06. July 2006
Women have Broken their Silence!
SWI Conference Inspires
June 26, 2006 - To a packed house, the Austrian Foundation for World Population and International Cooperation launched the event Gender Health from Violence from Violence to HIV: Women are Breaking the Silence last Monday. The gathering, held at the Wiener Städtische Versicherung, attracted a highly diverse audience coming from the diplomatic, academic, social and medical fields and also marked the re launch of SWI.
The Honorable Maria Rauch Kallat, Minister of Health and Women gave the welcome speech and gave a short and illuminating overview of the efforts of the Austrian government to address violence against women.
Dr. Edit Schlaffer, member, SWI Board of Directors ,presided over the event and also shared insights on the state of women in the world, their challenges and their triumphs.
Doctor Maha Muneef, one of the few women doctors at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital in Riyadh, talked about the importance of helping other Saudi women break their own silences. She said, Most important, we want to be teaching Saudi women their rights as laid down by Islam.A lot of Saudi women mix culture and religion, in fact many things that are cultural in nature are accepted as religious and linked to Islam in Saudi Arabia.. Many women do not know these rights.’
Nasra Hassan, Current Director of the United Nations Information Service and Spokesperson of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, spoke on the mission of the United Nations and how it was imperative “to actively engage in addressing gender-related issues.“ Women have one biological gender, but by virtue of being women they have multiple social genders, and violating any one of these genders of a women means massacring society,” she pointed out.
Atty. Justine Mbabazi, a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan-genocide who is currently mentoring the first batch of female defense lawyers in Afghanistan, spoke of how the human rights of women were still being violated in places like Dafur, even as she spoke. 'where are the women?' she challenged.
Reminiscing on her life as a refugee- born child, she said, “I examine how women awfully suffer due to outdated cultural beliefs as they are surround by a culture of impunity and violence. As a refugee born child, I grew up outside the country. Then one day, I asked my father how Rwanda looks like, as he always talked about it, and he replied with tears in his eyes, 'Rwanda looks like you'.”
Ms. Jenny Lind D. Elmaco, the new Secretary General of the Foundation spoke on the plight of the Overseas Filipino women and the indispensable dual role they play in their home countries and in their adoptive countries. „The Philippines ranks second only to Mexico in terms of the numbers of people it sends abroad to work. Today eight million Filipinos work overseas. According to official estimates, 2, 700 Filipinos leave the country each day as contract workers, immigrants or tourists hoping to find work. The majority of these migrants — over 65 percent — are women. And they have a role to play to break the silence of violence, HIV and all the other issues that leave women like them groping in the darkness or hiding in the shadows because of uncertainty, fear and pain,” she said.
Co-presented by the United Nations Population Fund, Women without Borders and supported by the Wiener Städtische Versicherung, Hotel Le Meridien and Hotel Domizil, the event concluded with a spectacular performance by the Alankara Classical Indian Music Ensemble.
Full transcripts of the speeches as well as introductory articles on the speakers can also be downloaded from this website.