World Rural Women's Day
15 October

Poster 2003

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Open Letter to Rural Women of the World - 2003
"Claim your Right to Information & Communication Technologies ICTs, a tool for development"

Dear Sisters around the world,

Amavi from Togo died because she used pesticides introduced vaginally in an attempt to abort, one among hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Third World due to lack of access to information on family planning and the hazards of pesticides. Maria from a remote Bolivian village sold her beautiful homespun shirts to a businessman until a tourist wearing one of her shirts happened to pass through her village and told her he had purchased it in an expensive boutique in his European city at a price 100 times more than what she received from the businessman. Now Maria has joined a women’s cooperative which contacted a “fair trade” organisation on Internet which ensures far better prices for her shirts.

Village farmers in India for years sell their mangoes and papayas at rock bottom prices because the middlemen who purchased them lied about selling prices in the city. Now, thanks to portable telephones, some know day after day the selling prices in city markets. HIV/AIDS prevention is essential to fight a disease which is wiping out millions every year and of which the largest number of victims live in poor countries. However, very few among you have access to prevention information, or even know it is available. Simple, high performance solar cookers have been around for many years but once more many don’t even know the ABC of solar technology, despite the fact that it can have a significant impact on reducing your work load and slowing down deforestation. Yet such information is available free on Internet.

The above mentioned examples show that living in the modern world depends to a great extent on easy access to information. Information, still more than guns or tanks, or even money, is the main source of power today. Unless you demand that people, and especially you living in rural areas, have access to ICT’s (= information and communication technologies) such as portable telephones, radios, computers with access to Internet, e-mail, and the like, the new technologies will become just one more tool making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

Imagine an immense invisible spider’s web covering the whole earth. The Internet resembles such a web. Thanks to this powerful new tool, people in the most remote areas of the world can have instant access to information available in Paris, New York or Moscow from any part of the world – as long as they are connected to it via a computer or portable telephone. Farmers organisations in Vietnam or Ethiopia can have access via Internet to the latest prices paid for their coffee on London or Chicago markets or by fair trade organisations like ‘Max Havelaar’ which promotes and enables fair trade transactions that ensure better and fairer prices for your products.

Announcement: On 10-12 December 2003, a United Nations World Summit on the Information Society is being organized in Geneva, Switzerland (www.wsisgeneva2003.org) with the aim to develop a common vision and understanding of this new “information society" where everyone's life in today's world will depend more and more on ICTs.

Statistics show that women in general are marginal users of ICTs (25% on average and almost 0% in poor rural areas). You must therefore demand that this situation changes rapidly. ICTs must become a tool for your empowerment and development and not increase your marginalisation.

It is essential that you join forces with grassroots organizations and exercise pressure on your government so that

Dear Sisters, the right to information and knowledge as well as the right to communicate are recognized as fundamental human rights and should therefore be added to the list of fundamental Human Rights.We hope this letter will encourage you to claim your rights, as there can be no global information society unless everyone, everywhere, including you, is granted an opportunity and the capacity to access information sources and communication networks. World Rural Women’s Day was created to empower you in your daily lives and struggles for the well-being of your families. You are the real, albeit unsung, heroines of the world.

Elly Pradervand, Global Campaign Director of World Rural Women’s Day - 15 October / WWSF Founder -Executive Director.

	For further information and posters, contact WWSF, PO Box 143, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland Tel. : (+41 22) 738 66 19. Fax : (+41 22) 738 82 48. E-mail : wwsf@wwsf.ch.

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