Women Give Lead In Human Rights

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31658, 19 April 1968, Page 2

Women Give Lead In Human Rights

Human rights are taken for granted in New Zealand, but in many countries the fundamental freedoms for all—“without distinction as to race, sex, language of religion”—in the Charter of the United Nations are still far from being a reality.

Where governments are slow to provide basic rights for the individual, the prompting voice often comes from women’s groups pledged to the cause. These organisations are stepping up their efforts in Universal Human Rights Year of 1968.

Their concern goes much deeper than frustration about continued discrimination against women. It stems from an awareness of the indissoluble link between respect for human rights and the maintenance of international peace. In the Lebanon, the National Council of Women made the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the theme of its recent convention. A report from this conference has been received in Christchurch by Mrs Doreen Grant, convener of the International Council of Women press and public relations commitee. It includes resolutions passed which give a glimpse of the vast work the council has set out to do. The national council has established a special committee of law personnel to study necessary amendments to the Lebanese legislation “to bring it into accord with the Uni-

versa! Declaration of Human Rights.” This dedicated women's organisation is also determined, that the Government will make the fundamental right of education available to all. Two of the council’s selfimposed tasks will be to convince the Lebanese Ministry of National Education that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be studied in primary and secondary schools—and that a law must be Introduced to abolish illiteracy. The N.C.W. of Lebanon will ask the Government to issue stamps to symbolise Human Rights Year. It is also organising a national committee representing the professions and syndicates to carry out celebrations for an occasion that is vitally important to the country. AU these efforts are geared subtly towards Informing the Lebanese people of their own rights as human beings. Israeli Women Next door, in Israel, the women turned their backs on national enmity and have launched a bold programme to help Arab women in the conquered territories, which formerly belonged to Jordan. This bridge of friendship over a gulf of hatred was discussed in New York recently by Mrs Leah Rabin, wife of the Supreme Commander of Israeli Defence Forces (General Yitshek Rabin).

The Israeli Council -of Working Women, which has 435,000 members, had provided nearly half of all social services to women and children in Israel, including Arabs living there, she said. Special clubs were started to teach Arab women to read and write, child care and home-making. Arab women were eventually trained to take over these clubs themselves. After the Israeli-Arab war last year, teams of women went immediately into the occupied Jordanian territory to help Arab women and children in the same ways. In each team were Israeli-Arab women as well as Jewish women, to show local women that working together for human needs was possible. The Arab women in the Israeli-held areas were hostile at first to the visiting welfare teams, but relented completely when they understood that the social workers really cared about them and their children. While their menfolk are still intermittently shooting at each other, Israeli and Arab women are getting on with the job of relieving human suffering; feeding, teaching and assuring helpless victims of war. Such contributions to peaceful co-existence too often go unnoticed in the world’s news flashes when military leaders and politicians are haggling over “honourable settlements.”