Therefore, the government needs to make more efforts to educate all citizens about its importance, the minister said here Tuesday.
"It`s been 100 years since the declaration of International Women`s Day but gender equality is still mostly unknown in Indonesia where domestic violence against women and children continue to be committed," Linda said at a seminar to mark International Women`s Day here Tuesday.
Linda said her ministry still needed to devise an effective strategy to properly familiarize the Indonesian public with the concept.
"We need to have an effective strategy for the holding of campaigns and educative seminars like this one to make people aware about the importance of gender equality. If the gender equality concept is sufficiently understood by the public, I`m sure the frequency of domestic violence cases will decrease," she said.
She said she truly appreciated the United Nations for having contributed much to efforts to reduce violence against women and children. The UN representatives in Indonesia had urged people to recommit in focusing on the gender equality issue as one of the Millennium Development Goals.
"Women`s empowerment and protecting women and children from violence were the basis of the development agenda in the world," said UN Resident Coordinator to Indonesia El-Mostafa Benlamlih here Tuesday.
The UN was also promoting global women`s empowerment by launching an organization aimed at struggling for women and children`s rights last February which was named UN Women.
International Women`s Day is commemorated every year on March 8 and this year was the 100th annual commemoration of the day. In 1910, an international conference on female workers was held in Copenhagen, and since then, the first International Women`s Day was commemorated for the first time. In 1977, the UN General Assembly invited member countries to state that on March 8 was the UN day for Women`s rights and World Peace.(*)
(T.KR-FNY/HAJM/H-YH)
Editor: Ruslan Burhani
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
