A VOICE AGAINST THE EXISTING ORDER

Belgrade Women's Lobby

AIM, BELGRADE, September 24, 1997

There are two ways to speak of the status of women in Serbia, depending whether one has in mind paragraphs regulating their position or estimates of that which is already at first sight obvious in reality. The first picture is coloured in pink shades and shows women as fully protected before the state, while the other one is sombre since it shows how this "pillar of the family and society" carries the burden of everyday obligations during crisis. What is their experience in married life is seen from the data that only in Belgrade reports register 200 thousand women beaten every year.

Emphasizing Social Visibility

The disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, war and the sanctions have contributed to the increase of family violence, which urged feminists, champions of women's rights to intensify their activities. As of March 20, 1990 a Belgrade feminist group "Women and Society" devoted all its energy to the SOS for women and children victims of family violence. However, they excluded politics from all their activities.

"It was obvious that the battered women were of different political orientations and affiliations and that therefore we could not express political stands as it turned out that volunteers were also of different political beliefs. We have therefore decided to separate the political actions of feminists from their SOS activity and the result was the Belgrade Women's Lobby", says for AIM Nadezda Cetkovic, one of the founders and a coordinator of this very influential non-governmental organization. Among the founders are also Sonja Liht, Director of the Open Society Fund, Vesna Pesic, the only woman president of a political party in this part of the Balkan peninsula, Jelka Imsirovic, Svetlana Knjazeva Adamovic and Neda Bozinovic.

"In contrast to men, our lobby publicly stated its stands. Lobbying as an idea for creating prerequisites for everything that is not socially visible - and women's lives are never socially visible - to become such. Later on it turned out that women on different sides of the globe have come up with the same name and that the public lobbying for women's demands has become an important method of action of women's groups and movements", explains Cetkovic.

Continuing its independent life, the Belgrade Women's Lobby has been active for seven years now as a politically shaped group which wanted, through the eyes of women, to evaluate topical events, already then prophetically announced as the "growing darkness". The lobby

• "women's voice against the existing order" - was never officially registered by the Ministry of the Interior, has no seal, president, rules, assets...All its texts, demonstrations and fora organized by the feminists were a product of voluntary work, while its protests aimed at winning recognition for and protection of the most numerous marginalized group in the society.

The Increase of Violence and "Morsels" of Help

"There is no reason for satisfaction with the state of human rights of women here, as everything that is done is done outside the system. We have problems with violence against women, which is enormous, we have shelters for women who flee from the most critical situations, and since the state doesn't give a single penny, this initiative survives only thanks to the resourcefulness of feminists, their international connections, humanitarian aid of international organizations, but all this given in morsels is awfully little. All this exists thanks to the work of women themselves who produce goods, make rugs, flower arrangements, pick herbs, do thousand chores just to survive within a system in which the one who committed himself before the international community to protect them doesn't care for their rights", warns Nadezda Cetkovic.

According to her, Yugoslavia has ratified all the UN declarations and conventions relating to the rights of women, "but doesn't observe any of them". We meet with violations of women's rights at every step - there isn't even a committee to monitor the protection of human rights of women, and neither prerequisites for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women have been fulfilled. Also, there are no institutionalized places at which women sexually harassed and blackmailed at work, in schools, at universities or in doctor's surgeries could register. Alimonies are also terrible. The world is miles ahead of us, although I think that nowhere in the world women have fully realized their right to difference", claims Nadezda Cetkovic.

What women in any part of the world can do, what members of all Belgrade non-governmental organizations can do is turn a case of one woman into a subject to be discussed by the United Nations. And all this can be achieved because of the international women's networks which make it possible to pass the whole procedure necessary before it reaches the highest world forum. The Belgrade Women's Lobby and all women's groups which work in the FRY as non-governmental organizations, are an integral part of the global women's movement. These activists regularly receive invitations to all international conferences, and when on account of sanctions not a single governmental organization could go into the world, this prohibition did not apply to non-governmental organizations.

Major part of the activities of the Belgrade Women's Lobby is linked to anti-war actions. The first anti-war messages from the territory of Serbia were sent by the Lobby members. "Before the 'small dirty war' in Slovenia, members of the women's faction of the SDP of Slovenia and the Belgrade Women's Lobby had signed the appeal "Women for Peace", points out our collocutor. During the war the lobbyists supported all anti-war protests and through public releases demanded demilitarization, ending of conflicts, warning of the war crimes and their lasting consequences for the perpetrators. Also, the Lobby opened up the problem of the abuse of the rights of refugees and of their hard position in refugee camps...

One of the Lobby's important demands regarding the amendments to the Criminal Law was the initiative to incriminate rape in marriage. The idea was to omit the words "out of marriage" in the article which incriminates the offence of rape. When Dr.Zarko Korac, deputy of the Civil Alliance of Serbia, proposed this amendment the majority of deputies laughed aloud to his proposal. The amendment was not adopted and for members of the Belgrade Women's Lobby this laugh showed "the extent to which our environment recognizes human rights of women".

According to Nadezda Cetkovic, a lobby is either a parliamentary or non-parliamentary institution depending how developed are democratic relations in a country. The European Parliament, for example, has a very strong women's parliamentary lobby. In addition to European women parliamentarians, the lobby also includes members of non-governmental organizations who jointly and equitably discuss all topical issues. There is a recommendation of the European Parliament to establish similar institutions in assemblies of European countries, but the Slovenian Parliament is the only one on the territory of former Yugoslavia which has an institutionalized women's lobby, established at the initiative of Metka Mencin and Sonja Lokar. In Serbia there was no chance of carrying out this idea in practice.

According to members of NGO organizations human rights have made a step backward in all countries established on the territory of former SFRY, especially in relation to reproductive rights of women. In Croatia, for example, women waged a major battle to exclude from the Constitution a paragraph on the "promotion of the right to life". This is the so called "pro-life attitude" - a right of a foetus to life - pushed ahead in the world by church and conservative forces. Left oriented and autonomous feminist groups of women, as well as of those women who refuse to be "only incubators their entire fertile life" insist on the right of women to choose.

The Belgrade Women's Lobby also reacted in defence of women's reproductive rights, by opposing draft republican laws and resolutions, but also "the SPC's (Serbian Orthodox Church) and SANU's (Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences) insulting and repressive attacks against women's reproductive rights". Seven times the Lobby approached the authorities with specific initiatives for amending the Constitution and laws to the benefit of women, but none of the proposed amendments were adopted by the Assembly. Among those was the amendment on "the right of women and children to life without violence and fear". The lobbyists thought that family violence was a social problem, and not a personal matter, and that consequently the society had to ensure the protection of women and children victims of violence. Deputies, representatives of the citizens of Serbia, thought that this proposal of the Belgrade Women's Lobby did not deserve their attention.

Olga Nikolic

Entrfilet:

Support

As a sign of support to the Belgrade Women's Lobby, a group of feminists in Zagreb organized the Zagreb Women's Lobby. Its members spread the messages of the Belgrade Women's Lobby and reacted to the demonstration of sexism in their midst. Later on, that work was carried on by the group B.A.B.E. (Be Active, Be Emancipated) (in Serbian language grandmothers).