FYI
------ Forwarded message follows -------

                      *** 15-Oct-0* ***

By Brian Kenety

BRUSSELS, Oct 15 (IPS) - Women from all over the world will converge in New
York on Tuesday in a ''World March'' to protest against poverty and violence
towards women and to put pressure on national and international bodies to
advance gender equality.

A pamphlet distributed here on Saturday by participants in a similar march,
said Tuesdays protest will be ''the grand finale of this extraordinary
undertaking called the World March''.

The march has a world platform of 17 demands. Its organisers and participants
are demanding from the United Nations and its member states concrete  measures
to eliminate poverty, violence against women and to ensure equality between the
sexes.

They want to force governments, decision-makers and individuals the world  over
to institute the changes necessary for improving the status of women and
women's quality of life.

On Tuesday too, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is to receive a 200-strong
delegation from the march in New York; World Bank President James Wolfensohn
and the International Monetary Fund managing director Horst Kühler are to
receive delegations in Washington on Monday.

''We plan to deliver to the United Nations millions of signatures in support of
the Marchs world demands,'' the pamphlet said.

Saturdays march in the Belgian capital attracted tens of
thousands of  womens rights activists. The demonstration was part of ''The
World March of  Women,'' an international undertaking which currently links
5,000 groups in 157 countries and territories worldwide.

Gerd de Clerck, a co-ordinator of the action in Belgium, told IPS that
police had estimated some 45,000 people turned out for the march, in which
300 local groups took part, ''so if that is the official estimate, perhaps  as
many as 50,000 are here''.

Demonstrators came from across Europe and beyond. The peaceful event had  much
of the feel of a festival, with food stands offering traditional Congolese,
Indian, and Indonesian food, and live music throughout the day and cultural
activities planned at Brussels venues for later that night.

The central theme of Saturdays event was 'Sharing Wealth and Combating
Poverty - Against Violence on Women and for Respect of their Integrity' and
throughout the Cinquantenaire park  in central Brussels a wide range of
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) set up informational booths, held
lectures, staged political theatre parodying the objectification and
exploitation of women in the workplace and society at large, while bands played
on the main stage.

Some demonstrators knitted a scarf thought to exceed five kilometres in length.
The inspiration came from the 18th Century French women revolutionaries who
knitted while they attended sessions in the national assembly.

''I wanted to remember them - not because they are victims or they are  heroes,
but because they tried to have a voice in political life. And that is just  as
important a thing for women now as it was then,'' Lucresse Marna, the projects
creator, told IPS.

Hilde van den Hooff, a volunteer knitter, added that the scarf ''is a symbol of
protest, but it also a symbol of connection between all the women of the
different countries. A scarf, of course, is something warm and is a symbol  of
taking care of the children ­ but you can also strangle someone with a  scarf,
so it has these two connotations'', she said with a laugh.

A slogan of the demonstration was '2000 good reasons to march' and there  were
hundreds of diverse demands put forth on Saturday. Women from Indonesias
Moluccan Islands (former Spice Islands) called for an end to sectarian violence
in their homeland and Kurdish women for a homeland of their own; French
lesbians were demanding anti-discrimination laws be adopted by
international bodies; Filipino women called for an end to trafficking of women;
Belgian childcare-providers were asking for better working conditions; Arab
immigrant women for access to basic social care.

The speeches were kept to a minimum. Suzanne Cautaert of the  Belgian
organisation Refleks told the crowd: ''In all our big (European) cities
traffickers in human beings are detaining women who come from poor
countries, forcing them into prostitution, while in many poor countries with
armed conflicts women and girls are raped and kept imprisoned ­ when
they escape  and arrive in the West, they physical or sexual violence is often
not grounds  for political asylum''.

She demanded that national and European authorities allocate funds
for a ''real action plan'' to combat violence against women. ''Violence against
women is a social problem asking for a political solution,'' said Cautaert.

A representative of the Philippines Freedom from Debt Coalition, Jean Enriquez,
spoke of the impact of globalisation, which she said has lead to even greater
feminisation of poverty.

''Together we have to stimulate exchanges and co-operation between
the women of the North and of the South, to support women in weaving solidarity
networks and act in synergy for our common interests,'' said Noell Mwavita
Rugense of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa).

''We must fight all gender-related inequalities in all spheres of life,''  she
said, not that women carry the heaviest burdens of poverty and violence all
over the world.

Sophie Zafari, of the French co-ordination of the march, said that in Europe
women perform ''invisible and undervalued tasks, such as domestic chores,  the
education and care of children'' that grant them less financial independence
than men enjoy and marginalise them from public life.

''We demand a real re-division of the useful and indispensable social
activities and of human resources. This World March of Women wants
to show  the absurd and unjust mechanisms that make women poor. Our demands
form the  urgent answer to this situation,'' she said. (END/IPS/HD/bk/da/00)


------- End of forwarded message -------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------