From: jagdish@igc.apc.org (Jagdish Parikh)
Newsgroups: alt.native
Subject: Asian Indigenous Women's Conf
Date: 26 Jan 93 04:01:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1308200103:000:3660
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jagdish    Jan 25 20:01:00 1993


From: Jagdish Parikh <jagdish>
Subject: Asian Indigenous Women's Conf

Subject: First Asian Indigenous Women's Conference

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A First         INDIGENOUS WOMEN'S CONFAB SLATED

     BAGUIO CITY -- Indigenous women from 19 countries are
converging here for the "First Asian Indigenous Women's
Conference" to be held January 24-30.
     
     The Conference is the first to be held for Asia's 150
million indigenous population.   It  opens venues for women's
voices to be heard during the  UN- proclaimed  International
Year  for  the  World's  Indigenous Peoples,  said Victoria
Corpuz.  Corpuz heads the non-government Cordillera Women's
Education and Resource Center (CWERC), main host of the
conference.
     
     Indigenous women up to this day play vital roles in ensuring
the survival of  indigenous peoples, cultures and biodiversity.
"Indigenous women are  the main food producers in subsistence
economies which persist in many indigenous people's communities,"
organizers said in a statement.
     
     "Their  reproductive roles of bearing and rearing the
future generation are  done  amid  poverty and dire lack of
health  and  social services,"  the statement added.
     
     Despite  all  the  odds,  indigenous women have  proved  to
be "capable resource managers and environment protectors."

     The  participants  are also expected to dissect the impact
on women  of indigenous  traditions  and culture, fundamentalist
religions, transnational corporations  such  as  those  in
logging and  mining,  militarism and  state violence,  official
development aid, foreign debt, media and  the educational
ssystem.

     Reproductive  health  and  sexuality of indigenous women
shall also  be reviewed.

     Issues  to be tackled in the conference include brideprice,
dowry deaths and   arranged  marriages  in  India;  population
control  and forced   mass sterilization  in  Bangladesh;
transmigration  in  West  Papua; logging  and deforestation   in
Sarawak  and  Sabah;  continuing  militarization in   the
Philippines; dams in India and sexual trafficking in Thailand.
     
    The weeklong conference is itself a crash course on feminism
as it aims to trace how "neocolonialism" brought with it what the
conference organizers call "patriarchal"  (male-dominated)
political and economic growth  models which, they say, further
"marginalized" indigenous women.
     
     The  conference  is  also  a  culture-filled  affair.  How
culture   and indigenous  women  helped maintain "people's
strength and  dignity" shall  be carefully  studied  as one of
the bases for an alternative development  model that is more
sustainable and earthfriendly.
     
     Participants  are expected to come out with an "Asian
Indigenous Women's Declaration  of  Unity" to be forwarded to the
United  Nations. Participants hope the declaration will influence
policies of various Asian governments.
     
     The  conference  will gather 200 indigenous women from  the
Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia (particularly West Papua and
East Timor which are seeking independence),  Burma, Thailand,
India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan,  China
Mongolia, Tibet, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, Japan and Taiwan.
Their  issues  rarely heard, women from these countries will seek
to "gather strength from each other," said an organizing
official.
     
     The Baguio Conference is a postlude to the 1985 Nairobi
Conference and  a prelude to the  Fourth World Conference on
Women to be held in Beijing,  China in 1995, which closes the
UN-declared Decade for Women that began in 1985.#
     
(Maurice B. Malanes) Philippinre News & Features
Newsgroups: alt.native,news.groups,soc.culture.misc