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p A distinctive feature of the present stage of the international women’s democratic movement is the increasing role within it that women and women’s organisations in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America are beginning to play. Women who had for long been cut off from public life by age-old traditions, customs and colonial practices, have made and are continuing to make an important contribution to the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle and to the achievement of social and economic progress in their countries.

p The women’s movement in the developing countries had never hitherto achieved such a scale. Its significance as a mass force was clearly manifested during the period of struggle by these countries for political independence and the movement continues to play a no less important role today. Moreover, the liberation of women themselves from all forms of oppression is an essential condition for the advancement of these countries along the path of progress.

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p The rapid collapse of the colonial system has led to the appearance of more than 80 sovereign states on the Asian and African continents. 1,500 million people have achieved political liberation, having significantly broadened and strengthened the front of anti-imperialist forces.

p The last colonial empire has fallen under the united blows of the national liberation movements in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique and the Portuguese people’s anti-fascist movement, its collapse marking a major landmark in the struggle for the complete and final elimination of colonial oppression from the African continent.

p The successes achieved by the national liberation movement were made possible by the fact that the peoples of Africa and Asia have been waging their struggle not in isolation but within the framework of a unified world revolutionary process, enjoying the support of the Soviet Union and the other countries belonging to the socialist community as well as of the international workers’ and democratic movement.

p At present, consolidation of the victories achieved by revolutions of national liberation and defence of these victories against the ceaseless encroachments of imperialism is of primary significance for the Afro-Asian states.

p World imperialism remains a danger, despite the general weakening of the imperialist camp as a consequence of the growing power of countries belonging to the socialist community and the liberated countries, the development of the international workers’ and democratic movement and the rapid growth in the struggle for national liberation. The aggressive policies of the imperialist powers, the armed conflicts they unleash 207 and the acts of discrimination and the economic pressure for which they are responsible represent a threat to peace throughout the world.

p The imperialists are making extensive use of neocolonialist methods of economic, political and ideological pressure to hinder the progress of the struggle for national liberation and to strengthen their positions in the developing countries.

p Contemporary neocolonialism is an extremely complex and many-sided phenomenon, not always easy to recognise behind the slogans of "economic and political partnership”, "constructive cooperation”, "mutual assistance" and "a dialogue of equals”, which conceal imperialist policy and signify, in fact, continuation and intensification of the exploitation suffered by the peoples of former colonies.

p Penetration by foreign capital of the economies of new sovereign states, their entanglement in military blocs and political groupings headed by the imperialist powers, fomentation of conflicts between states, the staging of reactionary coups, political and military support for racist regimes, reactionary cliques and puppet governments, dependence on the outdated traditional institutions of a tribal society, the use of racial prejudices to set one people against another and manipulation of the "communist bogeyman" to blackmail new states are all manifestations of neocolonialism.

p Neocolonialist strategy consists in depriving former colonial peoples of the freedom to choose the path of social development, the choice of which is the internal affair of each people. For this to be a genuinely free choice, it is extremely 208 important that the possibility of interference on the part of imperialism he excluded. The peoples of the developing countries realise this and are therefore seeking to strengthen their national independence in every way, above all by consolidating their economic position. They are devoting great efforts to wiping out age-old backwardness and dependence upon international monopolies and ensuring the economic advancement of their countries, all of which is to be attained within an extremely short period.

p The problems that must be resolved in the process of reaching these goals are many and complex: they include ending the dominance of foreign capital, the creation of a national industry, the organisation of agriculture and the wiping out of hunger, poverty, illiteracy, disease and other colonialist legacies.

p Broad sections and groups of the population are taking part in solving these problems, including, of course, women workers, who constitute a significant part of the developing countries’ mercilessly exploited industrial workforce. Peasant women are also acting to put an end to the dominance of foreign planters and trading monopolies. These monopolies buy up at derisory prices coffee, cocoa, bananas, tea, cotton and sisal which are produced by the arduous toil of the workers, many of them women.

p Radical agrarian reforms, which represent an important factor in attaining economic independence, are the subject of vital concern for the women of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Agrarian reforms should wipe out the most backward forms of social relationships in the 209 countryside and effectively promote the solution of one of the most acute problems facing the majority of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America: insufficient food production.

p Progressive agrarian changes involve the solution of many problems, taking into account the specific features of each individual country. In some, the problem is that of expropriating the enormous holdings of feudal landowners and foreign companies and transferring the land without compensation to landless peasants, agricultural workers and to those possessing little land. In other countries, especial importance adheres to the problem of wiping out all forms of feudal and pre-feudal exploitation (metayage, share-cropping, forced labour, etc.) and cancelling all debts owed by peasants to large landowners, moneylenders and banks. The stepping up of material and technical assistance to peasants by the state, the introduction of modern agrotechnical methods into agriculture, the creation of various forms of cooperatives on a voluntary basis, the elimination of illiteracy and other social and cultural reforms in the countryside are questions which arise in the course of democratic agrarian reforms in every country.

p Social progress is impossible without a successful struggle to liberate women from all forms of exploitation and grant them equal rights with men in public life and work and in family relations; this also means placing upon women an equal responsibility with men for the future of their countries and peoples.

Women in the developing countries have, on the whole, demonstrated that it is in just this way that they understand their patriotic duty.