United Nations and the Problem of Women and Children Abuse in Third World Nations

Introduction Third World women, like their counterparts in industrialized nations, are largely relegated to particular occupations. The vast majority of women work in agriculture or the informal sector (United Nations, 1997). Those who work in industry are disproportionately found in the labor-intensive sections, and are paid low wages. As in industrialized nations, Third World professional women are over-represented in nursing and teaching. Such divisions between "women's work and men's work" have obvious economic and political implications. Although evidence of gender inequality and exploitation of women and children exists in most societies, some of their worst manifestations are found in parts of Third World nations. In their most horrifying form, the litany of injustice includes forced and painful female circumcision in Islamic areas of Africa and Middle East, wife beatings in Africa, the murder of some five thousand women annually in India by husbands dissatisfied with the size of their dowries, the sale of child brides for dowries, divorce laws that greatly favor husbands, a legal system in Brazil that virtually never convicts men who kill their wives, and economic conditions that force large numbers of Third World women into prostitution (Handelman, 1996; United Nations, 1997). Less chilling, but no less significant, is the double day that working women typically face. They return home after a day's work and start another round of housework and childcare. Throughout the Third World, women have fewer educational opportunities than men do, a deficit that, in turn, limits their occupational possibilities. All too often, poverty and the lack of vocational skills force women into prostitution to support themselves and their children. A large percentage of women in this group in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia experience suboptimal feeding practice, lack of essential micronutrients, and poor sanitation and water supplies for children. Such maltreatment of children continues, but awareness of it varies among countries depending on the cultural, socioeconomic, and political milieu of a society. Child abuse and neglect still exist in virtually all cultures and societal sectors despite worldwide articulation of concern for children (Gelles and Lancaster, 1987; Rosenau, 1992; Fontes, 1995). This article argues that the international structures of many progressive United Nations (U.N.) covenants of human rights law, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), governments, families, and helping professionals like social workers have individually and collectively failed to achieve social justice and social development for children, especially in the developing world. They have failed to successfully remove obstacles to the advancement of young women and children (especially in the developing world). Even the Beijing momentum and commitments made are not useful if they are not translated into measurable action (Boutros-Ghali, 1995; Charlesworth, 1996). One apparent deficit is the failure to challenge harmful fundamental cultural values and practices that promote child-rearing practices and endanger the world's children and young women. Worldwide articulation of the value of children through U.N. pronouncements has not translated directly into effective action on behalf of children's and young women's well-being. Instead, violations of human rights continue in the form of child labor, prostitution, infanticide, forced girl marriages, girl genital mutilation, and child sexual assault (United Nations, 1995; Charlesworth, 1996). National and international civil society should be a major player in all efforts to reduce these problems. Partnerships between the United Nations system, donors, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) must be strengthened around nationally defined goals for poverty, as well as women and children abuse eradication. United Nations and International Social Welfare In the past six decades the United Nations, international agencies, and Third World government planners have incrementally begun to have greater consciousness of the role of women in rural development. …