GENEVA (ILO News) - Women have paid a heavy price in the conflicts that have racked many areas of the world during the past decade - such as in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.
To underline both the enormous number of women and girls who have suffered in extremely harsh conditions but also their resilience in overcoming adversity, the ILO has joined with the UNHCR at a special event on Friday, 8 March, to mark International Women's Day 2002.
It will be addressed by ILO Director-General Juan Somavia and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers.
Three women - Zlata Filipovic of Bosnia; Latifa Rohina Sadat and Chekeba Hachemi, both from Afghanistan - will share their experiences of living in conflict situations.
Women and children comprise around 75 per cent of the refugee populations which are spawned at the outbreak of these "civil disturbances" or "internal struggles." The ILO's report 1 on Gender and Armed Conflicts, published in March 2001, reveals some of the grim statistics of war and the complex survival strategies adopted by women in the face of tremendous odds.
For women, war and conflict carry a special terror; death, injury and the destruction of homes is not all they must fear. Rape, torture, sexual or economic slavery and forced liaisons or marriage often have been their fate. Loss of husbands, family and incomes is their curse.
According to the ILO report, the nebulous nature of recent conflicts has extended the reach of violence. Unlike earlier warfare, involving set-piece battles between national armies, the conflicts of today engulf not only entire countries or communities but have reached a new level of brutality against non-combatants.
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women and girls - some as young as five - were subjected to torture, physical abuse and rape. The non-governmental organization "Women for Women International" says that "in addition to the emotional and physical trauma caused by the rapes, many women gave birth to the children of their rapists ... many women also suffer from gynaecological problems and sexually-transmitted diseases such as AIDS."
The ILO says an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 women are believed to have been raped in Bosnia, with the attacks sometimes used to terrorize communities and assault ethnic identity.
In Afghanistan, an ILO study 2 notes that "it is clear that the abuse of women's human rights is part of a much larger landscape that has been shaped by 23 years of conflict." The report notes that, as a result of "widowhood and displacement, more households are now headed by women, while the absence of men who were away fighting for long periods led to women taking on new areas of responsibility. In addition, exposure to refugee camp health-care facilities and to education and vocational skills training (for some) has changed attitudes and aspirations."
1 "Gender and Armed Conflicts", by Eugenia Date-Bah, Martha Walsh and others, Working Paper No. 2. InFocus Programme on Crisis Response and Reconstruction, Recovery and Reconstruction Department, International Labour Office, Geneva, March 2001, ISBN 92-2-11246-X.
2 "Capitalizing on Capacities of Afghan Women: Women's Role in Afghanistan's Reconstruction and Development", by Sultan Barakat and Gareth Wardell, Working Paper No. 4. InFocus Programme on Crisis Response and Reconstruction, Recovery and Reconstruction Department, International Labour Office, Geneva, December 2001, ISBN 92-2-112921-7.
Biographical notes on the three speakers attending the
ILO/UNHCR
special function on International Womens' Day, 8
March 2002
Zlata Filipovic, 21, began writing a diary in September 1991, shortly before her eleventh birthday. In it, she movingly chronicled life in Sarajevo as the city came under attack.
A prisoner in her own home with no water, gas or electricity, she poured her hopes and fears into her diary. She wrote about the friends and relatives she lost, and the struggle that her family endured simply in order to stay alive.
Extracts of her diary were originally published in Croat in pamphlet form by the International Peace Centre. Zlata's Diary subsequently went on to become a best seller worldwide, published in 35 languages.
Since leaving Sarajevo in 1993, Ms. Filipovic has been on a quest to help the victims of war. She has spoken widely about the urgency of a stable peace in the former Yugoslavia, and the suffering that the war inflicted on the children of Sarajevo. She has studied in Paris and Dublin, and received a degree from Oxford University, England.
Latifa Rohina Sadat, was born in Kabul in 1980 into an educated middle class Afghan family, at once liberal and religious. As a teenager she was interested in fashion and cinema and going out with her friends, and she longed to become a journalist.
Then, in September 1996, the Taliban seized power in Kabul. She became a prisoner in her own home. Her school was closed. Her mother was banned from working. The simplest and most basic freedoms - walking down the street, looking out of a window - were no longer hers.
Latifa wrote her book as a record of how her life had changed under the new regime. When published, it was recognized around the world as an extraordinary story of how a young woman and her family suffered and survived under the Taliban. It remains a vivid and touching account of the challenges faced by many women at this time.
Latifa, accompanied by her mother and father, fled to France in May 2001. She hopes to return to Afghanistan.
Chékéba Hachemi, 27, has been involved since 1996 in humanitarian work in Afghanistan and is the founder and President of Afghanistan Libre, a humanitarian organization dedicated to improving access to education for women in Afghanistan. Projects include the construction and restoration of schools as well as the creation of literacy workshops for adult women. Since leaving Afghanistan at the age of 10, she has been living in France.
Ms. Hachemi who was a close friend of the late Commandant Massoud has also been nominated by the interim Afghanistan government to be the first women diplomat to represent the country. She has been posted to the new Afghanistan Embassy in Brussels where she is in charge of humanitarian projects focusing particularly on women and education.