Global economy raises new liberatarian issues

MY HEAD was buried under the next row of seats for some minutes. However, those of you sit upright throughout The English Patient may remember one particular scene where much of the dialogue was in German.

Without giving too much of the plot away, a nurse had been summoned to "operate" on the chained hands of a Canadian prisoner of war. There was some "heated exchange among military officers. Mention was made and summarily dismissed of the Geneva Convention.

Now almost 135 years old, it has to be one of the best known international agreements in print.

There are, in fact, several conventions which formulated a code of practice for the treatment of wounded soldiers and prisoners of war. Protection was extended to civilians in 1949. Though purely morally binding, it is as synonymous as Amnesty International with our popular definition of human rights.

Slowly but surely, this definition is being expanded. No longer is it exclusively applied to state sponsored abuse of civil liberties. Now it embraces racial issues, the rights of indigenous people, and the rights of women.

The shift in perception dates back to a recent series of United Nations conferences, according to US feminist writer Charlotte Bunch. Women, she says, are now "bringing the lens of experience into human rights practice."

It begins back at home, says Ms Bunch, who was in Ireland last month to address a conference on this theme hosted by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

No longer is domestic violence a private matter between two individuals. The State bears a responsibility, as reflected in the legislation introduced here by the Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Mr Taylor.

Nor can it he regarded as marginal. "Until we improve the culture of the private world, we cannot learn to respect human rights,", she says.

Ms Bunch, who is currently director of the Centre for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University, New Jersey, was one of three keynote speakers at the recent gathering of some 350 women in Trinity College Dublin.

She was joined by Florence Butegwa, Ugandan women's human rights advocate and founder of Women in Law and Development in Africa, and Sunila Abeysekera, a long time feminist and activist from Sri Lanka.

By touching on everything from, poverty and unemployment to the impact of world trade and development policies, the purpose was, to "break the hierarchy, and show just how inter related all these issues are," says Niamh Reilly of the ICCL women's committee, who was one of the main movers behind the day.

That the male experience - of torture, war, imprisonment - has defined the popular notion is no great conspiracy, in Charlotte Bunch's view. Male experience has tended to permeate an entire system, extending from government to non governmental organisations (NGOs) until very recently.

"Women's very different perception has been classified separately in the past, and women accepted that for some time."

The so called "feminist backlash" may have been a reaction, in part, to an exclusive, rather than inclusive, approach to equality issues by the women's movement.

The backlash has had its benefits, Ms Bunch says. "When an unholy alliance of the Vatican, right wing US congressmen, some Muslim states and the Chinese government comes together to try and control women, as occurred at the UN world conference in Beijing two years ago, it shows how central the issue of women is to society today. Can you imagine such an alliance being forged over anything else?

"And women survived it. It enabled them to see that they could organise and work together," she says.

Though the Platform for Action drawn up and agreed by UN member states in Beijing might be deficient, it is regarded as a useful tool for making governments accountable. In Uganda, NGOs have been charged with monitoring specific government departments, Ms Butegwa says.

Now, however, even governments are victims in a rapidly changing world. Globalisation of the economy has not only spawned an underclass, but has also weakened the power and influence of elected representatives and policy makers who find themselves at the mercy of trans national corporations (TNCs).

Tesco, the supermarket chain which is about to step into the Irish market again, is one such TNC. A recent Channel 4 television documentary on its mange tout peas plantations in Zimbabwe illustrates how easy it is for a whole community to prostrate".

School children singing songs, a Tesco flag raised, gifts for the buyer "gods" - couldn't it have been happening here?

Ironically, women are benefiting in some respects from the economic revolution, Ms Bunch says. Ms Butegwa concurs. New technology opens up opportunities for women in areas that were traditionally male. The problem is that working conditions have also changed, and labour unions have been smashed, they point out.

"TNCs are setting the pace, as are international financial institutions," Ms Butegwa says. "Individuals who were supposed to be protected by a framework of labour legislation, and think that this is one of the advantages of working for a large company, find that their rights have been violated.

"And bodies like the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are disregarded. Governments are being coerced into accepting unacceptable terms, at the risk of losing investment altogether."

"You can't stop progress, you cannot overthrow the global economy," Ms Bunch adds." But one can raise awareness, to help prevent the sort of trade wars scenario of two centuries ago."

For all its faults, the UN has contributed to a new consciousness building through NGO participation at its human rights conference in Vienna (1993), and two years later in Beijing.

"Women in the US now realise that exploitation elsewhere can undermine working conditions in their own country," she says. "And the very fact that women's groups do want to influence key posts in the UN is a reflection of growing confidence among community groups, and a realisation that we must work within - while also seeking to change - existing systems.

Not only does it mean lobbying to ensure that candidates like the President, Mrs Robinson, are considered for such positions - and there are many other qualified names out there, both Ms Bunch and Ms Butegwa point out. It also relates to the simple power of the purse - and whether one really wants those Tesco mange tout peas, bought from Zimbabwean villagers at a fraction of the marked price.