Implementation Meeting on Human Dimension Issues, Warsaw, 26 October - 6 November 1998

1 September 1999

Mr Moderator,

Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a small international NGO working to further the rights of minorities and to promote cooperation between communities.

MRG recognizes and seeks to act upon gender concerns within its work. MRG recognizes that minorities are not homogeneous and that, as in the broader society, women and men are treated differently, assume different roles, and have different access to resources and power. MRG is concerned that women belonging to minorities are often the victims of double discrimination, both as members of a minority and as women. The latter discrimination often originates both from within their own community as well as the wider society.

When it reports on the situation of minorities, MRG seeks to reflect the experiences of women as well as those of men. The example of the role of the womens movement in the peace process in Northern Ireland must be highlighted in this respect: their role in bringing people together across the divide between the Catholic and the Protestant communities has been paramount in the peace process.

The OSCE should encourage these women to share their experience with others in the OSCE region, including the OSCE institutions and missions. MRG, for its part, facilitated the visit of some of them to Sri Lanka, where they encouraged the creation of similar women’s groups among Tamil and Sinhala communities.

In its training activities, MRG also seeks to ensure that women have as much access to training as men. We are currently implementing a programme of training and mentoring for your Roma leaders in Central and Eastern Europe. Half of the trainees on that programme are women.

Every year, we organize a training session on minority rights for minority representatives at the UN in Geneva. We are also trying to ensure that at least half of the participants are women. We face difficulties, however, in ensuring that women of minorities are sent as representatives of their groups. We recognize that this may be one of the results of the double discrimination mentioned above. We have also found it difficult to address gender issues in that type of work, although we recognize this is absolutely essential. In fact, if this question is not addressed, half of the persons belonging to minorities may well never see their needs addressed. We are eager to develop this work and are making contacts with women’s organizations in order to learn from their experience.

Another area of our work in this field was our participation to a seminar on Minority Women organized by the Åland Islands Peace Institute (Finland), in October 1997. This was also a great opportunity for MRG to listen and learn. The report of this seminar is available from the Åland Islands Peace Institute.

MRG welcomes the appointment, at the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna and at the ODIHR (Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights), of two women experts who will act as focal points on gender. We are looking forward to cooperating with them and, through them, with the various OSCE institutions and missions. We hope this will ensure that the rights of women belonging to minorities be given specific attention. We also hope that women belonging to minorities will be properly and fully listened to and will be able to participate in all activities of the OSCE which affect them. MRG welcomes specifically the indications provided by the ODIHR Adviser on gender mainstreaming and the human rights of women in her presentation.

Thank you, Mr Moderator.