PHILIPPINES: 'End imperialist globalisation'

December 12, 2001
Issue 

BY SUSAN PRICE

The unity statement of the International South Group Network included some far-reaching elements:

  • "The 'race to the bottom' character of economic globalisation ... may have increased the participation of the female labour force in paid employment. Such a phenomenon however has not improved the socio-economic status of women ... [and] has relegated women to low-paying jobs. Denied of employment and social security, ... forced to migrate in search of income [women] face sexual harassment and violence, racial discrimination and scapegoating, lack of the basic right to organize and are concentrated in employment which exploit their gender role as care-givers within the household."

  • "Denied ... access to social services and resources...[t]he responsibility of caring for and nurturing the children and elderly now rests entirely within the household and ... on women. This situation has more than increased the women's double burden in production and unpaid domestic work."

  • "International conventions and national legislations aimed at promoting gender equality and improving the status of women may have opened up opportunities for lobbying and advocacy. However, these remain largely inadequate. In cases where national legislations to protect and promote women's rights and well-being exist, the record betrays poor implementation by the state."

  • "Economic globalisation is matched with or backed up by the global political and military machinery ... The use of ... military might, in conjunction with the brutality of local military, subjects women and children to unmitigated human rights abuses, sexual slavery and prostitution. Women and children fleeing from the ravages of war, compelled by economic dislocation and repressive regimes ... fall prey to racism and racist scapegoating and are increasingly refused asylum and refuge."

  • "That global capitalism continues to assimilate and promote the moribund remnants of feudal and patriarchal systems and structures underscores the urgency for building mass-based women's movement. This movement must seek to build alliances with workers' movements, national struggles for liberation and self-determination and other democratic movements of oppressed peoples."

  • "We, therefore commit to [invigorate] our efforts in educating, organising and mobilising women in their numbers to fight for all women's rights, end all forms of discrimination against women and, in solidarity with all the exploited and oppressed, end imperialist globalisation."

The demands adopted by the meeting included:

  • "reducing the role and eventually dismantling the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other such instruments that entrench global inequity and underdevelopment of Southern economies";

  • "an end to the 'war on terrorism' employed by the US and its allies as a cover-up for its military expansionism";

  • "total cancellation of Third World debt and abolition of structural adjustment programs";

  • "guarantee ... the rights of workers, peasants, women and all oppressed peoples to resist and oppose neo-liberal globalisation, and to resist all forms of political repression directed against anti-globalisation movements";

  • "an end to racist scapegoating directed against the victims of economic dislocation, political repression and military aggression especially those seeking asylum and refuge"; and

  • "an end to violence against women and recognition of all women's rights as basic human rights".

From Green Left Weekly, December 12, 2001.
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