Thank you Chairperson.

Transcription

1 Thank you Chairperson. Honourable Members of the Steering Committees, Delegates, Dada zangu, kutoka kwa roho yangu hadi zenu. My sisters, this is coming from my heart to you. First I wish to heartily thank the Speaker of the Gauteng Branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Africa Region for nominating me, and the St. Lucia Branch of the Caribbean Region, for seconding my nomination. I shall be eternally grateful to the members of these two Branches for considering me worthy to vie for this very important position of Chairperson of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians. I present myself to you as a suitable candidate for the position of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians Chairperson. My name is Alix Boyd Knights, mother of three (3) and grandmother of five 5), so far. I was born on the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica where the current population is about seventy one thousand (71,000) people. I have passed more than sixty summers on this earth. I have absorbed and learned from not only the many, many experiences that have come my way but I have created quite a few experiences of my own, to be sure that I learned well; and I continue to learn as I go along. I have sat in Parliament as Speaker of the House for the past ten and a half (10 ½) years. I have had the great fortune to have interacted with many internationally known women in the forefront of the women s movement as it used to be known. I have addressed two Inter Parliamentary Union Speakers Conferences at the United Nations; and for two successive years, I have attended the Women Parliamentarians and Women Speakers Conferences at the United Nations. I have been a facilitator or attendee at many workshops and seminars locally, regionally, and internationally covering a range of

2 women s issues, all with the intention of empowering and uplifting our women. I have spent the greater part of my life as a hands on advocate of women s and children s rights working with and defending the rights of both abused women and children. I have come to be known as the battered women s lawyer, a label which in spite of the pejorative intent, I proudly wear. I work in the trenches and know at first hand how domestic violence destroys families and fully recognize this is a plague from which we must deliver families once and for all. I am proud to inform this august body that in 1998, while not yet a parliamentarian, I assisted in the passage of the Sexual Offences Act in my country and, after I was in Parliament, I assisted in the preparation of the Domestic Violence Bill. I have also been instrumental in making progressive amendments to the Maintenance Act of my country. There are as many issues confronting women of the Commonwealth as there are cultural differences. But as has been said so many times before, it is these cultural differences that make the Commonwealth grouping as unique as it is strong. However we need, as a group, to sensitize ourselves not only to the issues facing the women and children of our culture but other cultures as well. The saying who feels it knows it therefore has to become who knows of it must deal with it. Issues such as HIV and AIDS, poverty and the low wages of women, genital mutilation, human trafficking, child labour, domestic violence, child abuse, better education for children especially the girl children, are just a few of the issues to be tackled. These and other such issues affecting mainly women and girls are usually presented to Parliaments mainly by women! We all know that the most effective way of ensuring that these issues come to Parliament at all and receive the level of attention they deserve, would be to encourage more women all over the Commonwealth to become more involved in the political process in their country. But it is also clear that that this is easier said than done. And here I must stop to heartily congratulate and commend

3 the people of this beautiful land, Kenya for showing the way with their new constitution. It may well be then, that the biggest challenge facing Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians is to persuade more women of the Commonwealth to stand for elections in spite of the barriers real and imagined that may stand in their way. By virtue of the fact that we are here today, we have already overcome these barriers! In recognition of this need, our region is currently preparing a module for Strategies for Attracting more Women into Politics along the following lines: Mentoring Motivating Mobilizing Time does not permit me to do no more than summarize : 1. Mentoring All of us here have probably had a role model, a mentor who inspired us to arrive at the point we are at today. I have the honour to claim as my mentor Dame Mary Eugenia Charles, 1 st female Prime Minister of Dominica, the Caribbean and Western hemisphere. She became Prime Minister in 1980 and was Prime Minister for 15 years. Now, just as we were inspired, whether we recognize it or not, the young women, and the older ones too, watch us and take their cue from use. I do believe as women leaders, we have a duty to build on that situation and become advocates to these women. 2. Motivating With regard to the duty I just mentioned, I believe that that duty consists of speaking to young persons, both boys and girls, not just whenever the opportunity permits, but also creating opportunities to do so. And I say girls, because we desire to motivate them and boys, because we need to encourage them rethink the traditional mindset.

4 3. Mobilizing (a) persuading political parties to adopt targets for gender representation (b) getting women s groups and other NGOs to hold leadership workshops with the objective of preparing women to become part of the political process; (c) persuading male parliamentary colleagues to accept more women in Parliament and doing whatever is necessary to accommodate women to get into Parliament; (d) preparing society at large to accept women in politics more readily; and developing the idea that it is the norm. Like the world famous American Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr, I have a dream My dream is to see every woman in the Commonwealth and the world being sufficiently empowered to achieve her maximum potential; I have a dream that girls all over the world will have the same educational opportunities as boys; I have a dream that girl babies would have as great a chance of survival as boy babies; I have a dream that no longer will women have to work twice as hard to get half as far; I have a dream that women will earn the same wages as men for doing the same job; I have a dream that every Parliament in the world will be made up of 50% women and 50% men; I have a dream that by the year 2015 women will be truly equal to men in every sense of the word; I have a dream that the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians will be the chief catalyst for the realization of these dreams; I have a dream that I will be elected by you to be at the helm of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians when all these dreams are being realized.

5 Our previous Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians Chairpersons namely Baroness Curston, Lindiwe Maseko and Kashmala Tariq have held our hands and brought us thus far with their charismatic leadership and hard work. I now ask for the opportunity to take Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians to the next level and beyond. If I am elected, I pledge to work closely with you, my sisters, with EXCO and Regional EXCOs as well as all branches to prepare and execute projects and programmes and also to accomplish the targets set by the CWP under my leadership. And so my sister, I hope I have painted a clear picture of where I think, together, we ought to be going, well in keeping with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the words of the song I sing Ain t no stopping us now, We re on the move, Ain t no stopping us now, We re in the groove Thank you for your attention. Asanteni sana.