GLOBE EDITORIAL
A culture of women
3/11/2004
AMSTERDAM
IN THE 10 years since 179 countries signed a groundbreaking plan for sustainable development at the United Nations population summit in Cairo, progress has been real but uneven. World population has surpassed 6 billion, but the rate of growth is slowing. The UN estimates that 187 million unwanted pregnancies are prevented and 105 million abortions avoided each year due to the Cairo program, which prescribes not just wider access to birth control but a holistic web of services including maternal and child health, economic self-sufficiency, and the education of girls.
Still, customs, taboos, and religious interpretations keep women oppressed in much of the world. In some societies the denial of women's rights directly affects their ability to survive. It is difficult to consider the empowerment of women when an Indian girl can be raped with impunity for daring to postpone marriage beyond age 14.
To address this conflict head on, the UN and the Dutch Foreign Ministry decided to mark International Women's Day (March 8 -- widely celebrated in Europe) with a two-day conference on reproductive rights and culture. The idea was to see if the implicit tension between cultural diversity and individual rights could ever be reconciled.
"I myself believe that culture and religion are exploited and simplified for political purposes," said Agnes Van Ardenne, the Dutch minister for development cooperation. "I am convinced it need not stand in the way of people's reproductive rights."
Why Amsterdam? The Netherlands is now the world's largest donor to the UN Population Fund, at $67 million annually. This shames the United States, where a $34 million American commitment is frequently stalled or withheld by conservatives in Congress and the Bush administration.
The conference brought together scores of exuberant women and men who work every day breaking down the fear of women's rights and freedoms in traditional societies. They included Penda Mbow, minister of culture in Senegal, Sima Simar, the first minister of women's affairs in post-Taliban Afghanistan, and Hauwa Ibrahim, the lawyer who successfully defended the Nigerian women sentenced to death by stoning under sharia law last year for having a child out of wedlock.
Ibrahim, herself raised in a Nigerian village without electricity or running water, described visiting eight conservative clerics -- some of whom had issued death threats against her -- in their mosque. She chose to sit on the floor in humility even though they offered her a chair. By the end of the meeting they had agreed on official neutrality: They wouldn't denounce her publicly.
LaLaine Viado, who runs youth programs in the Philippines, explained that during the recent SARS scare in Manila, Communion wafers at Catholic Mass were placed in the celebrant's hands, not directly on the tongue. Thoraya Obaid, director of the Population Fund, recalled how in the 1960s her father fretted over whether she should cover her face when she first returned to Saudi Arabia from her education in the West. Finally he told her to lift her veil, saying: "If you can face God uncovered" -- the Saudi tradition at prayer -- "you can face your people."
All these stories demonstrate that culture is dynamic -- that rules or customs can change under the proper circumstances. As well they should. When a woman dies in childbirth every minute -- 509,000 avoidable deaths a year -- the diplomatic question of whether human rights encompass reproductive rights seems well beyond debate. RENEE LOTH
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
