****************************************************************************** This bulletin has been made available in electronic format by the United Nations. Reproduction and dissemination of this text - in electronic and/or printed format - is encouraged, provided acknowledgement is made of the role of the United Nations in making it available. ****************************************************************************** United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Young Women Speak: Excerpt from: Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo Zlata Filipovic, age 14, Bosnia "Historia est magistra vitae"i - that is what the Old Latins said. It was the first lesson in a schoolbook for Latin. I think it means something. It should have a meaning. And in my war excerpts, in Sarajevo in 1993, I wrote: "Suddenly, unexpectedly, someone is using the ugly powers of war, which horrify me, to try to pull and drag me away from the shores of peace, from happiness of wonderful friendships, playing and love. I feel like a swimmer who was made to enter the cold water, against her will. I feel shocked, sad, unhappy and frightened and I wonder where they are forcing me to go, I wonder why they have taken away my peaceful and lovely shores of my childhood. I used to rejoice at each new day, because each was beautiful in its own way. I used to rejoice at the sun, at playing, at songs. In short, I enjoyed my childhood . I had no need of a better one. I have less and less strength to keep swimming in these cold waters. So take me back to the shores of my childhood, where I was warm, happy and content, like all the children whose childhood and the right to enjoy it are now being destroyed. And the only thing I want to say is: PEACE." The same thing was felt by each child in my town, each child is still feeling it, because, unfortunately, the war is still going on. They are still in cold, war water, looking for help, seeking out a helping hand which would take them out of this cold water because they are helpless. They are seeking PEACE, because it is the smallest thing they should be looking for. They deserve it because they are not guilty, they are innocent, but they suffer the most, unfortunately. I am thinking about the utterance of the Old Latins and am asking myself if it did not mean something in history. It seems it did not mean a lot because there have been millions and millions of sad notes throughout the world, before 1992 and in those terrible 40's of this century. History seems to serve no lesson, it is just repeating itself, on and on. And why? Who knows? I do not, and I will never understand why it is not that "Historia est magistra vitae", when it sounds so edifying. Zlata Filipovic's wartime journal, written over a two-year period, was first published by a small press in Sarajevo with the help of The International Center for Peace. Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo attracted worldwide attention when it was published in France in 1993 by Fixot et editions Robert Laffont, and subsequently in the United States by Viking Penguin. She and her parents now live in Paris, where she attends school. i "History is the master of life."My Experience in El Alto: The Reality of Poverty of Women in Bolivia Claudia Teresa Muñoz, age 23, Ecuador It was a rainy, cold November day in La Paz, Bolivia, and I was about to make a journey that would forever change my life. I was about to leave behind the sheltered and affluent neighborhood where my grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins live in order to enter a different world, El Alto - Bolivia's poorest, most complex and least understood city - in order to learn more about the social and cultural reality of my native country. The majority of the residents of El Alto are migrants who had left behind failing subsistence agriculture and disintegrating kin networks in order to make a decent living in the city below. My first reaction upon entering the center of El Alto was one of sadness and disbelief, because of the poverty that I was seeing. Eighty percent of the buildings in El Alto lack electricity; 70% don't have running water. Most of the buildings in El Alto are adobe shacks with corrugated metal roofs. Despite the wide-spread adverse conditions in El Alto, women suffer from the greatest poverty because of the country's patriarchal society which promotes subordination of women and limits women's access to economic and educational resources. The majority of Bolivian women work in service activities or as domestic workers. Only 2.1% work as skilled workers. I was going to spend a month in El Alto conducting research on adaptation strategies used by domestic workers and became interested in this topic because domestic workers account for a great percentage of employed women in Bolivia, as in the rest of Latin America. 90% of domestic workers in Bolivia are women who suffer from exploitation because of their race, gender, and social class. The study of domestic workers raised many interesting issues which have intrigued me as a woman with upper-class Bolivian roots, including: the societal domination of women; the rigid class structure; the perceived inferiority of the indigenous populations in South America; the consequences of rural to urban migration; the role of women in the urbanization of Latin America; and the encounter of two cultures in the domestic environment. I began to learn that domestic workers are in the lowest rung of Bolivia's rigid social class and suffer from: racial and gender discrimination; low wages; lack of social security; physical, psychological and sexual abuse; and tremendous isolation. Domestic workers are very young women (average age is 17 years old) and do not have access to other employment opportunities because of a lack of education and capital. Their work in the domestic sphere helps perpetuate negative gender stereotypes and serves to justify the rigid social hierarchy and the belief in the inferiority of the indigenous populations in Bolivia. Most of all, by living in El Alto, I began to be more critical of the oppression, segregation, and exploitation suffered by Bolivia's indigenous population, especially the women. The experience helped me begin to question the validity of the rigid class structure which exists in Bolivia and is comparable to that in other Latin American countries. It now shocks me to see people living in shantytowns with no water or electricity while upper-class families, including my relatives, drive flashy cars and live in mansions with swimming pools. My time in El Alto helped me to become sympathetic to the plight of women in Bolivia, especial to the plight of domestic workers. It made me value the importance of education for women which will give domestic workers greater employment opportunities and become a critical factor in the eradication of poverty. Women need to be fully integrated into the labor force and given full access to economic resources, such as credit and land ownership. The Health of the African Girl Child Kinna Likima, age 25, a national of Ghana and Kenya Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) have magnified the existing inequalities on the Africa continent, widening the economic gap between the wealthy minority and the poor majority. Of particular concern is how these programs have and continue to affect the health status of the African girl child. Without exception, all African countries with SAPs have reduced real per capita spending on health by 20% or more. Consequently, the mid 1980s and early 1990s saw a decrease in public health in countries whose healthcare infrastructure had been well established (e.g. Zimbabwe) and a near collapse of the healthcare system in countries whose infrastructure had been marginal prior to the institution of SAPs. For instance, Rwandan girls under 4 years of age are more likely to be treated at home with traditional medicines than boys. This discriminatory practice in relation to healthcare by girls reflects the low status of girls and women in some African countries. If the health policies of SAPs are not changed, Africa will experience a real excess of female mortality in childhood. Women and girls are particularly susceptible to severe vitamin A and iron deficiencies. Malnutrition of girls leads to a reduced quality of life, increased morbidity and a reduced capacity for the never-ending domestic and income-generating work expected of young girls as they grow older. The reduction in healthcare spending by African governments diminishes the continent's ability to fight the AIDS epidemic. Prevalence rates of condom use in some African countries are amongst the lowest in the world (1% in Africa compared to 38% in industrialized countries). These low rates are due to a general lack of condom availability, the cost (US $0.30 to $1.00) and cultural misconceptions about condom use. The breakdown of primary and tertiary public health facilities in Africa drastically compromises any effort to decrease the rate of transmission, and also the reporting and treatment of HIV/AIDS. These factors place the African girl child at considerable risk and require substantive efforts by governments, educators and health practitioners. Of particular concern are the children who live in areas where civil unrest, conflict or war occur. Over 494,000 excess childhood deaths occurred in Mozambique during their civil war. If a child is not massacred in these civil unrests, he is recruited and forced to commit murder; she is raped or both boys and girls are displaced. The psychological impact of these wars on African children is enormous and often immeasurable. Certainly, for as long as civil unrests continue in Rwanda, Liberia and other parts of Africa, the lives and the psychological well-being of African children will continually be threatened. Programs that compromise the health, not to mention the education of African children, particularly girls, do not lead to economic prosperity. Certainly, these programs are not an investment in the future of the girl child. African governments need to place a greater emphasis on the health of children especially in these times of civil conflicts, disease and epidemics. Otherwise it is not possible to envisage a viable future for the children and indeed the continent as a whole. The following two essays are the winning entries to a Canadian-sponsored competition jointly administered by Status of Women Canada and Télémedia Communications, Incorporated. The Writing Challenge invited Canadian citizens and permanent residents between the ages of 18 and 24 to respond to the question, "If you could address the 1995 United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, what would you say?" My Address to the Fourth World Conference on Women Susan Dowse, age 24, Vancouver I am a woman. I am young. I am brown. I am a mother. I am rural. I am a worker. I am an immigrant. I am old. I am of the North. I am a professional. I am happy. I am poor. I have access to resources. I am disabled. I am white. I am of the South. I am urban. I am a woman. I am an individual. We have come to talk about this thing called "women". We have come to talk about "her" and the issues "she" is facing. Oh, the inequality. Oh, the oppression. Sisters of the world unite. Fight the common enemy. But our enemies are not common. Our struggles are not equal. We do not come here as one - the almighty female monolith. We come here as many. We come here as individual voices bound together in various coalitions by common politics, nationality, colour, sexuality, age, or occupation. Our stories are not the same. Our power is not equal. We, too, withhold the capacity to oppress each other. I embrace the spirit and purpose of this conference. I embrace the opportunity to gather, connect, and celebrate the ground that has been broken and the progress that has been made. I embrace the opportunity to gather, discuss, and strategize about the work that remains to be done. For there is so much to be done... But as we gather and connect and talk and discuss and lobby and laugh and shout, let us remember that there is no single challenge or issue paramount to us all. Our links will be limited, our common ground may be narrow. In the final analysis, there may be as many answers and solutions as there are women here today. Let us forge ahead in this awareness of our diversity... Entry from French Canadian Winner Marjolaine Be'lair, age 18, Québec Dans bien des pays, des femmes luttent pour le seul droit d'exister comme e^tres humains et souffrent de ne pouvoir s'exprimer. Elles subissent toutes formes de la discrimination; on brime leurs droits à l'inte'grite' physique et morale et a l'e'galite'. Pour mettre fin a` ces oppressions, if faut entreprendre une de'marche d'e'veil des consciences et contourner deux obstacles majeurs: le fanatisme religieux et le manque d'e'ducation, profonde'ment anciens dans certaines cultures et difficiles a` e'branler san le discours vigoureux d'une haute instance comme l'ONU. Mais celle-ci doit d'abord rede'finir sa position quant a la primaute' des droits; le droit a la liberte' religieuse est-il plus important que le droit a l'inte'grite' physique et morale des femmes? Si la re'ponse est oui, ou donc nous me`neront tous nos efforts? Sinon, l'ONU pourrait intervenir aupre`s des gouvernements des pays contrevenants. Nous devons re'aliser un consensus quant au respect de la De'claration universelle des droits et liberte' et faire en sorte de la prescrire si ne'cessaire. Sur le plan interne, ces gouvernements doivent mettre en oeuvre: - des reformes de l'e'ducation susceptibles d'en favoriser l'acce`s a toutes les femmes, de les e'veiller a leurs droits, et de de'velopper leur sens critique et leur autonomie; - des le'gislations et des sanctions en mesure de de'courager la violence et d'autres formes d'atteintes a la dignite' des femmes. En somme, il faut cultiver l'espoir, le courage, la volonte' et l'engagement responsable et solidaire, non seulement chez les autoritite's locales et les gouvernements ‚trangers, mais aussi a l'inte'rieur de chaque femme. -----