March 8, 2001

 WOMEN'S RIGHTS CONTINUOUSLY VIOLATED

The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi does pay lip service to the need to respect the rights of women but in practice the violation of the rights of Ethiopian women continues relentlessly. Though the Ethiopian people in general are victims of the denial of rights women and children in particular are doubly vulnerable and more victimized by the repression. The ongoing ethnic repression of Amharas in Eastern Wellega, where scores of Amhara women have been killed in a government sponsored violence, highlights the precarious fate of women.

 The system in place militates against the respect of the rights of women. The top officials of the government patronize the profitable traffic in women and children to the Middle East and Europe. Sold to domestic slavery, more than 70 young girls have been murdered in the Middle East and many more beaten and disfigured. Child prostitution is rampant. Young girls are married off at an early age, raped women are hardly given any legal redress and government officials, cadres, police and soldiers who commit rapes are not apprehended or brought before a court of law. As is to be expected AIDS afflicts hundreds of thousands of women and young girls.

The deplorable condition of the life of women in Ethiopia has not improved at all. With the overall violation of rights that characterizes the EPRDF government, women have continued to suffer. The male dominated government does not consider the protection of the rights of women as a priority despite the persistent reports that women, especially in rural areas, are being subjected to severe oppression. The struggle for the respect of the rights of women in Ethiopia has to intensify along with the overall campaign to make the EPRDF government stop the violations of the rights of the Ethiopian people as a whole.

SOCEPP