Convenor Olga Djanaeva ALGA Rural Women’s Group, Kyrgyzstan Co-Convenor Tess Vistro Amihan, Philippines Member Dwi Astuti Bina Desa (INDHRRA), Indonesia Geetha Fernando National Fisheries Society (NAFSO), Sri Lanka Lily Lusia Natesan Society For Rural Education and Development (SRED), India Susmita Chakma TAUGYA, Bangladesh Sita Poudel All Nepal Women's Association (ANWA), Nepal Kingkorn Narintarakul Northern Development Foundation, Thailand Programme Officer Tomoko Kashiwazaki

At this juncture where the discourse on WTO and the specific agreements within it – particularly Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA), or General Agreements on Trades and Services (GATS), Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) – all have significant impact on the livelihood and lives of food producers and grassroots communities -  have reached a level of sophistication, and expertise, there are a lot of women in the local communities who have not yet heard of WTO, let alone understand how powerful it is in creating impacts in theirr daily lives.

On the other hand, bilateral trade agreements and free trade agreements (FTAs) are aggressively being pushed and entered into by national governments. Thailand, for example, has concluded four FTAs, including that with China and Australia. It is presently having heated negotiations with US, and new ones with Australia and Papua New Guinea. Most of these FTAs have grave impacts on the livelihoods of the small communities. Indonesia and the Philippines have pending Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with the United States. Malaysia too has pending trade agreements with the US and Japan.  (www.us-asean.org/ASEAN/FTA_Matrix.doc)   In Kyrgyzstan, 70% of the total population is in the rural communities and 60% of them are women.  While positive changes have been observed in the poverty alleviation programmes of the government, ALGA (rural women’s NGO in Kyrgyzstan) reports that the country is also witnessing the loss of role of the local harvesters, mostly women, in the food production sector as there is a rising flow of food importation from China and other countries. However, there has been a lack of information and understanding on the different trade policies that the Kyrgyz government has been implementing. 

These agreements are being entered into and negotiated without public consultation or information at all. The lack of transparency from the part of national governments, systematic information dissemination, and public consultation among their constituencies make the governments, the trade negotiators in particular, commit sell-out trade agreements on food and agriculture at the expense of the rural communities with impunity.  The public, let alone grassroots women, are left in the dark about the negotiations, as they suffer the brunt of all of these.  The trade agreements on investments, and those on food and agriculture, have detrimental impacts on our food security, the quality of food that we have, and control over means of food production and natural resources.

This lack of transparency is compounded with the climate of fear created by the ongoing “war on terror” and unabashedly intolerant policies of national policies.  This climate of fear is so real that the campaign for women human rights defenders has been one of the urgent campaigns the RIW programme is involved in.  In the Philippines, the political killings under the Arroyo government have become so much part of the political landscape.  For the year 2005 alone, there have been 31 human rights defenders killed. According to AMIHAN (Philippines National Federation of Peasant Women), a significant number from this has been involved in the land struggle in the Hacienda Luisita case, which was between farmers and agricultural workers on one hand, and the Cojuangco family on the other.  Cojuangco is the family of former President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino.

In Nepal, there is little information on the actual situation of the indigenous women. The mobility of women has been limited by the state of insecurity in the country.  This became even worse with the King Gyanendra taking over the governance of the country. Killings and disappearances have become almost difficult to monitor.  The leaders of ANWA (All Nepalese Women Association), who are actively involved in the protest actions, have suffered arrests and harassments from the state police.  According to ANWA’s report “There is no sex disaggregated data on the numbers of women killed during the conflict. It is a known fact that the issue of women’s human rights violations takes backseat to national reconciliation.”

This “backseat taking” of women’s issues is unfortunately still very real within the broader people’s struggles. Patriarchy is still very much alive, and made alive even by the communities. “In the Philippines, it is said that the land is so limited so why should women separately fight for women’s rights to land; why not focus on the community struggle for land, and the women will benefit from it as they are ‘part of the family’.  But the reality is once the community gains victory, the women end up in the subordinate position in landownership.  Women’s fight for land rights has been interpreted as capitalist because it is individualistic, and veering away from communal struggle,” AMIHAN shared at the 2005 TF meeting.

This hierarchy of issues, and the blindness to the specific interests of women was very much highlighted in the post tsunami situation in the four countries where RIW TF members work.  The tsunami has had great impacts on the regular community as well as political work of our members from Indonesia, India, Thailand and Sri Lanka.  The post-tsunami report, which compiled the data and experiences of our members who responded and continue to work with the affected communities, showed that women’s particular issues remain invisible, if not less prioritised. The issue of actual sexual harassment and the situation which make them more vulnerable to such, has largely been ignored.  The particular needs of women such as sanitary napkins, underwear and separate toilets have been set aside. It was the TF RIW members and APWLD which responded to this, and highlighted these in the reports and information materials. 

The post-tsunami situation also paved the way for a more aggressive presence of the agents of different political and economic interests. There was the military in Aceh and Sri Lanka, which made their presence felt even stronger, causing more fear and actual violence in the communities.  There are the businessmen who took the opportunity to grab lands from the coastal communities to expand their tourist businesses in Thailand.  There were the agents of religious fundamentalists who took advantage of this moment of vulnerability of the communities in Aceh and impose their morality and religious values over them, especially women.

More information and stories are being compiled to be able to have a clearer picture of the situation of women post-tsunami and also during disasters, which the region has been experiencing lately at a devastating scale. This would assist the governments, and the development agencies and the communities themselves to become more aware of and responsive in a strategic manner to the particular needs and interests of women in the communities.

However, the sharing of information from those that the non-government organisations and the activists can obtain, and analysis – from any of the issues discussed above -  have been little use for the rural and indigenous women – given the language barrier and the limited and limiting ways of sharing them. This is the case with most of information. It also works the other way around where because of the language and other limiting factors (lack of mobility, bureaucratic requirement to travel), most women from rural and indigenous communities could not participate in the national and regional forums where they could get different information, analysis, as well as share their own.  Most of the time, rural and indigenous women are represented, borrowing voices from those who can freely speak out, and those who are allowed to speak out.  Grassroots women are unfortunately experiencing yet another marginalisation in the struggle.

Indeed, there are various layers of marginalisation rural and indigenous women face. But over the years, we have seen that rural and indigenous women are unrelenting, as this is a matter of survival, indeed a matter of life and death – for them, their families and their communities. 

APWLD, through its RIW programme, joins this struggle of survival for the rural and indigenous women. For the past three years (2003-2005), the RIW programme has set its objectives as:

• to assist RIW Task Force members in awareness-raising, organising, mobilising and strategising against globalisation and its negative impacts on rural and indigenous women;
• to involve young women lawyers to assist RIW Task Force by sharpening their feminist perspective on the impacts of globalisation on rural and indigenous women; and
• to influence the agenda of people’s and social movements on the impacts of globalisation on rural and indigenous women from a feminist perspective.

Campaign for Food Sovereignty

Within the framework of the advocacy for food sovereignty, this campaign has been initiated and launched jointly by WEN task force and the Rural and Indigenous Women (RIW) task force.  This is to provide a platform for other members of APWLD and its networks to be part of the resistance to the corporate control of food, agriculture and the lives of women and their communities.   (please refer to WEN report on the details of this campaign)

Support to National Activities
As part of the Don’t Globalise Hunger! campaign, the TF members committed to carry out national activities/campaign actions at the community and/or national level.  These actions at the different countries would culminate at the WTO MC6th.  There were national members which were given financial support by the TF, while there were others where the secretariat actually participated in one of the national actions.

1. Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women (Philippines)  – WTO Out of our Rice, Food and Agriculture: A Campaign Advocacy Project / July-December 2005
2. Northern Development Foundation (Thailand) – National Consultation on Women, Food Security and Sustainable Livelihoods/October 16-18
3. Binadesa  (Indonesia) – National Women Consultation on WTO 6th Ministerial Meeting / Dec. 9

Campaign materials
As part of the information awareness, campaign materials were printed and distributed in the different forums, workshops and conferences that the APWLD Secretariat attended. These campaign materials were also distributed to the TF members for their own use in the national actions.  These materials are - posters (2 types), flyers, bandana, banners, campaign paper, and flags. 

Website
A website was created which is the portal for the different actions, events, statements, photos from the different countries in the region – www.dontglobalisehunger.org

Consolidated Actions
There were a few significant dates during the year in which the participating organisations agreed to have simultaneous actions. Some participating organisations held demonstrations in their areas, forums, and issued press statements on October 15 – Rural Women’s Day, October 16 - World Foodless Day, November 25 – International Day to End Violence Against Women. These actions within the Don’t Globalisation Hunger! culminated at the WTO 6th Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong.

Women Human Rights Defenders Campaign

As the political situation at national level becomes volatile, more so at the community level, where human rights violations are committed almost always with impunity.  This is the case in Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. 

Thus, in response to the worsening situation of the communities where RIW TF members are present, RIW programme has carried the issues of the WHRD deaths and harassments in these countries – AMIHAN (Philippines), ANWA (Nepal) and to a certain extent the women from Thailand and Aceh, Indonesia.

Relief and Rehabilitation Work for Tsunami affected Communities

Four of our TF members were actually involved in the relief and rehabilitation work of the tsunami-affected communities – SRED (India), Bina Desa (Indonesia), Northern Development Foundation (Thailand) and NAFSO (Sri Lanka).  Two of the WEN TF members were also heavily involved – Solidaritas Perempuan (Indonesia) and Sustainable Development Foundation (Thailand).  And so were the other member organisations from the other task forces.  APWLD had a central programme for supporting – fund raising, video documentation, and publishing of report. Apart from assisting these initiatives, RIW TF also tried to assist in other ways by looking into and highlighting the different RIW issues which were present in the post-tsunami areas.  One of these issues was the militarisation of the relief and rehabilitation work (particularly in Aceh). The strong presence of the military meant less active support from the international community and the undermining the separatist movement in the region.  The increased presence of the military in Aceh also reinforced the political relationship between the military and the Shariah government in Aceh.  The fundamentalist religious leaders and the military were in heyday in their increased power over the communities, especially women, in their promotion and practice of fundamentalist values.

RIW TF then joined the international community in clamouring for the military pull-out in the area through issuing statements. A paper on the interlinks of religious fundamentalism, militarism and women’s human rights in Aceh was presented in Femme Globale, an international women’s forum in Berlin (September 12, 2005).  The information mostly was from the two visits of the programme officer to Aceh within the year.

There were similar issues among the communities surviving the tsunami, particularly among the women – increased reproductive work in a hostile environment, vulnerabilities to sexual harassment, neglect of their health and nutrition in favor of the men, elders and children in the families, among others. But there are also some distinct issues among the different women from different communities.  The land struggle against a large business family with a lot of political clout was the main issue of K. Ratree from Phuket, Thailand. As they fled to safety during the tsunami, the businessmen came and took over their lands.  This was the same plight among the other families in those particular areas.  In India, caste system was a very entrenched discrimination factor in the societies that not even tsunami was able to wash away.  The Dalit women receive the least support from the government and the opportunities for rehabilitation made available were limited.  The Burmese women migrant workers faced a different set of challenges in the coastal areas of Thailand. Their insecure status as migrant workers hindered their receiving of relief and assistance from the Thai government. 

These are some of the issues discussed and shared among themselves as well as with some support groups in the Regional Conference on Women’s Human Rights in the Post-Tsunami Aftermath (July 2005/Aceh) and among the TF members in the solidarity visit the RIW TF had in Phuket, Thailand in July. 

The members of the TF are now involved in the ongoing community research coordinated by APWLD on the gendered impacts of disaster, such as tsunami, and the experiences in the response of the governments and the non-government institutions.  This research would hopefully provide guidance as to how RIW TF and APWLD can programmatically respond to these needs and issues. 

Anti terrorism research

This has been a long-standing research which the TF has yet to finalise. The TF members recognise that this is a significant research which will assist the TF’s advocacy against the state policies which are guised under the “war against terror” but in reality are in place to quell the growing resistance among the rural and indigenous communities. However, there were a lot of challenges in finalising this.  But with the resolution of the TF to still finalise and publish it, then it is scheduled within the year 2006.

While young women lawyers from five different countries were involved (Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, India and Bangladesh), there was no programmatic involvement to sustain the active participation of most of the lawyers.  However, Susmita Chakma (Bangladesh) who is part of the research team is now a member of the RIW TF.  Salma Safitri (Solidaritas Perempuan) sat as co-convenor of the TF for a while and had to be replaced as she became the Secretary-General of SP.

Women and Globalisation Module

The Women and Globalisation Module is to assist the TF members in their organising and awareness-raising programmes among the rural and indigenous women.  This was written in English, and the TF members committed to translate it in their own languages.  In the first quarter of 2006, the module would have been printed and released in English, and will be distributed to TF members for their translation and printing in their own countries.

Network Support

The RIW is a member of the Women and Agriculture Task Force of Pesticide Action Network – Asia Pacific (PAN-AP).  This TF meets once in two years.  This year (June 24-26/Penang) the programme officer attended for the task force. This is one network where rural and indigenous women’s issues are discussed from an anti-globalisation perspective. APWLD brings to this mixed network our broad representation from the RIW sector. 

The TF also facilitated the participation of our convenor and co-convenor – Olga Djanaeva (ALGA/Kyrgyzstan) and Tess Vistro (AMIHAN/Philippines) respectively to the Action Aid-sponsored forum on "Discrimination, Exclusion and Food Rights" (December 3-4/New Delhi, India). 

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