20. July 2006
Why we should care?
Nasra Hassan's Call to Action for Efforts to Solve Violence Against Women
Madam minister, friends, panelists, and the nine men in the room.
I can give you a number of UN websites that have all the reports that you would ever need on the activities of the UN. However,I would like to approach the issue of gender and violence from a different angle—why should you care what happens in Latin America, Africa, Asia?
In far flung continents, why should we care? If the world is divided biologically into two genders, and if the world is divided into the 'elite' and the 'street,' then all of us in this room are belong to the empowered, comparatively speaking,elite. But we have seen with poverty, we have seen with HIV AIDS, we have seen with the violence, that the social ills do not remain confined to distant continents and distant countries. They touch our lives. They also touch women in this country. Migrant women, refugee women, sometimes second or third generation Austrian women in this country—Austrian citizens-- who have more in common with many women in the third world, than they have in common with other segments of Austrian society. We cannot wall ourselves off from these problems. This is why knowing what is happening in Saudi Arabia, what is happening in Rwanda is important. The United Nations is filled with data from around the world, but action should be local and global.
The minister spoke about what is happening in Austria, the steps that are being taken here and they are marvelous. There are 70% women in the third world, who would give anything to face the problems that you face today. This is because for them violence is not simply a matter of human rights.
Violence there is very serious. It means death. That is why we should care. This is the only UN headquarters in the EU. This is why the EU, and its member states should look at, and are looking at these problems. Whether the problems are homegrown, or whether they came across the border. I will give you an appalling statistic: The economic cost of gender violence in the US exceeds 6 billion dollars—6 billion dollars is more than the GDP of many countries combined. These are the issues that collectively the UN and collectively we must face.
Violence breeds on silence and violence breeds on fear.
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. What do we do? If you look at the problems of women---the panelists and speakers have given us good examples—but if you look at the entire panorama of problems—gender related problems, such as HIV, AIDS, poverty, illiteracy, forced prostitution, rape, child marriage, the selling of female children and inheritance laws. All of this has nothing to do with Islam as such. I am proud to be a Muslim woman working and living in Europe. Other cultures have the same problems and you have to look at them from a social, political cultural, economic rather than a religious angle.
So there are two main things that are important, access to justice and access to empowerment.