March 8, 2005
March for equal rights as thousands mark International Women's Day
Agence France Presse

Thousands marched in Brazil as women around the world marked International Women's Day demanding equal social and political rights.

SAO PAULO (AFP) - Thousands marched in Brazil as women around the world marked International Women's Day demanding equal social and political rights.

The Brazil march kicked off the start of a world tour for a charter for equal rights known as the Women's Global Charter for Humanity that will go to 53 countries and end in Africa in October.

The charter was adopted by women's rights groups in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, in December. The tour will end in Ouagadougou, the Burkina Faso capital, chosen because of its poverty and low level of protection for women.

Women of all ages and races, some dressed in regional costume, others walking with the aid of crutches, joined in the march, singing and dancing and swaying to the beat of drums.

Brazil's Women's Health Network (RFS) said around one million abortions, many clandestine, are performed each year, and are the fourth major cause of death in Brazilian women. Officially, 160 women die each year as a result of abortion, but estimates put the figure much higher.

The charter proposes "to build another world where exploitation, oppression, intolerance and exclusion no longer exist, and where integrity, diversity and the rights and freedoms of all are respected."

The charter will leave Brazil on March 12 and be handed over to women's groups from Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

After circulating through South America and North America, the document will travel to Europe in May and June, to Asia and Oceania in July, and then move through Africa in September and October.

At the United Nations (news - web sites), Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) said there should be more women in top UN positions. The world body must live up to "the principles that we set out for the rest of the world," he said. "What we do in our own house surely sends a powerful message to the nations we represent."

He said there were "still far too many obstacles that prevent women from advancing and thriving" in the United Nations.

UN officials wrap up this week a fortnight of conferences and meetings to evaluate progress across the globe on gender equality.

In many areas around the world women risk torture and rape, according to the Geneva-based World Organization Against Torture (OMCT).

Perpetrators went unpunished in 2004 in documented cases of rape and other violence against women and girls in Bangladesh, Colombia, Greece, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Sudan, the OMCT said in a statement. "In most of these cases, the perpetrators were not even arrested and in many cases no enquiry was opened," the group said.

According to the group, many victims of sexual abuse do not report the crimes due to shame and fear of reprisals. In some societies the victims of sexual violence are threatened with expulsion from their home and community, or even risk being killed or subjected to further violence by members of their own family or community, it said.

Human Rights Watch said government troops and rebel fighters have raped tens of thousands of women and girls in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (news - web sites).

"Sexual violence has shattered tens of thousands of lives in Congo, but fewer than a dozen victims have seen their assailants prosecuted," said Alison Des Forges of HRW's Africa division.

In Kinshasa, a leading lawyer said the Democratic Republic of Congo's decrepit judicial system is unable to afford any protection and discourages women from pressing charges against their attackers. Sylvestre Bisimwa, who runs an association offering free legal advice to rape victims, denounced what he called a culture of impunity in the country.

In Brussels, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions stressed the increasingly important economic role played by women. More women work than ever before, holding 39 percent of the world's 2.8 billion jobs. Yet best-paid jobs "are overwhelmingly reserved for men," the confederation said.

In Washington, US first lady Laura Bush said that her husband's administration had made women's rights a global policy priority. Even in the Middle East, where women's freedoms by Western standards are among the most curtailed in the world, there was hope of a better future, she said.

"All people who love freedom hope that we are witnessing the start of a new era of expanding liberty and growing opportunity for women worldwide," she said at a meeting with leaders from 15 Muslim nations.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said the meeting sent "a clear message to the women of the world who are not yet free: As you stand for your rights and for your liberty, America stands with you."

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