Help Women Stand On Their Own Feet - International Committee Of Red Cross (ICRC)

KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 (Bernama) -- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has made an impassioned plea for more action to help women meet their specific needs and regain dignity and hope. The Geneva-based organisation has also underlined the responsibility of parties involved in armed conflict to search for the missing, and provide the relevant information for the families. In a statement issued on the occasion of International Women's Day last Thursday, it said: "Although the vast majority of people who went missing in connection with armed conflict were men, the mothers, wives and other family members they left behind also suffered enormously and often faced severe hardship." Maria-Teresa Garrido Otoya, the organisation’s adviser on issues relating to women and war, said women globally had shown extraordinary capacity to overcome hardship and take their fate into their hands. "Not knowing what happened to their husbands, sons or other relatives, women and girls in these situations typically face daunting practical difficulties. "In many cases, they have lost a breadwinner and have to struggle to provide basic necessities like food for their families and education for the children," she noted. She added that these women would also need to face legal and administrative challenges when it involved matters like claiming their husband's property or their eligibility for public assistance to ease their families' economic hardship. In Nepal for instance, the ICRC makes counselling available and helps set up support groups to lessen some of the distress and difficulty that the wives and mothers of missing persons experience. In Iraq, the organisation assists women whose husbands have gone missing by helping them set up small income-generating activities such as running a shop or working as a hairdresser. The ICRC, which has a regional office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia , pointed out that under the international humanitarian law, everyone had the right to know what happened to missing relatives. -- BERNAMA