The Karen National League, as a non-armed Karen organization, seeks to uplift the lot of the Karen people and bring about the rule of law and true democracy to Burma. It engages in any and all lawful activities incidental to the foregoing purposes.

KNL President Shines Spotlight on Burma?s Women Issues at the UN Conference

The following is transcript of oral intervention delivered by Naw May Oo before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights at its 55th Session Commission on Human Rights Item 10 - The Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Oral Intervention under International Peace Bureau April 8, 1999

Madame Chairperson:

When many people think of human rights, civil and political rights first come to mind. In our ongoing struggle for human rights, we accept the primacy of those entitlements that allow us to participate in the public lives of our countries: the right to speak freely, the right to associate with whomever we chose, the right to expect a society in which the rule of law prevails. Because these rights are well established and familiar to many, they receive more protection than some others such as our social, economic, and cultural rights. For people living in poverty or in a state of disenfranchisement from their government, their economic, social, and cultural rights are at the gravest risk. For women, in particular, our social, economic, and cultural rights are most fragile and most important to our well-being.

I would like to give you a specific example of the terrible threat to women's social, economic, and cultural rights ongoing at this moment in my country, Burma. While my country is just one of a multitude of places in which women struggle to protect their social, economic, and cultural rights, it is one of the most poignant examples. In this country of forty-six million people, fifty-one percent are women. Yet, women are in the minority sector--in fact, the oppressed sector--in virtually every aspect of social, economic, and cultural life.

Traditional stereotypes of women's roles die-hard in my country. It is assumed that women will take the primary responsibility for childbearing and managing the household, even if we choose to do otherwise. In fact, many men believe that women are ill-suited for any other kind of work, and fail to give us the opportunity to prove ourselves in another context. If, as we often must, we stay home to care for the family, we do not receive the credit and the appreciation we deserve for our work. The job of raising and care for a family is not perceived as a useful job in our culture, and therefore we are denigrated for our efforts. Even those men who are considered to be "enlightened," including many of those who are active in the movement for democracy and human rights in Burma, want their wives to stay home with little reward.

Many of us would like to advance our education. However, numerous barriers stand between us and a higher education. Particularly for girls in rural areas, education is discouraged after the fifth or sixth standard, if that. Female literacy rates (to the extent official statistics exist) are considerably lower than those for males. When the colleges in Burma are open, itself a rare occurrence under the present regime's fear of uprising, women are admitted far less frequently than men. Furthermore, certain programs of study--for example, engineering--while not prohibited to women, are to a large extent foreclosed, because women must meet far higher entrance standards than men. If we are actively discouraged from going to school, if we are aggressively channeled into certain professions labeled as "female," if we do not learn to read, then how can we possibly meet our potential?

So, we find that for many women from Burma, the job opportunities fall into a few circumscribed (and in some cases, downright unappetizing) categories: housewife; forced laborer; sex worker; and impoverished refugee. We have already mentioned the problem of domestic responsibilities in Burma. It is not overstating the case to say that the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) evades its obligations under both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination Of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. It does so by failing to educate the people of Burma on the value and dignity of raising a family, and by reinforcing, rather than overturning, traditional and harmful gender stereotypes.

The regime, furthermore, violates women's economic, social, and cultural rights with a program calculated to employ women primarily as low-wage workers (at best), and as sex slaves and forced laborers, at worst. The myriad incidents of forced labor in Burma, for women and men alike, have been extensively documented, most recently and compellingly by the International Labour Organization. Women, in particular, are singled out as human shields and mine sweepers during their tenure as forced laborers, as the SPDC's army, the Tatmadaw, apparently believes them to be both more expendable and less likely to draw enemy fire. Furthermore, women conscripted as forced laborers are sometimes required to perform twenty-four-hour guard duty, since they are deemed unfit for any other work. These women, as many other women engaged in forced labor, are often subject to sexual abuse including systematic rape at the hands of the soldiers.

Yet another job description which the women of Burma are frequently required to fill is that of involuntary sex worker. The trafficking of girls from Burma to sex industry in Thailand has been extensively and credibly documented by a number of human rights and women's organizations. The expansion of this industry across the Indian border has been less explored, but appears, from anecdotal evidence, to be burgeoning as well. While no non-governmental organizations are currently focused on documenting or assisting Burmese women involved in sex work in India, members of the Mizoram government's Social Welfare Department have identified Burma as the primary source of new prostitutes in the region. With no other viable economic choices, the social stigma of prostitution pales in comparison with the prospect of starvation.

For thousands of women from Burma's ethnic minority groups, our social, economic, and cultural rights are abridged by our refugee status. Or, to be even more precise, if we are forced to flee our country due to oppression and persecution to Thailand, we are not even accorded the status of refugees, as Thailand has not acceded to the refugee convention. Socially, we are people without a place; economically, we are people without livelihoods; and culturally, we are people without a community. We cannot teach our children properly, and there is no chance to develop and propagate our culture. We cannot feed our families well, and must rely on the well-meaning but insubstantial donations of kind-hearted NGOs. As this esteemed body well knows, human rights are meaningless without regular access to meals.

A deathly struggle is being waged in many parts of the world by women. This is the struggle for dignity, for cultural autonomy, for social equality, for economic independence. Nowhere is this struggle more apparent than in my country of Burma. I urge the Commission on Human Rights to take all possible steps to ensure that women in my country and throughout the world have the opportunities to enjoy these most important rights. Thank you.

Naw May Oo, president of Karen National League (KNL), attended the 55th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, as a member of the delegation led by the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB).

Released by: Communication and Information Division P.O Box 320 518 San Francisco, CA 94132 U.S.A. Email: KNLcomm@aol.com

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