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A Beijing issue that hasn't gone too far
Wednesday, June 07, 2000
By Jane Elizabeth, Post-Gazette Education Writer
"Women's rights are human rights."
This was the mantra at the World Conference on Women in Beijing five years ago, and it remains so this week at what's being called the "Beijing+5" conference in New York.
Not exactly a catchy phrase. The fact that women are human seems almost too logical to mention.
"Theoretically speaking, it's a stupid conversation worldwide," said Sohini Sinha, a former Pittsburgher who attended the Beijing conference in 1995, representing the local chapter of the World Federalist Association.
"But it's a very real issue," said Sinha, who moved to Los Angeles last year to work for UCLA's African Studies Center. "Women's rights are abused all the time. Some U.S. women live like they're in Third World countries."
Sinha, who grew up in Central Africa, sees a major missed opportunity for the United States to address human rights in this country and around the world -- the failure to pass what's know as CEDAW.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is a treaty that's been signed by 165 countries. The United States is the only major developed country that has not ratified the document, despite the support of President Clinton and many legislators.
"The whole treaty revolves around human rights," said Sinha. "It defines discrimination, it defines the countries' legal structures. It asks whether women have legal rights that equal men's rights; it addresses health care and poverty."
And most importantly, the United Nations will monitor the status of human rights for women in the countries that have ratified CEDAW.
"Until we have this, we have nothing," said Andrea Blinn of Squirrel Hill, former executive director of the Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh who also attended the 1995 Beijing conference.
A report card issued by US Women Connect, a Washington-based group of grassroots and national women's organizations, graded the United States on progress in women's issues since the '95 Beijing conference.
In human rights, the grade was C+. The lackluster ranking was prompted in large part by the CEDAW rejection.
But another reason was an issue that "people in the U.S. don't like to talk about," said Sinha -- child prostitution and the sale of women as sex partners.
"That was one of the issues we focused on in Beijing but it hasn't gone very far," said Sinha.
Typically called "trafficking," bartering of women and girls in the sex trade has increased in recent years, according to international women's rights groups.
"Especially in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, the Middle East, we've seen a real rise in trafficking," said Susan Kindervatter, who chairs US Women Connect.
Pamela Shiffman, director of the Washington-based women's group Equality Now, said most offenders live in wealthy countries, while the victims live in poor countries.
"As we are on the demand side of this problem, we need to stop it here," said Shiffman.
Dozens of U.S. "travel" companies offer package deals for men to trafficking hot spots -- particularly the Philippines and Thailand. Trafficking in girls and women is an international multibillion dollar industry, according to Equality Now officials. The organization's studies show that male customers primarily come from the United States, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
While most of these countries have laws against sex tourism, penalties apply only to travel for the purpose of engaging in sex with minors.
"It's a trans-national crime," said Anita Botti, a native of Irwin who now chairs the U.S. Interagency Task Force on Trafficking in Women and Children.
Trafficking "is a human rights issue, economics, education. It's a corruption issue and a health issue," said Botti. The U.S. needs to lead the way in criminalizing trafficking, she said, because countries worldwide take their cue from Americans.
Blinn, who has studied child prostitution in southern Thailand, noted that any tourist there can see "a lot of European and American white men with young Thai women in their arms."
The reason is economic, Blinn said. "In striving to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace, the Thai government has made it possible for businesses to pay really low wages. A woman can make 25 times more money by being a prostitute."
However, since the Beijing conference five years ago, Kindervatter said, some progress has been made in preventing trafficking and child prostitution.
"Five years ago it wasn't on most governments' radar screens," she said. Now, the State Department has developed a separate office to look at the issue, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has made it a topic of conversation in her meeting with world leaders.
Although trafficking and ratification of CEDAW are at the top of the human rights agenda, other issues being discussed at "Beijing + 5" include:
The women's groups also will be trying to seek what one activist calls the "connectiveness of all the women on the planet" -- the reasons that women in Pittsburgh and around the United States should care about international rights for women.
"Here, we experience and enjoy a relatively higher degree of freedom of expression and participation than many women in other countries," said Kit Cosby, a board member for US Women Connect and director of the Washington-based Baha'is of the United States.
"Because of that, we often feel that we don't need to worry about it here. Our lives are so full, it can be difficult to understand why we need to be concerned about other countries.
But those who work in the area of human rights realize that "as it goes for women in their own cities and towns, so it goes for the struggles and concerns shared by women all over the world, in Latin America, India, Asia, Russia, Europe."
"All women are marred by discrimination in one way or another."
Human Rights 
Female genital mutilation. The circumcision-like procedure has been banned in some countries including Egypt after much debate. Still, millions of women undergo the procedure each year because religious or ethnic custom dictate that they should not experience sexual enjoyment. Legal literacy. Women and girls need more education about the law and their rights, women's groups contend. The channels for bringing charges against discrimination need to be publicized, and women need better access to legal information. Legal issues. Conference attendees will discuss equality and non-discrimination under law and in practice. National and international laws dealing in the areas of family, civil, labor, domestic violence penal and commercial issues need to be examined for discrimination. Sweatshops. Although much attention has been given to shutting down sweatshops where mostly females work long hours for little pay, more needs to be accomplished.