"Women, Mothers and Human Rights"
Cheryl Thomas
Sunday, May 11th, 2003

What does it mean to be a women’s human rights advocate and what does it possibly have to do with Mother’s Day? We’ll get to the Mother’s Day part I promise - It is integral to all of this but first I want to tell you why I think it is important to conceive of women’s rights as human rights and tell you a bit about what we do as women’s human rights advocates.

Over 50 years ago, after the horror of World War II, people came together in a historical statement of unity and commitment to principles of human dignity which transcended national boundaries and national interests. That statement was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted in 1948 by the brand new United Nations General Assembly. That visionary declaration beautifully articulates the fundamental rights of all human beings. With this document, member nations of the U.N. promise to protect individuals’ right to freedom, to security of their person, to be free from discrimination and torture, to free speech.

This simple document continues to be my own beacon of hope today in this violent and chaotic world and the beacon of hope for many around the world. We did that once - we came together and made this commitment as an international community - and many from the U.S. were leaders in the effort - Eleanor Roosevelt was one.

When we assert that Women’s Rights are Human Rights we claim those rights outlined in the UDHR for our own. The unique power this document brings to women’s human rights advocacy is the strength of international consensus.

Needless to say however the struggle for women’s rights did not end with the signing of the UDHR. Despite the language of this revolutionary declaration, in the 54 years since its creation women’s rights have continued to be negotiated away in the interests of national politics and power. And they continue to be violated with breathtaking brutality and impunity around the world.

The rise of extreme religious fundamentalism for example, is resulting in tragic consequences for women all over the world - we saw this in the Taliban’s oppression of women in Afghanistan, we see it in the case of Amina Lawal in Nigeria who has been sentenced to be buried up to her neck and stoned to death for a charge of adultery and this week’s papers tell of women in Iraq who fear a new religious fundamentalist government and the threat it may pose to their freedom.

On a global scale the situation of women remains simply stated, dire. Seventy percent of the 1.3 billion people in the world living in absolute poverty are women. As the World Atlas on the State of Women says,

“Women constitute the biggest single group of the poor. They are among the poorest of the poor. Poor men in poor countries have even poorer wives and children. When family or household resources are diminished, women compensate by curtailing their consumption or increasing their workload. They bear the brunt of poverty and of managing poverty.”

As women’s human rights advocates there is much we can do. Like it or not we come from the most powerful and influential country in the world and we have a responsibility to use that influence in a much different way than what we are seeing in the headlines today. The central message of the administration to the international community today is certainly not about international coorperation in the spirit of women’s rights and human rights - but it can be our message. We can organize, we as private individuals and groups can reach out and speak out and listen and work in partnership with human rights and women’s rights groups all over the world. And listen, listen, listen to the voices of the women who are working most closely to a problem we all contemplate solutions to that problem We can listen carefully but critically when we hear ‘culture’ as a justification for brutalizing women and girls. Ask yourself when you hear this - whose culture? - have women truly participated in defining such cultures or have their voices been silenced, and if so is it really the right thing to do to back away in the name of cultural sensitivity and deference. After all, slavery was once part of our culture and we stood up and said. No more. It is time to do that for women.

Next week I will travel to Bulgaria where we will celebrate a new law introduced in parliament last week. Eight years ago, advocates there asked us to work with them to shine the international spotlight on a criminal justice system that ignored violence against women, where police failed to respond to calls from women and prosecutors felt violence against women in the family was a private matter. We have worked with this group for 8 years helping them train legal professionals and advocates about the devastating effects of domestic violence. We used model laws from Minnesota and around the world to draft a proposed new law. This is but one example of the many many ways those of us from places with power and influence and resources can assist in women’s advocacy efforts. There are many many more.

It is my deeply held belief that there is no more important contribution we can make to a better world than to improve the situation and status of women. As was so often stated after September 11, women in Afghanistan were the `canary in the coal mine’, the warning to the world of how brutal the Taliban regime could be. Women’s right to work, education, health care, to be free from violence were stripped from them to an extreme we rarely see. But the lesson of women as the canary in the coal mine goes far beyond the Taliban. The trampling of women’s rights may not always and everywhere predict events of destruction we witnessed on 9/11, but women’s human rights violations as a way of life never predict progress

David Landes, the economic historian at Harvard states in his book, “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, “The best clue to a nation’s growth is the status and role of women.”

Secretary General Kofi Annan speaks of it when he talks about the importance of including women in peacebuilding and postwar reconstruction. In a speech to the United Nations Security Council last fall he said,

Sustainable peace and security will not be achieved without women’s full and equal participation.

In the first reading today you heard a passage from the speech that Ann Julia Cooper, gave hundred years ago. In her work, A Voice From the South, Cooper likens a world without women’s full contribution to a man with one eye who has to limp and wobble along without being able to see a whole and complete landscape. Imagining a different world, she says, “Suddenly, “The bandage is removed from the other eye and the whole body is filled with light. The “darkened eye restored, the world “sees a circle where before it saw a segment”.

And I can’t help but spending a lot of my time trying to imagine the landscape that might emerge when the bandage is removed and the darkened eye restored.

And that is where motherhood comes in. Maybe it is the spirit of the day moving through me - but what about a world where the power that uniquely characterizes motherhood becomes the force pushing humankind forward. As feminist Elisabeth Schusller Fiorenza describes it, this is a power FOR rather than a power over. It is a power for life, a power to create, to encourage, and raise up and empower those around us. It is a divine power and it is the antitheses of the power on display today.

One of my favorite dreams is a world where every leader of every government is a mother or someone inspired by the spirit of motherhood. The bodies of these people need not have born a child but their souls must bear the spirit of motherhood. These people view and live their power FOR the people - as the mother does her children - the power to attend to essential needs food, shelter, clothing, medical care, learning . But above all the greatest joy and sense of success of these leaders, just like mothers, is to know that she has nurtured a world where free from the burdens of hunger, poverty, violence - individuals can use their hearts and minds to reach their dreams and make their contribution to the world as God intended them to do.

Maybe this is the world we would see were our darkened eye restored.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!