International Women’s Day Events Calendar 2/22/10

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Feb 222010
 

It’s hard to know where to begin this week, so many fabulous events being planned all over the world, but first, from the vaults with gratitude to Iranian.com, check out this amazing footage of IWD in Iran in 1979:

You can see Part 2 of the footage here.

And how better to celebrate  IWD than 3 women, some cooking and a tub?

And from Spain:

They sing, they compose, they write, they paint, they dance, they act… In short, they create (Ellas Crean). Once again, and for the sixth consecutive year, the most important female festival of Spain celebrates the International Women’s Day. In this way important female figures of music, theatre, poetry, art and dance are going to lead us through different artistic and cultural proposals.

The festival will be included in the cultural programming of the Spanish Presidency of the European Union and will reach 20 cities on the five continents through the Instituto Cervantes. It is organized by the Ministry of Culture and Equality, and it will be held in Madrid from February 17th to March 30th.

In Nepal:

An FM radio station is to be operated for the first time in Parvat at the initiatives of women.

The Society for Uplift of Women is going to operate Radio Didibahini 95.2 Megahertz which will be totally operated by women journalists and RJs.

Chairperson of Society for Uplift of Women, Kalpana Chapagain said the managers, program presenters, technicians and employees of the radio station would be all women.

Radio Didibahini 95.2 Megahertz is starting its test transmission from February 27. This will be the second radio station to be operated by women after the Mukti FM of Butwal.

The FM radio station will be formally inaugurated on March 8 on the day of the International Women’s Day.

Via AWID:

Honoring the lives of feminist Haitian leaders who died in the massive earthquake on January 12th, will be the focus of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2010, which is also the 100th anniversary of this annual celebration…Women’s groups around the world are asked by the Haitian women’s movement to organize a memorial activity as part of their celebration of International Women’s Day in their countries and communities.
“The main activity will take place that day in Plaza Catherine Flon in Champ de Mars in the center of Port au Prince, a park that symbolizes Haitian women’s participation to the war towards independence two centuries ago.

It is being organized by the Haitian women’s organizations locally to acknowledge and honor the human suffering of the catastrophe in Haiti, promore feminist values based on the human rights of all, the struggle for well being of all in Haiti and urban planning, reaffirm feminist struggles despite the loss of significant feminist leaders, strengthen solidarity and display a MEMORIA which will take the form of testimonies, a mural and a slide show.

Local activities in other countries for March 8th have already been announced by women’s organizations in Chile, Argentina, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Canada, etc.

The Feminist International Camp is also requesting a statement of solidarity from the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

The initiative to commemorate the 8th of March by honoring Haitian feminists emerged from a Haitian women’s meeting on January 24th in Port au Prince, which was then adopted at a Latin American and Caribbean meeting of the International Feminist Solidarity Camp Myriam Merlet, Magali Marcelin, and Anne Marie Coriolan, held in the Dominican Republic on January 26-27.

Finally, for all you bloggers, Gender Across Borders invites you to blog for International Women’s Day:

International Women’s Day [IWD] is on Monday, March 8, 2010. As set by the United Nations, this year’s theme is “Equal rights, equal opportunity: Progress for all.” While we  here at GAB believe that equal rights for women should be celebrated every day, this particular event is a day for people to come together and blog about the progress of rights and opportunity for women worldwide.

This is the first year that we’re asking you (yes, YOU) to blog for IWD on March 8, 2010. Please take a moment to sign up using the form here and you can also download a Blog for IWD graphic to let readers know you’re participating. We ask bloggers to think about any of the following questions in regards to the U.N.’s theme for IWD:

  • What does “equal rights for all” mean to you?
  • Would you describe a particular organization, person, or moment in history that helped to mobilize a meaningful change in equal rights for all?

Once you sign up, a link to your blog’s URL will appear on the Blog for IWD blog directory page. Also remember to tag your posts as “Blog for IWD” or “Blog for International Women’s Day” so that we can identify your posts!

Please also visit FPN’s International Women’s Day webpage for more information about IWD and click here to learn why we are calling for a boycott of Thomson Reuter’s InternationalWomensDay.com website.

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 Posted by Fempeace on February 22, 2010

CEDAW Turns 30, U.S. Senate Has Yet To Ratify

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Dec 142009
 

Dear U.S. Senate, we hate to rush you but  you’ve been deliberating about this (or more accurately stonewalling) for 30 years, do you think maybe you could possibly ratify this crucial human rights document?  Just asking…

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) celebrates its 30th birthday on December 18.  President Carter signed CEDAW in 1980, but the U.S. Senate has yet to ratify it, making it one of only seven countries in the world not to implement this important platform for women’s rights.  The other six are Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan and Tonga.

However, it is not at all clear whether ratification at this point would be a good idea because of ‘reservations’ that might be attached to that approval that could potentially nullify or change the impact of key provisions.

Via AWID comes an interesting report regarding how the use of ‘reservations’ by countries in conjunction with ratification:

A landmark UN treaty on women’s rights, which will be 30 years old next week, is in danger of being politically undermined by a slew of reservations by 22 countries seeking exemptions from some of the convention’s legal obligations.

“A reservation must not defeat the object and purpose of a treaty,” Ambassador Palitha Kohona, a former chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS. If a state has intrinsic difficulties with a treaty, it has the right not to become a party, he said. “To become a party and then defeat the object and purpose of the treaty is unacceptable,” said Kohona, currently Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which will commemorate its 30th anniversary on Dec. 18, has been described as “an international bill of rights for women” and has been ratified by 186 member states. But 22 member states, ranging from Algeria and Australia to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United Kingdom, have exercised their right not to implement certain provisions of the treaty, even though they have signed and ratified CEDAW.

You can read the complete analysis here.

In addition AWID reports here that an Arab women’s organization, Equality Without Reservation, has called for the heads of Arab states to:

  • Withdraw all reservations to the Convention and reform all discriminatory laws which constitute obstacles to the fulfilment of the rights of women as citizens.
  • Integrate the principles of equality and non-discrimination based on gender into constitutions, laws and action plans and ensure their implementation.
  • Support the efforts of non-governmental organisations to raise awareness on the Convention and contribute to its implementation in order to end all forms of discrimination against women and promote substantive equality.

Ambassador Kohona raises the point that,

human rights treaties tend to attract a noticeable number of reservations. Some treaties, Kohona explained, may prohibit reservations. However, “states having the sovereign right to lodge reservations to treaties in the generality of cases when they become party, have exercised this right extensively,” he said. Others, he pointed out, “have surreptitiously sought to achieve the same objective by crafting clever declarations of understanding.”

While we understand Ambassador Kohona’s point regarding national sovereignty inasmuch as that has traditionally been an unassailable canon of international law, national sovereignty is not an excuse for the continuing  denial of women’s full human rights that is a global pandemic that knows no boundaries. The Feminist Peace Network calls on the U.S. and the other  countries that have not fully implemented CEDAW to do so immediately and without reservation.

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 Posted by Fempeace on December 14, 2009