Ad Hoc Committee on Belarus

Side events focus on gender and migration, human rights in Belarus

BELGRADE, 8 July 2011 – OSCE PA Special Representative on Gender Issues Hedy Fry (Canada) opened Thursday’s well-attended Working Lunch on Gender Issues by underlining the importance of women’s economic independence for the wellbeing of all OSCE countries.

“Some women are less equal than others,” Dr. Fry said, emphasizing that female migrants, especially, are vulnerable to trafficking, prostitution and poverty.The OSCE PA’s Special Representative for Migration, Kathleen Ferrier (The Netherlands) elaborated on the link between migration and gender and encouraged parliamentarians to promote legislation that gives migrants the ability to participate fully in society.

Gordana Comic, Deputy Speaker of the Serbian National Assembly, spoke about the value of women’s work. The average woman spends 3-4 hours every day doing housework, she said, which is not factored into GDP statistics.

The Ad Hoc Working Group on Belarus, chaired by Uta Zapf (Germany), met with members of civil society Thursday to hear recommendations on how to improve the country’s human rights situation. Hundreds of people have been arrested in peaceful demonstrations this week in Minsk.

Organized with the Committee on International Control over the Human Rights Situation in Belarus, parliamentarians heard from Irina Bogdanova, sister of imprisoned December 2010 presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, and Stanislav Shushkevich, the country’s first independent president and now opposition member.