Jean is flanked by her father (from the left), Mayor Venus Portes of Pagbilao, Quezon, her mother, and Pagbilao’s social worker Mrs. Hutalla.

After having been included among the Ten Women of the Year for 2007 by Marie Claire Magazine, the Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific (CATW-AP) was again honored by her own province of Quezon with an Award of Excellence (Quezon’s Ladies First 2010) on the province’s celebration of International Women’s Day yesterday, March 12, 2010.

Ms. Jean Enriquez (born Jo Enrica Catalla Enriquez) has always been an unabashed Quezonian, always introducing herself as hailing from this province, proud of her accent and impeccable Tagalog. In writing analytical articles and even literary work, she uses both English and her native tongue. Thus, given her integrity and achievements, she effectively models love for her home province and first language to the people whom she leads and to whom she speaks, especially the women and young people.

Similarly, her expertise and knowledge on women’s human rights reflects the brilliance of Quezon’s leaders. Even more concretely, Ms. Enriquez and her NGO has been the reference of the national government, especially, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for trainings on gender issues, which benefits the nation at large, and also the province of Quezon.

Ms. Enriquez has clearly manifested dedication in her calling, having been involved in human rights work for 28 years now, focusing on international women’s human rights for the last 19 years and has thus risen from the position of Deputy Director to Executive Director of CATW-AP.

Ms. Enriquez has gained extensive experience as resource person and trainor for various international and national fora on trafficking and prostitution, sexuality, health and reproductive rights, women’s political participation, women and development. She has been invited to speak on women’s issues to at least 31 countries, including the poor countries of South Asia and the Mekong Region, such as Bangladesh and Cambodia.

Her leadership and management skills have been grounded by her long experience in grassroots work, researches in especially in marginalized communities of indigenous and Moslem populations. These have been internationally recognized, as she was invited to the United Nations and by various governments to speak on the hugely successful anti-trafficking projects she has led, including the “Addressing the Demand Side of Trafficking Project” for young men.

Among her involvements, Ms. Enriquez chaired the Commission on Trafficking in Persons during the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

Ms. Enriquez helped in drafting the anti-trafficking bill with then Rep. Pat Sarenas, adopted by Rep. Bellaflor Angara-Castillo and subsequently, with Senator Loi Estrada for the Senate version. She concurrently sits as Women’s Sectoral Council Member for the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), Member of the Board of Advisers for Buklod Center for Women in Olongapo and Bagong Kamalayan (Prostitution Survivors’ Collective).

Her award was dedicated by Ms. Enriquez to the social workers of Quezon, fellow Pagbilaoins, as well as the survivors and youth who inspire her in her work.

Martsa ng Kababihan Laban sa Karahasan

Women: On With the March, Toward the Elections and Beyond! (Militarism, Sexism, WTO, Arroyo, RETREAT)

Women: On With the March, Toward the Elections and Beyond!
(Militarism, Sexism, WTO, Arroyo, RETREAT)

Today, March 8, the International Day of Women, we march, together with our sisters across the globe, to celebrate the lessons, the triumphs as well as the challenges of our many-faceted struggles.

We are workers marching for full employment with dignity and equal opportunity, amidst a backdrop of a hollowed-out domestic economy, of unwieldy migration and contractualization, precarious and informal work, and chronic unemployment.

We are rural women, marching for food sovereignty, sustainable livelihoods and meaningful asset reform, in a country characterized by increasing hunger, where profit continues to define the production and distribution of food; and wealth, inputs and productive assets remain concentrated in the hands of a few families and corporations.

We are survivors of gender -based violence, marching to end violence within our own homes and society at large, as we confront domestic struggles, as well as more intense militarization, and displacement due to conflict and war.

We are daughters, sisters, mothers, marching to assert our rights over our bodies and claim our entitlement to public and reproductive services, in the face of greater impositions from the church, religious fundamentalisms and even the state, which choose to decide for us, and even worse, decide to deny us the right to choose.

And at this juncture, foremost, we are citizens, marching to create meaningful spaces for public intervention, marching to shape our institutions and political system, during this period of elections and beyond 2010.

We recognize that many of the issues we carry require decisive, strategic, gender-responsive governance. We recall how many of these concerns have been pushed to the sidelines, as vested family interests, transactional politics, corruption and greed took center stage under the Arroyo administration.

Where political survival and personal gain serve as the main driving force of supposedly public decision-making and action, we are bombarded with scandals rather than solutions.

As we remember Hello Garci, the Fertilizer Fund Scam, and the PhilHealth Cards fiasco, we observe how many of the key actors in these abominations have turned themselves into key players in this year’s elections. As we recall Mrs. Arroyo’s disregard for the Anti-Prostitution and Reproductive Health bills, we also note how many of our candidates would readily place political points, over women and the people’s welfare, as the defining guideline of their policy pronouncements. As we reel from the economic crisis and development aggression, we remember how the current administration championed the neoliberal framework, with nothing to show for but increased precarity and poverty, and nothing more to offer other than overseas work, outsourcing jobs and pantawid gutom programs. As we recall how the Arroyos coddled political warlords such as the Ampatuans, we also remember how she spoiled convicts like Daniel Smith and consistently upheld US interests, even over our own sovereignty. As we reject the Visiting Forces Agreement, we also denounce extra-judicial killings and other forms of torture that have escalated under the Arroyo government.

As we contend with lack of information, abuse of power and impunity, which became the norm in this regime, we note the glaring lack of meaningful discussion within the current electoral discourse. As we recount these multiple assaults and forms of violence that comprise the ‘GMA legacy’, we find very little indication that this will be significantly resolved and reversed.

We are disappointed that much of the discussion remains centered on personalities rather than issues, hinged on the search for a single messiah, who will redeem us from a dysfunctional political system and a warped democracy. We are displeased with electoral contests that remain largely confined to a few political clans, where even some main contenders for top national positions and key local posts, come from the same family. We are dismayed that none of the presidentiables explicitly talked about a concrete women’s agenda. There is no agenda for women workers, for rural women, for women survivors of violence or for any other woman who says no to militarism, to the exploitation of women in armed conflict, to globalization and unfair trade. We therefore challenge them to come out with a concrete, convincing and long-term women’s agenda. Filipinas deserve political leaders that uphold their rights and lives, rather than sell their bodies and dignity, silence their voices or neglect their needs.
Rather than be disheartened, these only prompt us to amplify our collective action and intervention. We recognize the need to infuse our voices into the current debates. But we refuse to resign ourselves to the idea that there is no point in struggling for thoroughgoing change or confine ourselves solely with in these limited arenas of engagement.

We shall reclaim power, revitalize our movements and strengthen our resolve.

We will keep on marching until spaces for peoples intervention are created, until transformative institutions and a more people-centered political system are in place. We will keep on marching until patriarchy and militarism are dismantled. We will march until states have put in place full employment that allow for mothers, sisters and daughters to have real economic choices. We will march until rural women have truly claimed land and support services. We will march until WTO shrinks and eventually sinks. We will march until equitable, sustainable living and production patterns are established in accordance to the principles of climate justice.

We will march until we have built a society based on peace, justice, equality, freedom and solidarity.
Marso 8/ 2010
Amnesty International • APL-Women • Bagong Kamalayan • Batis-AWARE • Buklod – Olongapo • Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino – Kababaihan • CATW-AP • Center for Overseas Workers • Focus on the Global South • FORGE • Free Burma Coalition • Hilom-Kabataan • Kanlungan • KAISA-KA • LRC-KSK/FOE-Phils. • MAKALAYA • Partido Lakas ng Masa • Partido ng Manggagawa • PKKK • Piglas Kababaihan • SARILAYA • Transform Asia • TWMAE • UP Sigma Alpha Nu – Manila & Diliman • WomanHealth • Women’s Legal Bureau • Women in Development Foundation • Welga ng Kababaihan • Women’s Crisis Center • Youth and Students for the Advancement of Gender Equality (YSAGE) • World March of Women – Pilipinas

Alab ng Pakikilaban, Puyos sa Kaapihan
ni Jean Enriquez
(Iniangkop ng PETA para sa “fire dance” na itinanghal nuong Marso 1, 2010)

Daan-tanong nagmamartsa ang babae sa sanlibutan
Naglalakad
Tumatakbo
Kumakandirit
Lumalangoy
Lumilipad
Babae sa sanlibutan
Migrante, magbubukid, mag-aaral at kabataan
Kababaihan
Sigaw ay pag-aaklas laban sa ibayong kaapihan
Ang kababaihan ay hindi mga parausan!

Cigarilleras ang nanguna sa Lupang Hinirang
Panawagan ay makataong lagay sa pagawaan
Itinuloy nina Trining Tecson at Agueda Kahabagan
Nina Teresa Magbanua ng pambansang himagsikan.

Patuloy na lumalaban sa kasalukuyang kaayusan
Sa makauri at patriyarkal na lipunan
Hustisya sa mga kabarong ginahasa ng dayuhan
Patalsikin, mga negosyong kumubkob sa kalikasan.

Di kami patatalo sa seksismo at imperyalismo
Di pagugupo sa karahasang kinanlong ni Arroyo
Kababaihang nagmamartsa’y di aasa sa pulitiko
Nasa ating mga kamay ang tunay na pagbabago!

A hundred years ago, the International Women’s Day was declared in Copenhagen by the 2nd International Conference of Socialist Women. Henceforth, we continue marching around the globe to advance our vision of equality and push back all forces of oppression.

In Asia and Oceania, women are marching for peace as US military bases are being expanded in Okinawa and Guam. Already, the overwhelming majority of American bases are in Asia, creating a ring around China, as part of their “containment policy.” Military agreements such as the Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA) are forged by Australia and the US to ensure markets for their boats, arms and ammunitions, thus propping up conflicts in the Philippines, Afghanistan, Iraq and countries under the former Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, China remains to be the major supplier of arms to the military junta in Burma, and keeps control of Tibet.

Women, in these conflicts, are displaced. Rape is used as a weapon of war. US soldiers, in particular, continue to sexually abuse women in host countries as dispensable objects. In the Philippines, the Arroyo government favored the perpetrator, instead of asserting criminal jurisdiction over custody of the accused, as in the case of the rape by Daniel Smith and his cohorts.

Women workers are marching on, as the Arroyo government continues to fail in meeting its target for job generation. It offers but offshore call centers to our university graduates. In subcontracted work, they are offered much lower salaries than their Northern counterparts. The youths are forced to live the culture and time zone alien to ours, if only to make their families survive.

The hailing of overseas workers as new heroes echoes a government’s resignation to labor export as employment strategy. The women migrant workers who fall victims to exploitation are but life-size signs of government apathy to our workers’ plight.

Crisis brought about by the failure of the neo-liberal paradigm has pushed more women workers to the informal sector. Despite this, the Northern countries are bent on concluding the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) “development” round towards tying down more South markets to Northern products. And the Arroyo government is ready to accept the North’s offer and has broken away from the ranks of other developing countries. This will result to further losses of local farmers and national businesses, and therefore loss of livelihood. In the recent months, stories of farmers killing themselves are coming out. In the recent years, stories of mothers killing themselves have shocked a nation never associated with suicides.

Women in the rural areas are marching, given also heavy pressures on agricultural lands by states biased to natural-resource-extractive industries such as mining, large-scale plantations and dams. The consequent militarization of local areas, aimed at protecting the interests of foreign investors yet justified as peace-keeping efforts, makes women victims of armed conflict. Displacement of families due to conflict or development aggression has further marginalized women and children as they are uprooted from their lands, their very source of survival.

With the Arroyo government’s failure in implementing genuine agrarian reform, rural women remain desperate in seeking food to put on their tables. Food sovereignty continues to be elusive amidst massive land conversion. Similarly, water sources are either seized by large-scale resource extraction or become polluted by mine wastes and pesticides. In the face of this, Arroyo continues to prioritize debt payments over and above social services.

Thousands of women and girl-children, especially from rural, indigenous and Muslim communities are denied of public services such as health, education, water, and others subjected to liberalization under the WTO.

Women survivors of gender violence are marching as realities of domestic violence, coupled with government neglect, force rural women to cling to promises of migrant labor notwithstanding the risks of sexual abuse, involuntary servitude, and slavery.

Arroyo’s disregard for the Anti-Prostitution and Reproductive Health bills, and coddling of political warlords such as the Ampatuans, who are responsible for the recent massacre that involved the rape and mutilation of 21 women, have all too clearly exposed her complicity with patriarchal forces carrying out violence against women. We do not forget the cases of violence against women and children committed by Rep. Romeo Jalosjos, Ambassador Claudio Teehankee, Jr., Presidential Appointee Chavit Singson and other criminals who either got executive pardon or were simply reprimanded by the President. Arroyo’s administration is equally responsible for the irreversible harms of violence against women and children.

We have had enough of Arroyo’s kleptocracy and collusion with sponsors of militarism, perpetrators of violence against and authors of neo-liberal globalization! Filipinas and all women in the Asia Pacific deserve political leaders that defend their rights and lives, rather than sell their bodies and dignity.

We will keep on marching until militarism is dismantled. We will march until states have put in place full employment that allow for mothers, sisters and daughters to have real choices. We will march until rural women have truly claimed land and support services. We will march until WTO shrinks and eventually sinks.

We will march until we have built a world based on peace, justice, equality, freedom and solidarity!

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!

Jean Enriquez
Executive Director of www.catw-ap.org and
Coordinator of World March of Women – Pilipinas

Presscon Speakers on March 1, 2010: Jean Enriquez (World March of Women - Pilipinas Coordinator); Atty. Virgie Pinlac ( KAISA-KA President); Liza Gonzales (Bagong Kamalayan Collective, Inc. Policy Officer); Marlene Sindayen (Alliance of Progressive Labor - Women Coordinator); Amparo Miciano (Pambansang Koalisyon ng mga Kababaihan sa Kanayunan); Monina Geaga (Sarilaya)

By David Challenger, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Angeles’ sex industry is fueled by sex tourists who travel from all over the world
* One former prostitute was able to leave the sex industry with help from Renew Foundation
* U.N. estimates 60,000 to 100,000 children in the Philippines are involved in prostitution rings

Angeles City, Philippines (CNN) — Sitting in the backyard garden of a women’s outreach center, a woman recounts a life that seems to belie her young age of 20 and her name, Joy.

“I started working as a prostitute in Fields Avenue when I was 15,” said Joy, a native of this city in the northern Philippines.

“I needed the money to support my baby, as I was already so poor. But after awhile the bar’s “mamasan” (the name given to a woman who oversees work in businesses such as brothels and bars) said I should go to Malaysia to work, where I could make a lot more money.”

After her mamasan organized the contract, Joy found herself working in Sandakan in eastern Malaysia, but the promise of good money and working conditions quickly evaporated.

“First I was made to take drugs. Then I was made to service as many as 20 men a day. If I refused they threatened to put me in jail without food,” she said.

World’s Untold Stories: Undercover to combat child sex slavery

The traffickers refused to let her go home, and she was only able to make her way back after her grandmother’s continual pleading with Philippine government officials. Six weeks later, Joy returned to Angeles without having received a cent.

Broken financially and in spirit and determined to leave Angeles’ sex industry, Joy was able to make contact with a non-government organization called the Renew Foundation , established in Angeles in 2005 in order to help eradicate trafficking and empower victims of prostitution.

Funded by individual donations, as well as grants from UNAIDS and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Renew offers shelter-based programs, housing, food, legal representation and education courses, all of which aim to help women return to their families or reintegrate into the community.

Renew also has a keen interest in helping child victims of the sex trade; an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 children in the Philippines are involved in prostitution rings, according to Minette Rimando, a spokeswoman for the U.N.’S International Labour Organization’s Manila office.

“Most child prostitutes are recruited from rural areas to work in urban areas or even abroad,” she said. “They are exposed to hazards that include contraction of STDs, physical violence and harmful psychological effects.”

Cities such as Angeles can present all of these hazards for girls and women.

A two-hour drive north of Manila, Angeles (pronounced “angle-ease”) sits opposite what used to be the massive Clark U.S. Air base.

In 1991 the cataclysmic volcanic eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo helped prematurely close the base, culminating in some lean years for Angeles’ well-established prostitution trade, experts said.

But the city’s sex industry has since come back, fueled by sex tourists who travel here from all over the world. Many are older men, looking for their version of fun with some help from so-called “Viagra” pills — sold on street corners like candy, chemical makeup unknown.

The city appears grimy and soulless. There are no pristine beaches or tropical forests, the traffic snarls and the poverty is endemic. But there is sex for sale, it’s cheap, and there’s a lot of it.

“Mate,” an overweight, chain-smoking Australian growls in between gulps of a San Miguel beer as he teeters on a bar stool. “This place is heaven — the girls are young, the beer’s cheap, and it’s never cold. What’s there not to like?”

Along Angeles’ main road of Fields Avenue where Joy once worked, the bars are filled with inebriated men leering at young women walking by. Most of the women are dressed in skimpy outfits and walking shakily as they plod along in poorly made high-heels.

The road is lined by countless bars where sex is readily available from dancers for about 1,200 pesos ($26).

Focusing on those bars and brothels in Angeles City, Renew uses outreach workers to identify women who have been trafficked or abused, said director Paulo Fuller.

“If someone needs help escaping from the industry,” he said, “our outreach workers liaise with police and authorities to help initiate a rescue. We also have cards with contact numbers that are distributed throughout the area, and flyers.”

Most of those helped fall into four categories: Girls and women subjected to sex trafficking; girls exploited in the commercial sex industry; and girls who are at risk of being prostituted and/or trafficked.

Renew director Fuller claims a high success rate. “Just over 80 percent of the women who come into our program don’t return to prostitution,” Fuller said. “After providing them with the support they need, like housing, education courses and employment, that’s the figure that don’t return back to the bars.”

Joy has been living at Renew’s shelter now for just over two months. She says she’s not sure when she’ll leave, but wants to try and finish her studies first. “After I leave I hope to get work to support my son and work as a hairdresser or in a beauty salon,” she said enthusiastically.

Back at the bar, the chain-smoking Aussie is informed of Joy’s harrowing experience in Angeles. He shrugs his shoulders half heartedly, weighing his reply as a bunch of Harleys driven by riders adorned in Swedish flags rumble past.

“I don’t know, I mean it’s just all a bit of fun. Those girls have a free will, right?” he asks. “Live and let live, I say.”

And with that, he walks off down Fields Avenue through the stifling heat, dodging the tumult, lighting up another cigarette.