From the Editors
What do postfeminism and postracialism have to do with liberation and freedom? The answer is clear: nothing — not a single thing. Postfeminism or postracialism contribute nothing to dismantling the patriarchal systems that spread across cultures and races. Or to inhibit gender violence, deliver healthcare, provide economic relief or increase abortion accessibility. The “posts” are nonmovements and they move precisely nothing forward.
The “post” terms, thrown about vigorously by pundits, send out signals that the problems of our society related to gender and race have magically flown away in an unseen balloon. Yet, race rears regularly into headlines with the small and big ripples – an African-American professor is arrested, a Latina judge is demonized, an immigrant is beaten on the street, a girl disappears but major attention will follow only if she is white. Gender concerns permeate the public sphere with unequal pay rates, sexualized commentary, rape, anti-abortion violence. The reality-based world is jammed with perplexing matters related to race and gender that demand creative resolutions.
In this edition of On The Issues Magazine, we decided to take on race and feminism, two of the most provocative social, political and cultural topics of our times. To approach the subjects with fresh eyes, we invited partners from the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Network to be Consulting Editors, and were joined by Loretta Ross, SisterSong’s National Coordinator, and Serena Garcia, Communications Director.
“Race, Feminism, Our Future” reflects the decision to put our collective consciousness into articulating ways that we can unite on the path toward social justice and equality, rather than dwell on interpersonal agitations and past histories with all of their ups and downs.
The result is a series of big-picture articles and visionary ideas. Rinku Sen, in “Taking on Postracialism,” brilliantly describes engrained institutional racism that makes the goal of a more equitable society elusive. Most Americans, she writes, “don’t see racism as a system enabled by rules and structures. They have no idea that when we lay seemingly race-neutral policies on top of the history of explicitly racist policy, the racial gap remains in place or grows.” Sen suggests that new storytelling is needed to help people break through structural-blindness.
In “To Stop the Gender Violence, Start Changing the Tune,” Andrea Smith takes up a topic that affects women across racial, class, ethnic and cultural boundaries: violence. Gender violence is a frequent topic in On The Issues Magazine, both as a print publication (1983-99) and an online publication (2008-on). In 1990, Merle Hoffman, publisher and editor-in-chief, wrote: “There is no honor in a society that brutalizes women and denies them the fundamental human right of living without sexual violence – just as there is no honor in a society that inflicts racist violence against Black people and discriminates against millions of its citizens because of the color of their skin.”
In this edition, Smith, a scholar and activist, notes how much still needs to be done to end gender violence. Today’s mainstream anti-violence programs could benefit from adopting newer community-oriented strategies that women of color groups are creating to deal with both violence against women and the violence of aggressive police actions that devastate communities of color. “It is a problem that requires a political organizing solution, one that focuses on transforming society so that it no longer condones violence,” writes Smith.
Eleanor Bader describes a teaching model that helps youth think through difficult social problems, and Graciela Sanchez writes poetically about an arts program that uses photography to help women break free from isolation and become activists. Eesha Pandit articulates the necessity of incorporating a strong reproductive justice perspective in national healthcare, while Suzanne Pharr and Jacqui Patterson look at unifying themes for progressives in economic stimulus and climate change policy. Betsy Hartmann discusses how new population explosion claims are replaying racist narratives. Loretta Ross takes apart the language of right-wing groups that deploy darts of anger in undertones, and Serena Garcia breaks down the distortion of attacks on “wise Latina” Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
In book reviews, Book Editor Christine E. Hutchins looks at a new book by Dutchess Harris on Black feminist activism in the 40 years following President Kennedy’s election. Reviewer Courtney Zedner describes the book release by the very contemporary spoken word artist, Staceyann Chin, who defies the use of categories in her invigorating stagework seen in a featured video.
In areas in which it is often difficult to find the right words, artists in this edition share humor and pain in response to race and feminism. Faith Ringgold, the featured artist selected by Art Editor Linda Stein, is known for her vast and impressive body of work with paint, quilted fabric and storytelling. In “How the People Became Color Blind and We Came to America,” Ringgold personally narrates an illustrated story, imagining the world without skin color variations. Poets Marian Cannon Dornell and Cheryl Clarke, selected by Poetry Co-Editor Clare Coss for The Poet’s Eye delve into history, where women find escapes from harsh and difficult times. Other acclaimed artists share their work throughout the online magazine, including Emma Amos, Natalie Frank, Janet Goldner, Gloria Hollwerda-Williams, Gwyneth Leech, Helene Ruiz and Taryn Wells.
We will also continue to build on this rich assemblage of articles, poetry and art. Natalie Bell will report back as a special correspondent for the national SisterSong Conference in Washington D.C. in early November. Our unique Café will highlight additional perspectives – such as Maame-Menisme Horne’s writing about reproductive oppression and black anti-abortionists and Angela Poh on Chinese heroines in folk tales. And more.
Collecting these incisive materials also raised questions, some on language and style: is “Black” or “black” more appropriate? And “White” or “white”? In the end, we decided to leave those decisions to the individual authors.
We look for your opinions, too. Send us your ideas and thoughts to managingeditor@ontheissusemagazine.com
http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/2009fall/2009fall_editors.php
Survivors of human trafficking spoke at the U.N. recently as part of a new institutional effort to have their input on policymaking. Panelists said a major problem was not being seen as trafficking victims when they suffered their ordeals.
The U.N. has held hearings and sessions on human trafficking many times before, where professional advocates and police authorities have offered evidence.
But an Oct. 22 gathering before an audience of several dozen, which included U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, was different.
For the first time trafficking victims were invited to speak, reflecting the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights’ effort to promote a victim-centered approach.
One of the victims was Rachel Lloyd, who grew up in the United Kingdom. She survived forced sexual exploitation, which began after she quit school at 13 to care for her alcoholic mother. It led to a cycle of sexual abuse, drugs and prostitution that lasted through her teenage years.
After moving to New York, she founded GEMS: Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which she said helped 279 young women escape prostitution last year. She also actively lobbied for New York State’s Safe Harbor Act for Sexually Exploited Youth, the country’s first law to end the persecution of child sex-trafficking victims.
“This is a big and significant step for the U.N., and my hope is that this is the beginning of some real and substantive action on this issue,” Lloyd told Women’s eNews after delivering her testimony.
Three other survivors also spoke at the gathering–each from different corners of the globe, each with a very different ordeal to recount.
Different Stories, Common Theme
But there was one common theme: The official world often failed to see them as trafficking victims.
“One of the largest challenges that we have . . . is the lack of identification and the lack of recognition of our victim status,” Lloyd told the gathering.
Charlotte Awino of Uganda told the panel about her eight-year imprisonment at the hands of Ugandan rebels, who kidnapped her and three dozen others from a boarding school when she was 14. Forced to march for days, she and other prisoners were “traumatized and often near death from beating and starvation.”
Awino escaped at 22, having borne two children. She pointed out that often people in her position are viewed by authorities as being there voluntarily, mistaken for complicit terrorists rather than prisoners.
Buddhi Gurung of Nepal–the only male in the group–said his passport was confiscated when he answered a recruitment ad for work abroad. Instead, he was held for about a month in Amman, Jordan, then told by his supposed recruiters that he was going to work on a military base in Iraq. On the way there, a van in front of him carrying other trafficked Nepalis was ambushed and his 12 countrymen abducted. They were later killed, their beheadings broadcast over the Internet.
After serving 15 months at a U.S. base in Iraq, he was given his passport and sent home. He is currently suing the U.S. government. Although he may have looked like any immigrant worker, his circumstances did not match those of a voluntary worker. Instead of being sent to work in the U.S. for $500 per month as his recruiters had promised, he was brought to a war zone, paid a pittance and fed even less, he said.
Gurung and the families of the murdered Nepalis have taken the Houston-based defense contractor KBR, Inc. and Daoud and Partners, a Jordanian subcontractor, to federal court on human trafficking charges.
Forced Into Prostitution
Kikka Cerpa of Venezuela said that in 1992 she followed her boyfriend to New York City expecting a job as a nanny. Instead, he and his cousin forced her to “work off” her debt to the boyfriend by prostituting herself in his family’s brothel.
“The first night was the worst. I had to service 19 men. They lined up for the new girl,” Cerpa told the panel. She said her “boyfriend” told her that if she turned to authorities for help she would be arrested and deported.
She said that police sometimes raided the brothel and demanded sex. At other times, police arrested her. But either way, no officer ever seemed to look at Cerpa as a potential crime victim.
Cerpa eventually escaped by marrying a customer. When he started beating her she sought refuge in a shelter for abused women, which steered her toward Sanctuary for Families, a New York nonprofit that assists abused women and their children. In 2007, Cerpa received the annual Susan B. Anthony Award from the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women for her victim-advocacy work, which she continues to do while earning a living as a housekeeper.
Ruchira Gupta, a former BBC reporter who has spent the past 20 years working with prostitutes in India, many of whom are trafficked, moderated the panel.
In opening the session she offered her own example of public officials not recognizing trafficking victims as people in need of their help.
She said public health workers in Bombay try to prevent disease within brothels by giving out condoms, when official efforts would be better focused on helping to free the women in the brothels. Gupta was struck by the plight of these women when she first met them in the 1980s, women who had been sold into sex slavery in their teens or earlier. Her work has helped bring the issue to the forefront globally, and in September she received the 2009 Clinton Global Citizen Award from former President Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative foundation for her work.
More Concern Over Protecting Men
“Some of them actually told me, ‘If the brothel didn’t exist, where would we distribute the condoms?’” said Gupta, referring to the public health workers in Bombay. “They are more interested in protecting men from disease than protecting women and girls from the men.”
The Office of the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons presented a report on trafficking to the General Assembly on Oct. 23, the day after the hearings.
Human trafficking, it said, encompasses slavery, debt bondage, forced labor and sexual exploitation.
The Geneva-based International Labour Organization, or ILO, estimates that at least 12.3 million adults and children are being trafficked at any given time.
The majority of these people are women and girls forced into sexual slavery, according to the ILO and other agencies.
“There are millions out there who are still victims, many of whom have not been discovered,” U.N. Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons Joy Ngozi Ezeilo told the panel.
The key, she said, is giving visibility to victims, keeping track of those who go missing, offering them assistance once they’re rescued and making a commitment to eliminate trafficking in the first place.
Countries, she said, must also levy harsher punishment on traffickers and compensate victims for the time lost.
“It will be irresponsible if we fail to act. We are humans and we should not support inhuman action,” Ezeilo said. “The slave trade has been abolished and we can’t accept that in our world today.”
For more information:
* Girls Educational and Mentoring Services http://www.gems-girls.org/
* Sanctuary for Families http://www.sanctuaryforfamilies.org
* Report of the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, presented to the General Assembly on 23 October 2009 (pdf) http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/1739807.html
* 2009 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, published by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-trafficking-in-persons.html
END FGM European Campaign works with partner organisations across the European Union to ensure that the EU protects the rights of women and girls who are subjected to, or are at risk of, female genital mutilation.
Three million girls and women are subjected to female genital mutilation worldwide each year. That’s 8000 girls per day.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a form of violence against women and children that can amount to torture.
The practice violates:
* Right to physical and mental integrity
* Right to highest attainable standard of health
* Right to be free from all forms of discrimination against women (including violence against women)
* Right to freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
* Rights of the child
* and, in extreme cases, right to life
Female genital mutilation has been documented in certain parts of Africa, Asia and Middle East, and it is now being encountered in Europe as well. Most often, girls and women are taken to their countries of origin during school holidays to be mutilated.
The European Parliament estimates 500,000 girls and women living in Europe are suffering with the lifelong consequences of female genital mutilation.
FGM constitutes a persecution qualifying for being granted refugee status according to the international human rights standards as well as European law. However, because of lack of uniform implementation among all member states of the European Union (EU), women and girls are put at risk of being returned to countries where they could be subjected to FGM.
END FGM European Campaign is run by Amnesty International Ireland, in partnership with non-governmental organisations across the European Union. The campaign aims to ensure that the EU delivers a coherent strategy to prevent young girls and women in Europe from being mutilated and protect those who flee their countries for fear of being mutilated.
See also
The moral imperative to end this brutal practice exists – now we need the leadership and political will to consign it to history
In countries all over the world today, women live with the threat, or consequences, of female genital mutilation.
In Africa alone an estimated 3 million girls and women are subjected to the practice each year, and some 92m of the continent’s female population are estimated to have been victims of FGM.
The justification for the procedure changes from country to country. In some parts of the continent, religious scriptures are disingenuously invoked. In other parts it is cultural traditions that help keep the practice alive. But whatever the reasoning, the simple fact of the matter is that female genital mutilation is a blatant violation of the most fundamental human rights and must be eradicated.
Many States in which FGM is practised are signatories to the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women, article 5, which explicitly calls for legislation banning FGM. And while there are positive signs of a shift away from the practice in many countries, the failure of many African Union states to ratify the protocol and the scarcity of effective national legislation is hampering a more co-ordinated effort to rid the continent of this scourge.
Which is why the government of Burkina Faso and the human rights organisation No Peace Without Justice is organising a high-level meeting in Ougadougou (8-10 November) to discuss the important next steps that need to be taken towards a global ban on FGM.
The meeting, which is sponsored by the Italian government, will bring together lawmakers, NGOs, government ministers and community leaders as well women from throughout the region who have dedicated, and sometimes even risked, their lives to ensure that future generations are not subjected to female genital mutilation.
The meeting will also be used to issue a call to other African first ladies to commit themselves to the abolition of FGM by joining a continent-wide effort to educate and legislate. Educate their communities – particularly women – about their rights under international law, and push for legislation that enshrines those rights at a national level.
Her Excellency Mrs Mubarak of Egypt and Her Excellency Mrs Museveni of Uganda are among those who have already spoken publicly – and vociferously – about their opposition to FGM. What is important now is to expand and co-ordinate the actions of this alliance of like-minded women. A coalition of Africa’s first ladies committed to the eradication of FGM would not only give the issue the visibility it deserves, but also provide the leadership required to outlaw the practice once and for all.
Burkina Faso is proud of the leading role it has played in the region in the elimination of FGM. It is among only a handful of African nations to have enacted effective legislation banning the practice. The subsequent prosecution of FGM practitioners, combined with a nationwide education campaign, has shifted community attitudes, led to a drop in the incidence of FGM and – importantly – provided an example, and encouragement, for similar campaigns that have sprung up in neighbouring countries.
The Ougadougou meeting comes at a crucial moment for the growing movement – in Africa and around the world – towards a global ban on FGM. This summer in Mali, thousands of women marched throughout the country demanding that their parliament enact legislation against FGM. Despite the best efforts of the conservative forces promoting FGM, communities in countries all over Africa are starting to question the practice.
The lesson learned in Burkina Faso is that women across the country are empowered to resist FGM when the population as a whole, including women in both rural and urban areas, understand not only the health consequences of FGM but are made aware of women’s legal rights, as recognised and protected by the constitution and by national laws.
The moral imperative to rid the world of this most heinous violation of human rights most definitely exists, the international protocol is firmly in place – now all that is required is the leadership and the political will to consign this brutal practice to the history books where it belongs.
By Chantal Compaoré is the First Lady of Burkina Faso http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/female-genital-mutilation
More than half of Ugandan girls who enrol in grade one drop out before sitting for their primary school-leaving examinations.
The fact that girls are dropping out between age 11 and 13 is being linked to the beginning of the menstruation cycle and its associated challenges.
Research conducted by a non-government organisation, the Forum of African Women Educationalists (FAWE), reveals that the lack of sanitary pads, coupled with other factors like the absence of water or separate toilet facilities for girls in many schools, is responsible for the drop-out rate.
Despite tax waivers introduced to reduce the cost of sanitary pads, finding money to buy them each month is a challenge for many grown women, never mind pre-teen girls.
A packet of sanitary pads costs the equivalent of $1.50 in Uganda – for the same amount you could get a kilo of sugar for the whole household. Girls whose parents can’t afford to give them the money improvise with strips of toilet paper or old cloth. “Sometimes you buy two packets depending on the flow,” says Florence Kanyike, national coordinator of FAWE in Uganda. “For some girls the flow is heavy and they will need to change pad in the course of the day.”
In their study of challenges to girl child education, FAWE researchers found that taboos and silence associated with menstruation in many communities mean some girls are in any case unable to ask their parents for money to buy pads, and forced to find ways of getting money on their own.
Raising the subject can put unwanted pressures on a young girl. Kanyike says that for some parents, when a girl starts menstruating, it’s a sign that she is mature enough for marriage. This is the age at which many girls in rural areas are sent into forced marriages.
Maimuna Kagoya has just started secondary school. She’s fortunate that her aunt, Aisha, buys pads for her. In her Muslim family, Maimuna will be assumed to be ripe for marriage once she’s known to be menstruating.
Speaking to IPS in the presence of her aunt, Maimuna says many of her friends dropped out of school although she is not sure if it was related to menstruation.
One risky means girls less fortunate than Maimuna turn to to raise the money on their own is through sexual relationships with much older men who can provide the cash; one consequence of this is a large number of unwanted pregnancies, which then force girls to drop out of school.
Dropping out of school affects girls in the long-term by limiting their future earning potential.
FAWE has launched a campaign to de-stigmatise menstruation through “girl education movement” clubs in schools, where girls are taught to treat their periods as a normal occurrence not to be scared of.
The campaign to dispel silence around menstruation and advocate for affordable sanitary pads to be made available in local markets across the country piloted in five districts earlier this year.
The project is dealing with twelve primary schools in each district, conducting workshops with pupils to open up dialogue on the topic of menstruation. The pupils discuss anything from lack of sanitary pads, poor facilities for menstruation at school and in the community, as well as try to find solutions.
Fatuma Wamala, programme officer at FAWE, says through the workshops they found that poor menstrual hygiene on the part of adolescent girls stem from beliefs, myths and attitudes within the community coupled with poverty.
“Many parents do not allocate any budget to sanitary materials for the girls especially in day schools,” says Wamala.
She says FAWE’S advocacy has led to lower prices for sanitary towels on the open market and increased demand for sanitary towels in rural areas, where local shops are beginning to stock them.
It was FAWE’s workshops with members of parliament and government officials which led to tax waivers on sanitary pads being announced by the finance minister in the 2006 national budget.
Now the lawmakers want government to go further and buy sanitary pads for female pupils in primary schools. Nabilah Sempala, a woman member of parliament for Kampala Central constituency, says government should include the cost of sanitary pads in the budget of the universal primary education.
The Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives has passed a health care bill backed by President Barack Obama that includes a far-reaching attack on abortion rights.
The Affordable Health Care for America Act includes a measure, the Stupak-Pitts amendment, that would ban insurance companies participating in health care “exchanges” from covering abortion procedures in plans subsidized by tax credits and sold to middle- and low-income families (those earning under $88,000 for a family of four).
Exceptions would apply only in cases of rape, incest, and if the woman’s life is in peril.
Abortion coverage would also be banned from the bill’s so-called “public option”—a government-run plan open to those presently not insured. The reactionary Hyde Amendment of 1976 already outlaws funding for abortion from the Health and Human Services Department budget and from federal Medicaid funds.
Women forced into insurance plans offered through the public option or the private health care exchanges—on pain of fines imposed by the government—would, in the event of need, be forced to pay for the procedure out-of-pocket, or else pay premiums for a separate insurance rider covering only abortion.
When it comes to abortion rights, politicians have little compunction about interfering in the “free market.” Because the amendment targets private insurance plans, the great majority of which currently offer abortion coverage, it would narrow the coverage that insured women already have.
The provision’s ultimate aim is the de facto prohibition of abortion for low- and even middle-income women. Among the wealthy layers not affected by the measure are those who passed it—the members of the US Congress, 237 of whom are millionaires, according to a recent study by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade proclaimed the constitutional right to abortion, this right has been the object of an unrelenting attack by religious groups and the right wing. For many working class women, it is already difficult, if not impossible, to afford the procedure or to find clinics that offer it.
Democratic politicians have for many years presented themselves as defenders of abortion rights. This posture was in keeping with the party’s embrace of identity politics, including feminism, which it increasingly promoted in tandem with its abandonment of any pretence to social reforms.
Every election cycle, the various liberal and feminist groups mobilize to warn that voters must cast their ballots for Democrats in order to defend abortion. Only Democratic politicians, the electorate is told, stand between the Republicans and the imposition of religious dogma.
Now, a House of Representatives dominated by liberal Democrats—among them the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi—with the backing of a Democrat in the White House, has passed the most sweeping attack on abortion rights since Roe vs. Wade, a measure that goes far beyond the ban on late term abortions enacted during the administration of George W. Bush.
The Affordable Health Care for America Act, including the Stupak amendment, named after its Democratic author, passed the House with the votes of 219 Democrats.
Feminist and reproductive rights organizations were quick to condemn the vote. The National Organization for Women (NOW) called the vote “the worst blow to women’s fundamental right to self-determination” put in place to “buy a few votes” for the health bill. “It is unconscionable” that the health bill could be used “to attack women’s health and privacy,” said Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
These organizations did not attempt to square the bill’s passage with their ongoing support of the Democratic Party and Obama.
This inconsistency was most glaring in a John Nichols column on the web site of the Nation. Hailing the health care bill as “the most sweeping expansion of health-care coverage” since Medicare and Medicaid, Nichols conceded that the bill is “flawed” by its inclusion of the anti-abortion amendment.
Democratic Congressmen were cowed by the intervention of religious opponents of abortion, particularly the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which issued “a series of increasingly stern letters to lawmakers” demanding that any health bill cut funding for abortion, the New York Times reports. For his part, Obama “listened intently” to similar warnings from Cardinal Seán O’Malley, archbishop of Boston, while the two were attending the funeral of Edward Kennedy in late August.
It is absurd to claim that a bill stripping millions of working- and middle-class women of the ability to obtain an abortion—one dictated by corporate interests and Catholic prelates—are blemishes on otherwise progressive legislation.
In fact, the Stupak amendment is entirely in keeping with a health bill that is not a reform at all, but a sweeping attack on health care for millions of people. The Stupak anti-abortion amendment exposes the anti-working class and anti-democratic nature of Obama’s health care overhaul.
Its aim is to contain costs while ensuring the profits of the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical giants and the hospital chains. It seeks to ration and restrict health care procedures for the working class. In this sense, depriving working class women of access to abortions is entirely consistent with the general thrust of the bill. At the same time, the bill leaves millions of people uninsured.
Obama personally intervened to ensure passage of the bill, closing Democratic congressional ranks by telling them, “No bill can ever contain everything that everybody wants, or please every constituency.”
Such statements reveal Obama’s contempt for basic democratic rights. Obama’s “constituency,” as the bill’s attack on abortion rights makes clear, is not the American people. His drive to pass the bill is rooted in a different constituency—the US financial elite, which views health care “reform” as the first pass in its long-desired assault on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Obama won office on the campaign slogan of “change.” On every major issue, however, he has not only continued, but in fact deepened the right-wing policies of his predecessor—the expansion of war, bank bailouts, the attack on democratic rights, and the unrelenting assault on the working class. The abortion measure is only the latest demonstration of the real class character of the administration, as well as the utterly decayed state of American liberalism.
Access to abortion is a democratic right. It is a well-established and safe medical procedure. The Socialist Equality Party supports unequivocally this right, which can be defended only as part of a socialist system of free health care that makes available to all the great scientific breakthroughs in medicine.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n10.shtml
See also:
* Domestic Violence Provisions Included in Healthcare Bill
* Women’s Health Insurance Under Healthcare Reform
The World Health Organisation said on Monday women tend to receive poorer medical care than men.
Following is a breakdown of the differences between male and female health in children, adolescents, adults and elderly people, according to the United Nations health agency’s report:
INFANTS AND CHILDREN
– Death rates and causes of death are similar among boys and girls until 9 years of age.
– Pre-term birth, birth asphyxia and infections are the main causes of death in the first month of life, when mortality is highest. Pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria are the main causes of death during the first five years of life.
– Girls are more likely to suffer sexual violence than boys
ADOLESCENTS
– Teenaged girls are at risk of unsafe, unwanted and forced sexual activity that can make them vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, other infections, unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion.
– Women catch sexually transmitted infections more easily than men for biological reasons and also due to lack of access to information as well as health services.
– Pregnancy-related complications are among the main causes of death among girls aged 15 to 19 in developing countries, with unsafe abortions accounting for a large number of such deaths.
ADULTS
– Every year, about 500,000 women die from giving birth, almost all in developing countries.
– Poorer nations lack services to screen and treat cervical cancer, the second most common type of cancer among women.
– Women are more susceptible to depression and anxiety than men. Some 73 million women worldwide suffer a major depressive episode every year. Mental disorders following childbirth affect about 13 percent of women within a year of delivery.
– Women typically prepare most of the family food, and thus are most exposed to indoor smoke from burning solid fuels for cooking, a phenomenon most common in poor countries. The burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung ailment also related to smoking, is 50 percent higher among women than men.
– Women suffer far more fire-related injuries and deaths than men, with most related to cooking accidents and others the result of intimate partner violence. Burns are a leading cause of death among women aged 15 to 44 in southeast Asia.
ELDERLY
– Though often considered a “male” problem, heart attacks and stroke are the main killers of older women. Cardiovascular disease is often undiagnosed in women.
– Because they live an average of six to eight years longer than men, women represent a big proportion of all older people. Their main problems in older age, often untreated, include poor vision, hearing loss, arthritis, depression and dementia.
Despite considerable progress in the past decades, societies continue to fail to meet the health care needs of women at key moments of their lives, particularly in their adolescent years and in older age, a WHO report has found.
Launching the report, entitled Women and health: today’s evidence tomorrow’s agenda, WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan called for urgent action both within the health sector and beyond to improve the health and lives of girls and women around the world, from birth to older age.
“If women are denied a chance to develop their full human potential, including their potential to lead healthier and at least somewhat happier lives, is society as a whole really healthy? What does this say about the state of social progress in the 21st century?” asked Dr Chan.
Women provide the bulk of health care, but rarely receive the care they need
Worldwide, women provide the bulk of health care – whether in the home, the community or the health system, yet health care continues to fail to address the specific needs and challenges of women throughout their lives.
Up to 80% of all health care and 90% of care for HIV/AIDS-related illness is provided in the home – almost always by women. Yet more often than not, they go unsupported, unrecognized and unremunerated in this essential role.
When it comes to meeting women’s health care needs, some services, such as care during pregnancy, are more likely to be in place than others such as mental health, sexual violence and screening and treatment for cervical cancer.
However, in many countries, sexual and reproductive health services tend to focus exclusively on married women and ignore the needs of unmarried women and adolescents. Few services cater for other marginalized groups of women such as sex workers, intravenous drug users, ethnic minorities and rural women.
“It’s time to pay girls and women back, to make sure that they get the care and support they need to enjoy a fundamental human right at every moment of their lives, that is their right to health,” said Dr Chan.
Women live longer than men but these extra years are not always healthy
HIV, pregnancy-related conditions and tuberculosis continue to be major killers of women aged 15 to 45 globally. However, as women age, noncommunicable diseases become major causes of death and disability, particularly after the age of 45 years.
Globally, heart attacks and stroke, often thought to be “male” problems, are the two leading killers of women. Women often show different symptoms from men, which contributes to under diagnosis of heart disease in women. They also tend to develop heart disease later in life than men.
Because women tend to live on average six to eight years longer than men, they represent a growing proportion of all older people. Societies need to prepare now to deal with the health problems and costs associated with older age and anticipate the major social changes in the organization of work, family and social support.
Despite some biological advantages, women’s health suffers from their lower socio-economic status
Lack of access to education, decision-making positions and income may limit women’s ability to protect their own health and that of their families. Though major differences exist in women’s health across regions, countries and socio-economic class, women and girls face similar challenges, in particular discrimination, violence and poverty, which increase their risk of ill-health.
For example, in the case of HIV/AIDS the risk posed by a biological difference is compounded in cultures that limit women’s knowledge about HIV and their ability to negotiate safer sex.
“We will not see significant progress as long as women are regarded as second-class citizens in so many parts of the world,” Dr Chan said. “In so many societies, men exercise political, social and economic control. The health sector has to be concerned. These unequal power relations translate into unequal access to health care and unequal control over health resources,” she added.
Policy change and action is needed within the health sector and beyond
The report seeks to identify key areas for reform, both within and outside the health sector. These include identifying mechanisms to build strong leadership with the full participation of women’s organizations, strengthening health systems to better meet women’s needs throughout their lives, leveraging changes in public policy to address how social and economic determinants of health adversely impact women, and building a knowledge base that would allow a better tracking of progress.
Strategies to improve women’s health must also take full account of gender inequality and address the specific socioeconomic and cultural barriers that prevent women from protecting and improving their health, the report points out.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2009/women_health_report_20091109/en/index.html
Women and health: today’s evidence tomorrow’s agenda – WHO global report
* Download or order from http://www.who.int/gender/documents/9789241563857/en/index.html
The Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO), All Women’s Action Society (AWAM), Sisters in Islam (SIS) and Pusat Kesedaran Komuniti (EMPOWER) have joined hands in calling for the abolition of Section 498 of the Penal Code which they claimed was discriminatory against women.
WAO president Meera Samanther said women should be accorded rights as independent human beings an be treated as an equal partner in a marriage.
“Laws that discriminate women should be eliminated and Section 498 is one of them,” she told a press conference here yesterday.
AWAM senior programme officer Abigail De Vries said the organisation was on global campaign to draw the people’s attention to the violation of women’s rights.
Section 498 carries a punishment against any man convicted of “enticing a married woman.”
The section states that a man who enticed, took away or detained with a criminal intent a married woman can be jailed up to two years, fined, or both if convicted.
The Government has announced that it had no intention to amend Section 498.
Certain quarters have critised the section, saying it was an affront to women to suggest that they could be so easily enticed.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/11/10/nation/5074562&sec=nation
Taking an active part in politics in Bolivia can be a hazardous undertaking. Hundreds of reports of violence against women participating in politics attest to the risk. And while attacks go unpunished, a bill designed to protect the rights of women occupying public office has spent almost a decade in Congress waiting to be approved.
María Eugenia Rojas, leader of the Bolivian Association of Women Town Councillors (ACOBOL), which works for the right of women to hold public office, told IPS that the members of her organisation are in dire need of a law that will protect them and raise awareness on a critical but little known reality.
But she also admitted to weariness, brought on by Congress’ lack of sensitivity to the problem. Things hardly improved for women in politics even after President Evo Morales took office in 2006, representing the interests of the country’s impoverished indigenous people and ushering in social changes. Not even the new constitution in effect since February 2009, which strengthens women’s rights, has had much of an effect in that area yet.
When asked to give an example of a particularly alarming case, Rojas said all cases of violence targeting women politicians are equally disturbing. “Which is worse? The case of the councilwoman who was attacked and suffered a miscarriage? Or the one that was beaten within an inch of her life? Or the municipal official who was raped?” she asked.
But she had no doubt about a common denominator in the more than 200 complaints filed through the association alone: “They all involve gender-based discrimination and violence.”
Gender violence aimed at women who are active in politics occurs at many levels, but nowhere is it more virulent and committed with so much impunity than in rural municipalities. Women are often harassed, or worse, with the aim of forcing them out of politics.
“Public humiliations of women councillors elected by popular vote, or floggings inflicted as punishment by indigenous communities are gross violations of women’s rights and demand immediate action,” Rojas explained.
ACOBOL has faced many frustrations in its struggle to defend the rights of women in public office, most notably the fact that none of the perpetrators in these cases has been brought to justice.
It was in the context of this struggle that a popular consultation was held with the aim of introducing a draft law against political harassment and gender violence, as women came to the realisation that that was the only way they could defend their right to participate in politics safely and under conditions of equality.
In the rest of Latin America, only Ecuador has a law similar to the bill under consideration in the Bolivian legislature.
One of the women involved in the campaign to get the bill approved is now heading the Ministry of Justice. Minister Celima Torrico is a former trade union leader, a reporter for grassroots radio stations, and president of the Association of Women Councillors in the central province of Cochabamba.
Bolivia will hold general elections in December. Under the new constitution, 50 percent of all candidates to public office must be women, although that percentage was only achieved in the Senate and in the lists known as multi-nominal.
From her office, Torrico explained to IPS why she recently changed her position with respect to the proposed law and is now pushing to expand it to apply to men who participate in politics and are also victims of harassment and violence by reason of the posts they hold or their views on the administration of municipal governments.
As it is currently drafted, the bill aims to prevent, punish and eradicate harassment and violence against women who are running in elections or hold office, and guarantee their political rights and ensure that they will be protected under the law at the national, provincial and local levels.
The vast majority of all cases of gender-based political discrimination and violence are committed at the municipal level.
“A law is not sufficient in and of itself, but it will be a key step in the right direction and a major achievement because it will be taken as a reference point for further action, especially as it sets specific penalties and identifies certain behaviours as punishable offences,” Patricia Flores, an official in the ombudsman’s office, told IPS.
“It provides for more than just disciplinary measures, and punishes (gender-based violence) as a crime,” by including it in the Criminal Code, she underlined.
The bill establishes penalties for perpetrators of acts of political harassment and violence against women candidates and elected and acting officials. Perpetrators may be subject to administrative, civil and criminal measures, and may be temporarily or permanently barred from public office.
Political gender violence is motivated by men’s unwillingness to surrender their hold on power and the administration of public funds and resources, Rojas said.
ACOBOL backs its position saying that studies amply show that “power relations based on violence affect women directly just because they are women and because they hold political and public office.”
A study conducted by ACOBOL from 2000 to 2005, and updated with the two hundred additional complaints filed since, revealed that 36 percent of all cases of harassment and abuse were aimed at forcing women councillors to resign and leave their seat to a male candidate or alternate.
Twenty percent of complaints were for physical violence and another 19 percent for harassment and pressures to keep women away from municipal government oversight and supervision functions.
The result of this harsh experience is that women councillors don’t usually run for a second term. With few exceptions, when they complete their five years in office they decide to drop out of politics because they come to the conclusion that it’s just not worth the sacrifice, and this cuts emerging female leaderships in the bud, Rojas explained.
Only four percent of council seats are occupied by women, and of the 327 town councils, only 25 percent are headed by a woman, according to data gathered by ACOBOL.
The violation of the rights of women in politics affects women in every party, cuts across the full spectrum of ideologies, and occurs in indigenous communities and grassroots and civil society groups as well, Rojas said.
But there are geographical differences. Rojas noted that in the eastern lowlands and Amazon jungle region women in political positions are more widely accepted, while in the western Andean highlands region û where the population is predominantly indigenous – women in public office are more subject to intimidation and discrimination due to the strong patriarchal structures that still prevail.
Edited version of longer article at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49024
Somalia’s hardline al Shabaab insurgents closed three grassroots women’s organisations in the rebel-held town of Balad Hawa on Monday to stop women from going to work, a rebel leader said.
The group wants to impose its own version of Islamic law on areas it controls, and Washington says it is al Qaeda’s proxy in the Horn of African nation.
“We have taken this step after we recognised that women need to stay in their homes and take care of their children … Islam does not allow women to go to offices,” Maalim Daaud Mohmed, the chairman of Balad Hawa, told Reuters by telephone.
Balad Hawa is located on the Somali border with Kenya, near the Kenyan town of Mandera.
The organisations closed by al Shabaab are the Halgan Businesswomen’s Organisation, the Sed Huro Human Rights Organisation and Farhan Woman for Peace, he said.
The insurgents have banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing and watching soccer.
Courts have ordered executions, floggings and amputations in recent months, mostly in the southern Kismayu region and rebel-held districts of the capital.
The rebel leader said they would also close five non-governmental organisations in the region. He did not name them.
http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSL2281395._CH_.2400
IN THIS ISSUE
- UNIFEM Welcomes Strong Support by the General Assembly for the Establishment of a New Gender Entity
- New Security Council Resolutions Strengthen Women’s Protection in Conflict and Participation in Peacebuilding
- Launching in November: Say NO – UNiTE to End Violence against Women
- UNIFEM around the World
- o Clinton Global Initiative Selects UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women as Commitment to Action
- o Spain Contributes EUR 31.5 Million to UNIFEM in 2009
- o West Africa: Women Particularly Vulnerable to the Negative Impact of Climate Change
- o Rwanda: Empowering Women through Cooperatives
- o Latin America: Economic Policies and Stimulation Packages Must Not Overlook Women
- o El Salvador: UNIFEM Opens a Regional Training Centre for Women’s Entrepreneurship
- o Afghanistan: Photo Exhibition on Women and the Afghan Elections
- o Japan: UNIFEM Liaison Office Opens in Sakai City
- o Palestinian Women Mark the International Day of Rural Women
- o Philippines: Landmark Legislation for Gender Equality Officially Enacted
- o 50 Million Women in Asia at Risk of Contracting HIV from Intimate Partners
- Recent Speeches & Statements
- Recent Publications
- Current & Upcoming Events
- Job Vacancies
This issue is available in HTML format online at http://www.unifem.org/news_events/currents/issue200911.php
Nearly 90,000 women reported they were raped in the United States last year.
It’s estimated another 75,000 rapes went unreported. But while rape convictions are up – a five month CBS News investigation raises questions about just how many rapists are actually being brought to justice.
Rape in this country is surprisingly easy to get away with. The arrest rate last year was just 25 percent – a fraction of the rate for murder – 79 percent, and aggravated assault – 51 percent.
“When we have talked to victims, they very much so doubt that it was worth it for them to go to the police,” said Sarah Tofte, US Program Researcher for Human Rights Watch. “They’re incredibly disillusioned with the criminal justice system, and that sends a terrible message.”
The suspect’s attorney told police his client never had sex with Valerie. Yet an exam revealed “evidence of forced sexual penetration.” Semen found on her underwear. Nurses took a rape kit- a collection of swabs and clothing that provide DNA evidence. The suspect provided a sample. But the DNA was never tested.
“Testing the kit is one way to affirm a victim’s story,” Tofte said, “and discredit the suspect’s story.”
A five month CBS News Investigation has found a staggering number of rape kits — that could contain incriminating DNA evidence — have never been sent to crime labs for testing.
Many untested for years. And that’s not all. At least twelve major American cities: Anchorage, Baltimore, Birmingham, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Oakland, Phoenix, San Diego said they have no idea how many of rape kits in storage are untested.
Police departments told us rape kits don’t get tested due to cost – up to $1,500 a kit — a decision not to prosecute, and victims who recant or are unwilling to move forward with a case.
Psychologist David Lisak from the University of Massachusetts has spent twenty years studying the minds of rapists.
“Somehow all we can do is take the statement from the victim. Take the statement from the alleged perpetrator and then throw up our hands because they are saying conflicting things,” he said. “That’s not how we investigate other crimes.”
Valerie was told her rape kit wasn’t tested because they didn’t have the money. But when we caught up with Kenton County prosecutor, Rob Sanders, he told us something else. “The results of the DNA test would not have made the case one way or another,” Sanders said.
Sanders said his office made a “judgment call” the case was unwinnable in court — claiming there were issues with Valerie’s memory and the alcohol involved. A practice, says Lisak that often plays right into the hands of rapists.
“Predators look for vulnerable people and they prey on vulnerable people,” Lisak said. And if, as a criminal justice system, we’re going to essentially turn from any victim who was drinking or any victim who was in some way vulnerable – we’re essentially giving a free pass to sexual predators.”
Worried they were doing just that, CBS News has learned the Oakland California Police Department is now plowing through 489 untested rape kits from stranger rapes dating back six years, looking for evidence in what they believe to be “solvable cases.”
The Los Angeles Police Department is testing a backlog of nearly 3,000 rape kits. LAPD’s new Chief Charles Beck says efforts to reduce the backlog have “resulted in 405 hits” in the FBI DNA database.
In New York City, prosecutors are even more aggressive – testing every rape kit, even in cases of acquaintance rape – over 1,300 last year alone.
“You never know what you’re going to find,” said Mecki Prinz of the NY Medical Examiners Office.
The results are stunning. Today New York City’s arrest rate for rape is 70 percent – triple the national average.
Prinz says testing kits in acquaintance cases can tie suspects to other attacks, “We have lots of situations where a domestic situation or an acquaintance situation is actually an indication of the male involved responsible for other rapes,” she said.
“I feel like they didn’t do their job to protect me and to protect everyone else,” Valerie said. “I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever forget. I don’t think it’s something you can forget.”
For full story and links including helplines in the US go to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/09/cbsnews_investigates/main5590118.shtml?tag=cbsnewsTwoColUpperPromoArea
See also:
* The introduction in the Senate of the Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Act of 2009 is a significant step toward eliminating the backlog of evidence in rape cases – Human Rights Watch.
A single clinic in the capital, Harare, says it has treated nearly 30,000 girls and boys who were abused in the past four years ‑ an average of 20 per day. Experts believe that the country’s economic collapse under Robert Mugabe has led to widespread family breakdown and left many children vulnerable.
Dr Robert-Grey Choto, a paediatrician and co-founder of the Family Support Trust Clinic, said the increase was alarming. “In the last four years we have seen over 29,000 cases, and in the last 10 years we have more than 70,000 at this clinic alone,” he told the BBC’s Network Africa programme*. “It’s a tip of the iceberg ‑ the problem is enormous. We need drugs and any assistance we can get.”
A 12-year-old patient at the clinic, part of the main referral hospital in Harare, told the BBC he had been gang-raped in a township last month. “Four men waylaid me on my way from school,” he said. “I was taken to a shop where they showed me pornographic material.”
The boy said he was then drugged and sodomised for more than a week. His father added: “This is unbearable. All I want is justice for now.”
Other organisations dedicated to helping victims are on the back foot because of Zimbabwe’s tense political climate. Betty Makoni, founder of the Girl Child Network (GCN), which has rescued more than 35,000 girls from sex abuse, was forced into exile last year because of threats against her.
Speaking from London, she said the real number of victims was likely to be double that recorded by the Family Support Trust Clinic. The GCN says 10 girls report rape every day in Zimbabwe and a further 10 victims probably remain silent. The youngest known victim was a baby of one day; the oldest was a woman aged 93.
Makoni told the Guardian: “We have children forced to marry under the age of 13. We have children who were held hostage and raped in militia camps during the political violence who are now giving birth to their own children. We still have children being raped because of the myth that if a man with HIV has sex with a virgin he will be cured of his virus.”
She said men were able to perpetrate the crime with impunity because of 4,000 known rape cases per year, only 500 resulted in a prosecution. The GCN’s research indicates that on average a man can rape 250 children before his crimes become public knowledge.
“The justice system has collapsed in Zimbabwe. A syndicate of men uses its economic and political muscle to escape justice. We also have 10,000 boys going to train as youth militia; they become vicious and make girls succumb to sex through fear.”
The economic meltdown, political violence and starvation in Zimbabwe over the past decade have driven numerous people abroad, with 3 million fleeing to South Africa alone. Often they leave their children in the care of extended family or friends and try to send money home.
Many more children have been orphaned by HIV/Aids or other diseases in a country where the average life expectancy has plummeted to 37 for men and 34 for women, among the lowest in the world.
Chipo Mukome, a counsellor at the Family Support Trust Clinic, told the BBC: “Due to the economic situation where we have seen a lot of parents going to neighbouring countries, like South Africa, in search of greener pastures, they are leaving their children to the care of others ‑ uncles and aunts for example. These people, in the end, are abusing these children.”
Zimbabwe’s fragile unity government has limited capacity to intervene after years of neglect of welfare state structures. The priority in recent months has been the reopening and maintenance of crumbling schools that were once the envy of Africa.
David Coltart, the education minister, said: “I suspect that a third of households in Zimbabwe have been broken up as a result of the economic chaos. But the social welfare department has all but collapsed. There are hardly any social workers left.”
Coltart, a member of prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, said the child sex abuse statistics were indicative of a wider epidemic. “In the last few decades we allowed a culture of violence to pervade our society,” he said. “It’s compounded by the fact that those responsible are generally immune from prosecution. The breakdown of the rule of law means this culture is all-pervasive. It is not just intra-political parties. It spreads to domestic violence and the abuse of children.”
Last month Coltart launched a campaign, Learn Without Fear, aimed at ensuring schools are safe places for children. It noted that while teachers have been responsible for abusing girls in schools, there has been a developing trend in which girls are abused by senior boys, with some cases going unreported.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/09/child-sexual-assault-epidemic-zimbabwe
* A BBC Network Africa special investigation reveals that the problem could be much larger; Zimbabwean Journalist Brian Hungwe compiled this report about a growing trend now worrying health personnel.
Listen to the report at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/2009/11/091109_zim_child_abuse.shtml
While medical and psychological care are being provided to survivors of sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where 7,000 women and girls have been raped this year alone, UN and aid workers on the ground say the funding response has been too narrow, leaving key issues inadequately addressed.
“Increased international attention to sexual violence in DRC has led to a substantial increase of funding, accompanied by a disproportionate lack of evaluations of the real needs on the ground and lack of understanding of the complexity of the issues,” notes the Comprehensive Strategy on Combating Sexual Violence in the DRC – http://www.stoprapenow.org/pdf/SVStratExecSummaryFinal18March09.pdf – released in 2009 by the Office of the Senior Adviser and Coordinator for Sexual Violence in the DRC.
“Efforts are unevenly distributed [...] The programmatic focus is essentially on two sectors: medical and judicial support to sexual violence survivors, while the remaining sectors show very few interventions,” according to the strategy.
The sectors receiving proportionally less funding and attention include prevention and reintegration.
“Just treating the results of sexual violence is a catastrophe. No one is really treating the root or the entirety of the situation. If you just care for the raped women, you will be caring for them up until infinity,” said Butros Kalere of Women for Women – http://www.womenforwomen.org.
Among those feeling the funding pinch is Heal Africa – http://www.healafrica.org/cms/ – a Goma-based NGO that provides medical and social care in the region.
“Sexual violence is not just a physical problem, but we often don’t have enough funding and thus, we are limited to real work only for the immediate victims,” the organization’s community health coordinator, Jean Robert Likofata Esanga, told IRIN, adding that its programmes that focus on prevention, rehabilitation and re-integration continually suffer under-funding.
Effective prevention programming, according to Tasha Gill, child protection officer with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the DRC, “employs advocacy and awareness to mobilize the communities through community leaders, identifying the issues and working towards longer-term changes within local social norms, while alternately working towards protecting those who are most vulnerable”.
Gill also noted that the UN planned over the next few years to better direct funding so that “funding for this sort of prevention programming no longer falls through the cracks”.
Even organizations that specialize in protection are feeling the pinch. “We usually try to reduce vulnerability and protect 1,000 women in the communities on the outskirts of Goma by providing them with skills training, literacy and financing a portion of their activities,” explained an employee of one such NGO. “Now that our donor wants us to work more in an ‘emergency’ setting and we are confined to working in the IDP camps, it is very difficult as the population is always in flux. It’s hard to keep track of them and be consistent with the training.”
The UN’s goals for re-integration include “ensuring victims’ satisfaction and guaranteeing non-recurrence of sexual violence” as well as ongoing psycho-social care. However, the services are fragmented due to minimal funding, complicated coordination and the distances to be covered for transportation and service provision. Even in Goma’s Kibati I IDP camp in July, women were returning without access to further counselling, education or skills-building.
As Constance, a Heal Africa counsellor, said: “We would like to help each victim reintegrate smoothly and carry on with counselling sessions, but we are limited to having a clinic or a skill centre nearby. We do not have the funds to help every woman through her return.”
The UN’s ideal plan for re-integration also includes a “survivor-centred skill approach”. While some NGOs have funding to provide women with the opportunity to learn skills during their hospital stays, their use of those skills upon their return can be restricted by location and availability of material. For example, women are restricted in practising their sewing skills by lack of access to a sewing machine, while literacy skills are restricted by the lack of schools.
“Medical, protection, and legal/justice services and psycho-social care are part of treating sexual violence, but these services also need to include enabling women to be able to provide for their families… for them to feel like they can move on and take care of their children,” Mendy Marsh, an independent expert on sexual violence, told IRIN.
Until funding for programmes addressing sexual violence in the DRC makes this a priority, prevention and rehabilitation funding and programming will continue to have to make do with a small percentage of current funding.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/d60a2e98dba1c8474547947c407c73a6.htm
A countrywide survey of the incidence of rape in Cameroon has returned disturbing statistics: 20 percent of the nearly 38,000 women surveyed reported having been raped; another 14 percent said they had escaped a rape attempt.
Echoing findings elsewhere in the world, the survey, carried out in all ten of Cameroon’s regions by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and Cameroon’s National Association of Aunties – RENATA, as it’s known, is an organisation of more than 10,000 teenaged mothers working against sexual violence – found most rapes were committed by people known to the victims.
“The rapists are family members, including fathers, or school teachers, pastors and priests, classmates, colleagues, friends and neighbours,” Dr Flavien Tiokou Ndonko, one of the researchers, told IPS. Family members were reported to be the assailants in 18 percent of cases. Nearly a quarter of those raped became pregnant as a result.
“These statistics cannot in any way show the full extent of rape in the country, because most victims never tell anyone they have been raped,” he added.
Cameroon’s penal code states that “Whoever by force or moral ascendancy compels any female, whether above or below the age of puberty, to have sexual intercourse with him shall be punished with imprisonment for from five to 10 years.”
It further makes it illegal for a man to have sex with a woman under 16 years of age even if she consents to such intercourse.
Despite these laws, few perpetrators of rape are ever prosecuted in Cameroon.
In addition to this fear of social stigmatisation, and concern over family unity, loopholes in the law help deny rape survivors justice in Cameroon.
Section 297 of the penal code, for instance, prevents prosecution for rape when marriage has been freely consented to by the parties involved, as long as the woman assaulted is over the age of puberty at the time of the offence.
A separate study jointly carried out by the GTZ and RENATA, titled “Constraints in Seeking Justice for Rape Victims in Cameroon”, revealed that of the 33 reported cases between 2004 and 2007 at the Bamenda High Court, in Cameroon’s North West region, “only two of them were sentenced, 22 were struck out (cancelled) as lacking evidence, eight cases were discharged on grounds of simple threats, while one was withdrawn”.
The report further indicates that the procedures for getting legal redress are too cumbersome and take too long, essentially because of “the need for preliminary investigations, from the police and/or hospital to the legal department, before getting to court”.
In the course of these lengthy procedures, the report says, “most victims encounter lots of interventions and negotiations whereby the case is stopped or withdrawn before justice is rendered.”
Constraints such as a lack of counselling for survivors and accused, lack of specialised judges for rape cases, the high cost of court action and administration, as well as threats from the accused, all combine to make justice for rape survivors a privilege, not a right in Cameroon.
According to Patience Siri Akenji, the legal consultant who supervised the study, what happens in the Bamenda High Court is a microcosm of what happens in courts across the country.
She suggests the legal system be improved to make deadlines applicable to judicial officers to prosecute. Specific laws should also be enacted to protect rape victims.
She also recommends that court sessions be held in the magistrates’ chambers for the protection of rape survivors, away from the pressure of the court room, and as a way to uphold the dignity of the victim.
“This will encourage the reporting of these cases, and encourage cooperation, leading to rapid intervention in rape cases,” says Akenji.
The therapeutic support will be offered to 12 to 16-year-olds as part of an expansion of services offered by the NSW Rape Crisis Centre.
Minister for Women Linda Burney said the online support group would complement face-to-face counselling and other clinical care.
“This is the first time an online group like this has been used in Australia,” Ms Burney said in a statement.
“It targets young people with a tool they are familiar with – the internet – and will ensure effective and sensitive responses to their terrible trauma.
“Irrespective of where they live, they will have support and assistance from a peer support group and a counsellor.”
The online trial is one of three new services being offered by the NSW Rape Crisis Centre after a $616,000 funding boost from the NSW government.
The centre is also increasing telephone counselling hours and face-to-face counselling services in metropolitan and rural areas for those who have suffered childhood sexual assault.
Rape Crisis Centre executive director Karen Willis said the expansion of services will help address additional demand.
She said that in 2007-08 the centre received 7,029 calls, up from 2,927 received in 2004-05.
“We don’t think that relates to an increase in violence,” Ms Willis told reporters.
“All the indicators are that means more and more of those who experience sexual violence are making decisions to seek help in their recovery.
“We also know they are reporting to police … and that’s a really good thing.”
NSW Health Minister Carmel Tebbutt said the government would contribute an additional $80,030 to the Rape Crisis Centre to cover the establishment costs for the new services.
Dear friends
Greetings from Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML)! We are delighted to announce that Ms. Shadi Sadr is the recipient of the 2009 Tulip Award, the Dutch Human Rights Defenders Award.
‘Shadi Sadr is being awarded the Human Rights Defenders Tulip for her exceptional courage, perseverance and work in an environment of concern, where human rights are repeatedly violated,’ said the Dutch Foreign Minister, Mr Verhagen, who will present the award in The Hague on November 9, 2009.
Ms. Sadr is a courageous journalist, human rights lawyer, women’s human rights defender, and one of the most prolific women activists in Iran and in the region as a whole. She focuses in particular on ending the death penalty and stoning, as well as on women’s rights and equality under law and within cultural norms.
She began her activism in Iran as columnist and editor of national newspapers, most of which were successively banned by the Iranian government since 1997. Despite of this, Shadi Sadr continues to write in other online journals she has helped to establish, such as Meydaan and Women in Iran, the first women’s website in Farsi. She is also actively involved in legal research and film-making in order to bring the attention of the international community to discriminatory laws and resulting human rights abuses.
In 2004 Ms. Sadr founded the now-banned Raahi Institute, which provided legal counsel for marginalized women, legal literacy to young lawyers, and implemented empowerment projects. Founder of the Iranian campaign Stop Stoning Forever (SSF) in 2005, and Advisor to the Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women! (SKSW Campaign), Shadi is also Council member and an active networker of WLUML.
Her tireless defence of human rights has resulted in successful court cases where women human rights’ defenders and journalists who were sentenced to execution by the state were released. The case of Ms. Mokarrameh Ebrahimi, who was released in 2007 from Choobin Prison in Iran, where she had been imprisoned for ten years awaiting execution by stoning for adultery, reveals Shadi’s outstanding legal advocacy.
The bravery of Ms. Sadr’s activism and campaigning for women’s rights in Iran has not wavered despite her arrests in March 2007 and in July 2009, for her peaceful defence of women’s human rights. She bravely continues her work, in the unflinching belief that if people were given information about the realities of stoning and other manifestations of discrimination against women, they would change their views and that changes to the law would follow.
The granting of the Human Rights Defenders Tulip Award recognizes the invaluable activism of Ms. Sadr and of all women human rights activists in Iran and in the rest of the world. The award is also a boost for all those activists who protested peacefully for democracy after the electoral fraud in Iran and are now mercilessly prosecuted by the Iranian government. WLUML hopes that this award will grant Ms. Sadr personal safety and further support in her campaigns.
In solidarity,
Women Living Under Muslim Laws International Coordination Office
DEVELOPMENT: Is It Time to Plan Another U.N. Population Meet?
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48918
RIGHTS-UGANDA: Female Circumcision Still a Vote Winner
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48915
DEVELOPMENT-SOUTH ASIA: Women’s Peace Offensive
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48905
ECONOMY: ‘It’s Smart to Invest in Girls’
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48885
Q&A: ‘Cambodia’s Penal Code Aims to Silence Gov’t Critics’
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48924
AFRICA: Uneven Progress on Development Goals
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48869
INDIA: Return of Traditional Birth Attendants Urged to Meet MDG 5
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48853
RIGHTS: Unsafe Abortions Killing 70,000 a Year
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48851
DEVELOPMENT: Meeting MDGs “Not Rocket Science”
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48847
HEALTH: Study Faults Unregulated Trade in Human Organs
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“Women Will Benefit From Secularism” – Nawal El-Saadawi
28 October 2009 in Equality, Faith, Feminism, Government, Middle East, Opinion Comment with Closed
Controversy stalks dissident writer Nawal El-Saadawi, whose views on women and religion have put her at odds with Egyptian conservatives.
Recently she returned to Cairo after nearly three years in exile, and has already created a stir with the launch of a local chapter of her global campaign for the separation of religion and state.
“God has no place in politics,” El-Saadawi told IPS. “Religion is a powerful weapon to divide people. You are Christian and I am Muslim, and so we kill each other.”
Clerics have described her secularism campaign as blasphemous and opponents are now seeking to have her imprisoned. It’s nothing new for the outspoken 77-year-old civil activist, who has paid a price for outspokenness. Over the years she’s been removed from her post as a public health official, put in jail for criticising the regime, hounded by lawsuits, and marked for death by Islamists.
Yet she persists.
From her home in Cairo, El-Saadawi spoke to IPS about her efforts to counter the rising tide of religious fundamentalism and free women from all forms of oppression. Excerpts from the interview.
IPS: You spent much of the past 15 years in exile. Why did you decide to return to Egypt now?
NAWAL EL-SAADAWI: I came back to Cairo, in September, for the first time in three years. I decided to come back because, for one, I feel at home here with my daughter, my son, my husband and my friends. And two, I feel a responsibility towards my people, and I should do what I can as a writer. The threat of political religious fundamentalism in Egypt is growing. And people are timid; writers are afraid of the religious groups, because they are afraid of being taken to court and accused of apostasy. And the country is going backwards like that.
So I decided to come, and I will fight, even if they [gun me down] in the street. I prefer to be shot in the street and die fighting this conservative backlash against the mind, than stay in the U.S. and Europe and die, for instance, of breast cancer there. We’re all going to die, but if I’m shot in the street in Cairo at least it would have meaning.
IPS: While you were in the U.S. you founded a civil organisation to promote the separation of religion and state.
NS: I started Global Solidarity for Secular Society (GSSS), because we are all in the same boat. I haven’t seen a secular country. France is not a secular country, the United States is not a secular country. Norway – I was in Norway just last month. The king and the prime minister in Norway should be Lutheran Christian; 50 percent of the ministers should be affiliated to the state church; children are obliged to study in schools [where they are taught] that Lutheran Christianity is the absolute truth. And that’s Norway.
So there is no secular country. From this, the idea of a global solidarity movement came, that we should separate god from politics.
IPS: How do you believe countries could benefit from secularism?
NS: We need to separate religion from the constitution, state and legislation. Because whenever you have a religious law, it’s a racist law, and women are inferior.
In the family code here in Egypt, for instance, my husband can have four wives. My husband… can you imagine? He can go today and marry three other women. But if we separate religion from the legal system, if we have a civil law, he will be equal to me.
Women will benefit from secularism, because women are inferior in all religions. They suffer from religions. So when we separate religion from the legal system, the family code, culture, and the media – women will benefit, because you’re going more towards an egalitarian society.
IPS: You are not just critical of organised religion, but of spirituality as well, which you say is a deceptive term. Can you explain?
I am against feminists in the West who speak about spirituality. They don’t realise that we as women are oppressed by this division between the spirit and the body. Because in religion, god became the symbol of the spirit and mind, and man was created in the image of god, so man represented spirit and mind. As for women, they were degraded to be the symbol of the body, of the devil and of bad manners.
IPS: You object to the Islamic veil, but also to women who wear revealing clothes or apply makeup. What are your reasons for this?
NS: Nakedness and veiling are two faces of the same coin. If a woman is naked in public, she’s a sex object in the capital market; and if she is veiled, she’s a sex object in the religious sense, because men should not look at her. But if I’m neither naked nor veiled, then I’m a human being.
The mentality of patriarchy is that women are an object just to be covered, or decorated, or naked.
IPS: Your writing has always been controversial, and not without cost. So why do you continue to write?
NS: I cannot stop. There is no way back. And why should I stop? I feel that my country is going backwards. People are afraid. Intellectuals are afraid to face the challenge of religious fundamentalism because they are scared of losing their jobs, or they have interests. Because, you know, religion has become a business – there’s a lot of money to be made speaking about religion.
I’ll be 80 in two years. My mother died when she was 45, so I’ve lived nearly double my mother’s lifetime. I’ve also lived longer than the average Egyptian, and have written 47 books. What more do I need? Nothing, except to liberate the mind. And how to do that? By [freeing it from] religion.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48971