A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

by Jimmy Carter

  A significant revelation of these programs has been that people who live with poverty and disease, with little self-respect or hope for a better future, can have their lives and attitudes transformed by tangible success brought about by their own efforts. They have demonstrated vividly that, despite their devastating poverty, they are just as intelligent, just as ambitious, just as hardworking as people with much greater economic and educational resources. Like people everywhere, they seek to secure physical, emotional, and spiritual health for their families and their communities. And it is most often the women who lead in these initiatives.

  In 1986 we launched a program in Africa to increase the production of basic food grains, mostly maize (corn), wheat, rice, sorghum, and millet. Our partners were a Japanese philanthropist, Ryoichi Sasakawa, and Dr. Norman Borlaug, who had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1970 for inaugurating the “green revolution” in India and Pakistan. We named the program Global 2000 and worked only with subsistence farmers who usually had no more than a hectare (about two acres) of land on which the entire family depended for food and, in good years, some surplus to sell for cash income. Utilizing my own experience as a full-time farmer for seventeen years and especially the scientific and practical advice from Dr. Borlaug, we were able to double or triple production for those who used good seed, planted in rows, controlled the weeds, harvested at the right time, and had storage facilities that minimized damage from moisture, insects, and rodents. Eventually 8 million families in fifteen nations completed our program, and we gave awards to the most outstanding farmers in each nation.

  One memorable event occurred when Rosalynn and I went to Zimbabwe to present this award to a farmer who lived about 125 miles from Harare, the capital. When we arrived in the village we found the entire population of the area assembled in the town square, a bare spot surrounded by homes and a few trees. Local officials were assembled under a large tree, and we noticed one man standing with them, erect and nervous, wearing a dusty black suit and a flowery tie. He was introduced to us as the Global 2000 Outstanding Farmer, and we gave him a plaque and a financial award.

  We had made prior arrangements to eat lunch in his home, where he was quite loquacious and kept us amused with anecdotes about his parents, his early life, and some of his adult exploits. After we finished our meal, carefully served by his very quiet wife, I suggested that we visit his crops. He objected strenuously—about the path being rough, getting our clothes dirty, and the heat. I insisted, pointing out that we lived in South Georgia and had spent many years on the farm. Furthermore I had worn my khaki trousers and work boots, so I didn’t mind getting dirty. He finally yielded, and we walked down the hill to a beautiful stand of maize. I was impressed and asked him a series of questions involving the variety he planted, spacing in the row, growing season, fertilizer used, and expected harvest date. He did not know how to respond to any of the questions, and in every case he turned to his wife for the answer. Very shyly, she explained the entire process she had followed in actually becoming the most Outstanding Farmer in Zimbabwe. We learned that her husband just cared for the cattle and collected the money when his wife’s good crops were sold.

  Although our Center is not involved directly in microloans, we have observed women’s groups initiate their own programs. Often for the first time, these loans gave the recipients some financial independence from their husbands for purchasing personal items for themselves and their children. Using profits from producing or processing grain or making soap or handmade products, women started local banks that made small loans to others, and the custom spread widely. Since women are the primary farmers in many areas of Africa, it became increasingly common to see them directly managing the harvest, storage, and even marketing of grain. Rosalynn and I visited one of our agricultural sites in Togo as the maize crop was being brought in to a central marketplace, and all the weighing, accounting, assignment to storage bins, and disbursements were being conducted by women. It was like a combined farmers’ market and bank. They had devised a computer system using a row of nails, all of the same height, and had stacks of coins with perforated centers; exactly ten coins would fit on a nail, so the decimal system was automatically utilized as tabulation proceeded. The women were also grinding corn into meal and selling it along with handicraft items, including exquisite pottery. We still have some of the pots on our back porch.

  If the [developing] world was a molecule put under a powerful microscope, we would see a complex web of barriers that keep women from fully realizing their inherent human rights and living in dignity. Strands of this web include barriers to securing property rights; pursuing an education and earning a decent living at fair wages; making decisions about love, sex, and marriage; controlling one’s reproduction; and obtaining health care. We would also see the invisible DNA that keeps this web intact: a sense of powerlessness, enforced by social coercion, rigid gender roles, homophobia, violence, and rape. Finally, we also would see that only the women who face these barriers can push them aside, change their own lives, and transform the societies in which they live. It is our obligation to support them.

  RUTH MESSINGER, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE

  In 1978 I was the first American president to visit Sub-Saharan Africa, and it was not incidental that one of my destinations was Liberia. That nation’s government had been founded in the early nineteenth century by freed American slaves, freeborn blacks from the United States, and others who were liberated from European ships that were taking them to the New World to be sold. I had known Liberia’s president, William Tolbert, when he was the leader of the Baptist World Alliance. Two years after my visit, President Tolbert and all his cabinet were assassinated and the country was afflicted with civil strife, until a peace agreement was finally reached in 1995. During that time Rosalynn and I and other representatives of The Carter Center made many visits to the capital, Monrovia, and to the 95 percent of the country that was under the control of various warlords. We monitored the process when an election could be orchestrated, and the strongest warlord, Charles Taylor, was elected in 1997, primarily because many voters feared that civil war would again erupt if he was defeated. He was a despotic and oppressive ruler who promoted warfare in neighboring countries. After he was overthrown and forced into exile by opposition headed by a phalanx of women, in 2005 we monitored another free and fair election that was won by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman to be elected president in Africa. (Taylor was convicted of war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and sentenced to fifty years of imprisonment.)

  The vast region of Liberia formerly controlled by warlords had become isolated from the central government and was basically lawless. The new president asked us to help her minister of justice evolve a legal system in the rural areas that would protect human rights, be understandable to the populace, and make the citizens and their local political leaders feel that they shared the responsibility of maintaining the laws. As our programs evolved, it became increasingly apparent that their most powerful impact was on women, who had little protection under previous laws and tribal customs.

  We worked to inform the people, for the first time, that rape was a crime and that perpetrators could be punished, that women could own property, that a wife could inherit her deceased husband’s estate, that both parents had claims on their children, that there was a minimum legal age of marriage, that female genital cutting was not mandatory, and that a dowry was a gift and did not have to be returned if a marriage broke up. Most of this was new to them, of course, and there was opposition in a society where women had never demanded nor been granted these rights.

  Using the carefully chosen slogan “Empower Men and Women Together,” we began to frame issues of gender equality and violence with community dramas, training of traditional leaders, and use of radio broadcasts. For the first time women were encouraged to participate equally in the performances, discussions on the radio, and face-to-face debates. The most intriguing, and s
ometimes disturbing, subject for the traditional chiefs was the relationship between customary and statutory laws. With support from the minister of justice and the local leaders, we worked with the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission to establish forty-seven community justice advisors (CJAs), of which seventeen are women. They now operate in the five largest counties and have opened almost seven thousand cases, 71 percent of which have been resolved. About 40 percent of the cases involved domestic disputes, 33 percent related to financial and property claims, and 15 percent were criminal cases. The largest group that uses the CJAs are young women, and the largest single case category is child abandonment. Through March 2013 cases had been initiated by 2,694 men and 2,773 women. An independent study by Oxford University of four hundred representative cases reported an improvement in legal knowledge, a reduction in bribery, and an increase in community acceptance of the law, producing “large socioeconomic benefits . . . not by bringing the rural poor into the formal domain of magistrates’ courts, government offices, and police stations, but by bringing the formal law into the organizational forms of the custom, through low-cost third-party mediation and advocacy.”

  Even more significant was a statement by Ella Musu Coleman, a leader of the National Traditional Council of Liberia: “The Carter Center doesn’t tell us what to do. They help us understand what the law is, and why some of our traditions are not correct. We decide amongst ourselves if we want to get rid of certain practices.” Both she and Chief Zanzan Karwar, the chairman of Liberia’s National Traditional Council, attended the 2013 Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center and expressed strong support for the seminal improvements that have been made in the lives of their people.

  Deliberately we did not set out to address the issue of female genital cutting (FGC), which is deeply entrenched and a subject not normally discussed publicly. Liberia is one of the African countries where no laws have been adopted to curtail the practice. However, it has been debated among women leaders and in the government and international NGOs, who have faced opposition to its abolition from local men and women. A partner of The Carter Center, Mama Tumah, the head female zoe (traditional leader), has been open to new ideas, and in her own village she has removed the sacred grove involved in FGC ceremonies. Most recently she convened a group of women zoes from all of Liberia’s fifteen counties to discuss the issue among themselves. The closing ceremony was attended by four female government ministers.

  It is clear that more equal female involvement in community affairs is beneficial to all citizens but is best achieved by letting the local people—both men and women—make their own decisions. The experiences of The Carter Center and our African coworkers show that there are ways to encourage these changes in social norms, but this work will require a lot of patience and a tremendous amount of humility and mutual respect.

  An issue that The Carter Center has addressed on a global basis for fifteen years is access to information. Headed by legal expert Laura Neuman, this program seeks to encourage all nations to provide citizens with the ability to know what their governments are doing by passing laws that reveal how decisions are made, how public funds are spent, the terms of contracts for mining and timber harvesting, and the accurate and timely promulgation of voter lists and the results of elections. Access to such information is one of our fundamental human rights, enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to . . . seek, receive and impart information.” This same language is repeated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights. I have attended regional conferences on this subject in Ghana, Peru, Jamaica, Costa Rica, and China and an international forum in Atlanta. Having this right to information increases citizens’ confidence in their leaders, makes public administration more efficient and effective, guarantees that natural resources will be better utilized, and increases confidence of potential investors. It also promotes the desire of citizens to become involved in elections and other public affairs.

  Even in countries that have legal guarantees of these rights, one tragic finding is that the marginalized, poverty-stricken, least educated people are mostly excluded from access to fundamental information. This is especially true for women. As explained in the UN Millennium Development Goals report of 2011, women perform 66 percent of all the work but continue to form the largest bloc of the world’s poor, an estimated 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty. Girls are less likely than boys to attend primary school, and more of them have to leave school because of poverty or a need to work. This trend accelerates for secondary education. The Global Education Digest of 2012 concludes that this has led to approximately 66 percent of illiterate persons being women. Their relative poverty, illiteracy, lack of mobility, and much smaller proportion of membership in parliaments make clear that women suffer most from lack of information—and from corruption. A study conducted by the United Nations Development Program and UN Women found that “ ‘petty’ or ‘retail’ corruption” (when basic public services are sold) affects poor women in particular and that “women and girls are often asked to pay bribes in the form of sexual favors.” In a vicious circle, lack of access to public officials leaves women vulnerable to corruption, but their low income diminishes their ability to pay bribes, further restricting their access to basic services. In addition, their need to take care of their family often prevents women from having time to seek protection from corruption.

  We have come to the conclusion that many of the other abuses of women and girls (slavery, genital cutting, child marriage, rape) can be reduced only if women have more access to information about the international, national, and local agencies that are responsible for publicizing and ending these abuses. It is difficult for women and their defenders to demand their legitimate rights if they don’t know what they deserve under their own nation’s laws. We are conducting studies in Liberia and Guatemala to ascertain how well international standards are being met. Liberia is making good progress under the leadership of President Johnson Sirleaf, but Guatemala is greatly lacking in transparency.

  Top Guatemalan officials have agreed to cooperate with our program, since official reports of rape and sexual assault increased by 34 percent from 2008 to 2011, and an estimated 50 percent of women have suffered from domestic violence. During the first six months of 2013 more women were murdered in Guatemala than in any other complete year, and only one in ten cases of violence against women results in punishment of the offender. In our assessments so far, 75 percent of interviewees claim that women receive less public information than men; this is due to their timidity about asking for information, fear of retribution, lack of awareness about availability of information, and lack of mobility. For instance, 90 percent of those entering the birth registry department and 80 percent entering the business registry office during our observation period in early 2013 were men, and men received interviews and help from public officials much faster than women, who were largely ignored.

  These are some of the basic questions we are asking in our studies in Liberia and Guatemala:

  Education: Are women able to access information on educational policies, school budgets, curricula, nutritional programs, and scholarships?

  Land ownership: Are women able to access information on land policy, their rights to own or inherit land, and do they have access to land titles?

  Starting a business: Do women have access to information about obtaining a business license, procedures for starting and sustaining a small business, access to loans, laws regarding taxation, imports, or marketing?

  Farming: Do women have access to information about prices for land rent, seed, fertilizer, irrigation water, or about market prices at harvest time?

  When these surveys are complete, we will convene meetings of international and regional groups to consider how best to improve access to information for women as a way to reduce exi
sting impediments to their equal treatment as citizens.

  9 | LEARNING FROM HUMAN RIGHTS HEROES

  Our continuing experiences in different countries and with other organizations have been correlated with efforts to promote human rights more specifically. We have had Human Rights Defenders Forums at The Carter Center for many years with participants from the United Nations and about a dozen of the most prominent human rights organizations to discuss urgent issues. Our custom has been to invite about forty of the most notable human rights heroes from nations with oppressive regimes and then to use our best efforts to obtain permission for them to join us. My personal intercessions are sometimes inadequate, but just focusing our attention on them provides some protection even if they are not permitted to leave their country. Those who are able to attend these conferences of human rights defenders can learn from each other about tactics, and they derive encouragement from being together for frank and unrestrained discussions of the challenges they face. We have been successful each year in arranging a roundtable interview on CNN in Atlanta and for some of the key participants to go to Washington for meetings with representatives from the U.S. Congress and leaders from the executive branch.

  Over the years human rights activists have increasingly emphasized that the example set by the United States was having enormous influence on whether their own governments, often with less commitment and experience with the rule of law and protection of human rights, would follow in America’s footsteps. For example, America’s “war on terror” gave governments from countries like Kenya, Pakistan, Egypt, and Nigeria more latitude to violate prohibitions against torture and indefinite detention without due process in a vague and open-ended pursuit of national security. We decided to convene a session in 2003 titled “Reinforcing the Frontlines of Freedom: Protecting Human Rights in the Context of the War on Terror.” News of the establishment of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility for the purpose of detaining indefinitely people suspected of terrorism, along with what the majority of the world considered an illegal aggressive war against Iraq, led many to believe it was necessary to launch a movement for renewed commitment to the provisions of international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.