strength and inspiration to stand shoulder to shoulder with the men.

"The Indian people have come and taught us that we women too are necessary to do the work they are doing," she says. "We believed that not only men do these [kinds of] work but women too are capable of doing it."

"It makes the boys to feel that women are also part of society. It also makes boys think women can do what men do," says Principal Sargeor.

*Sonnie Morrie is a Fellow of New Narratives, a project supporting female journalists in Liberia 

source:IPS News

War Is Hell, Especially for Women

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20, 2010 (IPS) - As the United Nations commemorates the 10th anniversary of a landmark Security Council resolution (1325) on the protection of women in war zones, a new study details the successes and failures of a long-drawn-out effort to battle gender-based violence and provide women a key role in male-dominated peacekeeping and peace-building operations.

"Women rarely wage war, but they too often suffer the worst of its consequences," says Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which released Wednesday its 108-page annual 'State of World Population' on the impact of conflicts on women worldwide.

In many of today's conflicts, women are disempowered by rape or the threat of it, and by the HIV infection, trauma and disabilities that often result from it, she said.

Obaid said that experience shows that gender-based violence does not occur in a vacuum.

"It is usually a symptom of a larger problem, one of failed institutions, of dangerously skewed gender relations and entrenched equalities," she said.

War and disaster, she argued, do not cause gender-based violence, "but they often exacerbate it or allow it to strike with greater frequency."

The UNFPA says its study is based, for the first time, on reports from the field from countries and territories that have experienced, or are experiencing, conflicts or disasters. These include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liberia, Uganda, Timor-Leste, Haiti and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Among the many success stories since the adoption of the 1325 resolution in October 2000 are the national action plans by member states to protect and empower women in conflict and post-conflict situations.

The Philippines wrote its own 1325 action plan; in Colombia, the UNFPA created a task force to mainstream gender issues and sensitise the armed forces and police to issues of gender-based violence.

In Nepal, the U.N. agency is supporting the development of a national action plan to implement 1325, while in Rwanda it is supporting the national police force to effectively address gender-based violence.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, responding to a request from the Security Council, appointed in early 2010 Margot Wallstrom of Sweden as the U.N. Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Last March the United Nations also established an expert group, co-chaired by former Irish President Mary Robinson, to coordinate U.N. support for the implementation of resolution 1325.

Since hundreds of peacekeepers have been accused of rape and sexual violence in several countries, including Sudan, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations has declared "zero tolerance" on such crimes.

Still, the chair of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, said last year: "From Congo, to Bosnia, to Darfur, peacekeepers have been unable to prevent the use of rape as a weapon of war and even genocide."

In several peacekeeping missions sexual violence has become so pervasive that the U.N.'s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) keeps track of such crimes - on a quarterly basis.

During the third quarter of 2010, there were 19 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse, of which five concerned minors.

The DPKO said Tuesday that during the first three quarters of 2010, 64 allegations were reported, compared to 81 allegations during the first nine months of 2009: a decrease of 21 percent.

To counteract the incidence of sexual violence, the United Nations has also gradually increased the number of women peacekeepers.

"The proportion of women on the military and police side (in peacekeeping operations) has grown steadily since resolution 1325 was passed," says the UNFPA report.

At the end of 2006, there were 1,034 women in the uniformed ranks. By December 2007, the number had increased to 1,360. And a year later, there were 1,794.

Still, says DPKO, there's "only a fraction" of women in uniform compared to a total of more than 86,000 peacekeeping troops, 2,200 military observers, 13,200 police and 5,830 international civilians.

Bangladesh and India, the two top contributors to peacekeeping operations, also had the largest contingents of women, including all-female Indian police contingents assigned to Liberia and an all-female Bangladeshi unit assigned to Haiti.

Pakistan and Nigeria are expected to follow suit with all- women units.

Barbara Crossette, the lead author of the UNFPA report and a former U.N. bureau chief for the New York Times, told IPS that national governments are wary of any kind of tribunal or treaty or other formal mechanism to include women in peace negotiations.

"There is nothing that can be done about this. It is up to the governments of member states to take these recommendations seriously," Crossette said.

However, she pointed out, some countries have made gains - South Africa, for example, has the largest percentage of women in their contingents. Nigeria has the highest number of women in peacekeeping/police.

The fear for many years, especially since peacekeeping started to grow, is that the United Nations actually had to beg for peacekeepers.

"As a result, they had to take what they got, but it's unfair certainly to say that all peacekeepers have been somehow involved/guilty of something," Crossette added.

She said it's also true to say that there have been some spectacularly effective peacekeeping contingents.

"I was in Cambodia in the early 1990s where Bangladesh had a battalion there that was wonderful. The locals still think of them with great affection, they had a commander - it's the commander often - who said anyone who misbehaves here, off you go," she recalled.

"Then the second question is, if they send them home, will they go on trial? Almost 100 percent no."

*With additional reporting by Kanya d'Almeida.