Statement on International Women’s Day
Transcending
Pain and Suffering:
Women- Victims of Enforced Disappearance
8 March 2010
- As we join the whole world in celebrating the International Women’s
Day, we especially cheer the courageous women - victims of human rights
violations who have remained firm and steadfast in finding truth and
justice as they also perform other roles at their homes and in their
communities. From this segment, the women – victims of enforced
disappearance bear the worst impact expressed in various ways,
especially in their economic and health situations which are aggravated
by this form of human rights violation.
The women- victims of enforced disappearance count more than the number
of persons who have been forcibly disappeared because more often than
not, in one case of a disappeared husband, or son, there could be three
women, e.g. a wife, a mother and a daughter who are in grief.
In most cases, the situation of the wives of the disappeared becomes
more complicated as they would assume additional roles over an already
burdened existence. They take up the daily needs of the children from
sunrise to sunset, including, in some instances, midnight calls to heed
urgent requests from other family members.
In some South Asian countries, some wives are being ostracized by
their families – in- law for the disappearance of their husbands and
especially if perceived to have stopped in the search for their
disappeared. They are called “half–widows,” an apt description because
as wives of disappeared people, they are uncertain of their status until
the whereabouts of their husbands are established. Some are returned
to their biological parents as their parents-in-law are in no position
to take care of them and their grandchildren.
How could mothers forget the children whom they bore for 9 months from
their wombs and whom they physically and spiritually nurtured until the
time of disappearance? For lack of closure, these mothers may live in
perpetual anguish brought about by the trauma of being forcibly
disconnected with their disappeared children.
Daughters equally live in constant dilemma of living between hope and
despair due to their fathers’ disappearance. In some contexts when
their mothers remarry, situations complicate if their own stepfathers
sexually abuse them, living them all the more isolated especially when,
instead of getting sympathy from their mothers, they get condemnations
from the very persons whose love and support they need.
These few conditions affirm that even before becoming a victim of human
rights violations, women have been in a struggling condition in claiming
just roles and equal treatment as every social being is supposedly
endowed with. So painful is the disappearance of a loved that despite
their inner resources available to cope with mixed upsetting emotions,
the pain persists and escalates just because women-victims have not yet
seen the just solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. Being
women is in itself a struggle. Being a victim of enforced disappearance
aggravates the situation and is definitely more than a struggle!
Amidst all these, women family members of the disappeared strive to go
beyond their situation of victimization and struggle to survive from
it. As one of the steps of the AFAD’s psychosocial rehabilitation
process is dubbed: “ From Victims to Healers. ” It means to say that
there must be a process of transcending the situation of victimization
and aiming towards transformation from being victims to becoming human
rights defenders.
The international movement against enforced disappearances, have so far
produced women symbols in the fight against enforced disappearances. To
name a few, we have Edita Burgos of the Philippines; Toti Koto of
Indonesia; Angkhana Neelaphaijit of Thailand, Martha Vasquez of
Argentina, Irina Krasovskaya of Belarus…. Turning griefs into concrete
victories in the fight for truth and justice, they have become paragons
of courage, worthy of commendation especially on this special day, the
International Women’s Day.
Their struggle to tell the world of their situation and of the
imperative of non-repetition has, in no small measure, contributed to
the adoption and entry into force of the International Convention for
the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and whose
ratifications and universal implementation by UN Member-States are our
collective call.
The impact of disappearances is felt not only by the desaparecidos
themselves, but also by their families, the communities where they
belong and the greater society. By transforming society and ending
enforced disappearance and other forms of human rights violations, women
will not have to suffer any longer.
As the world commemorates the International Women’s Day, the Asian
Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) joins hands
with all human rights defenders and families of the disappeared
worldwide in recognizing the special and distinct role and contribution
of women in the struggle against enforced disappearances and against
impunity and in realizing a world without desaparecidos.
Signed
and authenticated by:
 |
 |
|
MUGIYANTO |
MARY AILEEN D. BACALSO |
| Chairperson |
Secretary-General |
