Communication Rights Are Women's Rights

Communication Rights are Women's Rights
FMA's statement on the occasion of the International Women's Day (March 8)
10 March 2006

The Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA) joins women around the world, particularly the more than 40 million Filipino women and girls, in celebrating the International Women's Day and Women's Month in the Philippines.
As the occasion coincides with grave political uncertainty threatening our basic civil liberties, we take this opportunity to remember the sacrifices of many Filipino women at different junctures of our history: women journalists, communicators and activists who boldly stood up against repressive regimes, helped restore our civil liberties, and even now continue to assert human and gender rights.
FMA supports Filipino women's rights advocates who seek to effectively address perennial problems such as patronage politics and poverty, which inform the more specific women's issues such as reproductive health, violence against women (VAW), and gender inequality. We also join them in calling for the government's full compliance with international agreements such as the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA).
As an organization that promotes communication rights and engages in policy development in information and communications, FMA specifically calls for the following:

1. We demand the full restoration of our civil liberties including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of media. While Presidential Proclamation 1017 has been lifted, we note that its government actions constitute a continuing chilling effect for media practitioners, activists and ordinary citizens. We urge the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and other government authorities to withdraw any guidelines which tend to intimidate media, even as we reiterate our opposition to any new external regulations on legitimate media content. Such instruments have been used by the police during the past weeks to justify illegal attempts to silence media and violate people's communication rights, resulting in cases of unlawful searches, illegal detention, and even physical injuries (including sexual abuse) against women protesters.

1. We also urge that the civil liberties be respected as well in the use of new media particularly the Internet and new information and communication technologies (ICTs). We in principle assert that the Internet should be free from prior censorship and government surveillance; it should provide spaces where women can feel safe from exploitation and marginalization, while building public and private networks of solidarity.

1. We are saddened by the increasing incidents of the illegal exploitation of women and girls over the Internet (e.g. sex trafficking and child pornography), and call on the global community and local stakeholders to find creative responses to these through more effective monitoring, law enforcement, and international collaboration.

1. Finally, FMA calls for a gender sensitivity in the design, implementation and evaluation of ICT policies and initiatives at all levels of governance. We call on ICT agencies such as the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), the National Computer Center (NCC), and the NTC to revive its women's committees in line with the Gender and Development (GAD) framework promoted by the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW). We also propose that greater effort be made by these and other agencies to reach out to other nongovernmental stakeholders in gender advocacy.
   

These measures will allow women to have not only access to strategic information and communications tools and resources, but provide a more meaningful venue to actively contribute to the development of truly human-centered communicative societies locally and globally.