December 3, 2003	Wednesday	Shawwal 8, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 2: The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has launched a new web portal on ‘Women, War and Peace’ to provide information and timely updates on the impact of armed conflict on women and their role in peace-building.

Notably, the women of the held Kashmir find no mention in the 33 conflict zones identified by UNIFEM.

One of the stated objectives of the portal is to “systematically gather information and analysis both to inform decision makers and provoke greater response to women’s experience of war and peace making”.

The UNIFEM executive director, Noeleen Heyzer, describes it as one of UNIFEM’s contributions to the implementation of the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, passed unanimously in Oct 2000.

The resolution specifically underlined the “need to consolidate data on the impact of armed conflict on women and girls”.

The glaring omission of data on women in the held Kashmir has surprised observers here, who say that it defies the spirit of resolution 1325 and points to a selective response to plight of women in the conflict zones.

The conflict zones identified by UNIFEM are countries with UN-recognized conflicts and interstate conflicts. Although the held Kashmir eminently qualifies to be in both categories, it has been blacked out in the portal content.

Among the countries that have been included are Afghanistan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Burundi, Cambodia, Cyprus, Eritrea, Fiji, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Myanmar, Nepal, occupied Palestinian territory, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Tajikistan.

Kashmir is a UN recognized conflict and it is seen as the most outstanding dispute between Pakistan and India. The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) is one of the oldest peacekeeping operations launched to monitor the conflict over Jammu and Kashmir.

The international community also considers Kashmir the world’s most dangerous flashpoint today. The UNSC resolution 1172 passed as late as 1998 after the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan recognizes it as an interstate conflict.

There are well-recorded statistics on the continued human rights violations in held Kashmir that specifically point to the plight of women living there.

Women and children of Jammu and Kashmir have been suffering under the Indian occupation for the last 55 years. They continue to be specifically targeted by the 650,000 Indian security personnel currently policing about 13 million Kashmiris.

In the last decade more than 60,000 Kashmiri men, women and children have been killed by the Indian occupation forces. It has been stated that there is not a single family in held Kashmir that has not lost either a son or a daughter.

According to Dr Hameeda Naeem, a professor of English language at Srinagar University, 20,000 women have been rendered widows due to murder of their husbands at the hands of Indian security forces. Out of these, husbands of 3,000 women have disappeared after arrest by various official agencies.

About 2,000 Kashmiri women have committed suicide after the members of security forces raped them. 25,000 children have become orphans.

Amnesty International, Human Rights and Asia Watch, as well as other international humanitarian organizations have consistently documented the abuses perpetrated by India in the occupied Kashmir.

These include torture by Indian authorities, rapes, extra- judicial executions, disappearances, wilful destruction of property, forced displacement, and repeated raids of hospitals and other medical facilities, even paediatric and obstetric hospitals.

Rape has been used as a weapon of war in held Kashmir. During the past ten years more than 5,000 women have become victim of rape and molestation by the Indian security forces.

Thousands have been maimed and thousands thrown in jail without any recourse to legal action.

The Freedom House, a Washington-based organization has categorized Kashmir as one of the “five worst rated territories” in the world.

While many international organizations have commented and documented the sufferings of Kashmiri women and the gross violations of their rights, UNIFEM has chosen to close its eyes on it.

The fact that UNIFEM has its regional office in India is said to be one of the reasons for such a glaring omission. In its apparent desire to appease India, UNIFEM has not even acknowledged held Kashmir as a conflict zone.

Observers here are equally astonished by the fact that Pakistan Foreign Office has taken no note of the omission. The otherwise vigilant human rights groups and women’s organizations working in Pakistan also seem to have been caught unaware.