By Feizal Samath

Plus

Women of the north, women of the south
By Feizal Samath

Women's rights issues in Sri Lanka are likely to get a major push soon with legal reforms - protecting their rights - hopefully going before Parliament in the next two months.

Indrani Iriyagolle, chairperson of the state-run National Committee on Women (NCW), said she was pushing for the proposed legislation to be presented to Parliament by July. "The draft is ready and needs to be put into legal jargon by the Legal Draftsman's Department before it goes to Parliament," she said.

These developments come as women's issues are also provided some space in the peace process through a committee on gender issues, with equal representation from the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The committee has had two meetings since February this year while a third meeting scheduled for June 7 and 8, was cancelled after the LTTE temporarily called off peace talks last month.

The proposed bill provides for a minimum 25 percent representation of women in the lists of candidates at local government level and moving up to the Parliament process, Mrs. Iriyagolle said, adding that it also has other far reaching legislative powers.

An Executive Commission on Women will replace the NCW and be empowered to receive complaints, acting on and investigating them through police officers and lawyers assigned to this institution and filing action in courts.

"The proposed bill deals with a wide range of issues facing women and consolidates their rights," noted Lalitha Dissanayake, Secretary to the Ministry of Women's Affairs, at a recent conference on the role of women in peace.

Mrs. Iriyagolle reckons at least 3,000 to 4,000 women would be ready to take part in the next local government elections. "From the many field visits, I find women are becoming more enthusiastic about contesting local elections. This is a major step forward," she said.

Meanwhile, women cadres from the LTTE are also on the same wavelength as the south on pushing for political and economic rights, says Kumudini Samuel, women's activist and government representative on the gender sub-committee.

Mrs. Samuel, despite criticism that the committee deals only with gender-specific issues and not mainstream issues like LTTE demands for an interim administration or core issues pertaining to the conflict, noted that the committee was a good start to a process that is likely to take years.

"I agree that nothing is perfect and we are confined to these issues because unlike the LTTE women who have a straight-forward political agenda, government representatives come from different backgrounds as activists and we cannot actually speak for the government. We are also members of civil society and don't strictly represent the government," she said, at a recent public discussion.

She also believes that though the gender committee is restricted to specific women's issues and works within certain boundaries, there are ways other groups outside this process can interact with women's groups in the north and push for issues like human rights, political rights and other non-political issues.

Kumari Jayawardene, a veteran Sri Lankan social scientist and head of the government delegation, says even though the peace process is at a stalemate and resulting in the postponement of connected sub-committee meetings, many issues have been discussed in just two days of talks.

"Health, education and how women are treated at military checkpoints … there were many issues that we discussed," she said.

Mrs. Jayawardene said government representatives on the committee, including women's activists and researchers, are continuing to work and prepare research on a range of issues that not only confront women in the war-torn north and east but also the rest of the country.

According to her, the committee has given women's groups a mechanism to raise and confront issues facing women across the island, not merely confine it to the northeast. "It has given us access to government departments, the police and other institutions. We want to make use of this access to study, report and find solutions to many issues confronting women," Mrs. Jayawardene said. "We would like to broaden the issues, now that we have this important structure and powerful access to institutions."

Activists also lamented the absence of women at the donor meeting in Tokyo despite the fact that 53 percent of Sri Lanka's population comprises women.Even though representatives from either side - government and LTTE - have not met since April 4, they have been in contact through email.

"I often get emails from the LTTE head of the delegation and that's useful," Mrs. Jayawardene said.

She says there are many common issues facing women in the north and the south like domestic violence, though northern women, devastated by the war, are much more traumatized than their southern counterparts.

While the committee is not project-related and is mainly to deal with the gender issue in the peace process to ensure women's rights and needs, its members are focusing on resettlement and trauma, among other issues.

"These are our priorities. There is also preparation of gender guidelines for the military on how women should be treated at checkpoints," Mrs. Jayawardene said.

Harassment of young Tamil women at checkpoints has been a sore issue in the past. Soldiers have also been accused of sexual abuse and discrimination.

Government representatives on the committee have also been meeting southern women's groups and discussing the issues that have surfaced at meetings with LTTE counterparts.

One of the striking features of the process, according to Mrs. Jayawardene, is that the much more conservative north maybe quicker to ensure women's rights than the more, comparatively, advanced south.

"LTTE women, for example, are more liberal minded than in the south and in fact want 50 percent share in the decision-making process for women whereas we have always been asking for 30 percent," she said.LTTE women, although around 30 years and below, dress in trousers and shirts and have their hair tied in a knot unlike the traditional, saree-clad, Jaffna woman with a long plait or ponytail.

"The other interesting thing I found was that LTTE women are secular … they don't have any religious pictures on the walls like the traditional home in the north," another member of the committee who declined to be named, said.

Women of the north, women of the south By Feizal Samath

Women of the north, women of the south
By Feizal Samath