Women fight back
This year's marches on International Women's Day expressed a new form of international solidarity, writes Faiza Rady
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In Manila leftist Filipina women raise their fists in protest as they were showered with violet confetti on 8 March as they use International
Women's Day to protest against the possible US-led attack in a march on the presidential palace
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On 8 March, International Women's Day, women had no particular cause to rejoice as the planned US-led war on Iraq cast a sinister shadow of death and destruction around the globe. Lashing back at the Bush administration's warmongering, militant northern and southern women went out on the streets to protest against the war.
Iran witnessed its first women's demonstration since the 1979 revolution on 8 March. Empowered by the militancy of the global anti-war movement and the anger that drove more than 10 million people worldwide to demonstrate against the American and British war drive, Iranian women took their grievances to the streets. Trailed by a small group of men, hundreds of women rallied in a park in the centre of the capital Tehran, demanding equal rights for women and denouncing the war on Iraq.
In the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syrian and Palestinian women staged a sit-in outside the European Union offices, chanting anti-war slogans and holding placards reading "Sharon and Bush are war criminals".
In Cairo, some 250 women from the Women Against the War coalition, defied the official ban on street protests and marched in front of the Arab League headquarters. Dressed in black to express their sorrow and anger, the women carried banners reading "Women say no to invading Iraq; no to occupying Palestine".
"The first victims of aggression and war are women and children," said Fatheya El- Assal, a prominent feminist and a member of the left-wing Tagammu Party. "This is why our slogan this year is to counter the planned aggression on Iraq and the barbaric attacks on the Palestinian people."
Women's protests also reverberated loud and clear in the US capital, Washington DC, where an estimated 10,000 people took to the streets in a march sponsored by Code Pink, a women's coalition protesting the war on Iraq. Dressed in all shades of pink, in mock reference to President George Bush's colour-coded terror alarm system, the women marched to Malcolm X Park -- a highly symbolic choice of venue expressing the women's tribute to the celebrated African-American leader and anti-Vietnam War activist.
It was another African-American, Reverend Graylan Hagler, pastor of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Northwest Washington -- and the sole male speaker at the rally -- who made the connection between the women's movement and the struggle of the African-American community. Hagler explained that white women and African-American women and men are still marginalised and sidelined from any political decision-making process in the US.
"Black people are always locked out of the debate in this country and particularly in the political arena," Hagler said. "We have always been involved in the military, as it offers a hope for jobs and the benefits of going to school, and then we are used as cannon fodder in unjust wars."
Medea Benjamin, a keynote speaker at the rally and a Code Pink spokesperson who recently visited Iraq with a delegation of international women, said that all major North American women's groups were "determined to stop the Bush administration from going to war in Iraq". The largest feminist groups in the US, such as the National Organisation for Women and the Feminist, Majority, endorsed Code Pink's agenda.
It is no coincidence that the struggle against the projected war on Iraq took centre-stage on International Women's Day 2003. In recent years, millions of poor women have paid a heavy price for wars mostly fuelled by rich northern countries and waged by men.
Under the neo-liberal version of globalisation, soaring levels of poverty, coupled with the increasing disparity between rich and poor, have contributed to triggering wars under the guise of ethnic and intercommunal conflicts. Southern countries, and African countries in particular, have been transformed into vast war zones -- disrupting and ultimately destroying people's lives.
A case in point: last year's US-led war in Afghanistan caused an internal refugee flux of six million people. In 2002 alone, some 40 million people became refugees as a consequence of civil and other wars -- from Afghanistan to Sierra Leone to Liberia and Colombia. On the average, 80 per cent of refugees are women and children, reported the Boston Globe.
Vulnerable, hungry and destitute, millions of women and their children linger in squalid refugee camps with no hope or future in sight.
As if this was not enough, women refugees are also exposed to sexual exploitation, rape and disease. In effect, HIV/AIDS are rampant in make-shift refugee camps throughout Africa. The rape of "enemy women" is considered part and parcel of the civil war arsenal. Thus, an estimated 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, while tens of thousands suffered the same fate in Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Colombia.
Besides addressing the projected war on Iraq and the inherent violence of war, 8 March rallies also denounced other forms of violence against women. In Paris, a march of 10,000 women called for an end to violence against women, including their exchange on the sex workers' market.
Documented in many human rights report about women, the horrific figures have become monotonously familiar. According to UN statistics, the annual sale of four million girls and women are transacted by the global Mafia-controlled prostitution business.
Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, a vast network of competent businessmen have set up shop along European East-West transit routes -- reaping windfall profits in the sector. For the most part young and destitute, an estimated 200,000 East European women fall into the clutches of these sex traders every year.
By all accounts, the business is thriving -- even in these times of global recession. In Thailand alone, sex tourism is estimated to bring in an annual $1 billion in net profits. Worldwide, prostitution revenues are estimated to generate between $5 and $7 billion in profits. According to Interpol figures, the average sex trafficker makes an annual 107,000 euros for each sex worker he manages.
Commodified on the sex trade market, denied equal political rights, turned into refugees through the vicissitudes of war, women are subjected to intensified violence in turbulent times. "The state of women's rights around the world is in crisis," said LaShawn Jefferson, executive director of the women's division of the UN Human Right Watch.
However, despite the crisis, women are fighting back. This year's 8 March, with its message of solidarity with the Iraqi people, expressed a new form of international solidarity between women.
