Tongan Prime Minister Fred Sevele told the U.N. General Assembly in New York that Tonga’s culture emphasizes communal and family responsibilities rather than individual rights.
He said that’s why the country’s parliament rejected ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW.
Women’s groups in Tonga are refusing to accept the decision, and are launching a nationwide petition aimed at getting the government to reverse it’s position.
Sevele told the General Assembly that women’s rights are already fully respected in Tonga.
“We admit that there are issues to be addressed. But rather than ratify CEDAW, we prefer to address those specific areas of concern for women in our own way. And we maintain that our women are among the most highly cherished, highly elevated respected in the world,” he said.
But Ofa Guttenbeil-Likiliki, executive director for the Tongan national center for women and children, said the prime minister’s assertion that Tongan women are highly cherished does not reflect what she is seeing.
“If that statement was true, why on earth are we seeing battered women on a daily basis?” she said.
“Why on earth are we dealing with rape cases? Why on earth have we had four homicides out of six homicides in the first six months of this year, are directly husbands murdering their wives?”
The Tongan government has concerns about how CEDAW might affect the system of land tenure and the line of succession to the throne.
