Jose Rizal & Womanhood

Like most everyone, I grew up in awe of Rizal, the Filipino national hero.  The first fable I learned which I also used to regale my daughter as a child is Rizal’s famous comic strip of “ Ang Matsing at Pagong.” 
While I was in Grade two, about the same age that Rizal wrote “ Sa Aking Mga Kabata,”  I devoured that literary piece and I knew then that Rizal was way beyond our league. In college, in our Spanish class, we were asked to memorize  Adios Patria Adorada, ( Mi Ultimo Adios)  and I still remember most of the  lines today. My love for Spanish is a belated one and so I will take up that beautiful poem again because it is about love of country in poetic language.  Then, my Rizal three unit college course was mostly all about the Noli & Fili novels and more.

During the holidays, I read again, Rizal’s “The Philippines, A Century Hence”  and yes, our hero is a consummate political scientist and a futurist. 

Very early on, it was impressed upon us that Rizal wrote Maria Clara in his novel  as a parody of  womanhood. That the Rizal icon and representation of  womanhood  is immortalized in his “ Letter To The Young Women of Malolos.”  Like a painting or a portrait, a literature or piece of writing may draw a different insight when read again at another time. 

So, I am reading again the “Letter To The Women of Malolos”   from a feminist perspective.  Let me quote some lines which I would consider today as about empowerment of women :

“No longer does the Filipina stand with her head bowed nor does she spend her time on her knees, because she is quickened by hope in the future; no longer will the mother contribute to keeping her daughter in darkness and bring her up in contempt and moral annihilation. And no longer will the science of all sciences consist in blind submission to any unjust order, or in extreme complacency, nor will a courteous smile be deemed the only weapon against insult or humble tears the ineffable panacea for all tribulations."

I will no longer dare to annotate the above self explanatory words. Rizal said what he said. I urge you to appreciate that as a portrait of what a woman should be.

The following lines of Rizal can be a reference for religion and faith that I found inspiring: 

“You know that the will of God is different from that of the priest; that religiousness does not consist of long periods spent on your knees, nor in endless prayers, big rosarios, and grimy scapularies, but in a spotless conduct, firm intention and upright judgment. You also know that prudence does not consist in blindly obeying any whim of the little tin god, but in obeying only that which is reasonable and just, because blind obedience is itself the cause and origin of those whims, and those guilty of it are really to be blamed. The official or friar can no longer assert that they alone are responsible for their unjust orders, because God gave, each individual reason and a will of his or her own to distinguish the just from the unjust; all were born without shackles and free, and nobody has a right to subjugate the will and the spirit of another. And, why should you submit to another your thoughts, seeing that thought is noble and free?”

So, in imparting a theory of Philippine society towards nationhood: then, now and for the future, we have always looked up to the monumental hero in Dr Jose Rizal for guidance and wisdom for most anything.

Reproductive Health as Mastery Learning For Us All

Reproductive health (RH) is almost a two decade old concept which should be understood by all given the amount of passion & politics that seem to overwhelm us now at this juncture of our nationhood. The past days have been witness to heated debates on the Reproductive Health bill in our House of Congress. The women’s movement is very clear on its arguments. 


Still, to recap, we have emphasized that we have moved away from a population control paradigm to a women’s rights perspective: informed choice, women’s health, bodily autonomy, etc. In my college classroom, my students had to master four reproductive rights as already spelled out by women & men & governments all over the world in Cairo, Egypt almost two decades ago: the right to found a family, the right to decide freely & responsibly the number & spacing of one’s children, the right to have access to family planning information & education, & the right to have access to family planning methods & services. These are such benign concepts except that some in the Catholic hierarchy want to define for women how we should practice our faith. As the laity is the majority in the Church, we want our voice to matter as much as the clergy. How we women practice our faith in conflation with our bodies is so important to be left to the male Catholic hierarchy who can never get pregnant, for now, at least, given natural law & current technology. For a bishop to say contraception is corruption so insults the dignity of women who have been using contraception. Academicians were quick to brand this logic as resorting to ‘reduction ad absurdum’ or reducing the argument to the level of absurdity. 


There has been serendipitous good news from the Pope in Vatican which seems to be a breath of fresh air. For the Pope to say that condoms can be morally justified is an iconic change in perspective. The Pope reportedly argued that “using a condom to preserve life & avoid death could be a responsible act – even outside of marriage.” Death here is invoked in reference to prevention from the scourge of the AIDS ailment. In our own country, we have a Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ, Jesuit educator & constitutionalist who has communicated a more nuanced stand on the RH bill. He has said that the Philippines is a pluralistic society & that it is wrong to impose one belief system to the rest of the population. In fact, there is an Islamic Official Ruling or Fatwa on Reproductive Health and Family Planning issued by the Assembly of Darul-Ifta of the Philippines in November 2003. By common understanding, a fatwa is a decree made by an Islamic authority. Reading the fatwa, one finds that it is focused on the issue of preventing birth or birth spacing & responsible parenthood. 


According to Emelina Quintillan based on her study, there is, however, very little awareness of the fatwa on family planning. Quintillan notes that according to a survey on the fatwa awareness that was commissioned by the Academy of Educational Development (AED), only 28% of the adult population was aware of the fatwa on family planning in the surveyed areas of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Over the weekend, I ran into Marxists academicians in social media who as expected argue that population is not a problem. This view maintains that what is required is more budget for classroom, for education, for food, etc. From the women’s perspective, we agree. Have we not moved away from the population control perspective? 


I would also like to give a voice to another perspective from Mucha Q. Arquiza, a Muslim thought leader in Mindanao who said, “As Muslim families, I hope we look beyond this controversial law-making & really stare the issue in the eye. No, I do not agree that our children & poor families should be used as the bargaining horses, if not the very stakes burned to stave off poverty or to argue for government priority in development, after all, granting we have all laws in place, we Muslims in the South still have to wrestle with those in Imperial Manila to deliver the crumbs home.” 


Such is a constant struggle that we must address even after the Reproductive Health bill is passed, as it will be. As we say in the women’s movement, work is never done. When the reproductive health bill becomes a law, it will be just a step to a million steps in our journey to our development as a nation.

FATWA on Reproductive Health and Family Planning issued by the Assembly of Darul-Ifta of the Philippines in November 2003

There is an Islamic Official Ruling or Fatwa on Reproductive Health and Family Planning issued by the Assembly of Darul-Ifta of the Philippines in November 2003. The fatwa noted the definition of reproductive health as provided by the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and found nothing objectionable to it. The ICPD defined reproductive health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity in all matters relating to reproductive system and to its functions and processes.” ( from Report of the ICPD, Chapter VII, 7.2, September, 1994.) 


While reproductive health is more than just family planning, the fatwa focused on the issue of preventing birth or birth spacing without addressing the other factors of reproductive health. The Assembly reviewed the Qur’an and found nothing that prohibited the spacing or limiting the number of children. It also consulted Islamic scholars who found that family planning is not incompatible with nature, it is not disagreeable to the national conscience and it is not forbidden by national conscience, and is not forbidden by Shari’a, It is said that the practice of preventing pregnancy was allowed by the prophet Muhammad and found nothing wrong with the use of contraceptives. 


According to Emelina Quintillan based on her study, there is, however, very little awareness of the fatwa on family planning. Quintillan notes that according to a survey on the fatwa awareness that was commissioned by the Academy of Educational Development (AED), only 28% of the adult population was aware of the fatwa on family planning in the surveyed areas of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). (Source : Fatwa Awareness Survey in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Final Report, March 2006, page 19.) Our Center, the PILIPINA Legal Resources Center (PLRC) is now promoting the broader picture of reproductive health and rights. This right is associated with basic principles of dignity, bodily autonomy, and the ability to make decisions for oneself. Many members of PLRC’s Shar’a Court Monitoring Team are actively promoting this fatwa. Women’s access to health services including those related to family planning is mandated in both Article 12 and Article 16 of the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of All Forms Discrimination Against Women (UN CEDAW, which also includes advocating for the right to informed choice, education, and access to basic health services.

The Philippines Now A Year After The P-Noy Aquino Presidency

An analysis of the Philippine situation now should be at once social, economic and political.
Let me start with the economy as it is the infrastructure of society according to still relevant classic sociologists.

 Aquinomics, according to economist Cielito Habito can be summarized into two & I quote,
“economics of business confidence and economics of fiscal responsibility.”

 As explained by C. Habito, the Philippines posted a growth in private domestic investment from zero in 2002-2007 to 37% now, with a corresponding drop in foreign direct investments and local government spending. The growth from investments is from the private sector and across all sectors, urban and rural, including the farming sector. The explanation for the drop in foreign investments is the U.S. flat economy and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

These two economies are our biggest foreign investors. Still, the increase in domestic private investment is a positive one. The “economics of fiscal responsibility,” accordingly is our budget surplus or under spending in government construction, for instance, which at first glance would mean a low absorbent capacity of this administration but not so because the 2011 budget was made by the Arroyo administration as the P-Noy crafted budget begins in 2012 yet.

 Last year registered the creation of about half a million jobs from the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Industry which also registered a U.S $9 billion Philippine income from the services sector. According to Ms. Marife Zamora, Philippine country manager of Convergys, there is still a lack of qualified human resources in this field who are good in English, computer savvy and logical thinkers.
 Still, about eleven (11) million Filipinos are still unemployed.

 On the political front, during the year, we have been a recipient of advisories against travel to the Philippines by foreign countries. The Manila Hostage Crisis became a symbol of sorts of the incompetence of our chain of command to handle a crime situation involving foreigners as victims.

That the tourism sector is into a “re-branding” of the Philippines is of positive note.

 Politics is mainly the stuff of our three branches of government.
According to P-Noy himself, the chief achievement of his administration, so far, is his policy of good governance and the restoration of public trust.
But, perhaps the snail pace pursuit of this “Ang Daang Matuwid,” may have been responsible for P-Noy’s drop in his net satisfaction rating by the SWS polling operation from a high of +64 in November 2010 to a low of +46 in June 3-6, 2011.

 Various committees in Congress are into investigations galore in aid of legislation : to name a few, the fertilizer scam, AFP scam, and lately the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes scam involving the clergy.

 The pillars of our justice system have not been able to resolve both old and new heinous crimes : Ninoy Aquino murder, Visconde massacre, Dacer-Corbito, Maguindanao massacre, etc.

 Last, but certainly, not least is the social services sector.

For women, the lingering delay in the passage of the Reproductive health bill is the ultimate test of the impotence of the lawmaking & policy making branches of our government. This is also a commentary on the failure of the P-Noy administration to muster political support for this piece of legislation from various political parties in Congress.

 That we are the last nation - state in this post modern world that does not have divorce for the majority speaks a million words of indictment of how feudal our leaders in position of power and authority are.

 As someone, who personally heard direct testimonies of about a hundred empowered parent leaders of the Pantawid sa Pamilya Pilipino Program or the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, I am adopting the view that this centerpiece program of the PNoy Administration is an investment in human resources to arrest poverty of the poorest of the poor of the current generation so that these children now in school will take care of the next generation.

Reproductive Health : When Does Life Begin?

During the grand debate on Reproductive Health Bill at GMA News TVs Grand Debate aired last Sunday, one of the themes that came out was the issue of “When Life Begins.” Because the question is very philosophical, many of us used the reductio ad absurdum argumentation and said that
“ Life begins at 40!” Seriously, the discussions on the Reproductive Health bill is getting to be very emotional and some of the main players are men and celibate priests who have no embodied sexual experiences, much less who have never been pregnant.

We love Fr Joaquin G. Bernas, a Jesuit and brilliant constitutionalist when he said & I quote “ I am happy that the CBCP has disowned the self destructive views of some clerics…. I am dismayed by preachers telling parishioners that support for the RH Bill ipso facto is a serious sin or merits excommunication ! I find this to be irresponsible.” Still, the official stand of Fr Bernas is that “ sacred life begins at fertilization and not at implantation.” This remark is associated with our faith and religion. And clearly, our constitution is secular and not a theocracy.

We have encountered this debate very early on when we were promoting emergency contraception as one of our programs. So, we are kind of settled on our view to the question “ When Does Life Begin?” For this, I wish to quote Emelina Quintillan, an international development lawyer and Coordinator of the Asia Pacific Network on Emergency Contraception (APNEC). Emel, as we fondly call her said,

“ What's this thinking of some lawmakers about finding an answer to "when life begins" in connection with the reproductive health bill? Don’t they know that a single cell has life, a sperm has life, an egg has life, a strand of hair has life? A sperm and an egg don't have to meet for life to begin. There is already life even before there is a fertilized egg! The question on "when life begins" can only be answered philosophically. It is a question that will only spark debates and arguments from different perspectives. Not even the different religions can agree on when life begins. The question of when human life begins has been pondered, discussed, and debated in a multitude of cultural contexts. The "answer" has been changing throughout history. Any answer about when human life begins is deeply integrated with the beliefs, values and social constructs of the community or individual that draws the conclusion. The anti-choice or anti-contraceptive group will always say that human life begins when the egg and the sperm meet and consider the taking of contraceptives as killing a human being. However, the fertilized egg or zygote is not yet a human being and there is no guarantee that it will become a human being. Scientific studies have shown that around half of the fertilized eggs naturally don't implant in the uterine lining, never develop into fetuses, and will never become human. Thus, it seems as if the anti-choice group are simply conveniently using the "life begins upon the meeting of the egg and sperm" contention to support their anti-contraceptive argument. The question on "when life begins" is irrelevant to the RH bill. If concern of some lawmakers is about abortion and abortifacients, maybe the more relevant question to ask is "when does pregnancy begin." There can be no abortion without pregnancy. Contraceptives prevent pregnancy.”

Finally, I found this provision ( Article 40-41) in our Civil Code : “ Birth determines personality; but the conceived child shall be considered born for all purposes that are favorable to it, provided it be born later with the condition ….(that) the foetus is considered born if it is alive at the time it is completely delivered from the mother’s womb. …if the foetus had an intra-uterine life of less than seven months, it is NOT deemed born if it dies within twenty- four hours after its complete delivery from the maternal womb.”

A Pause On My Birthday

I kind of pause a bit every year around this time in November because I turn one year older and because it is the thanksgiving season. So, let me share at random my current stream of consciousness. On a personal note, I have my share of angst in life and always there are reminders around me. The dreams that turned out to be elusive, personal problems and the problems of the world that in my social development work feels like I carry the weight on my shoulders.

So, I have developed a method of reciting a mantra to tell myself that I cannot have everything and that our collective work is hopefully always to make things better. And, yes, across the years, I find that things are different and so much better now. One example is that technology makes life handy and fun. The one technology that reminded me that I am one year older is Facebook. This is a wonderful medium and indeed we are now a global village.

I went to a meeting in Manila last week and it was a meeting of a development law group ( Alternative Law Groups) that I have not been to for a while now. I was much pleased to realize that our group has consciously developed a successor generation: the best and the brightest lawyers and development practitioners who are choosing to work for the poor and the oppressed instead of for the rich and powerful. But, I am also wary that the recent economic crisis is affecting the various development funding windows in a precarious way. I hope that this will not make social development work unattractive to the younger generation as a career track.

Ideally, it is about the challenge of tapping the centers of wealth and power towards social responsibility and the promotion of social justice. The rule of thumb here is the biblical saying “ Ask and it shall be given.”

We were discussing the national situation at this juncture in time and the twin issues that are plaguing us : corruption and poverty. The variation of the themes in a nutshell as shared by Representative Walden Bello to our group are on poverty reduction through conditional cash transfer (CCT), the likelihood that the reproductive health bill will be passed as a law, that there should be a reversal of trade liberalization which is the cause of our current economic crisis, the absence of a real opposition in the House of Congress because the 30 representatives in the lower house are headed by Rep Gloria Arroyo, our eight ( 8) million Filipino economic refugees spread around the world, and the Balay vs Samar political factions in the P-Noy cabinet which are personality driven and which are in a kind of tug of war in terms of programs and policies in government. ( read : Balay is the Roxas- Araneta home in Cubao & so it is the Liberal Party & more ; & the Samar group is the group which held office during the campaign period in Samar Avenue in Quezon City and is the other set of power holders in the P-Noy team)

To set the anti-corruption agenda in motion, the newly created structure is the Truth Commission. I am filled with hope that this will work out because some of the personalities that are here are our friends who came from the social development circle. The other structure is, of course, the track of impeaching our Ombudsman and the Akbayan Party List is very much into this track.

The latest on poverty reduction is the billions worth of conditional cash transfer which has recently been practiced in other jurisdictions like in Mexico, Brazil and Bangladesh. It is such a resounding success in Brazil. Anyway, this methodology is about giving cash to the poorest provided they send their children to school and that they visit health clinics and this project is being presided over by our Department of Social Welfare & Development (DSWD). Our legislators are examining the capacity of the DSWD as a bureaucracy to deliver this huge four (4) billion pesos worth CCT program. This CCT transfer program is related to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG). My personal take is that, perhaps, the impact of CCT will take time. There was a sense in our development law group that asset reforms like agrarian reform, modernization of agriculture, taxation, moratorium on debt repayment should also be pursued more vigorously towards real reduction of so much social inequality.

I now realize that my life is so very much intertwined with my work that I find very meaningful in the larger scheme of things in this world. And that is a good reason to celebrate my birthday.

Who is afraid of reproductive health ?

There is a whole story to the change in language from population control to reproductive health. This is a story that is part of the triumph of women not only here but all over the world after several centuries of continuing discrimination of women. The paradigm shift in language represents a re-thinking from demographics and numbers towards the promotion of the individual rights of each human being. Family planning per se will not improve the health of women as it is not a guarantee that mothers will not die of causes related to pregnancy and child birth. And so, reproductive health which is the broader picture is more than just fertility and family planning. Reproductive health is about the right of a woman to health. This right is now associated with basic principles of dignity and bodily autonomy and the ability to make decisions for ourselves; to be able to make decisions after being fully informed and, yes, after being fully empowered as a woman.

As a legal tradition, the separation of the church and state in the Philippines is more than a hundred years old. That we are a secular state was first enshrined and promulgated in the Malolos Constitution in 1899 as an icon provision during our birth as a free republic as presided over by President Emilio Aguinaldo. It was a reaction to the abuses of the clergy as immortalized in the character of Padre Damaso in the novel of Jose P. Rizal. But, any social institution - like the church or umma – can be an agent of good social change. So, the issue is whether what the church religious hierachy is teaching is for good social change or not. It cannot be denied that religion promotes patriarchy and our evidence for this are the passages that are strewn all over the writings of major world religions. This has resulted to the promotion of secularization in governance without infringing on our freedom of religion.

Therefore, even as our Catholic religious hierarchy continue to guide the faithful, our clarion call to the religious is to listen to what the church membership ( half of them women) are saying. In the Philippines, there is already a growing critical mass of support for the promotion of the reproductive health of women. Politicians should pay attention to this.

The objection of the religious hierarchy is related to the inclusion of the artificial means of contraception as a part of the family planning wholistic package. The proposed government policy is advocating for the right to informed choice. Informed choice cannot be had without the government allocating funds for the education of the public and for making available the basic delivery of health services for the reproductive health of women, which is half of the entire Philippine population. Pray, tell us, what is wrong with that? The opposition to the artificial means of contraception is related to the question : When does life begin ? This is a whole issue for another post all together.

Sexual Rights, War & the United Nations

After having worked on women’s issues for the past twenty five years, or since 1985, the way to go from here is to write about one’s life work. I have started this documentation of my life’s work two years ago when I produced, wrote the script & hosted a weekly television feature on women’s issues in my television show Women’s Work @ 23 that was shown in Skycable Channel 28. So, in this space, I will be churning out tales, stories & lessons learned over the years as my tribute to women in the hope of making this world a better place. That, I think is a very good reason to write 500 to 800 words each time from hereon.

My maiden blog, is about sexual rights, the Mindanao war & the United Nations.

One of our stark realizations in my work with women is that the United Nations (UN), in its international human rights instruments, is not yet itself clear in its ‘discourse’ on sexuality and human rights. The training courses we give to our social development partners include how to promote women’s rights through legal reform at various levels including the United Nations, thus, it is crucial to actually engage at the level of UN structures and processes.

So, I participated in the 49th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UN CSW) in New York City as a representative of PILIPINA Legal Resources Center.

This UN CSW meeting is also called Beijing + 10 meeting because this event held in 2005 is also a review of the Beijing Platform for Action that was drafted during the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. In this UN meeting, it was important to be working with other women’s groups and there were daily morning meetings of various women’s groups aside from the official UN sessions. These caucuses which we called ‘safe and free spaces’ for discussion of sexual & bodily rights were under the auspices of the International Women’s Health Coalition, WEDO, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Coalition for Sexual & Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies, etc.

In above meetings, I was part of the Anti-Trafficking core group. The NGO suggested text for draft US resolution on Anti-Trafficking was discussed during the meeting of the Philippine official & NGO delegation in New York at the UN cafeteria organized by the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) of the Office of the President of the Philippines.

One of the important outputs of our daily meetings of our Coalition is a statement signed by twenty members entitled “ A Call By The Coalition For Sexual & Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies On The 10th Anniversary Of The Fourth World Conference”. This statement was also read in one of the official UN sessions as part of the NGO intervention. This is an example of how NGOs and their advocacies can be part of a UN session’s agenda.

AThe Mindanao Context is shared in an International Forum

The Philippine delegation from Davao City led by our center’s co- founder, Ms. Irene Santiago, organized a forum on Gender Issues in Post-Conflict Situations at the UN. This forum before official delegates of governments & NGO delegates to the UN CSW meeting was organized by the Mindanao Commission on Women, a Philippine group with which my center is working with in its research & peace project.

The forum determined the following points for any peace agenda as highlighted by the speakers:

a) In the post peace agreement scenario, reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction programs will be necessary to deal with the effects of violent conflict.

b) The effects of violent conflict include destruction of the basis of livelihood and social capital, the absence of basic services, the breakdown or weakness of governance and institutions and the pervasive distrust and fear among various groups.

c) It is thus, crucial that as the state and rebel groups continue the process of peace negotiations, gender issues and human rights are highlighted as an advocacy program to address the effects of violent conflict.

d) While women are victims, they must also be seen as active agents of social change and as such any peace accord must thus take into consideration the leadership and participation of women in the reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction process.

e) By defining the roles of women and men can play in peace building and peace maintenance, while ensuring consensus around policy and program priorities, threats to social stability are lessened.

How engagement at the UN level helps shape discourses at the national level and vice versa

Through this UN engagement, one finds that there is a need for a definition of trafficking in the Philippines that is faithful to the principle of bodily autonomy and integrity and this is a case for a legal reform project.

Some of the issues raised against Anti-trafficking as espoused by the official Philippine delegates at this UN CSW session include, among others, that poor countries are the senders of prostituted women (choice is a fallacy for poor women) while countries in European Union like the Netherlands ( where prostitution is legal) look at prostitution as an industry. This is a microcosm of an existing divide among the so-called abolitionists (those advocating for the abolition for all forms of prostitution) and the stance of the activists for sex workers rights. The stance of the Philippine government and the NGO suggested alternative formulation on Anti-Trafficking was proposed to be addressed at many levels. Aside from addressing the root causes that put women and girls at risk of being trafficked, one level is legal reform. In this sense, my organization, which is a legal resources center working on legal reform, plays a role. Our current law on Anti-Trafficking still very much equates anti -trafficking with prostitution (even if our law mentions other forms, prostitution is very prominent) and our anti-trafficking law does not distinguish between forced and voluntary movement of persons. Also, all forms of prostitution, including voluntary prostitution is a crime. In short, Philippine policy is still in the abolition of all forms of prostitution mode. Similarly, the Philippine NGO community is still divided as to various forms of intervention in relation to prostitution. The need for a definition of trafficking that is faithful to the principle of bodily autonomy & integrity and which could ultimately be advocated through a legal reform project must start with organizing support around sexual rights as human rights.

International Advocacy on Sexuality & Human Rights & National Budgets

It was worthwhile working with groups like the International Women’s Health Coalition in projects that address the fact that international human rights is not yet clear in its discourse on sexuality and in many issues, such as anti-trafficking, abortion, prostitution, sex workers rights, reproductive rights, rights of the girl child, etc. Work of this nature is important for defining and shaping of the contour of official national policy on sexual & reproductive rights.

This 49th United Nations Commission of the Status of Women Session was important in exhorting states not only to set laws and policies for women but more importantly, that states agreed to appropriate more budgets for women’s programs in various countries on the ground.