On October 27, Vital Voices held a roundtable discussion, featuring Mukhtar Mai, on women’s rights in Pakistan and the work of the Mukhtar Mai Women’s Welfare Organization. After surviving a brutal gang rape by four assailants, the punishment for the crime allegedly committed by her brother when he held hands with a girl of a higher caste, Mukhtar says she felt it was necessary to help others in similar situations because, she says, “when you experience hardship and do not get help it makes the experience that much more difficult to live through.” Her case reached international prominence when highlighted by New York Times columnist and author Nicholas Kristof, who wrote of Mai’s near unprecedented decision to prosecute her rapists. Mukhtar was recognized by Vital Voices in 2006 with the Fern Holland award and her story is among those featured in the play Seven.

In order to benefit the community, Mukhtar established the Mukhtar Mai Women’s Welfare Organization. The organization’s services include a free legal help clinic, two schools for girls, a shelter for abused women, and a telephone helpline service. Through these avenues as well as others, Mai and her staff are able to educate six hundred girls, provide assistance to over one thousand female victims of violence, and support the local school for boys.

Over the past two years, the Mukhtar Mai Women’s Welfare Organization has partnered with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in order to build the organization’s capacity as well as providing technical assistance. Kristin Kim Bart, a member of the IRC team working with Mukhtar, describes how she sees Mukhtar:

“Mukhtar and [her colleague] Nasim [are] visionaries who were able to see dreams and formulate their projects into monuments.”

Though Mukhtar has faced a number of death threats as a result of her advocacy, she remains determined to follow through on her promises to help the her community and sees no sacrifice as too costly in the fight for women’s human rights.

On Wednesday October 28^th, Physicians for Human Rights convened a briefing on Capitol Hill to address sexual violence in Sudan and Chad. Physicians for Human Rights, a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winning organization, mobilizes medical professionals to protect human rights. The organization partnered with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative to assess the level of human rights abuses against Darfuri women.

The organizations sent three physicians: Dr. Sondra Crosby, an Internist from the Boston University School of Medicine, Dr. Linda Piwowarczyk, a Psychiatrist and Director of the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights and Dr. Julia VanRooyen, a urogynecologic surgeon, along with a human rights researcher, to conduct interviews of eighty-eight women in the Farchana camp in eastern Chad. The camp was built to house 2,000 refugees but it now holds over 20,000 and has only one functioning latrine for all 20,000 inhabitants. Of the 88 women interviewed, twenty women had been raped and twelve had a high probability of having been raped. Seventeen of these rapes occurred in Darfur while fifteen occurred in Chad, demonstrating an almost equal number of rapes happening in Darfur and the supposed sanctuary of the refugee camp in Chad.

After seven teenage girls were publicly beaten until their arms were broken, within the confines of the camp, eight women of the camp decided to write a manifesto to express their frustration with their treatment. The Farchana Manifesto was published on June 10^th, 2008 with the women of the camp “[hoping] to achieve freedom for women in the whole world.”

In her efforts to compel us to understand the struggles of these women, Dr. Piwowarczyk pushed the audience to “imagine [that] you are one of these Darfuri women, whose hair has been cut off, who was stripped naked because you were raped”, to realize that these “women’s nightmares [were] not new” and had been happening since many of them were young.

The panel concluded that it is our moral obligation to end the rampant impunity surrounding violence against women because for the women in the Farchana camp “there is nothing post-traumatic, their suffering is palpable.”

On October 27, TIME reported that a hostage situation involving as many as 170 bonded laborers has been unfolding in Pakistan. Officials at the U.S. Embassy based in Islamabad say that at least three landlords have held the laborers hostage at gunpoint on their respective estates since late September. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently in Pakistan for a three-day visit. The crisis came about following the decision made by three district courts “to declare as illegal the debts that the landlords were using to compel the workers into indentured servitude.”

The debts in question average around 1,000 Pakistani rupees -$12. A third of the hostages are said to be children, some as young as four months old. A spokesman for Pakistan’s Green Rural Development Organization told TIME that the landlords have “killed one hostage already and are threatening to kill the others unless they drop the cases and return to work.” The workers’ advocate, Amarchand Bheel, was abducted by the landlords while on his way to court.

U.S Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Luis CdeBaca has said of bonded labor: “Debt bondage is not a relic of history; it continues to exist in communities in South Asia.” He further adds: “We are exploring ways we can help Pakistan to confront the scourge of captive workers, to deliver freedom for these workers and realize the promise of Pakistan’s 1992 emancipation law.”

Pakistan’s Forgotten Plight: Modern Day Slavery -TIME

In August of this year, the Philippines adopted the Magna Carta for Women (MCW), a bill that prohibits discrimination against women in education and employment and provides for equal protection in marriage and health care. This legislation added to 27 preexisting laws concerning the rights of women.

Although women’s groups celebrate the MCW’s passage, many claim that implementation hasn’t occurred. The Philippines has had two female presidents, however many see these success stories as outliers. Mary Joan Guan of the Centre for Women’s Research told IPS that “Most Filipino women live on the fringes of society, where many undertake low-skilled irregular or contractual employment.”

Guan added that in order for these laws to have true meaning, men must also demand equal treatment for women.

National coordinator of United Nations Development Fund for Women, Luz Rodriguez, said, “We have won a battle but not quite the war.”

Women’s Rights Laws in Place- IPS

Bolivia will be holding a general election in December under a new constitution which requires that half of all candidates for political office are female. For women that make it into politics, especially at the municipal level, there is a constant threat of violence which causes many to either leave office or not run at all.

Several organizations, including the Bolivian Association of Women Town Councilors (ACOBOL) have pressured Congress to pass a bill to protect female officials, but so far the government has not responded.

When IPS asked María Eugenia Rojas of ACOBOL to recount cases of gender-based discrimination toward elected officials she considered many. “Which is worse? The case of the councilwoman who was attacked and suffered a miscarriage? Or the one that was beaten within an inch of her life? Or the municipal official who was raped?” she said.

Of those accused of beating or humiliating elected female officials, none have been prosecuted. From 2000 to 2005 ACOBOL recorded two hundred complaints which is unusually high for a country that currently only has 25 percent of its town council seats held by women.

“A law is not sufficient in and of itself, but it will be a key step in the right direction and a major achievement because it will be taken as a reference point for further action, especially as it sets specific penalties and identifies certain behaviors as punishable offenses,” elected official Patricia Flores told IPS.

Bolivia: Politics, a Risky Business for Women - IPS

From October 31 through November 2, 2009, Vital Voices will host “Breakthrough: Overcoming the Obstacles to Equality, Development and Peace,” which will convene an extraordinary group of 50 individuals at New York University’s Villa La Pietra campus in Florence, Italy to engage in an interactive working session on the status of women worldwide. Made possible with the support from the Paul E. Singer Family Foundation, New York University and Starwood & The Westin Excelsior, this gathering aims to commemorate the upcoming 15^th anniversary of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China in September 1995, and furthermore, to chart a better course forward to advance the status of women worldwide. Participants represent members of Vital Voices’ Global Leadership Network in addition to global thought leaders from government, civil society, academia and the private sector. The meeting will culminate in a report of findings and recommendations that will be released to coincide with the UN’s 15-year review of the Beijing conference, scheduled in March 2010.

Through two days of open-ended, roundtable discussions, this diverse and dynamic group will recognize gains made, consider the current status of women, and, most importantly, address the remaining, and at times worsening, challenges that women continue to face globally.

The gathering will open with a review of past challenges faced by women and strides made to confront them over the past 15 years, with the goals of Beijing and the areas of progress, stalemate or retreat as a starting point. The remainder of the meeting will focus on strategies to address the most pressing challenges facing women across the globe. Participants at the meeting in Florence will ask: Why does inequality endure? What underlies all of these emerging problems? What is needed to turn this around? What has been missing? What will it take? How do we do it? In short, how does a much larger community of institutions and individuals see themselves as stakeholders so that this larger community will act as much out of self-interest as out of any abstract sense of justice?

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International women leaders of the Vital Voices Global Leadership Network will coordinate the second annual Global Women’s Mentoring Walk on November 21, 2009. The 2009 Global Women’s Mentoring Walk will take place in communities throughout 6 different countries including:  Argentina, Egypt,  Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia.

Organized as a series of localized community events, the walks will convene established women leaders and rising women professionals to walk together in their communities and engage in discussions regarding their professional challenges and successes. Each walk event will seek to foster the leadership potential of aspiring women professionals for the benefit of local communities. Together, the coordinated walks in 2009 will reach several hundred women leaders and demonstrate the tremendous power of women’s leadership to promote positive change.

The idea for “mentoring walks” originated with Founder and Former CEO of Oxygen Media, Geraldine Laybourne, who developed these events across the United States and inspired alumnae of the FORTUNE/US State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership to do the same in their home communities.

The first mentoring walks were held in November 2008 and coordinated with support from Vital Voices. These walks were met with tremendous success and reached hundreds of women across Africa, Eurasia, the Middle East and Latin America. The 2009 mentoring walks promise to do the same, on an even larger scale.

Ambassador Melanne Verveer Addresses Audience at Conference

Vital Voices’ commitment to women’s economic empowerment has always been integral to our mission. Recently, it has led to exciting opportunities for the expansion of our programming and the strengthening of our network within Latin America and the Caribbean.

A part of the Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas Initiative, launched in 2008, Vital Voices partnered with the State Department, Count Me In, Ernst & Young and Agora Partnerships to carry out Access, a conference that brought together aspiring women entrepreneurs from Latin America to Washington, DC on October 7-9.

The conference launched a long-term partnership between the U.S. State Department, civil, and corporate entities to create opportunities for professional growth for women entrepreneurs, while promoting trade and economic development. Among other activities, it featured networking opportunities, leadership and technical training with panels on access to finance, markets and technology featuring Vital Voices President Alyse Nelson, Global Vice Chairman of Ernst & Young Beth Brooke, Director of Corporate Sustainability Latin America for HSBC and Co-founder of Vital Voices El Salvador Maria Eugenia Brizuela de Avila, CEO of Count Me In Nell Merlino and Vital Voices Nicaragua Co-founder Mercedes Deshon. Other speakers included Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Minister Laura Albornoz of Chile, Ambassador Melanne Verveer, Under Secretary Maria Otero and Anne Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy and Planning for the US State Department.

Left to Right: Vital Voices Intern Melissa Morales, Senior Program Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean Eugenia Podesta, and Senior Program Officer for Europe and Eurasia Tanya Woynarowsky

The sessions provided concrete advice and a seasoned perspective for the attendees. The conference concluded with a trade show for the entrepreneurs and with the unveiling of the Pathways to Prosperity website, which will provide resources and tools for the participants to stay connected and share information. Above all, it became clear that a new and powerful network of women entrepreneurs from around the hemisphere was born and Vital Voices would like to welcome them to our Global Network of Women Leaders.

On October 24 former Wall Street Journal editor Joanne Lipman wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times titled “The Mismeasure of Woman” on why women should celebrate positive attitudinal changes and newfound respect in the workplace, rather than focus on less than equal numbers.

Vital Voices co-founder and board member Mary Daley Yerrick wrote a response to Ms. Lipman’s article that was recently published on the New York Times website. Ms. Yerrick wrote that she agrees with Ms. Lipman that women’s advancement has come a long way and only expects the number of women in top professional positions to accelerate.

Ms. Yerrick wrote, “Just getting onto the ladder was the biggest challenge women in business faced in the past. No more. The best news is that women are now in the pipeline and ready to assume partner and chief executive roles in far greater numbers than ever before.”

Read Mary Daley Yerrick’s and Joanne Lipman full articles here.

The United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women publishes a quarterly newsletter describing how the UN is working to end violence against women around the world.

Here are a few highlights from the October edition:

1. The General Assembly adopted a resolution on September 14 creating a new agency specifically for women’s issues.
2. The Security Council adopted a resolution on September 30 that appoints a Special Representative of the Council to indentify and remedy sexual violence in armed conflict.
3. The International Conference on Violence Against Women met in Rome, Italy on September 10 to review national and international laws.
4. A new initiative was launched to address sexual violence against girls at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting on September 25. CGI will partner with UN agencies on this program.

Read the full newsletter here.