Concerning Human Rights

UN envoy welcomes beginning of child soldier discharges in Nepal

2010-01-11T05:31:00.001-08:00

www.chinaview.cn 2010-01-09 08:29:21

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- A UN special representative welcomes the start of the discharge of nearly 3,000 child soldiers serving in the Maoist army in Nepal's decade-long civil war, a UN press release said here on Friday.

The first group of young people discharged were verified as children in 2007, which subsequently disqualify them from the Maoist army, said the press release by the office for Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon's special representative for children and armed conflict.

The discharge from seven Maoist cantonments is to be completed within 40 days where the young people will be briefed by the UN on how to start their new lives and given the necessary support to return to school or to gain new skills -- all part of a rehabilitation process by the government and backed by the UN.

In December 2008, the special representative had gone to Nepal to help plant the Action Plan which has led to the discharge agreement signed by the Nepalese government, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal--Maoist (UCPN-M) and the UN.

"Today, the minors who have spent the last three years in Maoist army cantonments with their lives on hold will finally be able to take the next step towards a more positive future," Coomaraswamy said in the press release issued by her office.

Caste system traps Nepali 'hereditary prostitutes'

2010-01-11T05:30:00.000-08:00

Caste system traps Nepali 'hereditary prostitutes'

By Claire Cozens (AFP) – 10 hours ago

BANKHET — Durpati Nepali hides her face in shame as she recalls how she was forced to return to work as a prostitute after her husband was killed during Nepal's 10-year civil war.

The 35-year-old mother of five says she resorted to prostitution -- an occupation she first took up aged just 14 -- in desperation after the food stall she set up failed because customers were abusive and refused to pay.

Nepali was victimised because she is a Badi, a caste of so-called "untouchables" living mainly in western Nepal whose women have traditionally earned their living as sex workers.

Once high-class courtesans and musicians, the Badi are now among the poorest and most downtrodden groups in Nepal, where discrimination on caste grounds remains rife despite being outlawed more than four decades ago.

Many are disadvantaged from birth because they carry the surname Nepali, often used on the birth certificates of children where paternity is unclear, making them vulnerable to persecution.

"When my husband died, I had no option but to go back into prostitution to feed my family," said Nepali, whose husband died eight years ago, a victim of the civil conflict that ended in 2006.

"Even when I wasn't working as a prostitute, people treated me like one. But it has brought many problems," she told AFP in her tiny mud hut in the village of Bankhet in mid-western Nepal.

"Last month, more than 20 villagers came and threatened to burn down our home if we did not leave the village."

Activists say that a lack of education and continuing caste-based prejudices in majority-Hindu Nepal often make it difficult for Badi women to earn their living any other way, trapping them in a cycle of poverty and social rejection.

Nepali's mother was a sex worker, and now her two youngest daughters -- one aged 14, one 16 -- have followed her into prostitution.

"I had high hopes for my daughters, I wanted them to marry into good families. But they say they want to look after me like I looked after them when their father died," she said.

"I'm not happy that they have become prostitutes. But if they had not, there would be no food on the table."

Mahesh Nepali, director of the advocacy group Social Awareness for Education (SAFE) Nepal and himself a Badi, said the community faced discrimination even from other "untouchable" castes, and were viewed as the "lowest of the low."

"Even among the untouchables, Badis are seen as the most untouchable," he said.

"As a result they have no sense of self worth. On top of that, they are very weak economically, so it is almost impossible for them to change their destiny without outside help."

In 2007, hundreds of Badi women travelled to the capital Kathmandu where they held a series of rowdy protests to demand government help, some stripping off outside the parliament building.

Some help is now available in the form of government funding for the rehabilitation and rehousing of vulnerable Badi women, although the implementation of such programmes has been hampered by political instability.

The Badi -- estimated to number around 40,000 across the Himalayan country -- have also benefited from a recent change in the law that for the first time permitted fatherless children to obtain citizenship.

But Sapana Pradhan Malla, a renowned women's rights lawyer who last year became a member of Nepal's parliament, said the government needed to do much more to help the Badi people.

"Because of the social stigma they have not been a political priority," she told AFP.

"I urge the government to ensure justice for these people. After all, they are our sisters and mothers. How can we treat them differently?"

A handful of women have managed to change their destiny, among them Kalpana Nepali, 23, who grew up in a hostel for the children of Badi sex workers.

"My father died when I was two and a half, forcing my mother to go into the sex trade," said Kalpana, who now runs a small cooperative bank for her community.

"One day my mother and some other women sold all their jewellery to fund a hostel for the children because they did not want them to grow up in that environment.

"As a result, most of us managed to finish high school. But if it had not been for the hostel, I'm sure we would also be doing sex work."

But there are many more who have received no such help, such as Durpati's 14-year-old daughter Binita, who left school aged just 12 and went into the sex trade.

"I miss school. Sometimes I wonder why I left," she told AFP.

"I dreamt of becoming a doctor or doing some other honest job. But what can you do? We have no money so I cannot fulfil those dreams."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ijiTnFlqTQ1IDSQYXIaenI_4sqHA

Struggling with India gender bias

2008-09-30T12:27:00.001-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7570192.stm

Congo blasts child soldier claim

2008-09-30T01:42:00.001-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7641498.stm
Civilians have repeatedly been displaced by violence in DR Congo
A Democratic Republic of Congo minister has challenged a report claiming a rise in the recruitment of child soldiers and rape in the east of the country.
Defence Minister Chikez Diemu said authorities were tackling the problems, arresting suspects and trying them in military courts.
The report by Amnesty International said that for every two child soldiers released, five were being recruited.
The report cited victims of conflict in North Kivu province.
DR Congo's army has been battling fighters loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda in the east of the country, causing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
'Torture'
The report said that some child soldiers who had been demobilised were being re-recruited by armed groups.
It also said government security forces had "unlawfully detained and in some cases tortured and ill-treated captured children, and continue to rape and sexually abuse women and girls".
Mr Diemu told the BBC's Network Africa programme he knew of no reports that the armed forces were recruiting children.

"I wouldn't see for which reason [the army] would be recruiting kids," he said.
With renewed fighting in eastern DR Congo, the report said child soldiers who attempt to escape are killed or tortured, sometimes in front of other children.
Women and girls continue to be raped, often in public and in front of family members, it said.
But Mr Diemu said that reports on the situation in North Kivu should also say that "something is being done".
"A great deal has been achieved," he said, adding: "We still have to run to end this phenomenon, which is tragic."
"We are a post-conflict country. We have organised and just achieved democratic elections."
Gen Nkunda signed a peace deal in January following fierce fighting last year.
But he has always refused to disarm while Rwandan Hutu rebels still operate in the area, as he accuses them of attacking his Tutsi community.

Liberia cassava farm

2008-09-29T03:41:00.001-07:00

what these woman are doing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/africa_liberia_cassava_farm/html/3.stm

Economic storms threaten development

2008-09-28T04:17:00.001-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7634525.stm
By Stephanie Holmes BBC News
The Millennium Development Goals were hailed as a new framework for development - tangible targets that would propel and direct change in the spheres of hunger, health and human rights, equality and education.
But, as politicians, advocates and experts gather in New York, the economic storm clouds of soaring commodity prices and a global slowdown threaten to overshadow the future.

India's success in meeting goals on education is not matched in health
"We are very worried about the financial crisis," says Thoraya Obaid, the head of the United Nations Population Fund, whose agency focuses on maternal and reproductive health.
She admits that there is a risk that international aid priorities - and funding - will slip off the political agenda as governments and individuals grapple with their own domestic crises.
"Next year is supposed to be the year of reconciliation - of solidarity among nations - but the global crisis will affect everyone, not only at the national or government level, but also at the individual level."
The UN concedes that eight years on from member states pledging to halve the proportion of people who live on $1 (0.68 euros; £0.53) a day and reducing by 50% the hundreds of millions who go hungry each night, the results are mixed.
Towards the targets
The overarching goal of reducing absolute poverty by half is within reach for the world as whole, the UN says, but not in sub-Saharan Africa.
Some 80% of children in developing countries are now vaccinated against measles, yet one in four is still undernourished and underweight.

The [Indian] government talks about doubling and trebling expenditure, but they aren't increasing spending on a par with economic growth
Lysa John, Keep the Promise
Though the goals risk painting even progress as failure, Ms Obaid defends them as a tool.
"Without goals… we cannot monitor what we are doing and demonstrate results. It is a way for governments, international organisations and non-governmental organisations to hold each other accountable and people to hold their governments accountable."
Yet the targets have not been unquestioningly welcomed by campaigners who warn that some fundamental issues have not been directly addressed.
"Many women's groups in India feel that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) do not speak of social exclusion. They look at the sum of all things but not at socially excluded groups - like women, minorities, children or young people," explains Lysa John, of Keep the Promise, an Indian NGO which campaigns to ensure the government meets its MDG pledges.
MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/Aids
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global development partnership
Perhaps as a result, though India's economic success has fuelled progress on many goals - in particular access to education - the targets around maternal health are far from being met.
"The health indicators are where India has fallen off track," Ms John says. "We have the highest number of maternal deaths in the world."
The UN estimates that India has the highest number of women dying during childbirth anywhere in the world - one woman dying every three to six minutes from preventable causes, according to campaigners - yet the country spends less than 0.9% of its Gross Domestic Product on public healthcare."Women and children don't have a strong political voice," Ms John says. "Even beyond marginalised communities, the issue of maternal death is completely invisible - it is seen as God's hand, as your fate."
In reverse
Ms Obaid agrees: "It would cost the world $6bn (4bn euros; £3.24bn) to stop women dying during childbirth, less than the amount spent in a day and a half on the military, so you can see how a little investment could help to transform women's lives".

Households headed by women have been affected by rising food pricesEconomic success in countries across Asia is pushing down overall poverty levels but many of the poorest families within countries have been the hardest hit by the rise in staple foods like rice, wheat, corn and oil.
"It is the poorest of the poor - those who spend a large proportion of their income on food - who have been most affected by the increasing prices," explains Kostas Stamoulis, of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's Agricultural and Economics Development division. "It's the female-headed household, the landless people, the urban poor."
Until prices spiked, he explains, many countries were roughly on track to meet the first MDG - that of halving hunger.
"But if this trend does not get reversed then it will be very difficult to do it," he adds.
The FAO says an additional 75 million people joined the ranks of the hungry last year, pushed over the edge by increasing food costs.
"We believe we can still achieve it. But if food prices fall - even substantially - it will not necessarily cancel out these effects. Many households in distress have already sold assets that are difficult to build up, leaving them more vulnerable."
Political priorities
Long-term under-investment in the agricultural sector, Mr Stamoulis says, is only part of the reason why this particular MDG is proving so difficult to address, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where conflict combines with poor infrastructure.
"We also have to look at the political process in developing countries. We have to be even-handed, it's not just about the donors but also the recipients. Looking at the facts, agriculture was never a sexy sector to develop. It's about having the political will to focus on it."
India, Ms John points out, should channel a greater proportion of the growing funds available into meeting the health-related MDGs.
"The government talks about doubling and trebling expenditure, but they aren't increasing spending on a par with economic growth, the economy is growing far faster," she says.
There is also some anger, within the UN building, that the US government is considering a massive financial rescue package to bail out Wall Street, not so many blocks away across town.
"Why is it possible to find $700bn (477bn euros; £378bn) to help save the private sector on Wall Street and not find the money that is needed - in this case $6bn - to save women from dying?" asks Ms Obaid. "The issue becomes about where the priorities are."

Improving health in fragile states

2008-09-25T02:58:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7632361.stm

With the spotlight once more on the UN Millennium Development Goals, Michael Jay - the UK's chief negotiator at the 2005 Gleneagles Summit and chair of medical aid agency Merlin - argues that we must address the conflicts that prevent targets on poverty, health and human rights being met.

In countries ravaged by conflict, progress towards the Millennium Development Goals is not only stalling, it is going backwards.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, maternal mortality doubled during the recent conflict, leaving its residents with no hope of hitting the target to reduce deaths in childbirth by a third by 2015.
The same is true elsewhere - in Zimbabwe, Niger and Sudan. This week's UN summit, attended by world leaders, is an opportunity to reverse this trend.
AFRICA HAVE YOUR SAY
The MDGs will always be a mirage to Africa and Africans as long as we have the type of attitude the leaders have
Bolu Aladeniyi, Ibadan
Send us your comments
During some of the world's bloodiest conflicts - in Sudan, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo - many more people were killed by disease and malnutrition than weapons of war.
Long conflicts, often lasting decades, can destroy health systems and set each nation on a path of chronic neglect of its people.
As health workers flee fighting and medical centres close, people succumb to malnutrition and preventable disease.
Weak governments
Mothers remain at home rather than risk taking their children to a health clinic. Progress falters and healthcare stops. It is within these conflict-affected countries that the Millennium Development Goals are most off-track.

Health services can be casualties of conflict. Pic: Kate EshelbyI saw first-hand the enduring effects of conflict last week, when I travelled to southern Sudan.
Twenty-one years of civil war killed just under two million people and forced four million from their homes here, leaving them exposed to disease and malnutrition.
The bulk of these deaths could have been prevented by trained health workers. But most had fled with their families or were sick themselves. The health system had collapsed.
Three years on from a peace agreement and the lasting damage is evident.
At a hospital in Torit, in Eastern Equatoria, we are trying to train health workers. Staff try to recruit from the local community, but people who have spent years moving between camps have missed out on education. No wonder Sudan is off-track to meet its development targets.
World leaders... must acknowledge that conflict is directly responsible for a lack of progress
Sudan is, alas, not alone but one of 50 fragile states - countries where the government is unable or unwilling to support the needs of its people.
Whether emerging from civil war or recovering from famine or disease, these countries have limited resources to deal with healthcare demands.
The impact is clear: nearly half the women who die in childbirth each year live in fragile states, over half of the children who die before their fifth birthday live in a fragile state.
Ensuring a functioning health system and a trained work-force in this context is difficult, but essential.
Change possible
Many dedicated health workers, both national and international, are working on the frontline, delivering vital health care in Darfur, Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq, despite constant security concerns. They provide a key role in peace-building, helping to build up a tattered social fabric, minimising the effects of war and promoting a peaceful agenda.
And progress is possible. In Afghanistan, 40,000 young children are saved each year, the result of a growing number of skilled birth attendants working despite the insecurity.
In Liberia, a period of stability under President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has allowed health workers to deliver more vaccinations, paving the way for a fall in infant mortality.
As world leaders meet to discuss the progress of the Millennium Development Goals, they must acknowledge that conflict is directly responsible for a lack of progress.
If we as a global community are to stand a chance of reaching the targets, we must ensure that those countries most off-track receive particular attention.
Ensuring access to health during conflict and helping to rebuild health systems in the longer term must be a key priority. So must strengthening international systems for preventing conflict in the future, or the gains will be lost.
We need to work now to support countries recovering from conflict and to prevent future conflicts if we are to help millions of the world's most vulnerable people and stand any chance of reaching the 2015 target. World leaders must rise to the challenge.

Appeal for Congo child hostages

2008-09-25T02:56:00.001-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7631038.stm

The LRA has forced thousands of children into combat
The UN has appealed for the release of 90 children who it says are being held by Ugandan rebels in north-east Democratic Republic of Congo.
Unicef said it was concerned the children, seized from two schools last week, would be forced to fight.
The UN agency for children said a village chief had also been kidnapped, and at least three people killed.
The LRA has led a rebellion for more than 20 years which has left some two million people displaced.
Unicef said 50 children had been seized in a primary school in Kiliwa and 40 others from a secondary school in Duru during simultaneous attacks in Oriental province. It said another village, Nambia, was also attacked.
The LRA is believed to have a base near Duru.
In a statement, the agency demanded the unconditional release of the children.
"Unicef is very concerned that they will now be forced to fight or support fighting, putting their lives at risk," it said.
The LRA has relocated to bases on the Sudan-DR Congo border for the last two years during peace negotiations
In April, LRA leader Joseph Kony refused to sign a peace deal agreed to by his representatives after nearly two years of talks.
The LRA has said it is willing to sign the agreement but would not disarm until the International Criminal Court (ICC) lifted arrest warrants against Mr Kony.
The LRA leader is accused of numerous war crimes, including abducting and mutilating civilians and forcing thousands of children into combat.

Germany lists Holocaust victims

2008-09-21T11:13:00.001-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7624004.stm

The list of names will be passed on to museums and institutions
The federal archive in Berlin has for the first time compiled a list of some 600,000 Jews who lived in Germany up to 1945 and were persecuted by the Nazis.
The names and addresses, which took four years to compile, will be made available to Holocaust groups to help people uncover the fate of relatives.
By the time of the Nazis' defeat, only some 20,000 Jews remained in Germany, most in displaced persons camps.
Six million Jews across Europe were murdered under Adolf Hitler's regime.
Archive officials from the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation said the list was not yet definitive and would require further work.
It will not be released to the public because of Germany's privacy laws, but will be passed on to museums and institutions, including Israel's national Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem.
"In handing over this list, we want to make a substantial contribution to documenting the loss that German Jewry suffered through persecution, expulsion and destruction," said Guenter Saathof, the head of foundation.
The Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation was set up in 2005 under former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to compensate victims of Nazi persecution.

Maternal mortality drop is hailed

2008-09-21T11:11:00.001-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7625725.stm
Millions of children in India are malnourished
There has been a big fall in the number of mothers dying during childbirth in South Asia, according to the UN children's fund (Unicef).
In a new report, the agency says that maternal mortality fell by five percent worldwide in the 15 years to 2005.
The figures show that the rates fell by 22% in South Asia (from 650 to 500 deaths per 100,000 live births).
Unicef says that antenatal care and childbirth attendance rates in the region have also improved.
Their report said that India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan were still among the 10 countries that accounted for almost two-thirds of maternal deaths globally.
Maternal causes
South Asian women are among the least likely to have a skilled birth attendant at delivery, the report said.

Underweight babies are more likely to die than a healthy ones
Only 41% of all births are delivered by a health professional and in India an estimated 14.4 million births a year are not attended by a skilled provider.
"Antenatal care coverage in South Asia is the lowest in the world, but improvements are also proceeding more rapidly than in any other region," the report said.
It says that despite the improvements, South Asia still accounts for more than one third (187,000) of the estimated 536,000 women who died in 2005 from maternal causes.
That it says is a higher proportion that any other region in the world.
India alone, with an estimated 117,000 deaths in 2005, accounted for about one fifth (22%) of the global total of maternal deaths, according to the report.
"The goal needs to be a continuum of care for women and children that includes prevention of unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortions, provision of high quality pregnancy and delivery care, including nutrition and emergency obstetric care," the report says.

Peru struggles with its dark past

2008-09-20T05:04:00.002-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7132375.stm

By Dan Collyns BBC News, Ayacucho
The Andean city of Ayacucho is famous for its sunlit plazas and many ornate churches. It is also renowned for its melancholy music and colourful dances.

Angelica Mendoza's son "disappeared" 24 years ago
But many Peruvians also know the Ayacucho region as the heartland of the brutal Maoist guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso, or the Shining Path, which began its armed struggle against the Peruvian state in 1980.
Here too, the Peruvian military fought terror with terror. Hundreds of young men, suspected of being guerrillas, were plucked from the street or dragged from their homes and taken to Los Cabitos military base on the outskirts of the city.
They were "disappeared". Most were tortured and executed and have never been found.
The trial of the former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, is likely to bring the memories of Peru's 20-year internal war - a murky period of atrocities and disappearances - flooding back.
Mr Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000, is charged with ordering a paramilitary death squad to carry out two massacres in the early 1990s.
But in total there were more "disappearances" during the 1980s than the 1990s. Most of the victims were poor peasants from the central highlands.
Digging up the past
In 40C heat, a non-governmental organisation, the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF), scours the ground next to the still-operational military base.

Researchers have dug up many bodies in Ayacucho
Helping them are North American handlers with dogs that have been specially trained to sniff out human remains.
"We have done a lot of missing person cases in the US, a lot of criminal cases, a lot of missing Alzheimer's patients, children or suicides," said Pat Lansom, one of the handlers from the US-based Institute for Canine Forensics.
"But this is truly the first human rights case that we've been involved with and all the political ramifications that are associated with a human rights case."
It is not just the harsh desert terrain that is hostile and unfamiliar for the American dog handlers.
They have been subject to tight time restrictions and they believe their work has been overzealously monitored by the state authorities.
"It's hard to see how there isn't a black hand at work," says Jose Pablo Baraybar, the director of EPAF who has worked on exhumations for the UN in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
He says 15 bodies and parts of others have already been found on this patch of land and he believes there could be many more.
'Mountains of corpses'
Hundreds of women in Ayacucho think the remains of their missing husbands and sons are still there.

The legacy of the bitter conflict lives on as this mural shows
"It was half past midnight when the soldiers came into my house. They were hooded. They woke us all up and turned everything upside down but they didn't find anything, what would they find here?"
Angelica Mendoza, 77, tells the story she must have told a thousand times. She tells it meticulously as if every detail is important, as if her life stopped on 3 July 1983, the day her 19-year-old son, Arquimedes was abducted and "disappeared".
"They started to take my son. 'Why are you taking my son,' I said. 'Just for questioning' they told me, but I wouldn't let them take him so they beat me until I fell down, then they stamped on me in the doorway where their cars were waiting."
Mrs Mendoza talks unblinkingly about how she searched through "mountains of corpses" for her son.
She tells how she was turned away by the police and public prosecutor's office and endured death threats but she never gave up.
"They tried to shut me up. But I will never keep quiet up, I will never give up until I die," she says.
"When I die my daughter will continue our fight to know what happened."
Reconciliation
In August 2003, a truth and reconciliation commission in Peru found there had been 69,280 deaths during the period from 1980-2000, a high proportion of which were in the department of Ayacucho.
Left-wing guerrillas, it found, were responsible for 54% of the deaths; the military is blamed for 37%. Most of their victims were forcibly "disappeared".

The seach for bodies is far from over
These extrajudicial executions happened under three presidents, including Alan Garcia in his first mandate as president of Peru between 1985 and 1990.
Mr Garcia is now president for a second time but he has already been acquitted of any involvement in the atrocities.
EPAF director Jose Pablo Baraybar says there are still almost 14,000 unresolved disappearances in Peru and the state needs to be more transparent by "not giving up on its responsibility to investigate".
"It needs to be giving delegated authority to civil society to deal with those investigations because the state is allegedly an implicated party," he adds.
"We are creating generations of people who are lost, that had a life that was at some point interrupted," says Mr Baraybar.
Efforts to suppress or stall investigations are preventing Peru from moving on, he says.
"Those people will not be very willing or open to reconcile with the past, because they are living in the past. And it's not one; there are thousands of people like that, so what kind of time bomb are we creating?"

Black market in organs uncovered

2008-09-20T04:25:00.000-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/7493466.stm

By Paula MacKinnon BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland journalist Paula MacKinnon uncovers a market for human organs in her attempt to donate one of her healthy kidneys to a stranger in a bid to save a life.
You may think I'm mad but I'm not - I actually think what I'm doing is very simple.

Paula MacKinnon had originally planned to donate a kidney to her mother
I am donating one of my kidneys to a stranger.
I don't need two.
I have researched it well and am convinced that I will not suffer health-wise.
I came to this decision after my mother had kidney failure - I started the process of donating to her but we were not compatible.
She has other health problems and doesn't want a transplant now anyway.
The tests started 10 months ago - a lot of them - blood tests, scans and being injected with dye, amongst many other things.
It's not been easy to be honest and sometimes I have asked myself what am I doing, but it all boils down to one thing.
My donation could change someone's life and it's really minimal in terms of effort from me.
I am in the final stages - it's up to the Human Tissue Authority to decide now and I still have to have an MR scan - basically to see how my kidney is 'plumbed' for retrieval by the surgeons.

Advertisement
Secret filming exposes the organ black market
I am a journalist and decided to make a programme about it because it would get people talking about organ donation - it's a subject which is very close to my heart now because it affects me so directly.
In my research I discovered some frankly shocking things.
There is a black market in kidneys here in the UK.
I secretly filmed people trying to sell me their kidneys, exploiting the vulnerability of someone who is desperate to help a family member.
They are also trying to exploit the very law that has changed to allow me to make a 'stranger donation'.
They wanted to fool the authorities - the first woman I met started with an asking price of £250,000, another man wanted the 'price of a Mercedes' - £60,000.
I met them in cafes across the UK and their actions were shocking.
They know they are doing something illegal and just don't seem to care.
I met with a man who was a 'transplant tourist', who paid £7,000 in Pakistan to buy a kidney.
I understand his desperation but I then travelled to India and met with the very people who are selling their kidneys.

Barbara Ryder donated her kidney to Andy LoudonThey have been butchered - their scars are huge and they have long-term health problems.
It did make me doubt my actions for a moment, but I realise that what I am doing is done with great care to me and does not involve money.
I trust the doctors and NHS staff - they would not do anything to harm me.
A lot of my friends and family are not keen about my plans - I guess they just care for my health - but I wouldn't do it if I thought it would suffer.
I met Barbara Ryder - she has done the same thing that I'm trying to do - it was great to meet her because we sing from the same hymn sheet.
She has no health problems and wants more people to do this.
Who knows - maybe one day it won't be so unusual. I hope so.
BBC Scotland Investigates - Buying Hope: Selling Illegal Organs is being broadcast on BBC One on Wednesday 9 July, at 2245 BST.

Desperation behind Pakistan's kidney trade

2008-09-20T04:23:00.001-07:00

By Ayesha Akram BBC News, Lahore

Mr Amjad works 10 to 12 hours a day but still cannot pay off his debts
Muhammad Amjad, 34, takes out his rosary during a five-minute-break between shuttling customers around Lahore in his auto rickshaw.
These noisy machines, which can be heard from afar revving their four stroke engines like buzzing locusts, are usually decorated with brightly coloured motifs or poetic verses.
But the back of Amjad's rickshaw, which he has been driving for almost a decade, is completely covered by a white cloth banner with an advertisement sprawled across it in black and red painted letters.
The advertisement has been put there by Amjad who is eager to sell his kidney (blood group A+) to the highest bidder.
'Helpless'
"I don't have any other options," he says. "My family can't help me. The government doesn't help me. What can I do?"
Amjad is one of many poverty-stricken Pakistanis driven to desperation by the recent escalation in the prices of food and oil, caused by the global food crisis and the coalition government's inability to provide sufficient state-subsidies.

It's just not possible to live on this amount
Muhammad Amjad
Almost one-third of the Pakistani population - about 40 million people - lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.
Amjad's greatest problem is the loan of $4,200 he took out two years ago to take care of hospital expenses during his mother's illness.
Almost daily, Amjad's creditor knocks on his door and screams at him.
"He (my creditor) insults me all the time," he says. "I am tired of feeling helpless."
Desperate times are prompting many Pakistanis to adopt dangerous measures.
In three villages near Gujranwala, located about 75km (47 miles) from Lahore, one member from each of the 300 families living there has sold a kidney.
Atta Chohan, a resident of the area, says the stories of many kidney sellers are similar to Amjad's tale of woe.
Breaking point
"Often the kidney seller is a brick kiln worker who has taken a loan from a landlord and is unable to pay it off," he says.

Selling kidneys is a potentially fatal procedure
"Sometimes men sell their kidneys to pay for the weddings of their daughters or hospital bills."
Besides Gujranwala, the kidney trade is also flourishing in southern Punjab especially in cities like Sargodha.
Here, more than half of the people living there have sold a kidney.
The reasons for the flourishing kidney trade are simple - the poor are reaching their breaking point according to economist Dr Qais Aslam.
"There are both short-term and long-term affects of the grinding poverty," he says.
"In the short term, criminalisation is increasing, people are selling their children and in some cases parts of themselves. The tragedy of Pakistan is that a majority of the population is being forced to scavenge themselves."
Suicide
Amjad, who spends a good 10 to 12 hours a day ferrying customers around Lahore, says that despite the long hours he pulls at work he can only afford one meal a day for his family.

The kidney trade is flourishing in parts of Pakistan
On good days, he makes about 1,000 rupees (about $14) to 1,200 rupees (about $16), out of which 200 rupees (approximately $3) is spent on petrol and another 200 rupees is paid to the owner of the rickshaw from whom he leases the vehicle.
"It's just not possible to live on this amount," he says, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead and worry etched on his face. (My note - you will note the picture of him at the top. He is thirty-four, and almost entirely grey)
Abdul Sattar Edhi, popularly referred to as the Mother Teresa of Pakistan, says that stories like those of Amjad are proof that Pakistan is at the worst stage in its history.
"I fear that we will soon come to a stage where the poor will start dying of hunger," he says. "I have never seen such depressing conditions in Pakistan before."
But Amjad still considers himself to be fortunate. His friend recently committed suicide after he was unable to raise finances for his daughter's wedding and his mother's illness.
Many of Amjad's neighbours have started mobile-snatching or indulging in other petty crimes, he says.
"At least I'm earning my living honestly," he says.

Mexico plans anti-kidnap police

2008-09-20T04:20:00.000-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7626544.stm
By Warren Bull BBC Americas analyst

The rising number of kidnappings and killings has provoked a public outcry
The Mexican government has created a specialist police force to tackle the level of kidnapping in the country, among the highest in the world.
The authorities say so far this year more than 650 people have been abducted in Mexico a huge rise on last year.
Mexico's National Security Council says all 32 states will get an extra 11.5m pesos ($1.1m; £580,000) in funding to set up the anti-kidnapping units.
The move was proposed at a security summit last month.
They were responding to mass protests - triggered by the abduction and murder of a 14-year-old boy - which brought 100,000 people on to the streets of the capital last month calling for tougher punishment for serious crime.
Corruption allegations
Violence has escalated in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon came to power in December 2006, despite his deployment of more than 40,000 soldiers to try to curb the power of the drug cartels.
This year alone there have been 3,000 drug-related murders, but kidnappings often receive less media coverage.
Although officials say there have been more than 600 abductions this year, human rights groups point out that up to two thirds of all kidnappings may actually go unreported.
They also accuse corrupt police officers of involvement in the practice.
Among other measures the security council is considering is the creation of high-security prisons for kidnappers, and standardising anti-abduction laws across Mexico.
Mexicans will be hoping that the tougher line on kidnapping, and a related commitment to purge corrupt police officers, will create the safer society their president promised when he was elected.

Hunger levels soar in East Africa

2008-09-20T04:17:00.001-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7626562.stm

Rising food prices have hit Ethiopia hard
Nearly 17 million people in the Horn of Africa are in urgent need of food and other aid - almost twice as many as earlier this year, the UN has said.
Some $700m (£382m) in emergency aid is needed to prevent the region descending into full-scale famine, it said.
Top UN humanitarian official John Holmes said food stocks were critically low in parts of Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, northern Kenya and Uganda.
The area has suffered from drought, conflict and rocketing food prices.
The number of those at risk could rise still further "as the drought deepens and the hunger season continues", Mr Holmes said.

"What we need essentially is more funds, and more funds now, otherwise the situation is going to become even more catastrophic than it is today."
The estimated total for the rest of this year for those in need is $1.4bn. Almost half of that has been raised, Mr Holmes said, but there remains a shortfall of $716m.
"We may need significant funds after that period - this is not the end of the story," he said.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation blames worldwide rises in food prices for helping to push 75 million more people into the ranks of the world's hungry last year - bringing the total to 925 million.

Malaysia arrests second blogger

2008-09-18T04:12:00.001-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7622437.stm

Another blogger, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, was detained last week
An opposition blogger has been arrested for allegedly displaying a national flag upside down on his website, as the government comes under more pressure.
Syed Azidi Syed Aziz, better known as Kickdefella, is the second blogger to be arrested in a week.
The Malaysian opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, is demanding a vote of no confidence in the government.
Mr Anwar says he now has the support of enough MPs to bring down Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.
Mr Syed Aziz, picked up late on Wednesday, is being held under the Sedition Act.
He is known as a supporter of the conservative Islamic PAS party, a component in the coalition seeking to topple the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.
Mr Syed Aziz's website had recently advocated that people fly the Malaysian flag upside down as a protest against the current political upheaval.
Mr Abdullah reportedly called the protest "a malicious act" and police were told to investigate the campaign.
"We were informed that the police were looking for us on Tuesday and waited for them but they didn't show up," his Mr Sayed Aziz's wife Bariah Ishak told the Star daily newspaper.
"We thought the worst was over but they came looking for him and so he surrendered," she added.
No confidence
Mr Abdullah's government is under pressure from an emboldened opposition, which is trying to persuade members of parliament to defect in favour of Anwar Ibrahim's Pakatan Rakyat alliance.
Mr Anwar says he has written to the prime minister demanding a special session of parliament no later than Tuesday.
"Any delay in his response would be interpreted as nothing short of sabotage of democratic process and abuse of executive powers. It is therefore critical for the prime minister to respond," he told reporters.
Mr Abdullah has rejected Mr Anwar's claims of majority support in parliament. In response, Mr Anwar said on Thursday that the way to find out was to "go to the parliament".

Mr Anwar challenged the government to put itself to the test in parliamentMr Anwar needs 30 MPs to cross the floor to join its 82-strong bloc and seize a majority in the 222-member assembly.
On Wednesday, one small party pulled out of the governing coalition and Mr Abdullah hinted that he might step down early.
He also announced he would be handing the finance portfolio to his deputy, in return for taking the defence portfolio.
The parliament is currently in recess.
The ruling Barisan Nasional, or National Front, has been in power since Malaysia gained independence from Britain 51 years ago.
It lost its two thirds majority in parliament for the first time in elections in March.
Discontent has been rising as the economy falters and racial tensions have flared between the country's dominant Malays and the large minorities of Chinese and Indians.
More arrests
The latest arrest follows that of the well-known blogger, Raja Petra Kamaruddin on Friday under the country's Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial.
He had attacked government figures on his website, called Malaysia Today, and was charged with sedition and defamation for alleging that Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife were linked to the sensational murder of a Mongolian woman.
Opposition Democratic Action Party politician Teresa Kok was arrested at the same time, apparently for objecting to a mosque broadcasting its prayers too loudly.
A reporter, Tan Hoon Cheng, from the Chinese language daily Sin Chew was also arrested on the weekend but was released after a day.
Rights groups have protested against what they say is a government crackdown on dissent and repression of constitutional freedoms of speech.
They say about 63 people are being held under the ISA.
The government minister responsible for legal affairs, Zaid Ibrahim, resigned earlier this week in protest at the government's resort to the harsh law.

Mini-skirt 'ban' worries Kenyans

2008-09-18T03:37:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3522391.stm
Two women have been stripped for wearing mini-skirts and hipster trousersAnxiety has gripped women in Kenya's port city Mombasa after leaflets hit the streets telling them not to wear mini-skirts or other revealing clothes.
The leaflets warned that women wearing short skirts or "hipster" trousers risked being stripped in public.
The government has denied rumours that it had banned such revealing clothes from 1 March.
Security Minister Chris Murungaru has said the government will arrest any groups who attempt to harass women.
Last week, vigilantes stripped two women for wearing hipster trousers.
Traditional values
The BBC's Jamhuri Mwavyombo in Mombasa says women have vowed not to be intimidated by male chauvinists who have allegedly authored the leaflets.
"Nobody can tell me what to wear, since I am big enough and I can take care of myself," a woman told the BBC.
In Mombasa, a majority of the residents are Muslim and some women cover themselves from head to toe.
But a religious scholar in the town, Sheikh Mohammed Sheikh has told the BBC that although Islam disapproves of dressing in mini-skirts and tight trousers, he does not support a compulsory dress code because Kenya is not a Muslim state.
Two years ago, members of the outlawed Mungiki religious sect launched a similar crackdown under the guise of upholding the traditional values of the Kikuyu ethnic group.

Toxic milk toll rockets in China

2008-09-18T03:33:00.001-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7616346.stm

The company which made the milk is accused of a cover-up
A total of 1,253 Chinese children have fallen ill after drinking contaminated milk powder, and two babies have died, China's health ministry says.
It confirmed the big jump in the numbers affected at a news conference.
"As many as 10,000 infants may have drunk the contaminated Sanlu milk powder," vice health minister Ma Shaowei warned.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand government has accused the company concerned - and local officials - of failing to act.
The company at the centre of the growing scandal, Sanlu Group, is part-owned by New Zealand's Fonterra Cooperative, the country's biggest dairy producer.
The New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said her government contacted Beijing directly, after alerting the company and officials but to no avail.
Estimates rising
Mr Ma said in Beijing that 340 children remained in hospital, and that out of these 53 were in a serious condition.

In this case we frankly have sabotage of a product. Our hearts go out to the parents and the infants who were affected
Andrew Ferrier Fonterra chief executive
He confirmed earlier reports in the state media that two babies had died from drinking milk powder produced by Sanlu Group, both of them in north-west China's Gansu province.
Cases of contamination have also been reported in the provinces of Hebei and Jiangsu.
The government is investigating how the contamination occurred. Official media is reporting that melamine, an industrial chemical rich in nitrogen, was added to the milk powder to help the food appear rich in protein, but it also prompted babies to develop kidney stones.
Reports are now emerging of some mothers expressing doubts about the milk as early as March this year, on seeing that their babies' urine was discoloured after drinking the milk.
Government told
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said her government learned of the contamination problem on September 5, then three days later decided to inform Beijing after local Chinese officials refused to act.
New Zealand ambassador to China Tony Brown was deputised to tell the Chinese government.
"We were the whistle-blowers and they [the Chinese government] leapt in and ensured there was action on the ground," Ms Clark said.
Fonterra had "been trying for weeks to get official recall and the local authorities in China would not do it", Ms Clark told TVNZ.
"I think the first inclination was to try and put a towel over it and deal with it without an official recall," she said.
Meanwhile, Sanlu's minority partner, Fonterra, has accused Sanlu of sabotage.
"In this case we frankly have sabotage of a product," Fonterra's chief executive Andrew Ferrier told reporters.
"Our hearts go out to the parents and the infants who were affected," he added.
Under pressure in New Zealand to explain why Fonterra had not gone public with its concerns about the product sooner, Mr Ferrier said his conscience was clear.
He said Fonterra had known of the contamination in early August and wanted an immediate recall but that Sanlu had had to abide by Chinese rules.
"We together with Sanlu have done everything that we possibly could to get the product off the shelf," Ferrier said, speaking to New Zealand reporters by video from Singapore.
Arrests
All 19 people detained in connection with the scandal so far are from the stations which pick up milk from dairy farmers, the state-controlled China Daily newspaper reported.
It said the contamination probably happened at the milk-collecting stations.
Meanwhile, state news agency Xinhua reported that two brothers had been arrested, having allegedly added melamine to the 3 tonnes of milk they sold on from farmers every day.
Taiwan said late on Sunday it was banning all imports of Sanlu dairy products immediately. It is not believed that the milk powder was exported to any other country.
In 2004, at least 13 babies died in the eastern province of Anhui after drinking fake milk powder.
Melamine was linked to the deaths and illness of thousands of cats and dogs in the United States last year after it was added to pet food components exported from China.

Huge split in child death rates

2008-09-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7610810.stm
Unicef says help needs to be targeted at African countries
Progress in cutting the number of deaths among children under five is still "grossly insufficient" in some parts of the world, Unicef has warned.
Its report, published in the Lancet, shows there has been a fall of 28% in child deaths since 1990.
But the UN children's agency warns many poorer countries will not meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of cutting that figure by two thirds.
The situation is worst in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, it said.
Last year, 9.2m children aged under five died across the world.
Central and eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and East Asia and the Pacific countries have cut deaths among under-fives by over 50% since 1990.
Progress is still grossly insufficient, particularly in much of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia
Unicef report
But over the same period, deaths in western and central Africa have fallen by just 18%; in sub-Saharan Africa the figure was 21%, while in eastern and southern Africa it was 26%.
In Sierra Leone, the country with the worst under-five mortality rate in the world, 262 out of every 1,000 children die before their fifth birthday.
The rate for industrialised nations is just six deaths per 1,000 live births.
However Unicef says there are developing countries, such as Haiti, Eritrea and Turkmenistan, where major progress has been made.
Malnutrition
Its report is published to mark the 30th anniversary of the Alma-Ata declaration which highlighted the issue of child deaths.
It warns that malnutrition is now a contributing cause in around a third of deaths
HIV and Aids have had a significant impact on child deaths, and parental deaths and illness have made collecting accurate figures difficult.
But Unicef says better HIV prevention is likely to help improve child survival.
It cites countries such as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland where deaths from HIV/Aids among under fives are beginning to decline.
'Grossly insufficient'
The Unicef report says that while interventions in some areas, such as immunisations or insecticide-treated bednets to prevent malaria, have been effective, there is a “disappointingly" low coverage of services to treat pneumonia and diarrhoea.
Writing in the Lancet, the researchers said: "Substantial progress has been made.
"But progress is still grossly insufficient, particularly in much of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia."
They said working to improve sanitation, nutrition and HIV prevention, as well as better data collection, in these areas was key.
Unicef executive director Ann Veneman said: "Since 1960, the global under-five mortality rate has declined more than 60%, and the new data shows that downward trend continues."
She added: "There are also encouraging improvements in many of the basic health interventions, such as early and exclusive breast-feeding, measles immunisation, Vitamin A supplementation, the use of insecticide-treated nets to prevent malaria, and prevention and treatment of HIV/Aids.
"These interventions are expected to result in further declines in child mortality over the coming years."

Iranian women battle the system

2008-09-06T05:41:00.000-07:00

By Hugh Sykes BBC News, Tehran
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7600670.stm
Parvin Ardalan was blocked from travelling abroad to receive an award
Four more women in Iran have been sentenced to jail - six months behind bars - for campaigning for women's rights.
They were accused of "spreading propaganda" against the Islamic system here - specifically for taking part in the Million Signatures Campaign for equal rights for women.
One of those sentenced, Parvin Ardalan, was awarded the Olof Palme Prize this year - on her way to collect the honour, her passport was seized at Imam Khomeini International Airport in Teheran, and she was unable to travel.
She had to accept the award by video-link.
An estimated 50 women have been detained since the signatures campaign began.
Restrictions
Women in Iran have severely restricted freedom of choice, and no equality with men.
A married woman must obtain her husband's permission before taking a job outside their home.
A man may have up to four wives. A woman may not have up to four husbands.
Women must observe the Islamic dress code - showing as little hair as possible, and their arms, their legs and their feet must be covered.
God forbid that the Majlis should add another problem to the existing problems of women
Ayatollah Yusef Sanai
There is no protection against so-called honour killings for women who are raped; a husband - or a father - who kills the rape victim cannot be prosecuted and sent to jail for murder.
"This is inhuman," a law professor at Tehran University, Rosa Gharachorloo, told me.
Most of the people I have spoken to here agree: they believe rape victims should be comforted, not killed.
Women can be stopped and inspected by Gasht-e-Ershad, Ministry of Islamic Guidance patrols.
They have vehicles that look like police cars. They are often seen outside main metro stations in Teheran, checking women for hair or dress infringements.
They also go to parks, to ensure that couples sitting or walking together are married, engaged or related.
Significant victory
Feminists in Iran celebrated a significant victory for their cause at the end of August.
In the Majlis - the Iranian parliament - legislation that might have encouraged polygamy was sent back to committee for more discussion.
Article 23 of the Family Support Bill would have allowed men to marry a second wife without the permission of the first.

Patrols check women are keeping to strict dress codes
Although polygamy is legal in Iran, it is not widely practised and, Rosa Gharaachorloo told me, not generally accepted in Iranian culture.
So, opposition to the bill was on principle, not because it is a widespread phenomenon.
The same is the case with honour killings - they are not common here, but women's rights campaigners believe rape victims should nevertheless be protected by law.
The polygamy article may have been shelved indefinitely - the campaign against it revealed an improbable alliance of opponents.
As well as feminists, the speaker of the Majlis expressed his reservations.
And Ayatollah Yusef Sanai, a leading source of what is known as "emulation" of the Prophet and his teachings, wrote on his website that a second marriage without the permission of the first wife is "harram, a sin, a religious offence... contrary to the concept of justice prescribed by the Koran".
He went on: "I pray that such a decision that is oppressive to women will not be made into law... God forbid that the Majlis should add another problem to the existing problems of women."
Women's rights campaigners welcomed that strong and unexpected acknowledgment of their complaints.

UK - Women lose out on top jobs

2008-09-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

Yay! More people identifying "inflexible work practices" as a problem why women don't succeed (in light of their 'dual role').

BBC news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7596319.stm Women give their view of life in business

The number of women holding senior posts in politics, the law and the media has fallen compared with last year, according to a report. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said that in 12 of 25 job categories it studied, there were fewer women holding top posts. Women's representation had increased in eight areas, including company directors and the civil service. The EHRC said some women faced a "concrete ceiling", not a glass one. The commission also wants more flexible working to help women rise to the top. The EHRC said its annual study of women in top positions of power and influence across public and private sectors showed the biggest number of reversals since the report was started five years ago. Nicola Brewer, the chief executive of the EHRC, said: "Workplaces forged in an era of stay-at-home mums and breadwinner dads are putting too many barriers in the way, resulting in an avoidable loss of talent at the top. Sun editor Rebekah Wade is one of the few women at the top of her career "We always speak of a glass ceiling. These figures reveal that in some cases it appears to be made of reinforced concrete." 'Snail's pace' According to the report, there are now fewer women MPs, cabinet members, national newspaper editors, senior police officers and judges, NHS executives, trade union leaders and heads of professional bodies, compared with 2007. The number of female media bosses, MEPs, directors of major museums and galleries, chairs of national arts companies and holders of senior ranks in the Armed Forces has remained the same. Women's representation had increased in the House of Lords and among company directors, council leaders, university vice-chancellors and top civil service managers. However, in six of these categories the increase was less than 1%. The commission said opportunities for ambitious women to reach the top of their career were changing at a "snail's pace". It blamed Britain's business culture of long working days and inflexible working practices for discouraging women who want to both work and raise a family. Miss Brewer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme:
"There is a bit of discrimination still going on and that still needs to be challenged. At the commission's helpline, we still get a high proportion of calls from women at work who are pregnant who are suffering difficulties. "There are also bigger things going on about how the workplace is organised, how it's really quite inflexible, how there is a lot of occupational segregation and how the definition of success is still quite old fashioned." (emphasis my own)

'Draining combination'
The report, Sex and Power, said: "Often women experience a draining combination of outdated working practices and a long hours culture alongside the absence of appropriate high quality, affordable childcare or social care."

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "This survey proves that the softly-softly approach towards breaking down the glass ceiling is not working. "A firmer approach is needed so that women can reach the top on merit, rather than by having to fight every obstacle that society puts in their way." Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equality, said: "We have made great progress but we still have a long way to go."

Egyptian Bloggers

2008-09-03T03:16:00.001-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/world_women_are_taking_activist_roles_in_egypt/html/6.stm

Egyptians students relax between classes on the campus of Cairo University.

More and more of them have joined the bloggers nation. Those who criticise the government can wind up in jail. One Egyptian blogger Abdel Karim Suleiman received a four year sentence recently. Dalia Ziada who is campaigning for his release says it is wrong to jail bloggers. "For young people if you say something is prohibited that makes it more desirable. The government does not understand this."

Women in Egypt

2008-09-03T03:14:00.001-07:00

Source: BBC - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/7301484.stm
Egypt: women at the forefront for change
Crossing Continents travels to Egypt meeting remarkable women fighting for their rights in a male dominated society.
Two years on from Condoleezza Rice's visit to Egypt in 2005 when she challenged the Egyptians to "lead and define a democratic future", reporter Bill Law finds out what, if anything, has changed?
He hears stories from Egyptian women who are fighting against female circumcision, the suppression and imprisonment of internet bloggers, poor pay and for workers rights.
In 2005, Egypt under pressure from the United States of America, held its first presidential election. It was won by Hosni Mubarak, amidst widespread allegations of vote rigging.

Gameela Ismael campaigns for her husbands release from prisonSubsequently, the only other presidential candidate Ayman Noor, was thrown in jail and remains there today in ill health with no indication as to when he will be released. It has been left to his wife, the former television presenter, Gameela Ismail to carry on the struggle for democracy and her husband's freedom.
In the face of constant state intimidation and the loss of her livelihood, Gameela Ismail continues to speak out.
"It is very hard, for women to take a stand in this police state. Every day is like a small war."
Change

Validate women and you validate the whole society
Dalia Ziada, bloggerDalia Ziada is a 26 year old activist and blogger who speaks out against the practice of female circumcision, having been circumcised herself. In Egypt it is estimated that over 90 % of the female population are circumcised.
Dalia says the key to change is "to change the mentality of Arab women".
But bloggers who question accepted religious practices are often threatened and Dalia has been accused of being a spy for the CIA.
Dalia is also campaigning for the release of Ayman Noor and fellow blogger Kareem Amer sentenced to four years in jail - three for insulting Islam and one for insulting the president.
The road to real democracy, Dalia believes, lies through women's rights.
"Validate women and you validate the whole society."
That is brave talk in a country and a region where, as the 2005 UNDP Arab Human Development Report states
"In all cases, real decisions in the Arab world are, at all levels, in the hands of men"
BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 20 March 2008 at 1102 GMT. It was repeated on Monday, 24 March 2008 at 2030 GMT.
Reporter: Bill LawProducer: Daniel Tetlow

Rampant sexual harassment in Egypt

2008-09-03T03:08:00.001-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7593765.stm

Status of Women: Australia

2008-09-02T03:03:00.000-07:00

From Nick Bryant's Blog (sourced at BBC): http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/nickbryant/

Is it fair, or even true, to say that Germaine Greer has enjoyed more success in internationalising the ideas expressed in The Female Eunuch than implanting them in her native land?
There's no doubting that a feminist revolution has been underway in Australia for decades, but has it been a little slow, a little stunted and not yet reached its full fruition?
This week Australia will mark a landmark "female first". Quentin Bryce will become the first female governor-general in the country's history. The deputy leaders of the two main political parties, Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop, are female. Last year, Anna Bligh became the first female premier of Queensland. Kevin Rudd has appointed a record-breaking seven female ministers, four of whom are of Cabinet rank.
Away from politics, Kay Goldsworthy has recently been consecrated as the first Australian female bishop in the Anglican church. Gail Kelly has also broken through another glass ceiling by becoming the CEO of Westpac, one of the country's "Big Four" banks.
For all that, Australia has never had a female prime minister. Neither New South Wales, Tasmania nor South Australia has ever produced a female state premier. Victoria and Western Australia can boast one each, but neither received a popular mandate. No Australian state has elected a female premier (although the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory have).
It was not until 1990 that Australia saw the appointment of its female Federal Court judge. It was not until 1992 that Janet Holmes A'Court joined the male-dominated Reserve Bank Board, the first woman to do so.

Even now, only 6% of the CEOs of Australia's top 200 companies are women. They account for only 13% of the nation's judges. When Kevin Rudd convened the 2020 Summit, where forward-thinking was at a premium, he originally asked only one woman, the Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett, to chair one of the ten, brain-storming panels.
Almost 40 years after the first landmark equal pay case, the latest figures from the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Liz Broderick, revealed that women earn only 84% of what men get paid. Along with America, Australia is the only westernised democracy that does not have a statutory paid maternity leave scheme.
Before you start firing off your comments, I'm not arguing that Australia remains a bastion of beer-swilling, ocker male chauvinism. Neither, for that matter, do I subscribe to the view of the former Labor leader Mark Latham about the "crisis in male identity" and how "Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags".
I'm simply asking whether it is still the case that women struggle to penetrate the upper reaches of Australian politics, business, law and the military. And if so, why?

Romas Struggle for Fair Education

2008-08-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

I was amazed to find out that there is still school segregation for the Roma peoples. I know very little about them, or their current situation. You see how the changes have not yet had any identifiable impact and how the attitudes of the teachers veer strongly against the probability of the children picking up, and the difficulties which the Czech Education Minister, Liska identifies with addressing these prejudices. He says "We can't say to those who teach like this: you have to go. That would lead to a collapse of the school system." I wonder, though, if there are programs that can raise awareness of this harmful defeatism and prejudice against their group that translates into children's expectations for themselves, based on blaming the Roma community for their lack of participation in society instead of identifying and addressing (like through education) the concrete factors which contribute to this lack of participation - even if they believe it is wholly a matter of "fault" of the Roma people (such as the criticism of the Roma rapper Bhanga) they cannot deny that they can help to influence the concrete factors involved.
With regard to the "victimist" criticism of the poor, I am intrigued at how frequently and fervently it is maintained. An apparently popular book was recently recommended to me called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," the premise of which seems to be that it all depends on one's attitude whether one becomes rich or not. This seems remarkably naive especially to someone who is writing a thesis on the dynamics of sorrow and who is concerned with socio-economic rights as a fundamental provision for other rights to have any real basis and for capacities to have the space to begin to function.
The results of long-term efforts in Germany look encouraging. It seems in a way that Liska may have more options than he seems to think - for example, by providing high incentives and supports for Romas to enter the education field - like an affirmative-action measure - which would disprove stereotypes, provide relevant role models for the Romas who seem to find it particularly hard to identify with "white people" if we take seriously the rapper Bhanga and also the tendency the Sintas have to send their children to Sinta schools that perhaps there are issues of mutual trust that need to be built up. While I was tending away from law-based mechanisms in my essay on the socio-economic status of women, here is a situation that would strongly benefit from anti-discrimination policies and rules of affirmative action.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/7581969.stm

For generations, millions of Roma and Sinti people - often referred to as gypsies - have been excluded from mainstream schools in Europe. But the European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that this was discrimination, against the continent's largest ethnic minority.
The BBC's Ray Furlong examines what impact the landmark judgement has had.
There is no sense of victory in Berta Cervenakova's small flat.
The four children, aged 13 - 18, still share the same bedroom they did eight years ago, when she first began her ultimately successful law suit against the Czech state.
The dilapidated tenement block in the northern Czech city of Ostrava is now a condemned building.

It doesn't make up for the years she's lost - the years when you learn to read, write, and count
Berta Cervenakova
Last year the European Court acknowledged that Berta's daughter, Nikola, now 18, had suffered discrimination by being sent to a special school for mentally disabled children, even though there was nothing wrong with her.
"They took her in for a psychological test. I was told to wait outside."
"Then they gave me something to sign, and I signed. It said she was mentally retarded - but I had no idea what that meant," she recalls.
She has received 4,000 Euros compensation. "But that doesn't make up for the years she's lost - the years when you learn to read, write, and count. I can't even send her shopping. All she can do now is manual work."
But the verdict was seen by Roma groups as an important tool to fight a practice that is found across Europe - lawsuits have followed in Greece and Croatia, while other countries have taken steps to desegregate classes.
Attitudes
Despite this, real change is slow to filter through. The Czechs abolished special schools in 2006 as criticism surrounding the court case grew.
Critics say the only change was on the nameplate by the door - and a visit to one former special school in Ostrava seemed to confirm this.

"In the first grade in a normal school, the kids can count to 20. Here, they can only count to five - although we want to teach them numbers up to 10," says headmaster Jindrich Otzipka at the Ibsen school.
He takes me on a tour. In the eighth grade, a classroom for 14-year-olds, a brightly-coloured alphabet is on the wall.
"Normally the children would learn this at fourth grade. But these kids keep forgetting things, so you have to keep repeating them," he says.
"I blame the parents. They don't read to their kids. The Roma have no appreciation that you have to apply yourself to get on. They just live for the day."
Views like this are commonplace in the Czech Republic, and were also voiced to me by other teachers. The Czech Education Minister, Ondrej Liska, says changing attitudes is his greatest challenge.
"We can't say to those who teach like this: you have to go. That would lead to a collapse of the school system."
"I want to see in two years that teachers in schools with a high percentage of Roma children have appropriate training and I want to see a major shift in these schools - but I can't say: tomorrow you have to change the philosophy you've been teaching with for 20 years."
Choices

They don't send their kids to school because they don't want them to be white
Radek Bhanga, Roma rapperBut members of the Roma community tell me Roma parents also need to take more responsibility for how their children get on at school.
"I wasn't at a special school because my parents were strict with me," says Radek Bhanga, a Roma rapper who draws large, mixed-race audiences - mixing hip-hop with traditional gypsy sounds.
He has become notorious for challenging what he has called the 'victim mentality' of Czech Roma.
"Czech people are racist and xenophobic. But many Gypsies are worse. They don't send their kids to school because they don't want them to be white. It's a big mistake. We can talk about racism. But we live in a democratic country and everyone can make choices."
Sinti
After talking to Radek, I head for Germany - where there have been similar problems getting Sinti children into mainstream schools. I want to see what effect 30 years of strident efforts at integration have had.
My visit to the special school in Straubing, Bavaria, is more upbeat than my visit to the school in Ostrava. The lessons I see seem much more demanding. But still, the Sinti are massively over-represented.
"The Sinti families see this school as their school," says headmaster Wolfgang Steinbach.
"They send us their children, and we try to send them back to a normal school. But they like to have their kids in schools where the other Sinti are."

Sinti teaching assistants like Manuela and Nadia support children entering mainstream education
They do special classes with Sinti teaching assistants to prepare the children to re-enter mainstream schooling.
In one class, I meet Leo - who will be transferring up to a normal school next year.
Leo is a cheeky, funny character, with podgy cheeks and jet-black hair.
He says the work in this school frustrates him and that new Sinti assistants at the new school will make him feel at home. But it took a year to persuade his parents to have him transferred.
The experience here is a warning to anyone expecting quick change in the Czech Republic after the Strasbourg ruling.
But Jim Goldston, the lawyer who represented Berta Cervenakova on behalf of the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) says the judgement is still a crucial moment.
"The parents of many of the children in special or sub-standard schools are themselves the products of a discriminatory educational environment. That will affect their children's chances."
"So there are problems within many affected communities, but the principal burden rests on government to make clear that discrimination must end."
After the programme at 1130 BST on Thursday, 28 August join Ray Furlong and Jim Goldston - the lawyer who took the Czech State to court - for a live web-chat to discuss the issues raised by the programme.
BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 28 August, 2008 at 1102 BST. It will be repeated on Monday, 1 September, 2008 at 2030 BST.

World Poverty "More Widespread" - World Bank

2008-08-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7583719.stm
The World Bank has warned that world poverty is much greater than previously thought.
It has revised its previous estimate and now says that 1.4 billion people live in poverty, based on a new poverty line of $1.25 per day.
This is substantially more than its earlier estimate of 985 million people living in poverty in 2004.
The Bank has also revised upwards the number it said were poor in 1981, from 1.5 billion to 1.9 billion.
The new estimates suggest that poverty is both more persistent, and has fallen less sharply, than previously thought.
However, given the increase in world population, the poverty rate has still fallen from 50% to 25% over the past 25 years.
"This is pretty grim analysis coming from the World Bank," said Elizabeth Stuart, senior policy advisor at Oxfam.
"The urgency to act has never been greater, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where half the population of the continent lives in extreme poverty, a figure that hasn't changed for over 25 years."
Regional differences
The new figures confirm that Africa has been the least successful region of the world in reducing poverty.

The poor need growth - but it must be distributed more equitably
The number of poor people in Africa doubled between 1981 and 2005 from 200 million to 380 million, and the depth of poverty is greater as well, with the average poor person living on just 70 cents per day.
The poverty rate is unchanged at 50% since 1981.
But in absolute numbers, it is South Asia which has the most poor people, with 595 million, of which 455 million live in India.
The poverty rate, however, has fallen from 60% to 40%.
China has been most successful in reducing poverty, with the numbers falling by more than 600 million, from 835 million in 1981 to 207 million in 2005.
The poverty rate in China has plummeted from 85% to 15.9%, with the biggest part of that drop coming in the past 15 years, when China opened up to Western investment and its coastal regions boomed.
In fact, in absolute terms, China accounts for nearly all the world's reduction in poverty. In percentage terms, world poverty excluding China fell from 40% to 30% over the past 25 years.
Millennium goals
The new figures still suggest that the world will reach its millennium development goal of halving the 1990 level of poverty by 2015, according to World Bank chief economist Justin Lin.

The transformation of China has been the biggest example of growth
"Poverty has fallen by about 1% per year since 1981," he said.
"However the sobering news that poverty is more pervasive than we thought means we must redouble our efforts."
Oxfam, however, warns that another 100 million people may be forced into poverty by rising food prices, as well as the additional 400 millio identified in the new report.
The Bank's findings come as the OECD has reported that many rich countries have cut back on their foreign aid budgets, with little sign that the pledge made at the G8 summit at Gleneagles in 2005 to double aid to Africa by 2010 is being met.
The World Bank's new poverty line of $1.25 per day in 2005 is equivalent to its $1 per day poverty line introduced in 1981 after adjustment for inflation. The new estimates are based on 675 household surveys for 116 countries, based on 1.2 million interviews. The data has also been revised on the basis of new data on inflation and prices from the 2005 ICP survey of world prices, which showed that the cost of living in developing countries was higher than previously thought. It does not take into account the recent increases in fuel and food prices.

The Socio-Economic Status of Women

2008-08-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have just completed an essay on the socio-economic status of women in Canada in light of their "dual role" and I look into proposals of job-sharing and Basic Income as a way to relieve women's burdens.

http://mantellata.tripod.com/

Re-Appropriating

2008-08-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

This blog has been a very haphazard, unprofessional, and neophyte attempt to initiate myself into what I naively thought was a "world" of human rights. I hope to continue these efforts while learning more about issues that face "rights" from philosophical, economical, and practical points of view while occasionally sourcing such empirical events of injustice as we were instructed to inscribe in our journals for our initial human rights course. So welcome to the new face!

U.S. care for HIV detainees falls short -report

2007-12-12T06:41:00.000-08:00

Immigrant detainees are held in prison for three reasons, according to the group, "Jews for Racial and Economic Justice": http://www.jfrej.org/Facts.Immigrant.Detention.html. They are held for lesser offenses, and what is most disturbing, they can be held indefinitely (cf. one case http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/10/10/judge_asked_to_free_immigrant_detainees/) and are deprived of certain legal protections, such as the right to free counsel. Other complications which occur is the restriction of the access to counsel through language barriers and faulty phones: http://www.immigrantjustice.org/litigation/detaineerights.html. The categories of immigrants are often asylum seekers from torture which they are exposed to in other countries.
The reasons for which they are imprisoned may be because they have faulty documentation, because they have violated their visa by an overstay or in other ways, or they may imprisoned for any crime they have committed during the past, even though they have already done time for it.

These facts are considerably disturbing in themselves. But there are violations of human rights compounded to these in the conditions of their detention. This article brings attention to the neglect for health care for HIV - infected detainees. Jews for Economic and Racial Justice notes the abuses of one facility in particular, the Passaic County Jail, which has overcrowded and unhygenic conditions and in which there have been reported beatings of prisoners as well as guards using dogs to move prisoners from one location to another (cf. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4193030)
Article 7 of the Universal Declaration states that "All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination" The fact that immigrant detainees are deprived of certain essential legal protections is in contravention of the spirit of the Universal Declaration of human rights and is a sad testimony to the disregard of the American government for the rights of people who seek refuge within its borders.

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N06255192.htm
By Robert MacMillan
NEW YORK, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has failed to provide adequate care to immigrant detainees with HIV, putting their health and lives at risk, Human Rights Watch charged on Friday.
In a 71-page report, whose findings were challenged by Homeland Security, the rights group said the agency denied, delayed or interrupted treatment for HIV-positive detainees in immigration custody.
The department's detention guidelines for people with HIV/AIDS failed to meet national and international standards for appropriate care, the report said, adding the agency did little to enforce its own minimal standards.
The report said without improved standards for medical care, internal oversight and accountability to the public, "immigrant detainees with HIV/AIDS will continue to needlessly suffer, and in some cases, die in U.S. immigration detention."
The report detailed the treatment of several people who it said either died or became resistant to AIDS drugs and received incomplete dosages. Most were not identified by their full names.
A cellmate of Victoria Arellano, a 23-year-old transgender detainee with HIV/AIDS, said in an interview with Human Rights Watch that after Arellano began to vomit blood, "(she) was told only to take Tylenol and drink large amounts of water ... she died a week later."
There were 47 detainees with HIV in facilities run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, a division of the Homeland Security Department, through April 2007, Human Rights Watch spokeswoman Rebecca Schleifer said.
Detainees also are held in other facilities such as local jails and regional centers, where the government does not track the number of people with HIV, she added.
Asked about the report, ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said, "ICE provides excellent care to the detainees in our custody, it's an absolute priority with us.
"We spend nearly $100 million every year on detainee health care," she said.
About a quarter of the 300,000 people whom ICE processes each year are diagnosed with chronic health problems, and many learn about them only when ICE doctors tell them, she said.
On any given day, there are about 30,000 detainees at eight facilities run by Customs officers, seven run by private contractors and about 400 local and state facilities such as jails, Nantel said.
The report asks the government to increase the number of facility inspections, revise medical standards for detainee care, enhance protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive detainees and increase access to HIV testing. (Editing by Christine Kearney and Peter Cooney)

CIA man defends 'water-boarding'

2007-12-12T06:17:00.001-08:00

Kiriakou "felt water-boarding may be torture." "Felt"? "May be?" The intent of the practice is to simulate drowning. Any "technique" that inflicts physical pain for the purposes of gaining information by definition seems to be torture or degrading treatment to me. The Universal Declaration states that no one is to be subject to such treatment (cf. art. 5)

It is disturbing to see that for many people the right not to be tortured seems to be one of the most negotiable of rights. It is justified because the information thereby obtained is supposed to be able to save innocent lives. This would then be a case where the end justifies the means. Other people express that they have no sympathy for people who have committed horrible crimes and thus care not if they are subjects of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment.

What is unfortunate is that people do not see that human rights are inalienable and indivisble. This applies in a universal way. Certain rights can never be forfeited or suspended, even though the subjects of them have abused similar rights in others. A concept of 'right' where rights are 'taken away' arbitrarily by the behavior of the individual does not apply. Certain rights may be restricted because they are proportionate to the offense committed or the interests of the common good - such as imprisonment or labor for crimes committed, but these ar always to be in humane conditions which can foster the moral as well as the whole rehabilitation of the individual. In talking about the restrictive conditions on capital punishment (which was understood to be legitimate in his day), St. Thomas talks about the love that must remain for the human nature of the offender. If the concept of 'right' is restricted to 'an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth' or the 'advantage of the majority' - in cases where torture is used to obtain information that may save other lives - then we are left with no objective basis at all. Each abuse of human rights would then warrant another abuse. Some people would object that such person deserve such treatment by the acts which they have done as a matter of justice or 'paying a debt' - the question is, is torture ever a proportionate means of punishment or of any other end, such as obtaining valuable information?
The Universal Declaration does not appear to lend itself to this view. No one shall be subject to inhuman treatment. Immanuel Kant would say the same thing. Another consideration that shuold be taken into account is the right of the officials who are responsible for criminals or suspects to moral integrity - to behave as human beings and not to inflict harm on others. One might expect psychological damage or at least unease with respect to the perpetrators of this degrading treatment, as there is someting unnatural about inflicting physical pain on a fellow human-being. Kiriakou describes his own moral questioning: "Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that water-boarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the water-boarding technique. And I struggle with it."
____________________________________________________________________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7137750.stm
CIA man defends 'water-boarding'

John Kiriakou said he felt water-boarding may be torture A retired CIA agent has said a top al-Qaeda suspect was interrogated using a simulated drowning technique, but that he believes it was justified.
John Kiriakou told US broadcaster ABC that "water-boarding" was used when his CIA team questioned suspected al-Qaeda chief recruiter Abu Zubaydah.
He said it might be torture but that it "broke" the detainee in seconds.
US authorities are investigating the CIA's destruction of videotapes of al-Qaeda suspects being interrogated.
Mr Kiriakou said the day after water-boarding was used on Abu Zubaydah, the detainee told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to co-operate.
'Principles compromised'
"From that day on, he answered every question," the retired agent said.
WATER-BOARDING
Prisoner bound to a board with feet raised, and cellophane wrapped round head. Water is poured onto face and is said to produce a fear of drowning
CIA boss faces credibility test
Water-boarding scrutinised
"The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."
But he added: "Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that water-boarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the water-boarding technique. And I struggle with it."
He said he felt water-boarding's use had "compromised [American] principles in the short term" and was unsure the technique would be justified any longer.
"At the time, I felt water-boarding was something we needed to do," he said.
"And as time has passed, and as September 11th has, you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I've changed my mind."
The interview is said by ABC News to be first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling top al-Qaeda suspects.
Cover-up claims
It comes as an official inquiry is launched into the CIA's destruction in 2005 of two videotapes showing interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects.

The CIA is being investigated over the deletion of interrogation tapes
One of the detainees in the deleted footage, filmed in 2002, is understood to be Abu Zubaydah, the man referred to by Mr Kiriakou.
The Palestinian was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The CIA says it destroyed the tapes to protect the identity of its agents.
But Democrats have accused the agency of a cover-up to hide evidence of possible detainee torture.
The administration of US President George W Bush has always maintained it does not allow the use of torture.

Kenya to compensate locals for planting shrub

2007-12-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

The right to a safe and healthy environment for humans to live in exceeds any ecological considerations. It is astonishing that anybody would seek to preserve a plant species in existence that had such devastating effects on the human body as well as the livestock of villagers. The fact that it was actively introduced by the Kenyan government to the Baringo District belies comprehension. The Kenyan government exhibited callous disregard for the danger it would represent to the health of the nearby residents.
The quality of life of all human beings involved must be the primary consideration in any kind of endeavor, whether ecological, economical, or any other kind of project.
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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12885117.htm

Kenya to compensate locals for planting shrub
12 Dec 2007 13:55:26 GMT 12 Dec 2007 13:55:26 GMT ## for search indexer, do not remove
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Source: Reuters
NAIROBI, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Kenya's High Court has ruled that the government must compensate farmers affected by a poisonous, thorny shrub that was introduced to their remote region more than two decades ago, local media said on Wednesday.
Baringo District residents had argued during a one-year legal battle that Prosopis Juliflora, known locally as Mathenge weed, had spread rapidly and that its thorns caused the paralysis of limbs in humans and livestock.
The High Court gave a technical commission 60 days to assess the environmental impact and losses suffered by the villagers.
"The court has decided that the environmental well-being of people is the same as human rights," the farmer's lawyer, Thomas Letangule, told journalists after the verdict on Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear how much the government might have to pay in compensation after the commission reported, and government officials made no immediate comment on the ruling.
The government introduced the plant more than 20 years ago to try to slow deforestation in Baringo, north-central Kenya. (Reporting by Daniel Wallis; editing by Elizabeth Piper)

Many Britons say okay to target civilians -survey

2007-12-12T05:57:00.000-08:00

Only 51 percent of Britons believe that targeting civilians is unjustified in war! This is quite unbelievable. What about the right of persons to life and security that is assured in the Universal Declaration of Rights? What is interesting is the context - the drastic drop in numbers since 1999, a comparatively short time ago.
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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L11189008.htm

12 Dec 2007 00:01:15 GMT 12 Dec 2007
Source: Reuters
LONDON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Half of Britons think it is okay to target civilians in war, according to a survey commissioned by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The finding comes at a time when Britain is engaged in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where locals have often accused foreign troops of excessive use of force and of sometimes killing civilians indiscriminately.
The survey, conducted by polling group ICM on behalf of the ICRC, asked 1,000 people if military engagement should be limited to targeting combatants only, with civilians left completely alone. Only 51 percent of respondents agreed.
In 1999, before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 72 percent of those quizzed in a similar poll said civilians were off limits.
"The ICRC hopes that this research will inspire debate on the humanitarian aspects of war and particularly a focus on the men, women and children who become the victims of such wars," the Geneva-based organisation said in a statement.
The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have been largely unpopular with the British public since they began. The survey appeared to reflect that sentiment, with 72 percent of those polled saying they considered world events "to be going in the wrong direction".
In 1999, the figure was 55 percent.
The British public also had strong views on the use of weapons in conflict, with the vast majority (84 percent) believing chemical and biological weapons should never be used, and four-fifths saying the same for nuclear weapons.
One area in which Britons were very clear in their opinion was in the treatment of prisoners of war.
Four-fifths of respondents said PoWs should not be subjected to torture, even if it was to obtain important military information, and that the authorities should allow prisoners to be visited by an independent organisation.
Former prisoners have accused the United States of using "extraordinary rendition" to take "enemy combatants" to third countries where they were tortured for information.
Washington denies using torture or handing over prisoners to countries that practise it, although it has acknowledged holding suspects overseas. (Reporting by Luke Baker; Editing by Stephen Weeks)

Juvenile crime on rise in China

2007-12-06T07:28:00.001-08:00

The situation of youngsters in China is compounded, according to this article, by the following factor: the "abandonment and meager education levels among an estimated 20 million children between the ages of six and 16 left behind in rural villages by the country's army of migrant workers." Why is China's situation such that the 'migrant workers' are forced to seek employment out of the rural villages, thus leaving their children behind? Researcher Guiming put as primary causes "the influence of broken families, the depletion of school education, and incomplete social management." I am not sure exactly what 'social management' means - if it is concerned providing for their basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter and the right to education, then it seems to be one of the primary answers to the problem.
What role do other programmatic rights play in reducing juvenile crime? Article 11 of the Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural rights states that: The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to anadequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothingand housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions." the "continuous" is very important here - it is an effort and a priority that never ceases.
The Preambles to the Convention on the Rights of the Child also make reference to principles that childhood is 'entitled to special care and assistance' and that the family should 'be afforded the necessary protection and assistance" as the natural environment for the growth and well being of (...) its children. What is being done about the situation of these workers who must live migrant lives, and more particularly, for the children who are left behind?
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Juvenile crime on rise in China
Thu Dec 6, 2:13 AM ET
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071206/ap_on_re_as/china_young_criminals;_ylt=AkMgpQxE96sWuzKCluJ8h2wBxg8F

BEIJING - The number of underage criminals in China has more than doubled in the last decade, and experts blame the rise on broken families, loosened social controls and the Internet's negative influence, an official newspaper reported.
Academics put the number of juvenile criminals — those between the ages of 14 and 18 — at about 80,000, up from 33,000 in 1998, the official China Daily said Wednesday, citing figures presented at a recent conference.
"Offenders' average ages have become younger and they are committing new types of crime and forming larger gangs," youth crime researcher Liu Guiming was quoted as saying.
Liu blamed the problem primarily on "the influence of broken families, the depletion of school education, and incomplete social management" — an apparent reference to the withdrawal of Communist Party influence in private lives amid the rise of the private sector.
About 59 percent of juvenile criminals come from broken homes, the paper said, noting figures collected by Shang Xiuyun, a Beijing judge specializing in juvenile crime.
Emotional neglect, broken marriages, and rising levels of violence in schools and in the home — all common worldwide causes of juvenile delinquency — are contributing to the problem, the report said.
However, China's problem also exhibits unique features, including abandonment and meager education levels among an estimated 20 million children between the ages of six and 16 left behind in rural villages by the country's army of migrant workers.
Sociologists say such youths have to fend for themselves and are more likely to drop out of school and drift into menial jobs and crime.

Yahoo Betrays Free Speech

2007-12-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

Yahoo handed over the private information of two Chinese journalists who were circulating pro-democracy writings. They argued that it was better to abide by state laws - "for it is better to have a censored Internet than no Internet".
There was no reason Yahoo had to comply with the Chinese State demands. Yahoo is not under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government.
My question is, what objective do they hope to achieve by participating in a government's project of suppressing freedom of speech? It is not true that "it is better to have a censored Internet than no Internet" - their cooperation with the Chinese government is not 'saving the Internet' for the Chinese, it is only making it possible for the Chinese government to extend their control over free expression in the one place where it has been made possible for Chinese citizens.
Even if this were true, this is no justification for cooperating with a corrupt government. What is the purpose of the Internet but the dissemination of ideas? Why is not the international community outraged by this abuse of freedom of expression by China?
The cooperation of big companies such as Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft with corrupt governments shows that they are willing to offer freedom of speech only to members of select countries. Please call or write to express your concerns to Yahoo:
Yahoo! Inc.Phone: (408)- 349-3300 (toll free)1-800-318-0631(408)-349-1572 Office Hours 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PSThttp://info.yahoo. com
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Editorial NY TIMES
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/opinion/02sun2.html?th&emc=th

Published: December 2, 2007
For a company that ostensibly believes in the Internet’s liberating power, Yahoo has a gallingly backward understanding of the value of free expression.
The company helped Beijing’s state police uncover the Internet identities of two Chinese journalists, who were handed 10 years in prison for disseminating pro-democracy writings. Testifying before Congress last year about one case, Yahoo’s legal counsel said the company was unaware of the nature of the investigation. Did he miss the language about providing “state secrets to foreign entities” — a red flag for a political prosecution?
Last month, Yahoo settled a suit by the families of the jailed journalists but it did not admit doing wrong and is refusing to change its procedures to avoid becoming a stool pigeon for China’s police state again.
Yahoo’s collaboration is appalling, and Yahoo is not the only American company helping the Chinese government repress its people. Microsoft shut down a blogger at Beijing’s request. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft censor searches in China. Cisco Systems provided hardware used by Beijing to censor and monitor the Internet.
These companies argue that it is better for the Chinese people to have a censored Internet than no Internet. They say that they must abide by the laws of the countries they operate in. But the Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the press, association and assembly. Those guarantees may be purely symbolic, but these companies — which loudly protest Chinese piracy of their intellectual property — have not tried to resist. What they are resisting are efforts in Congress that could help them stand against repressive governments.
Last January, Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey reintroduced the Global Online Freedom Act in the House. It would fine American companies that hand over information about their customers to foreign governments that suppress online dissent. The bill would at least give American companies a solid reason to decline requests for data, but the big Internet companies do not support it. That shows how much they care about the power of information to liberate the world.

China urged to end "child labour" in schools

2007-12-06T06:37:00.001-08:00

Must children work for their education? Human Rights Watch noted concerning this problem, "Chinese law mandates that the state provide all children with nine years of free and compulsory education, but in practice most schools, especially in poor areas, cannot function without collecting tuition fees," it added. Article 31 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child states the right of the child to "rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child, and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts". It is a trite understanding in the affluent Western world that'children need to be children' - to play and to be carefree. When their 'school' life is interupted or even for the most part replaced by manual labor, when is the child supposed to gain this recreative time and 'participation' in cultural life, which is necessary to their full development as a person? Article 32 of the Convention states very explicitly the obligations of States to take"legislative, administrative, social and educational measures" to ensure that children are not engaged in work that interferes with their education. According to this article, the government itself is running programmes for child labor through the schools. By introducing compulsory and free education for children, China has just made children formally a part of the class of workers.
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Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK371556.htm

BEIJING, Dec 3 (Reuters) - China must end the practice of putting students to work to generate extra income for schools as the system suffers from "chronic abuses", a human rights group said on Monday.
Children are often forced to work long hours doing dangerous or exhausting work at the expense of their education under the "work and study" scheme to help schools supplement meagre budgets, Human Rights Watch said.
"China claims that it is fighting child labour, and repeatedly cites its legal prohibition against the practice as proof," Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
"But the government actively violates its own prohibitions by running large programmes through the school system that use child labour, lack sufficient health and safety guarantees, and exploit loopholes in domestic labour laws," she added. The Education Ministry declined immediate comment.
The group cited several serious cases of abuse, including one in the southern province of Guangdong where 100 children were found making cardboard boxes for 2.4 yuan ($0.32) an hour.
Schools in some poorer inland provinces had sent students to work in factories in the booming coastal regions, or to help gather the crops at harvest time, it added.
"Budgetary pressures at the local level may account for worsening practices, with local governments often slashing education and health budgets when revenues decline," Human Rights Watch said.
"Chinese law mandates that the state provide all children with nine years of free and compulsory education, but in practice most schools, especially in poor areas, cannot function without collecting tuition fees," it added.
While the government has acknowledged problems within the system and does periodically crack down, it has also stifled reporting of the issue in state media and classifies information on child labour as state secrets, the group said.
"China's own laws and international obligations recognise that children shouldn't be working," said Richardson. "But the government allows dangerous work by under-age children if their schools organise it. This really raises doubts about China's commitment to eliminating child labour." ($1=7.406 Yuan) (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; editing by Nick Macfie and roger Crabb)

In Japan, Rural Economies Wane as Cities Thrive

2007-12-06T06:10:00.000-08:00

The economic policies of Japan are gradually making a drastic gap between the 'winners and losers' i.e., between the cities and the depressed rural areas. It brings up the question as to the role which economics play in human rights and development and the responsibilities which governments have to ensure the 'common good' of all members of its society. Unbridled capitalism is considered by some to be a good system of economy, but what it really ultimately seems to do is make a smaller and smaller group of people more and more wealthy.

More is at issue here than the need to ensure economic equity - the question of what capitalism does to the quality of human life is also an interesting one. Kitagawa, a senior of 64, inherited his store from his father. There is a tradition, a culture of labor which includes a sense of pride, of ownership, of personal responsibility and credit, which home businesses and other small businesses bring that capitalism removes. People become mere cogs in the machines of big business. As Hegel termed it, man becomes alienated from his work when he can no longer see himself in it. The fact that small businesses are choked in an unrepressed market means that one important facet of human existence, the ownership and responsibility for one's labors and the sense of solidarity and continuity that is maintained in the 'family business' - these are factors which are not usually considered and yet are significant.

Economy is not a science that should be taken apart from the consideraton of the common good of all. The enrichment of a certain few does not justify the increasing impoverishment of the rest. Governments need to incorporate these principles when they are forming their economic policies.
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/business/worldbusiness/05gap.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

December 5, 2007
By MARTIN FACKLER
NOSHIRO, Japan — The only outward sign of conflict here is the red flags of protest, but this small logging city on Japan’s remote northern coast is seething.
A proliferation of national chain stores outside town has already forced the closing of about half of the city’s once teeming central shopping district. Now, many in this normally restrained rural community see the megamall being built nearby, by a company based near Tokyo, as the final nail in the coffin of their economy.
“We don’t want to fight, but we are desperate,” said Seiji Yanagihara, an official with the Noshiro Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the mall. “Tokyo is eating all the goodies, and not even leaving us with scraps from the table.”
Japan’s $4.7 trillion economy has expanded for the last five and a half years. Urban centers like Tokyo and Nagoya, the seat of the Japanese car industry, are thriving, as seen in the building boom decorating Tokyo’s skyline with glittering new high-rises.
But in regions like Akita, the mountainous northern prefecture that is home to Noshiro, downtowns have emptied and factories have closed, and an exodus to Tokyo of youths seeking jobs has left behind towns that are predominantly for the elderly.

There is widespread concern here that these changes are turning Japan into a nation divided into winners and losers, split geographically between prosperous cities and the depressed rural areas. Many here attribute this growing disparity to Japan’s embrace of American-style economic liberalization, begun in the 1990s to end the nation’s decade of stagnation.
The measures to open up markets helped revive cities like Tokyo and lowered prices for Japan’s long-suffering urban middle class. But elsewhere in Japan, they are seen as bringing unwelcome and wrenching change.
And now, with recent signs of a coming economic slowdown in Japan, divisions could deepen. On Monday, Japan’s top central banker, Toshihiko Fukui, warned of ripples from the housing downturn in the United States, one of Japan’s largest overseas markets. He said he was particularly concerned about the impact on Japan’s small and midsize companies, many of which are in rural areas.
The new economic policies are blamed for undoing one of Japan’s proudest achievements after World War II, the creation of an egalitarian society that was almost uniformly middle class. They have also eroded one of the pillars of Japan’s postwar political stability, rural voters’ stalwart support for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
The changes began during Japan’s doldrums, when the government tried to revive growth by slowly but steadily deregulating entire swaths of the economy, like banking, insurance and groceries. As seen in Noshiro, some of the biggest upheavals followed the lifting of restrictions on large stores, a step originally urged by Washington to admit American retailers.
As in the United States, this has filled the countryside with large shopping malls and strips of chain stores, some American but most domestic, at the expense of town centers.
Rural areas also lost out in the 1990s because of the gradual dismantling of government-sanctioned price cartels, which had guaranteed jobs by protecting industries from “excessive competition.” As Japan’s markets opened, a flood of cheaper industrial and textile products from China and other Asian countries gutted local economies, which still depend heavily on manufacturing.
Rural areas were hit hard again in the early 2000s, when Junichiro Koizumi, then prime minister, tried to unshackle the private sector by shrinking the government. Akita lost thousands of construction jobs as Mr. Koizumi made deep cuts in public works projects, which had been a way to redistribute Tokyo’s tax revenue to the countryside.
The economic hardships have led to a growing sense of resentment that began to spill into national politics in July.
Angry rural voters handed the Liberal Democrats a crushing defeat in elections for the upper house of Parliament. This rural discontent has helped the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which made closing Japan’s regional economic gaps the central plank of its campaign.
Many opposition politicians now talk about halting or rolling back American-style liberalization to protect traditional ways of life. Many blame Washington for having pushed Japan into opening markets. Stung by defeat, the chastened Liberal Democrats and their new leader, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, have backed away from their support of economic liberalization and have begun emphasizing steps to fix regional disparities.
“The elections were the first scream of distress by Japan’s regions,” said Daigo Matsuura, an opposition Democratic Party member from Akita who defeated the ruling party incumbent in July for a seat in the upper house. “America pressured Japan into making these changes. The result was the birth of regional economic gaps.”
Whatever the cause, the widening of these gaps is apparent in government statistics. Over the last decade, Tokyo’s economy has grown 6.9 percent. Land prices in the capital are rising so fast that there is talk of a property bubble, and the city’s population has grown by 900,000, to 12.7 million residents, at a time when Japan’s overall population growth has flattened.
By contrast, Akita’s economy and population have both shrunk by about 7 percent in the last decade, and land prices have been dropping for 15 years. Akita’s average annual income has fallen to 2.3 million yen, or about $20,000, exactly half Tokyo’s average.
Last year, after the restrictions on building large stores were lifted, Aeon, one of Japan’s largest retail companies, proposed a 378,000-square-foot shopping center near Noshiro that would be the largest in northern Akita. The mayor and consumer groups in this city of 60,000 have supported the plan, saying it would bring more jobs and cheaper prices. But they face bitter opposition from the local business establishment, particularly merchants.
Residents say it is the first time they have seen the community so divided.
Opponents have erected red flags saying “Oppose Aeon!” and are seeking a referendum on whether to allow the mall. The notion that a company, and particularly one from near Tokyo, can come in and compete with their businesses runs against the grain in rural communities like this one, where a tradition of harmonious coexistence has made the creation of economic winners and losers abhorrent.
“This is the first time that I’ve seen people here so up in arms,” said Munenori Kitagawa, 64, owner of a women’s clothing store he inherited from his father.
Mr. Kitagawa opposes the mall. “We are fighting for our survival,” he said.
For all of Japan, the question now is whether this sort of reaction will be strong enough to stop or reverse economic liberalization. The central government has already begun to tighten restrictions on large stores, and many in rural areas are calling for more public works.
But many in Tokyo and regions like Akita say Japan’s soaring fiscal deficits make it impossible to return fully to the old ways, and many advocate opening markets further.
Some analysts and politicians fear that Japan is entering a period of political stalemate, with the government taking no significant steps in either direction.
“There is no more consensus on economic policy,” said Heizo Takenaka, a former economic policy minister who earlier this decade was an architect of many of the changes.
So far, regions like Akita have not adapted on their own to the changing economic environment. In interviews, local business leaders bemoaned their declining fortunes, but also quickly dismissed suggestions that they seek new opportunities in nearby emerging markets like China or Russia, which sits just across the narrow Sea of Japan from Akita.
Indeed, local leaders who have tried to make changes complain of running into a thicket of local interest groups and powerful bureaucrats in Tokyo — both forces against altering the status quo. Norihisa Satake, the mayor of Akita city, the prefecture’s capital, says he has hit such obstacles as he has tried to promote revitalization plans like expanding his city’s port for large Russian ships, luring tourists from Tokyo or even holding a one-day jazz festival.
“It’s hard to convince people that they need to adapt to economic changes,” Mr. Satake said. “It’s as if they still want to use horse-drawn carts to compete in the age of the auto.”
But in small ways, some in Akita are learning to adapt.
Arata Chinda, whose used-book store in Noshiro is one of only 10 shops left on a downtown commercial street filled with either shuttered storefronts or vacant lots, said sales at his store had fallen 90 percent in the last decade. But instead of giving up, he has found an alternative marketplace online.
Mr. Chinda, 60, says he now supplements his income by selling used fantasy card games, which were popular in Akita, to collectors elsewhere in Japan. But he said he is the exception.
“It will take 10 or 20 years for this city to think of new ideas,” he said. “By that time, the downtown will be nothing but a ghost town.”

Iranian hanged after verdict stay

2007-12-06T05:34:00.000-08:00

20 year old Makwan Mouloudzadeh was only 13 when he 'raped 3 teenage boys'. The alleged victims withdrew their accusations, likely when they found out the sentence that was to be imposed.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child expressly forbids capital punishment for persons below eighteen years of age (and of course for persons of the age of majority being tried for crimes when they were below that age).
Makwan's case of hanging is a special abuse because of his age of immaturity when he committed this crime. In reading this sad account, I am struck by the list of offences which are eligible for this kind of punishment in Iran: murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug trafficking, apostasy, adultery and homosexual acts between men. Note that some of these things are not even considered crimes in a democratic society - "apostasy" is technically a human right - i.e. the right to freedom of religion (which includes the freedom not to practice a religion). Consensual sexual acts between persons of age, while not particularly defined as a right, certainly merit no punishment on the part of civil society - they may be perhaps contained under the right to privacy or something similar.
Even for cases such as murder, rape, armed robbery, "serious" drug trafficking - how do any of these crimes justify capital punishment? At one time, capital punishment may have had a practical purpose - if prison security was incapable of holding dangerous criminals who present a real likelihood of continuing to harm people in a very grave way, perhaps capital punishment was the only way to 'protect' society at large. I suspect this was not the rationale that was given - but it seems to me the only rationale which could make capital punishment justifiable. Respect for life must extend to all members of the human family, even those who have seriously harmed other people. Killing people is not the way to make them 'pay their debt' to society.
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Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7130380.stm
Amnesty says five minors have been executed in Iran in 2007

An Iranian man has been hanged for rape despite his alleged victims withdrawing their accusations and a judicial review being ordered into the sentence.
Makwan Mouloudzadeh, 20, had been found guilty of raping three teenage boys when he was 13 years old.
The hanging took place on Wednesday morning at a prison in Kermanshah province in western Iran.
Human rights groups say international law strictly forbids execution of child offenders, even after they become 18.
"On 11 November the head of the justice administration of Kermanshah received an order from the judiciary head, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to stop the verdict being carried out," the lawyer, Saeed Eqbali, was quoted as saying.
"But the case, which was supposed to be reviewed in Tehran, was sent back from there to Kermanshah, and the execution was carried out quickly," the lawyer said.
Public execution
Clarisa Bencomo, of the US-based Human Rights Watch, told Reuters news agency she had received information that Mouloudzadeh's family had been to come and pick up his body.
Her organisation had spoken to people who had seen the body, she said.
As a state that is party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran has undertaken not to execute child offenders.
But Amnesty International says Iran has executed five minors so far in 2007 and 27 minors since 1990.
The latest execution brings to at least 280 the number of people hanged in Iran this year, according to the AFP news agency. Many are public hangings.
Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug trafficking, apostasy, adultery and homosexual acts between men.

Japan elderly abuse much more than disclosed-media

2007-12-04T10:07:00.001-08:00

I think it is time to call for a convention on the rights of the elderly. This is especially timely today, as we have a considerably 'aging population'. We are lacking a culture of respect and reverence for age. Aged people, because they often have physical and other weaknesses which decrease their ability defend for themselves, making them vulnerable to particular forms of abuse. The ailments which usually accompany old age render them particularly needy, and so neglect has worse physical consequence than it would even for children.
The social and emotional needs of the aged are also sadly curtailed. The Human Rights Learning Centre (http://www.hrea.org/learn/guides/aged.html) voices particular categories of rights of the elderly that need to be addressed, including those that fall under "participation" and "image" - participation referring to the possibility of continuing to hold an active place in society, and "image" referring to not only reduce discrimination and degradatory views of the older person, but to work on creating a positive image of the elderly and their place among the human community.
Formerly, it has been the practice in many cultures, particularly Asian cultures, to keep one's aged parents and grandparents under the family roof, to care for them and to render them particular respect due to the experience of their years. It may be the huge prevalence of elderly in nursing homes do not reflect the callousness of children and other relations, but the desire on the part of the elderly 'not to be a burden' to loved ones. But the fact that the elderly consider themselevs to be a burden to members of their own family is itself a sad commentary on the state of affairs. We ought to create a culture of respect and dignity for human life at every stage within our society. Old people must not be perceived as burdens, but recognized for their value as persons which age and infirmity can never reduce.
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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/T270292.htm
Source: Reuters

TOKYO, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Nearly 500 elderly people were abused at Japan's nursing homes in the space of nine months last year -- 10 times the number of cases reported by the government for a whole year, Japanese media reported on Tuesday.
A survey conducted by experts on elderly care earlier this year revealed 498 cases of nursing facilities employees abusing the elderly between April and December last year, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.
Of the 498 cases, 190 involved psychological abuse, such as cursing and ignoring the elderly. More than 130 cases involved physical abuse and 110 involved tying elderly people to a bed or otherwise restraining them, the paper reported.
Survey respondents listed personality clashes between nursing home employees and the elderly and a lack of knowledge among staff for the abuse.
The survey drew responses from some 1,800 nursing home employees around the country, the Yomiuri said, adding this suggested that many more abuse cases were probably going unreported.
A government report in September recorded 53 cases of abuse against elderly people in nursing homes in the year to March -- around one-tenth of the figure that the new survey revealed for part of that period.
The Sendai Dementia Care Research and Training Centre, which issued the survey last month, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Rapidly ageing Japan, where a tenth of the population is aged 75 or older, is confronting cases of abuse against the elderly.
Government data showed that nearly 13,000 elderly people were abused by their family members in the year to March. (Reporting by Yoko Kubota)

Iraqis 'left to rot' in Lebanon

2007-12-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

The Universal Declaration states the right of every person to seek and enjoy asylum in other countries (article 14). This is a most fundamental right, because the other list of human rights are empty if a person is not free to move from a place which, through war or other reasons, consitutes a real and constant threat to their security.

The attitude of countries such as Lebanon (and indeed frequently other countries including the United States and Canada) to persons seeking asylum is a disgrace and reflects an ambiguous commitment to human rights.
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Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7126651.stm
Iraqis 'left to rot' in Lebanon
A human rights watchdog has sharply criticised Lebanon's attitude to Iraqi refugees who do not have valid visas.
New York-based Human Rights Watch says hundreds of Iraqi refugees face the prospect of "rotting in jail" unless they agree to return home.
About 50,000 Iraqis are thought to have fled violence and instability in Iraq to the relative safety of Lebanon.
HRW says at least 500 Iraqi refugees are in jail in Lebanon and 150 were expelled in the first half of 2007.
Its report Rot Here or Die There: Bleak Choices for Iraqi Refugees in Lebanon urges the authorities to ease restrictions on Iraqis and grant them temporary legal status.
"By giving Iraqi refugees no option but to stay in jail indefinitely or return to Iraq, Lebanon is violating the bedrock principle of international law," said HRW refugee policy director Bill Frelick.
A Lebanese official quoted by AFP said the country did not offer special treatment for Iraqis, but did offer residency to anyone who qualified for it.
Lebanon never signed the 1951 UN convention on refugees. For decades its politics has been dominated by finely balanced sectarianism, which analysts say makes it hyper-sensitive to demographic changes caused by influxes of refugees.
More than 2.5 million Iraqis are refugees, most of them in neighbouring Syria and Jordan and at least 2 million more are internally displaced.

Turkish prosecutor probes atheist book

2007-11-28T07:44:00.000-08:00

Freedom of expression is an important right based in a man's freedom not only to search for the truth and to say what he thinks, but also to share opinions and interact with others in the community concerning whatever he wishes to say. The freedom of expression, especially by the printed word, is the basis of a free and democratic society, it permits the growth of ideas and it provides the opportunity to criticize abuses or faults in the state or society in which one lives.

Curtailings of freedom of expression are accepted in certain contexts, i.e. when it is targeting particular groups with hatred, i.e. words that are damaging or threatening or that incite others to hatred - another aspect of this, I suppose, is when there are no bonafide grounds for discrimination (e.g. race, sex, religion, economic status, etc). I introduce the "bonafide" grounds because there are contexts where criticism is fully permissible. But to suppress something because it is an attack on 'values' does not seem to qualify in any respect. Values may always be challenged, and they are in a free and democratic society - that is the prerogative of every person to say what he thinks and to challenge existing structures. The fact that Turkey is seeking to prosecute a publisher for the dissemination of an atheistic book is a very sad sign of Turkey's stand with respect to civil and political rights.
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Source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071128/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey_atheist_book;_ylt=AmPOyuNvJlOo_9n08Fwq1b1vaA8F
Wed Nov 28, 5:50 AM ET
ANKARA, Turkey - A Turkish prosecutor has launched a probe into whether a book by best-selling atheist writer Richard Dawkins is an attack on religious values — a move that could lead to the prosecution of the book's Turkish publisher.
Publisher Erol Karaaslan said Wednesday he would be questioned by an Istanbul prosecutor on Thursday as part of the official investigation into Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion."
Karaaslan could face trial and up to one year in prison if the prosecutor concludes that the book "incites religious hatred" and insults religious values, Milliyet newspaper reported. Karaaslan is both the publisher and translator of the book.
The investigation of the British scientist's book comes at a time when Turkey has been criticized for targeting writers and intellectuals for expressing opinions. The European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, is pressing Ankara to change laws that curb free expression, calling them inconsistent with the bloc's free speech standards.
Turkey said this month it would soften a much-criticized law that makes denigrating Turkish identity, or insulting the country's institutions, a crime.
The Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk was among the highest profile Turks snared by the law, when he commented on the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century.
Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
A probe was launched into "The God Delusion" after one reader complained that passages in the book were an assault on "sacred values," Karaaslan said.
No one was available for comment at the prosecutor's office.
The book has sold some 6,000 copies in Turkey since it was published by Karaaslan's Kuzey publishing house in June.

"A Loss for Privacy Rights"

2007-11-28T07:01:00.000-08:00

This project is blatantly discriminatory against persons on the basis of economic standing.
What is appalling here is not only the permittal of this ruling which permits the police to enter into people's homes unwarranted is the lack of response of the American public. The author suggests a reason for this: "The case has not prompted much outrage, perhaps because the people whose privacy is being invaded are welfare recipients, but it is a serious setback for the privacy rights of all Americans" He later warns: "It would be a mistake, however, to take consolation in the fact that only poor people’s privacy rights were at stake. When the government is allowed to show up unannounced without a warrant and search people’s homes, it is bad news for all of us." He brings to light the callousness of people with respect to the poor - it is 'all right' to search their homes, because they're poor.
Article 12 of the Human Rights declaration ensures the right to privacy: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." Do rights disappear or become less present when the subject is poor? The Supreme Court of the United States seems to think so.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/opinion/28wed2.html?th&emc=th

Editorial
A Loss for Privacy Rights

Published: November 28, 2007
The Constitution protects individuals against unreasonable searches, but for this protection to have practical meaning, the courts must enforce it. This week, the Supreme Court let stand a disturbing ruling out of California that allows law enforcement to barge into people’s homes without a warrant. The case has not prompted much outrage, perhaps because the people whose privacy is being invaded are welfare recipients, but it is a serious setback for the privacy rights of all Americans.

San Diego County’s district attorney has a program called Project 100% that is intended to reduce welfare fraud. Applicants for welfare benefits are visited by law enforcement agents, who show up unannounced and examine the family’s home, including the insides of cabinets and closets. Applicants who refuse to let the agents in are generally denied benefits.
The program does not meet the standards set out by the Fourth Amendment. For a search to be reasonable, there generally must be some kind of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. These searches are done in the homes of people who have merely applied for welfare and have done nothing to arouse suspicion.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, rejected a challenge brought by welfare recipients. In ruling that the program does not violate the Constitution, the majority made the bizarre assertion that the home visits are not “searches.”
The Supreme Court has long held that when the government intrudes on a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy, it is a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. It is a fun-house mirrors version of constitutional analysis for a court to say that government agents are not conducting a search when they show up unannounced in a person’s home and rifle through her bedroom dresser.
Judge Harry Pregerson, writing for himself and six other Ninth Circuit judges who voted to reconsider the case, got it right. The majority decision upholding Project 100%, Judge Pregerson wrote, “strikes an unprecedented blow at the core of Fourth Amendment protections.” These dissenters rightly dismissed the majority’s assertion that the home visits were voluntary, noting that welfare applicants were not told they could withhold consent, and that they risked dire consequences if they resisted.
The dissenting judges called the case “an assault on the poor,” which it is. It would be a mistake, however, to take consolation in the fact that only poor people’s privacy rights were at stake. When the government is allowed to show up unannounced without a warrant and search people’s homes, it is bad news for all of us.

Canada in pledge over Taser death

2007-11-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

A Taser is supposed to be an alternative to the use of a gun. Why would it have been necessary for three burly policeman to shoot an unarmed man who was upset and began throwing things (at no person in particular)? As you can see from the illustration at the end of this article, a taser has 50,000 volts of electricity. More than 18 people have died in Taser incidents since 2003, according to CBC. That's more than four people a year. With its history, Canadian police ought to have been aware, ought to have been trained to understand that it should be used sparingly, i.e., in cases where real self-defence is required, i.e. when one's life is actually threatened by an armed or unusally dangerous person. In short, the point of a taser is to avoid the taking of a life. The policemen would not have shot Mr. Dziekanski in this context. The fact that policemen are using it on harmless individuals such as Dziekanski shows an indifference to the danger involved to the individual's life.
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Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7114519.stm

Canada's Border Services Agency says it will change its operation at Vancouver airport following the death of an immigrant stunned with a police Taser.

Robert Dziekanski's final moments were captured on video by another traveller and the recording sparked outrage when it was broadcast two weeks ago.

Mr Dziekanski, 40, was Polish and spoke no English. He was declared dead at the scene by an emergency medical team.
It is the first time the agency has spoken about the 14 October incident.

The agency's president, Alain Jolicoeur, expressed his condolences to Mr Dziekanski's family and said that an internal investigation had recommended a review of services provided to international travellers and those waiting to meet them.
More cameras will be installed to cover areas under the agency's control.

The video shows Mr Dziekanski being pinned down by police

The agency will also increase security and ensure that people get to customs without long delays.

The agency is also updating its list of employees who speak languages other than English and French, and reviewing interpreter services to make sure interpreters are provided as quickly as possible.

"The CBSA is committed to implementing these recommendations without delay here at Vancouver International Airport and at other international airports as appropriate, to further secure and safely facilitate travellers' entry," Mr Jolicoeur said.
Airport mix-up

The CBSA report is one of several investigations into Mr Dziekanski's death currently underway.

Mr Dziekanski, a construction worker, was emigrating to Canada to join his mother, who lived in the western province of British Columbia.

Mr Dziekanski, who had not flown before, had boarded a plane a day earlier in Germany, and arranged to meet his mother at the baggage carousel in the international terminal.
Neither of them knew the baggage carousel was inside a secure area, with no view of the public arrivals hall area, except for a short distance through sliding glass doors.

Mr Dziekanski's mother waited for him for five hours in the airport's public arrivals area but eventually went home after a call to an immigration official, who told her partner that no person fitting her son's description was in the immigration area.
After spending 10 hours in the secure part of the international arrivals area Mr Dziekanski apparently panicked when he finally emerged into the public area and could not find his mother.

Police were called when he began throwing furniture and shouting.

He died shortly after being stunned at least twice with a Taser, seconds after police arrived.
A debate about the use of Tasers - promoted as a non-lethal alternative to guns - is ongoing in Canada after a series of incidents, including the death of an inmate at a Nova Scotia prison last week.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation says more than 18 people have died after being stunned by a Taser in Canada since 2003.

(For earlier coverage and a video of the event, vide http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7095875.stm)

There was a study, the results of which were released on October 8 by the BBC, concerning the safety of taser guns. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7029376.stm

African human traffic is catalyst for child abuse

2007-11-26T12:34:00.000-08:00

According to this article, UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children are being trafficked every year. One of the most sad aspects of the situation is that parents seem to be wanting the best for their children by sending them to 'apprentice' or be 'domestic servants' with wealthier families. "Their families do not understand, and sweep it under the carpet," according to Serigne Mor Mbaye. Apparently apprenticing these children is a traditional practice, although the tradition does not seem to be working anymore because of the different society - the children are no longer in the hands of relatives who actually do have some kind of interest in their well being, but they are left with completely unscrupulous strangers.
There do not seem to be adequate recourses for these children to obtain justice. It seems that a very important avenue to resolving this problem is the education of parents, as they responsible guardians for their vulnerable children. We have seen in an October article another example of dangerously trusting American parents who entrusted their teenagers to "boot camps" where they died from ill-treatment.
Why do parents hand over and delegate their responsibilities with respect to their children to others? Here is is a question of culture that gives particular credence to this exposing children to the guardianship of others - and perhaps this 'placement' did work well within a specific context - within the circle of relatives.
What kind of avenues are present, or can be made present, to children who are trapped and misunderstood even by their own families with respect to the abuses which they are subject to - the families who are blinded because of the cultural practice? A similar question may be asked about the 'boot camp culture' with even more application - children are quite helpless because parents intentionally place them in a position where their lives are to be made more difficult, and complaints are understood to be a matter of course.
However because of the special situation and vulnerability of children, it seems to be difficult to reach them. They are 'closed off' to the world, because they are supposed to be provided for by their parents or other guardians.
What can be done to improve the situation of children in this regard, how can there be avenues for formal complaints that are feasible and accessible to these children, who are so completely under the power of their elders? What legal measures can be taken to protect children from exploitation in these circumstances?
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Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L18213814.htm

By Alistair Thomson
DAKAR, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Akissi was not even 10 when she was sent abroad from Togo to work as a domestic servant for a woman who beat her and twice forced chilli peppers into her vagina to punish her.
Now 15 and struggling to care for her 6-month-old baby and a husband who beats her, Akissi's tale was discovered by researchers investigating the psychological effects of child trafficking in West Africa and the way it encourages abuse.
Researchers for U.S.-based non-profit development agency Plan International, who shared their findings with Reuters ahead of Monday's World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse, gave the girl the pseudonym Akissi to protect her identity.
Working with researchers, Akissi drew a "life-line", with flowers to represent good experiences and stones for bad ones.
A green flower marks her return from domestic servitude in Benin to her village in Togo at the age of 12. A black stone indicates when she was raped there before her next birthday.
Akissi is severely traumatised by past and present abuse, and is at serious risk of committing suicide by consuming agricultural chemicals, having already tried to do so once, Plan researchers say.
"There are very few institutions ready to help them ... there is no psychological support for these children. Their families do not understand, and sweep it under the carpet," said Plan's Serigne Mor Mbaye, who worked on the pilot research programme in Togo that interviewed Akissi.
"This really is the tip of the iceberg," he said.
"MODERN SLAVERY"
The U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children are trafficked every year into what it calls "the modern-day equivalent of slavery".
This trafficking takes many forms in West Africa, encouraged by a tradition of "placing" young children with families of wealthier relatives to receive an education or learn a trade.
"It's a high-risk practice," Mbaye said.
"Many of those who are placed are victims of abuse. This traditional practice continues to happen, but (social) solidarity does not function like before," he said, adding that many children are placed these days with unrelated strangers.
The Plan research in Togo found most trafficked children went to Nigeria, girls generally as domestic servants and boys working in agriculture, markets or serving food.
Different types of child trafficking networks have sprung up in other parts of West Africa.
Police in tiny Guinea-Bissau uncovered a trafficking network last week when they found over 50 young boys headed to Senegal, where hundreds of children sent from neighbouring countries to attend Koranic schools end up begging for coins on street corners.
"You should have seen the state they were in. Aged between 4 and 21, these exhausted children were barefoot, poorly clothed, some naked from the waist up," said Carlos Abdulai Djalo, governor of the Bafata region where the 52 children were found.
Rights activists have campaigned against the use of "child slave" labour on farms in Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together produce most of the world's cocoa beans. But researchers have said the situation is often more nuanced than appears, with children working on family-owned fields in traditional fashion.
The child trafficking debate has been revived by the arrest last month in Chad of French humanitarian activists on child kidnapping charges over a bid to fly 103 children to Europe.
The children were presented as orphans from Darfur, even though most turned out to be from villages in the Chad/Sudan border area and had at least one living parent. (Editing by Pascal Fletcher)

Embryonic stem cells made without embryos

2007-11-26T12:19:00.000-08:00

This is wonderful news for those who were concerned about the rights of the embryo. There is a tremendous indignity to human life to create embryos (or use so called 'leftover' embryos from other purposes) for the purposes of medicine! Their only purpose for existing is the interests of other people, after which they are killed or allowed to die. Emmanuel Kant stated as a moral maxim that "no person can be treated merely as a means, but always as an end in himself." He did not state that no-one can ever be used as a means, but not merely as a means (i.e. it is justifiable to use adult stem cells from a voluntary donor.)
Some people argue that the embryo is not yet fully a human person, because of the incipient stage of development. However, one could argue that the value of human life is so great that even in its primary stages it must be treated with special respect and accorded dignity. It brings to mind the question of nature in development - is the embryo of a different nature than other members of the human family? All the biological material is present - it merely needs time to develop. A born infant is certainly at a very limited stage of development - and yet there is no question of the completeness of the human nature that is present. This is shown in the way infants are considered to have the legal status of persons - infanticide is considered a form of murder, for nobody would question that infanticide is a specific form of murder, for instance.
Respect for the dignity of human life must extend to all its stages to be credible - to assume that one particular group of individuals are excluded by reason of their stage of development is an arbitrary discrimination.
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Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N20615247.htm

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Researchers have transformed ordinary human skin cells into batches of cells that look and act like embryonic stem cells -- but without using cloning technology and without making embryos.
Their breakthroughs, reported on Tuesday, could make possible the long-sought goal of tailor-made medicine, but without the political, scientific and ethical roadblock of using human eggs or embryos.
The White House immediately welcomed the development, given President George W. Bush's long opposition to embryo research, even as scientists said the finding should not be the end of such research.
"We weren't avoiding the ethical controversy -- we just thought this was an alternative approach that would work quicker," said James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who led one of the teams.
"This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone -- the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers' first airplane," said Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts company working in the same field.
"It's not practical to use right now, but it might be in a few years. This is truly the Holy Grail -- to be able to take a few cells from a patient -- say a cheek swab or few skin cells -- and turn them into stem cells in the laboratory."
The researchers agree it will be years before the technique could be used to treat people. More immediately, they say it can be used to study diseases and to screen drugs.
"We have to be sure the cells are safe," Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and the University of California San Francisco said in an e-mailed statement.
Yamanaka and colleagues reported their finding in the journal Cell. Thomson and colleagues reported theirs in the journal Science.
The new cells are called induced pluripotent stem cells and look and act much like embryonic stem cells -- the master cells that give rise to every cell and tissue in the body.
FOUR GENES
Both teams used just four genes to transform ordinary skin cells called fibroblasts into induced pluripotent stem cells -- iPS cells for short.
Yamanaka's team got the cells to develop into heart cells, which then beat in unison.
Each method is likely to be patented separately.
Both teams said the new cells are not ready to use in people yet because they used a type of virus called a retrovirus to carry the new genes into the skin cells. It is not clear whether this virus might cause genetic mutations that could cause cancer or other side effects.
"Even though we have this nice new source of cells it doesn't solve the downstream problem of getting them into the body and functioning," Thomson added.
The discoveries also were unlikely to resolve the long-running political and ethical debate about stem cells.
The controversy has split the U.S. Congress along unusual lines, pitting staunch abortion opponents such as Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who supports human embryonic stem cell research, against equally conservative Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, who opposes it.
"This exciting breakthrough means that we can conduct embryonic-type stem cell research without destroying human life, and I call on supporters of embryonic stem cell research to recognize that we have no realistic need to destroy embryos," Brownback said in a statement.
But Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa agreed with Thomson, who said it is too early to abandon embryonic stem cell research.
"Scientists may yet find that embryonic stem cells are more powerful," Harkin said in a statement. "We need to continue to pursue all alternatives as we search for treatments for diabetes, Parkinson's, and spinal cord injuries." (Editing by Bill Trott))

Forced marriage of Utah girl

2007-11-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

Article 16 of the Universal Declaration is concerned with rights respecting marriage. It is careful to point out that the parties are to be of full age and that there is to be full knowledge and full consent on both sides.
What about the presence of religions or more precisely, sects that effectively promote coerced marriages, particularly with underage females? The right to freedom of religion and the practice of religion is limited by the human rights of others. One cannot practice those parts of one's religion which involve such infringements upon basic human rights.
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Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7104832.stm
US polygamy sect leader sentenced
Warren Jeffs led the breakaway Mormon sect from 2002A US polygamist sect leader has been sentenced to 10 years to life in jail as an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin.
A Utah court said the state board of pardons would ultimately determine how much time Warren Jeffs would serve.
The 51-year-old was jailed for at least five years on two counts, with the sentences to be served consecutively.
The self-proclaimed prophet was found guilty in September of encouraging the girl to have sex against her will.
He spent 15 months on the run before his arrest in August 2006.
Jeffs was the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). The sect split from the Mormon Church after it renounced polygamy.
He went into hiding after being charged in Arizona with being an accomplice to incest and sexual misconduct for allegedly arranging marriages between minors and older men.

Warren Jeffs was on the FBI's most wanted while on the runAt the time of his arrest he was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.
A jury convicted Jeffs of orchestrating the girl's marriage to her 19-year-old cousin in 2001 and encouraging her to have sex by telling her she would go to hell if she did not.
Allen Steed, who has not been charged with any offence, testified that his wife had initiated their first sexual encounter.
Under Utah law a 14-year-old can consent to sex, but not if they are enticed by someone at least three years older.
Church under pressure
Jeffs, who is reputed to have 70 wives, took over the leadership of the FLDS church after his father, Rulon, died in 2002.

The 10,000-strong sect dominates the towns of Colorado City, in Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, less than a mile away. A compound in Eldorado, Texas, is also home to a growing community.
Members believe a man must marry at least three wives in order to ascend to heaven. Women are taught that their path to heaven depends on being subservient to their husband.
Polygamy is illegal in the US, but the authorities have reportedly been reluctant to confront the FLDS for fear of sparking a tragedy similar to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, which led to the deaths of about 80 members.
However, observers say the church is coming under increasing pressure from authorities in Utah and Arizona.

Rape case adds to Brazil jail notoriety

2007-11-26T11:04:00.000-08:00

This is unbelievable. As the article states, it is of no difference in whether the girl was 15 or 20 - or 40, 60, or 80, the violence and rape to which she was exposed be being placed in a cell with twenty men is an inexcusable offense against the rights of every woman. The subjecting of a vulnerable woman where the security of her person is bound to be compromised is unbelievably unjust.

And yet it is worse if she is fifteen - for a child should not be in an adult penitentiary because they have special needs on account of their age and stage of developement. Article 37 of the Convention of the Rights of the child notes this special situation of children: "Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons of his or her age."

This would compound to the crime of basically knowingly exposing a woman to a round of torture and distress with the other dangers to health that rape can present to a woman. The emotional after-effects are worse with respect to a child than a woman of more life experience.

What makes the situation even more pathetic (not that it makes any moral difference - the right to be free of degrading and inhuman treatment does not admit of degrees - alleged crimes of the subject have no bearing whatsoever on the absoluteness of this right) is that mere theft is what is suspected to be the reason for the girl's incarceration. Another article from the BBC states: "Media reports suggested that the girl was placed in a police cell in the town of Abaetetuba on suspicion of theft. But human-rights groups say there is uncertainty about what offence the girl was accused of and she was not formally charged." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7108676.stm)

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Rape case adds to Brazil jail notoriety
By Gary Duffy BBC News, Sao Paulo
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7109933.stm
It sometimes seems that there is little left to say about prisons and the system of detention in Brazil that still has the capacity to shock.

Even so, the report that a young woman, possibly as young as 15, was left to share a cell in a police station with around 20 men and is said to have been repeatedly sexually abused, does stand out for its sheer horror.

The fact that police officers involved then started to dispute her age, as if it mattered whether she was 15 or 20, does say something about the inability to grasp the scale of what had been done.

The girl does not appear to have been helped by the involvement in the case of women officials at various levels.

According to Brazilian media reports the officer in charge of the station where the case was processed was a woman, who has since been suspended, while a woman judge who dealt with the case did not authorise a transfer.

The governor of the state of Para, where the incident happened, is also a woman.

"I am shocked and angry," Governor Ana Julia Carepa told the Brazilian media.

"My political life was always dedicated to the defence of human rights and it would not be different in my administration."

As an effort continues to shift blame for what happened, the civil police of Para say that the judicial officials knew that the girl was being held with a large number of male prisoners.
They have produced a document which suggests a request was made to transfer the girl to a centre for young offenders on 7 November, at least a week before she was discovered by an official responsible for child welfare.

The discovery was only made after an anonymous tip-off.

The document - presented to the judge - requested the urgent transfer of the young woman to a detention centre for women, and said that she ran the risk of "any type of violence".
The police request for a transfer was only made after the girl had been in custody for 15 days, and in total she was held for 26 days, according to the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.
Welfare officials say the girl reported that she had suffered sexual abuse from about 20 prisoners and had to offer sex in return for food. She also showed marks of cigarette burns on her body.

Cell deficit
Brazilian prisons have long had a reputation for violence, appalling conditions and overcrowding.
Criminals using mobile phones in their cells are even able to directly organise crimes outside.
In August, 25 prisoners died after fellow inmates set fire to mattresses in a cell in a jail in the state of Minas Gerais.

The most notorious case in recent Brazilian history happened in 1992 following a riot in Carandiru jail in Sao Paulo when 111 prisoners were killed, the vast majority shot by military police.

In 2002 alone, 303 inmates were murdered by other prisoners.

A preliminary report from the United Nations Committee Against Torture, released on Friday, makes a grim analysis of the state of Brazilian prisons.

It speaks of endemic overcrowding, filthy conditions and pervasive violence, as well as torture "meted out on a widespread and systematic basis".
Part of the problem is that Brazil does not have a federal prison system and all prisons are run by the 27 different systems, although they are governed by a single penal law.

Between 1995 and 2003, the number of prisoners in the system more than doubled, from 148,760 to 308,304 men and women.

More than 100,000 new prison spaces were created but the country still has a huge deficit.
In recent years as many as 25% of prisoners have been held in police cells due to shortage of space, even though this is illegal. In some states the figure is even higher.

While the number of women in Brazilian jails is in line with other countries, it is clear that the level of overcrowding and violence means they can be extremely vulnerable.

Tim Cahill, Amnesty International's researcher on Brazil, said the organisation received extensive reports of women in detention who suffered sexual abuse, torture, substandard healthcare and inhuman conditions, showing that this case is far from isolated.

"Even though women in Brazil make up a small percentage of the overall prison population, their numbers in detention are rising," he said.

"There is a desperate need for the government to address their needs, which are rarely, if ever, met."

The security secretary for the state of Para, Vera Talvares, told Folha de Sao Paulo that any type of violation of a woman's rights was a violation of human rights and should receive exemplary punishment.

If that resolve leads to a change in policy in Para, and in other parts of Brazil, it would at least be something, but past events do not leave much room for optimism.

Torturers 'must pay victims' - UN

2007-11-26T10:52:00.001-08:00

This would be an innovative (and likely very effective) strike against torture!
____________________________________________

Mr Nowak suggested that individual torturers should foot the bill. States that commit acts of torture should be forced to pay for victims' rehabilitation, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak has said.
Mr Nowak said torture victims required long and costly treatment, and usually rich nations footed the bill rather than the offending states.
Mr Nowak said the EU was the biggest donor to torture rehabilitation centres, providing $29m (22m euros).
He was presenting his annual report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
"Countries where torture is widespread or even systematic should be held accountable to pay," the UN rapporteur said.
Mr Nowak suggested that such states could then even pass the bill on to the individual torturers.
"If individual torturers would have to pay all the long-term costs, this would have a much stronger deterrent effect on torture than some kind of disciplinary or lenient criminal punishment.
"In reality, it's almost never the state that tortures, but other states who provide asylum, who take victims of torture and who are then providing in state institutions rehabilitation."
Mr Nowak said the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture was the second biggest financier of torture rehabilitation, providing $17m (13m euros).
He also called for the application of a provision for universal jurisdiction within the UN convention against torture, which obliges countries to arrest alleged torturers who arrive on their territory.

UN Human Rights Council http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/4session/index.htm

Torture 'unpunished in Indonesia'

2007-11-26T10:51:00.001-08:00

Here is another unfortunate example of the widespread prevalence of torture in instutions, by those persons who are supposed to represent the law. The original purpose of police forces, as enforcers of the law, is supposed to be the protection of the common good which includes the human rights of individuals.
__________________________________________________________________
Torture 'unpunished in Indonesia'
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7109219.stm
The police are rarely punished for the abuse, Mr Nowak saysIndonesia has a "culture of impunity" in the face of ill-treatment and torture, a senior UN official has said.
Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture, has spent two weeks inspecting the country's prisons and police and military detention centres.
Mr Nowak said he found evidence of detainees being electrocuted, suffering systematic beatings and even being shot in the legs at close range.
He called on the government to make torture a separate crime under the law.
The BBC's Lucy Williamson, in Jakarta, says Indonesia has regularly come under scrutiny for its human rights record. Mr Nowak's visit is the third by a UN human rights monitor this year.
Safeguards call
He conceded that treatment of detainees had improved since authoritarian dictator Suharto's regime came to an end in 1998.
But the envoy said abuse had continued, and the police appeared to be the main culprits.

Mr Nowak toured several regions of the country
"The problem of police abuse appears to be sufficiently widespread as to warrant immediate attention," he said.
The level of abuse varied widely between institutions, depending on the personal behaviour of those in charge, he said.
In some places there were no reported cases of abuse, in others he said torture was systematic, with detainees regularly suffering beatings.
"In all the meetings with government officials nobody could cite one case in which a police officer was ever found guilty and sentenced by a criminal court for ill-treatment or other abuse of a detainee," he said.
He called on the Indonesian government to strengthen the legal safeguards against torture.
He said there should be a separate offence of torture, a reduction in the time people spend in police custody and an independent complaints system.
Mr Nowak, who will deliver a full report to the UN Human Rights Council, visited institutions in Jakarta, Papua, South Sulawesi, Bali and Yogyakarta.

Child Soldiers: "Seeking Hidden Accounts of Atrocity"

2007-11-24T10:55:00.003-08:00

Ms. Kamara-Umunna is engaged in a particular task - uncovering the stories of murder and rape and violence. She has come across many child-soldiers in particular. This is a special question concerning human rights: when it is about children who were forced, not only to witness or to experience atrocities, but to engage in them themselves. This is the very worst kind of human rights abuse, in my opinion - not only to be a victim, but to be forced to be an actor in violence. (It is true that there are different kinds of 'force' and 'influence' - and here one calls to mind the case of Omar Khadr, the fifteen-year-old boy, for example, who was influenced by his father to engage in combat. In Africa, however, the recruitment of child soldiers is on a completley different level in terms of its violence. Still, a lesser degree or even absence of force does not take away the fact that a child can scarcely be held responsible in the same way as an adult, especially when there are additional pressures involved, such as the adult being the parent)

Can these people be held responsible for what they were forced to do? In Sierra-Leone, some child soldiers were brought to trial as adults. Are there any child soldiers who have become so willingly? How does one treat of these cases? The Convention on the Rights of the Child calls for the rehabilitation of children who were forced into armed combat (art. 8 sect. 5). An investigation into "trauma studies" is probably a good place to start to find a way to help people who have experienced the worst possible sides of human nature and particularly those who were forced to cooperate in horrible crimes.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/nyregion/31reconcile.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

October 31, 2007
Seeking Hidden Accounts of Atrocity
By ELLEN BARRY
The other day, as she was walking on Park Hill Avenue in Staten Island, Agnes M. F. Kamara-Umunna noticed a young man who seemed reluctant to meet her gaze. He was about 25, and he began talking showily on a cellphone as they passed each other on the sidewalk.
After three years spent collecting narratives from survivors of Liberia’s civil wars, Ms. Kamara-Umunna has instincts. She believed she had spotted a former child soldier, vanished almost seamlessly into a community 4,500 miles from home. If she had antennas, they would have trembled.
Ms. Kamara-Umunna, too, blends easily into this neighborhood, among thousands of Liberian refugees in northeast Staten Island. But she has come to New York on a mission.
In Liberia, she specializes in persuading former child soldiers — men with every reason to keep silent — to give oral histories, sometimes confessing acts of bewildering violence on her radio program there.
Generally, she says, it takes her two to five minutes to identify whether a person has something to tell her.
“You have to dance very closely,” said Ms. Kamara-Umunna, 40. “It is not a distance dance.”
The puzzle before her this fall is how to do this work in Staten Island, where survivors have lived side by side for years without revealing what role they played in Liberia’s civil wars, which spanned the years from 1989 to 1996 and 1999 to 2003. She will submit the accounts of soldiers, victims and witnesses to Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which this year began a historic effort to collect narratives about wartime atrocities from refugees in the United States.
Ms. Kamara-Umunna’s approach is an unusual one for the truth commission, which generally sends teams of lawyers to collect statements in the United States. She studied secretarial administration, and has a klieg-light smile and a cap of braids. She imagines that in peacetime she would have spent her life in the friendly havoc of a travel agency.
But the war came. Now, as the host of a radio program financed by the United Nations, she ventures into the ghettos of the Liberian capital, striking up conversations with idle young men. She smokes and drinks with them if necessary, and winds around to the subject of killing.
They tell her stories like this man’s, which she remembers from early in her work: “They ask him to make love to his sister and mother,” she recalled. “He had to do it. They had to kill the sister and mother and he had to join the killers.”
She offers them mental health services at a drop-in center, which, like her radio program, is called “Straight From the Heart,” after the 1983 pop ballad by Bryan Adams.
In this quiet way, Ms. Kamara-Umunna has retrieved hundreds of confessions against remarkable odds, said Massa Washington, one of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation commissioners, who is overseeing the process outside Liberia.
“She seems to have the skill of persuasion,” said Ms. Washington, who visited New York last month to train 60 local statement-takers. “She just turned the entire thing around.”
Ms. Kamara-Umunna is in New York for nine months of training on a scholarship at the International Trauma Studies Program, an independent nonprofit organization based in Manhattan. She decided to use the time to mine Staten Island’s Liberians for their memories. She arrived early in September with the phone number of a single local contact, set out with bright confidence and slammed into a brick wall. Her old technique of striking up conversations had fallen flat; she found herself making phone calls and setting appointments. Even then, many of her subjects failed to show up.
It dawned on her, she said, that many of them “had never talked about it to anybody.”
“They keep on breaking in, coming back, trying to remember,” she said. “You see somebody breathe heavily. You see somebody changing position to feel comfortable.”
On a recent morning, she knocked uninvited on the door of Amelia Woods, a former school vice principal who now works as a personal care assistant. Ms. Kamara-Umunna planted herself on the sofa, her face expressionless, while Ms. Woods stared across the room in a kind of trance.
“You couldn’t hear any bird,” said Ms. Woods, in a near-whisper, recalling the moments before a massacre. “You couldn’t see any dogs. No animal. It was quiet as a graveyard. I don’t know how the animals manage to know something was wrong.”
“The way they killed that Congo man, I can’t get over it, you know,” she continued, a few minutes later. “You know how they kill that man? They didn’t use gun, no. They didn’t use knife, no. You know how they did it? They tied him in the legs. They threw him upside down in the well. They lock the well.”
When Ms. Kamara-Umunna asked about reconciliation, Ms. Woods was skeptical. “I have discovered that human beings say one thing and do another thing,” she said. “People just say beautiful words and have something evil in their hearts.”
After six weeks of work, the stories emerged slowly from Park Hill: Mothers who saw their daughters raped and abducted, a father who watched as his son was murdered for refusing to fight.
And then, by dumb chance, a real discovery: A 65-year-old man, Edmund Coleman, said he had witnessed a massacre in 1985. That year, Gen. Charles Julue is said to have thrown hundreds of children down a well in Nimba County. Accounts of the incident stoked the overthrow of the government, but to this day, General Julue’s supporters deny that it happened.
Ms. Kamara-Umunna was so excited that she placed a call to Monrovia, where the truth commission is headquartered, and spoke to its chairman.
When Mr. Coleman twice failed to show up for an interview, she went to find him at the coin laundry where he works. Yesterday, he sat down over his lunch break and told her what he had seen near the well, two days after the reported massacre: a 12- by 24-foot patch of disturbed earth, and bloodstains on the ground.
“I did not see him do it,” he said of General Julue, “but I understood that he was connected. To me, he was a killer, and a murderer, and a man who had two tongues.”
A note of disappointment entered her voice. It was not enough.
The accounts by perpetrators were also proving elusive. As many as 20,000 child soldiers were conscripted by rebel forces, Human Rights Watch estimates, and Ms. Kamara-Umunna knew that many had been resettled as refugees. But few residents are willing to name names; no one, child or adult, will admit to killing. “I have not figured out how I am going to do it,” Ms. Kamara-Umunna said, but added, “I see myself solving this puzzle.”
Though 29 truth commissions have been created around the world, according to the International Center for Transitional Justice, nearly all have focused on the experiences of victims, and virtually none include statements by low-level perpetrators, said Priscilla B. Hayner, a co-founder of the center.
Soliciting such statements is complex, because they could be used as the basis for prosecution or — in the United States — deportation. Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, which is heading the effort outside Liberia, recommends that refugees worried about such consequences give their statements anonymously.
Even so, every statement entered in the organization’s database has come from a victim.
What Ms. Kamara-Umunna will uncover in Park Hill remains to be seen. She recently began hunting for a job that would pay her living expenses. The cold weather was troubling her. Her birthday had just come and gone, and she was lonely. As she passed people on the street, she would smile at them, and they would not smile back.
“At one point,” she said, “I thought, ‘It’s not worth it.’ ”
And then, another trickle of information, another incremental victory. Last week, she once again passed the young man who she suspects fought as a child soldier. This time, he looked straight at her and said, “Hi, Miss.”
They both kept walking.
“So,” she said, with evident satisfaction, “I am waiting for the next time I talk to him.”
Kassie Bracken contributed reporting.

Cholera kills boy at notorious Baghdad orphanage

2007-11-24T10:55:00.001-08:00

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/RYA556121.htm

BAGHDAD, Nov 15 (Reuters) - An Iraqi child has died from cholera after falling ill at a Baghdad orphanage that became infamous this year when starving, naked children were discovered tied to their beds, a health official said on Thursday.
Adel Muhsan, general inspector for Iraq's Health Ministry, said the boy, believed to be around 12 years old, died from the virulent disease on Wednesday at a Baghdad hospital.
Four more children, boys and girls all under the age of 14, living at the al-Hanan orphanage in Baghdad's Utaifiya neighbourhood were also diagnosed with cholera and remained under hospital care, Muhsan said.
The cholera cases were confirmed several days after a dozen children at the orphanage came down with diarrhoea, he said.
The public orphanage made headlines this summer when U.S. soldiers helped rescue two dozen children found naked and severely malnourished in darkened rooms.
Many had been tied to their beds and were too weak to stand.
After the incident, the boy's section of the orphanage was closed, and the boys were moved to a nearby building where the girls were housed.
Muhsan blamed the cholera cases on a water tank on the orphanage's roof that had not been properly cleaned or maintained.
"We have a team that is always visiting the (orphanage)," he said, adding that orphanage officials had not responded to recommendations on clean water from the Health Ministry.
Orphanage officials could not be reached immediately for comment.
There have been at least 4,400 cases of cholera, which can kill victims with sudden, severe diarrhoea, in Iraq since an outbreak in August of this year, chiefly in the northern provinces. Cholera is spread mainly through water and food.
But the government has taken steps to curb the problem with a public awareness campaign and monitoring of the disease. (Reporting by Wisam Mohammed; writing by Missy Ryan; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Two Uzbek detainees die of torture - relatives

2007-11-22T08:23:00.001-08:00

Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Torture, however, seems to be one of the more prevalent abuses of human rights, as I am beginning to discover in my perusal of human-rights cases. Particularly vulnerable are prisoners. Do human rights end for persons who have done (or who are merely suspected of having done something wrong)? We seem to condone this at a certain level, as people are very rarely outraged by stories concerning the bad treatment of prisoners. However, Article 5 definitely excludes such a notion by rejecting "inhuman or degrading punishment". Human rights are not negotiable - it is not a system of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' - even persons who have done horrible things have not lost their human dignity, and while every precaution is to be taken that they cannot further abuse the rights of others, and 'non-degrading' punishment is permissible, they must be treated with dignity and respect.

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L225181.htm

ALMATY, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Two prisoners who died in jail in Uzbekistan this month had marks on their bodies consistent with torture, relatives and human rights campaigners said on Thursday.
Both men had been in jail on charges of Islamist extremism in the town of Andizhan, scene of a bloody uprising in 2005. Uzbekistan's Interior Ministry press service and penal system officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
Some Western nations have accused Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, who is seeking re-election in next month's presidential vote, of allowing human rights violations and systematic torture in jails. He has denied those allegations.
One prisoner, Takhir Nurmukhamedov, 42, died of torture on Nov. 13, said a close relative who had seen his body.
"The condition of his body was very bad. It was badly injured. It was clear that he was subjected to inhuman, severe torture," the relative said on condition of anonymity.
"I saw him in his Andizhan prison two months ago. He arrived limping, which was strange, and he couldn't hear well. I asked him what happened, and he said he was being tortured very badly."
The other prisoner, Fitrat Salokhiddinov, 40, died in the same prison around Nov.12., said Surat Ikramov, a prominent rights activist.
He said he had been told by the man's relatives that he had been tortured, but could not give any details. Salokhiddinov's relatives could not be reached for comment.
"The number of torture cases has risen and they became more severe," Ikramov said. "According to our estimates, more than 20 people have died over the past two months."
Karimov, in power for 18 years, has denied widespread human rights violations and torture in jails. He says his government has to take tough measures against Islamist militants who he says seek to topple his secular, post-Soviet government.
His ties with the West deteriorated after troops opened fire on a crowd in Andizhan in May 2005. Witnesses said hundreds of people were killed. The government put the toll at 187 and said they were mainly terrorists and security forces.
Rights groups have accused Uzbekistan of using what it sees as a growing threat of Islamist militancy as an excuse to press on with a wider crackdown on dissent and religious freedom.
In a November report, Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations to press Uzbekistan over what it described as "torture and ill-treatment" in Uzbek jails. A U.N. anti-torture committee is meeting this week to discuss Uzbekistan and other nations.

Rights Groups Condemn Egypt Over Religious Affiliation On Government Documents

2007-11-14T08:43:00.001-08:00

Members of the religious minority of the Baha'is are prevented from the rights of citizenship in Egypt because religious affiliation is required on government documents and the Baha'is religion is not a recognized one.
Why is nobody asking the purpose Egyptians for which include religious affiliation as a requirement for these documents in the first place? The right to freedom of religion is fundamental. As Stork mentions, religion is at the core of one's identity. The right to freedom of religion and the manifestation and practice thereof is stated by the Universal DeclarationThere can be no good reason for the State to need to know one's religion - the only purpose that can be imagined is as a basis for discrimination.
The fact that some are excluded from certain rights of citizenship on the basis of their religion not being one of the popular ones is astonishing. This is not a very commonly-seen abuse of human rights. The right to be a citizen of some country and to receive full benefit of the law thereof is essential for the welfare of a human being.
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Source: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009154266 Rights Groups Condemn Egypt Over Religious Affiliation On Government DocumentsJoseph S. Mayton - AHN Middle East Correspondent Cairo, Egypt (AHN) - The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), in conjunction with Human Rights Watch (HRW) have called on the Egyptian government to allow all citizens to use their actual religious identity on government issued documents, including identification cards. A joint report titled "Prohibited Identities: State Interference with Religious Freedom" details the systematic restrictions against religious minorities in the North African nation. Highlighting the report were the Baha'is, who have been prevented from having their religious affiliation written on their ID's, documents and even birth certificates. In Egypt, religious affiliation is required in order to obtain state identification cards and other documents. By denying the small community of being allowed to identify themselves as Baha'is, the government is essentially stripping them of full citizenship rights in the country. "Interior Ministry officials apparently believe they have the right to choose someone's religion when they don't like the religion that person chooses," Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, said at a press conference in Cairo. "The government should end its arbitrary refusal to recognize some people's religious beliefs. This policy strikes at the core of a person's identity, and its practical consequences seriously harm their daily lives," he added. "Our research clearly shows that there is no fixed Islamic law position on the administrative requirements for religious identification in the public records of a modern bureaucracy," Hossam Bahgat, director of the EIPR, said at the same conference. "Officials should pursue an approach that upholds basic principles of justice and equality, instead of one that directly violates the rights of its citizens."

Blind patient left in park by Japan hospital staff

2007-11-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

This sad occurrence brings to mind the question of the rights of the aged and or the disabled, which are not explicitly mentioned in the CESC except under the provision for social security and social insurance, but it is mentioned in the Declaration under article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
There is a speical vulnerability attached to old age and particularly disabled old age. The reasons why this problem is more pronounced today than ever is because of longer lives, and changing perceptions of the aged. It is an issue that will become more and more of a concern, as we have an 'aging population' - "(D)ue to the trend of lower birth rates and lower death rates, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, one out of every ten people on the planet is now 60 years of age or older. If the current trend of lowering birth rates and lowering death rates continues, by the year 2050 one out of five people will be aged 60 years or older and by 2150, one out of every three people will be aged 60 years or older." (Cf. http://www.hrea.org/learn/guides/aged.html)
The website which I just cited gives a very concise presentation of the rights of the aged person which are particularly at stake in today's world. Three categories of rights are at stake, according to this analysis - they fall under "protection, person, and image". Protection is with respect to the physical, psychological, and emotional well-being of the person. This sad event which I listed depicts all to well that kind of abuse - abandoning a blind, diabetic man in a park.
There is obviously a hole in Japan's social security system - this man needs a home as well as ready access to health facilities.

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Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/T344633.htm
Blind patient left in park by Japan hospital staff
14 Nov 2007 05:20:06 GMT14 Nov 2007 05:20:06

Source: Reuters

TOKYO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Hospital workers in Japan took a blind patient to a park and abandoned him, then made an anonymous phone call for an ambulance to take him away, a spokesman for the hospital admitted on Wednesday.
The four men, all office staff at the hospital in the city of Sakai, western Japan, took the 63-year-old diabetes patient home, but then left him in a nearby park after his ex-wife refused to take care of him, the spokesman said.
"We deeply regret this happened ... We find it difficult to understand why they did such a thing," he said, adding that they had no instruction to abandon him.
The patient had refused to be discharged from the hospital even though he was fit enough to be treated as an out-patient, the spokesman said.
Sakai City health official Ken Sakaguchi condemned the case.
"This should not have taken place -- it's unthinkable under normal circumstances," he said. (Reporting by Yoko Kubota, Editing by Michael Watson)

Woman dies from ectopic pregnancy bleeding

2007-11-10T10:35:00.001-08:00

I had an earlier reflection on abortion- concerning the 'conflict of rights' that seems to be at issue - and I chiefly was engaged in contrasting the right to life with the right to "freedom of choice".
This is a case when the mother's life is actually at stake. This particular case, that of an ectopic pregnancy, is one in which it is impossible to save the life of the fetus, but the mother stood a very real chance of death (and actually died) by not acting to remove the child earlier. In 'natural law' ethics - there is a principle called "double-effect" whereby one intends to acheive some important ethical good which at the same time implies so-called unintended effects. I used to think that it seemed an odd kind of ethical argument - a way of skirting around responsibility. But now I understand it a little bit further. I think that 'double-effect' applies perfectly in situations such as these, where if one doesn't act at all - two evils are likely to result instead of one which is certain, and so it is better to take the action that achieves a certain good, even if the consequences are grave, the consequences if one does not act are still graver. This is a very easy and clear situation it seems for me - it is impossible for a child of an ecoptic pregnancy to survive (at least until our medical techonology increases by leaps and bounds) and the chances are very heavy that the mother will die. The intention to save the life of the mother in the face of real and imminent threat to life justifies the removal of a child of an ecoptic pregnancy. The doctors, by not acting to save her earlier, were responsible for her death.
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By TRACI CARL, Associated Press Writer Mon Nov 5, 12:05 PM ETMANAGUA, Nicaragua - Two weeks after Olga Reyes danced at her wedding, her bloated and disfigured body was laid to rest in an open coffin — the victim, her husband and some experts say, of Nicaragua's new no-exceptions ban on abortion.Reyes, a 22-year-old law student, suffered an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus develops outside the uterus, cannot survive and causes bleeding that endangers the mother. But doctors seemed afraid to treat her because of the anti-abortion law, said husband Agustin Perez. By the time they took action, it was too late.Nicaragua last year became one of 35 countries that ban all abortions, even to save the life of the mother, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. The ban has been strictly followed, leaving the country torn between a strong tradition of women's rights and a growing religious conservatism. Abortion rights groups have stormed Congress in recent weeks demanding change, but President Daniel Ortega, a former leftist revolutionary and a Roman Catholic, has refused to oppose the church-supported ban.Evangelical groups and the church say abortion is never needed now because medical advances solve the complications that might otherwise put a pregnant mother's life at risk.But at least three women have died because of the ban, and another 12 reported cases will be examined, said gynecologist and university researcher Eliette Valladares, who is working with the Pan American Health Organization to analyze deaths of pregnant women recorded by Nicaragua's Health Ministry.Before the ban took effect on Nov. 18, 2006, fewer than a dozen legal abortions were recorded per year in Nicaragua. They were performed only when three doctors agreed a woman's life was in danger. However, the Roman Catholic Church estimates that doctors and other medical staff carried out about 36,000 "secret" abortions a year, because under the old law they had little fear of government reprisals.This year the Health Ministry has recorded 84 deaths of pregnant women between January and October, compared with 89 for all of last year and 88 the year before. It listed hemorrhaging as the most common cause, with 27 cases reported. The ministry refused to comment further on the ban.Abortion rights groups have disrupted Congress several times, demanding that lawmakers lift the ban. On Oct. 25, unable to get past increased security, they held up signs at Congress' front door that read: "Women assassins" and "They want to keep us quiet and dead." A minority of lawmakers are still trying to lift the ban, but don't have enough votes.The Roman Catholic Church mobilized nearly 300,000 people to march and sign petitions in support of the ban."A child is not a sickness," said Henry Romero, a priest who helped lead the campaign. "When two lives are in danger, you must try to save both the woman and the child. It's difficult to say now that it isn't possible to save both."Law student Reyes was one of the three confirmed fatalities. She knew something was horribly wrong, and went with her husband to their small town's medical center. They were sent to Bertha Calderon maternity hospital, more than an hour away in Managua. There, Perez said, Reyes was given a cursory exam, sent home and told to return the next day.By that time, the bleeding and cramping were worse. Perez said he rushed her to a hospital in nearby Leon, but after she had an ultrasound that confirmed her condition, they left her bent over and in agony for hours in a waiting room. When a doctor at a shift change saw her condition, she was rushed into surgery. She suffered three heart attacks and an exploratory surgery.Valladares said doctors should have acted quicker."They knew she had a limited amount of time before she bled out. The whole world knows that with an ectopic pregnancy," Valladares said. "They didn't treat her, out of fear."The hospital director, Olga Maria de Chavez, said Reyes arrived late at night, and was told to return the next morning when specialists were available. The doctors who handled her case in Leon refused to talk to The Associated Press.Walter Mendiata, president of Nicaragua's Association of Gynecologists and a supporter of the abortion ban, said doctors are taking the new law too far. He argues that surgery for an ectopic pregnancy isn't the same as carrying out an abortion."There's no discussion in a case like that," he said. "It's urgent, and you operate."But he acknowledged that many doctors fear they will be accused of performing an abortion, which could mean a license suspension and several years in prison, even though no one has yet been prosecuted.Some doctors privately admit to carrying out what they believe are illegal procedures, while others say they won't jeopardize their careers."Many are thinking that instead of taking the risk, it is better to let a woman die," said Dr. Leonel Arguello, president of the Nicaraguan Society of General Medicine.Doctors frequently see women coming in with infections, many likely brought on by illegal abortions that they refuse to disclose for fear they might be punished, said Dr. Carla Cerrato. Because the people with some medical training who used to do illegal abortions have disappeared, Cerrato said, women more frequently take drugs or pull the fetus out on their own using wires or other crude objects."What we are seeing are complications that before we never saw," Cerrato said, sitting in the dingy pre-labor room at a crowded public hospital in Managua.She added that she sees hysterectomies and severe infections that leave women sterile or dead because obstetricians can't take any action that might harm a living fetus."We have to wait until the fetus dies," she said. "But often, for the woman, it's too late."That appears to be what happened with Reyes. Her aunt, Gioconda Reyes, a devoted Catholic dressed in a worn T-shirt in which Jesus promises eternal life, said the sudden death has changed her views."I don't support abortion to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, but in cases like that of Olga's, it is necessary," she said, adding: "How could they let four days pass when every minute was precious? They denied her the right to medical care, to a life."___On the Net:Human Rights Watch report: http://hrw.org/reports/2007/nicaragua1007 Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071105/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/nicaragua_abortion_ban;_ylt=ArwwSDdfL1rocBQEFZS.hLW3IxIF

Muslim Women face more struggles

2007-11-08T17:02:00.001-08:00

It is sad that women still face so many struggles with respect to 'equality rights'. According to Zahidi, "religious and cultural reasons are important in understanding why men have economic, political, education and health advantages over women in much of the world." It is sad when religion and culture are employed as justification for discrimination against a certain group of people. There is always something perverse about prejudice, but to justify it by using history, culture, and particularly religion is not only the most perverse form, because it seeks to make it something objective - and it is the most difficult to eradicate - because it is tied up with so many other beliefs.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071108/ap_on_re_eu/global_gender_gap;_ylt=Av.P9B7m3pZvd3L_1jqz7rtI2ocA

Report: Muslim women face worse struggles
By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer Thu Nov 8, 9:02 AM ET
GENEVA - Women in predominantly Muslim countries are struggling to compete for jobs, win equal pay and hold political office, falling behind the rest of the world in eliminating discrimination, a report said Thursday.
Economic Forum.
The United States received mixed marks.
"The purpose of the rankings is to bring out where a country stands in terms of dividing the resources that are available between women and men," said Saadia Zahidi, one of the report's three co-authors.
Sweden, which has more women than men holding high political office, topped the list, followed by fellow Nordics Norway, Finland and Iceland. New Zealand, Philippines, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, and Spain round out the top 10.
Zahidi said religious and cultural reasons are important in understanding why men have economic, political, education and health advantages over women in much of the world.
Ex-Soviet nations with a Muslim majority, such as Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, were in the middle of the field, but nearly all countries in the Middle East place in the bottom third. Pakistan, Chad and Yemen were at the bottom.
Women living on the Arabian peninsula receive nearly as much education and health benefits as men there, Zahidi said, "but they're held back on political participation and economic empowerment."
The annual study does not take into account a country's overall level of economic development: women in Sri Lanka, South Africa, Cuba and Lesotho all fared better — relatively speaking — than women in industrialized nations such as Japan, Switzerland and the United States, which fell eight places from last year's study to 31st.
The U.S. scored lower because the percentage of female legislators, senior officials and managers fell in 2007, and the pay gap between women and men widened, the report said.
The world's most populous nations — China and India — were hurt in the study by the preference of many parents for boys, which has led to abortions and infanticide being directed primarily against girls.

Selection of baby's sex gains currency worldwide

2007-11-08T16:41:00.000-08:00

"We are living in a century of freedom of choice." It seems to me that "freedom of choice" is a the bottom - the absolutely-lowest argument for an action, a practice, or a possible action that has been called into question from an ethical point of view. The question as to whether we have freedom of choice is not an ethical question, for ethics assumes freedom of choice. Choice is a question for philosophers. I hate dividing philosophers from other people, and philosophy from ethics, and philosophizing from anything else in human life, but I am beginning to see it is not so much a question of what is best but what happens. As we are now, in our condition, generally the people who are in these ethical fields are not philosphers, although they throw out concepts here and there with much confidence. It would be great if we were all philosophers and handled these things as philosophers, but we don't, and then so it is necessary to insist that they treat something in an ethical and deliberative way, taking all the possible objections into account. Otherwise you are not responsible (I won't say - to yourself - because I don't know what goes on in your head by yourself) but to the community at large.
Ethics is concerned with the matter of choice, with the people who are involved, with what is due to each particular person. I get wary when I hear doctors and other peoples bandying around catchwords like "freedom of choice".
The issue at hand here is one particularly of discrimination for being allowed to live - a child is wanted or unwanted on the basis of sex. This is a particularly appalling form of discrimination, not only because what is at stake is the life of a child, but also because it takes place in the heart of the family. And it seems to be nearly always weighted against the female. In China and India for example, it is female abortions and infanticides which are always taking place. What does this say about the improvement of the situation of women or the perception of woman in certain cultures?
No human person, whatever their age or stage of development, should be evaluated, should be desired, solely on the basis of their gender. It is appalling to see members of the medical profession cooperating with this deadly discrimination.
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AARON DERFEL, The Gazette Published

Web Source: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=0fda400b-5667-47e2-ab23-63f6c3d3d76c
In vitro conference in Montreal. 'We are living in a century of freedom of choice,' Israeli doctor says, explaining nation's policy

Guaranteeing the sex of a future child is no longer the stuff of science fiction.Gender pre-selection for non-medical reasons is gaining currency around the world as a result of new developments in reproductive technology, an international conference in Montreal was told this week.The most reliable method to choose the sex of a child before it is born is through preimplantation genetic screening. First, several embryos are created following in vitro fertilization - that is, fertilizing a woman's eggs with sperm outside her body in the laboratory. Second, the embryos are examined genetically to determine the sex.Third, an embryo with the desired sex is chosen and transferred to the woman's uterus. The leftover embryos are either destroyed, frozen or donated.Though Canada and Britain have banned sex pre-selection, Israel last year adopted a policy of allowing it under strict conditions. Under the Israeli policy, a couple who have either four boys or four girls can get the procedure done to have a fifth child of the opposite sex.A government committee must first approve the request after questioning the couple and determining the woman is healthy. If approved, the government will pay for the procedure.Since the policy was implemented, fewer than 50 couples have taken advantage of it, said Joseph Schenker, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem."We are living in a century of freedom of choice," he told delegates at the 14th World Congress on In Vitro Fertilization at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. "Non-medical indications for sex pre-selection for families should be permitted as long as there are some guidelines."Historically, societies have favoured the birth of boys over girls. In India, for example, female infanticide is still practised in some regions. In China, abortions are regularly carried out if the fetus is a female, Schenker noted. This has led to a decrease in the percentage of females in China, with many men now seeking mates in Mongolia, he added.Preimplantation genetic screening to choose a child's sex is an acceptable alternative, he suggested.But Margaret Somerville, director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, argued that sex pre-selection using any reproductive technology is harmful to society."The reality is that most people will choose boys," she said. Somerville also raised a deeper objection involving the mystery of life."I think everybody has a right to come into existence by chance, not by deliberate choice of who and what you are," she explained.The Israeli policy came about for social and religious reasons. Schenker, who is also a professor at Hebrew University, said there is pressure on some women who have given birth only to girls to have a boy. Then, there is the notion of "gender balancing" to consider in a family.Although the Catholic Church opposes all forms of IVF, Islam has come to accept sex pre-selection for purpose of "sex-ratio balancing in the family."Somerville, however, countered that sex pre-selection cannot be justified for religious or cultural reasons."Once you accept a social, cultural or religious justification, you'll get different justifications," she said. "For example, my justification might be Chinese. I don't want girls. I want boys. My justification counts as much as yours."
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Child Labor in India

2007-10-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

This is appalling. Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child enunciates "the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts," and article 32 includes "the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development." The poverty of the parents who sell their children to these factories must be appalling. The article refers to the responsibility of India to 'monitor factories' and this is indeed the first and immediate preventative measure one might look to, but the real problem is on a much larger scale. What is the difference between a child starving in a family and a child starving while working at a factory? It is more difficult to work, certainly, and children have special needs for leisure - as enunciated by article 31. But to prevent child labor, without looking into its causes, is only the beginning of the responsibilities, of the Indian government as well as the rest of the world.
_________________________________________________________________http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071029/ap_on_re_as/gap_child_labor;_ylt=Ahjv5v6rMO3T0UczbR4syQEBxg8F India activists decry Gap child labor By MUNEEZA NAQVI, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 29, 5:15 AM ET NEW DELHI - The Indian children reportedly found making clothes for Gap Inc. should be reunited with their families and compensated by the government, activists said Monday amid a spreading scandal about the use of child labor by the international clothing chain. The reported discovery of children as young as 10 sewing clothes for clothing retailer Gap Inc. in a New Delhi factory has renewed concerns about child labor in India, but government officials offered no comment Monday."The biggest responsibility here lies with the Indian government — they don't develop a way of monitoring" factories, said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer who works with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save Childhood Movement."International companies hire subcontractors and then forget about it. There is no monitoring at all," Ribhu added. "Where the Gap is concerned, at least they've taken a good pro-active stand against the subcontractors."Britain's Observer newspaper on Sunday reported that it had found children making clothes with Gap labels in a squalid factory in New Delhi. It quoted the children as saying they were from poor parts of India and had been sold to the sweatshop by their impoverished families. Some said they were not paid for their work.Gap responded quickly, saying the factory was being run by a subcontractor who was hired in violation of Gap's policies, and none of the products made there will be sold in its stores."We appreciate that the media identified this subcontractor, and we acted swiftly in this situation," Gap spokesman Bill Chandler told The Associated Press on Sunday. "Under no circumstances is it acceptable for children to produce or work on garments."Child labor remains a widespread problem in India, despite the country's economic boom and its growing wealth.The government has repeatedly tried to ban the use of child workers — in 1986 outlawing them from working in dangerous industries, such as glassmaking, and last year banning them being employed as domestic servants or in restaurants.But the prohibitions have had only a minimal impact and children's rights activists estimate that 13 million children are still working in India, with many being used in labor-intensive businesses like carpet-weaving and in dangerous industries, such as making fire crackers.Chandler said Gap requires its suppliers to guarantee that they will not use child labor to produce garments. Gap stopped working with 23 factories last year over violations uncovered by its inspectors.The San Francisco-based company has 90 full-time inspectors who make unannounced visits around the world to ensure vendors are abiding by Gap's guidelines, he said.

Germany cracks down on enforced marriages

2007-10-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

What I found interesting is the initial sentence of this article - it speaks of 'practices which clash with (Germany's) liberal social values.' They do not consider it a question of violation of right, but a 'clash between social values'. Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights expressly declares that marriage must be entered into with the full consent of both parties. People speak of 'different values' of different societies - are there not some universal norms which apply equally everywhere and supersede 'cultural' practices?
Marriage is something which changes a person's life - one has the right to choose which person one should live with for the rest of one's life - for a woman in particular, it implies life-changing factors such as conceiving and bearing children. Marriage cannot be imposed upon any person, regardless of the legitimacy which culture or religion seeks to grant to such a practice.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071029/ap_on_re_eu/germany_forced_marriages;_ylt=AjAlWxU1OKm1pIhEseUVuPR0bBAF By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER,
Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 29, 2:46 PM ET BERLIN - Chancellor Angela Merkel has joined a growing movement to criminalize forced marriages in Germany, which is growing less tolerant of practices among Muslim immigrants that clash with the nation's liberal social values. Forced marriages are generally imposed by young women's families to keep them from dating. Prosecution is rare and must take place under assault laws that also outlaw threats and coercion. Women's' groups have been increasingly pushing for forced marriages to be specifically criminalized, to ease prosecution and to send a strong signal that the practice violates German laws and traditions. "I completely agree that forced marriages should be punishable as a criminal act," Merkel said in a speech at a women's conference held by her conservative Christian Democrats over the weekend, surprising and pleasing activists. "We are thrilled that the chancellor has made such a clear statement," said Sibylle Schreiber, a spokeswoman for the women's rights group Terre des Femmes. "Finally she's given a signal to the people that forcing your daughter into marriage is a crime." Approximately 3.3 million Muslims live in Germany, 70 percent of them of Turkish origin. Many lead secular lifestyles but some make strong, even extreme, efforts to preserve conservative values. In recent years, several courts have upheld state-level bans on headscarves for Muslim women teaching in public schools. Immigration laws now require that foreign spouses be at least 18 years old and already have a basic knowledge of the German language. The state of Baden-Wuerttemberg has proposed federal legislation criminalizing forced marriages. It passed twice, most recently in February, but has not been taken up by the lower house. Women's activists were hopeful that Merkel's push would accelerate the process. Serap Cileli, a Turkish-German writer whose book — "We Are Your Daughters, Not Your Honor" — documents her escape from a forced marriage at age 24, welcomed Merkel's initiative but said it was important to address the immigrant community directly. "As long as we don't teach the fathers, husbands and brothers to let the women live self-determined lives, this wound will never stop bleeding," Cileli said. Women's groups and experts on immigration in Germany said it was difficult to tell how many women marry after threats or abuse, but enough flee such arrangements that several shelters remain busy. Along with Baden-Wuerttemberg, the states of Lower Saxony, and Berlin have started shelters, hot lines and online counseling. North Rhine-Westphalia has made it mandatory for all high school students to learn that forced marriage is illegal in Germany. The impetus behind pressure to marry is found in conservative families' opposition to dating and premarital sex — considered affronts to family honor. Such pressures are also behind so-called honor killings of women by family members, often brothers or husbands. The Federal Crime Office counted 55 such cases from 1996 to 2005. A 20-year-old Turkish-German woman, whose her parents wanted her to wed a cousin she had met once, fled to Berlin, where she lives with a new identity out of fear her family might track her down. "After they found out I had a boyfriend, they locked me up in my room and beat me up every day for a month," said the woman, who now uses the name Rojin Dogan. "They wanted to sew the tear in my hymen and quickly marry me to my cousin — they wanted to make him believe that I am still a virgin." Dogan was rescued by "Hatun und Can" — a private organization named after the Turkish-German woman Hatun Surucu, who was shot and killed for her Western lifestyle in 2005. The group of 23 volunteers says it has helped 75 women since its founding in February. Dogan contacted them online. A few days later they picked her up by car, brought her to Berlin and provided her with an apartment and a new job as a cashier. In Britain, a forced marriage unit handles 5,000 complaints a year, with around 300 suspected cases investigated, ministers said, many among dual citizens with ties to Pakistan or India. British lawmakers decided in July not to create a specific law prohibiting forced marriages.

Banking possible for prostitues in Mumbai

2007-10-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

So often all you read about is the abuses of human rights in the media, it is refreshing to see an example of some practical action being taken by the vulnerable group of people themselves! Here are women, who are effectively barred by their low social and economic situation in life, from improving their conditions at all. They took the initiative to open a bank which allows them at least to improve their economic situation - the first and most important step to improving their lives in other areas.
Listen to this description:
"The government estimates there are 3 million prostitutes in India, many of whom start as children lured by traffickers. Others are teenagers sold by impoverished family members to brothel owners. They spend up to five years working for free in dingy, airless rooms to repay the brothel owner's investment. To survive they often turn to moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates and drive themselves further into debt and dependance."
Having a place to deposit their savings is a start, a small start - and it is to their credit that they took it themselves. There is much more that can be done for these women to improve their situation - education is a key place to begin. This is the responsibility of civil society to make it possible for them - they have many barriers to face, the least of which is the economic factor. There are very pronounced social barriers still in India - education for these women might help to make a big difference as to their re-integration (or integration, for some of thse women have begun as children) into society.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071026/ap_on_re_as/india_red_light_dreams
By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 26, 6:14 PM ET
MUMBAI, India - In the heart of Mumbai's red light district, several prostitutes sit on brown plastic chairs in a narrow room waiting to do something many have never been able to do before: deposit their savings in a bank.
The small bank is the initiative of the women and aims to help them break the vicious cycle of poverty and exploitation that keeps them indebted to brothel owners.
The simple act of squirreling away some money was previously out of reach for many customers of the Sangini Women's Cooperative Bank. Prostitutes are often shunned by regular banks or lack residence documents or birth certificates officially required to open an account in India.
Now, for the last three months, they have been able to enter the bank daily to deposit an average of 10 to 20 rupees (25 to 50 cents) and dream of things they will do as their savings grow.
"We may not have house papers, but we also dream," said Indra Jai, 40, who was lured from a southern village 20 years ago with promises of a job in Mumbai and then forced into prostitution. "We should get respect; our money is also good."
Jai said she dreams of buying a small house and a tailor shop in her village and paying for her 19-year-old son's college education.
The government estimates there are 3 million prostitutes in India, many of whom start as children lured by traffickers. Others are teenagers sold by impoverished family members to brothel owners.
They spend up to five years working for free in dingy, airless rooms to repay the brothel owner's investment. To survive they often turn to moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates and drive themselves further into debt and dependance.
Thoughts of breaking the cycle drive the bank's more than 900 customers.
"If we fall ill who will look after us? We must save when we are still earning," said Jai, a founding member of the bank.
The bank — three narrow rooms that also house a cooperative store — is filled with women, some queuing up in front of a teller, others shopping for soap, food, grains and condoms.
Mumbai's prostitutes began a women's cooperative group two years ago with support from PSI, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. The bank and store were launched with $40,000 in funding from PSI.
"We thought it would take a year to get 100 customers, but we opened more than 100 accounts on day one," said Shilpa Merchant, PSI's Mumbai director.
Guided by PSI, the bank invests daily deposits totaling 25,000 rupees ($625) in fixed savings schemes with state-run banks earning 9.5 percent interest per year.
The women say entering the bank every day helps them hold onto their dreams.
"Sometimes I think my life is a waste," said Gulabja Sheikh, 35, who was sold at 15 by her parents. "But now I have my house to work for."

A step ahead for cultural rights

2007-10-25T05:24:00.001-07:00

While it might be a bit of stretch to say that there is a "human right" to free museums, neverthess, in the context of 'programmatic' rights - particularly cultural rights, (cf. art. 15 of the CESC) it is an interesting question - and the French seem to be making progress.
What are cultural rights? People should have the freedom to be immersed in their culture - in the history, the art of their society and other societies. It is a human desire to see wonders - as Aristotle says in the Metaphysics, 'all men by nature desire to know, and a sign of this is the delight they take in their senses, and above all, the sense of sight."
Friedrich Schiller, in his "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man" puts forward the thesis that art as beauty is a unifying and harmonizing influence on two kinds of men - brutish men who live according to their passions, and men who are excessively rational. The idea was to harmonize these two extemes of character and he found this harmonization occurs in beauty - it refines those of coarser instincts and softens those who no longer know how to feel and who have developed a differnet kind of savageness, the kind that makes nature a slave to man.

If there is a right to education, there is also a right to opportunities to accessing the riches of one's culture and one's history, which are found in museums. The cost can be prohibitive for many people - (speaking from personal experience, when I was a child, my family went to the Toronto museum only once in my life because the costs became prohibitive for a struggling family. Even as a student in Ottawa, I have found that the student discount prices for museums to be enough to prevent me from going as much as I would like, although I have a great interest in going.) The professor who criticizes this approach and seems concerned about the loss of special programs which may result is concerned for a limited number of people - seems to think that a free day once a week or so is enough. The Ottawa network of museums, including the National Art gallery, has such a system - it is free from 5 until 8 pm on Thursday evenings from five until eight o'clock pm (I may add that such a period of time seems almost calculated to be inconvenient, and the 3 hours by no means allows one to do justice to any of the museums).

Free access to the common riches of one's culture is definitely a step ahead for the continuous improvement of man's social situation.
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France tries experiment: free museums
By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer Tue Oct 23, 3:01 PM ET
PARIS - A number of French museums will temporarily stop charging entrance fees as an experiment: If museums are free, will they draw a wider, more varied audience?
Starting Jan. 1, 14 French museums and monuments will open to visitors free of charge for six months, Culture Minister Christine Albanel said Tuesday.
Three of the museums are in Paris — Guimet, home to Asian art; Cluny, which features medieval treasures; and Arts et Metiers, dedicated to scientific inventions. Their full-price tickets range from around $9 to $11.
President Nicolas Sarkozy campaigned for free museums before his May election, and France's culture world has since debated the idea, with critics asking whether it's merely a superficial way of addressing the question of how to democratize culture.
Albanel, who has been skeptical in the past about free museums, said officials would study the experiment's results and decide how to proceed.
"The main question is simply how to inspire desire — desire for artistic experiences and culture — in people who are not familiar with these places," said Albanel, who once oversaw the palace at Versailles. "We'll see if free entry is the right response."
The measure only applies to museums' permanent collections, and visitors will still have to pay for temporary exhibits.
As part of the experiment, a few museums including Orsay in Paris, home to Impressionist masterpieces, will open for free one evening a week to young people between the ages of 18-25. A full-price Orsay ticket costs nearly $11. The Louvre, which charges nearly $13 for a full-price ticket, already offers free entrance to young people on Friday nights.
France is testing a path already taken by several other European countries, including Britain, which scrapped entrance fees for many museums starting in 2001. In the five years that followed, nearly 30 million more people visited museums, former Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has said.
In the United States, the Smithsonian Institution museums and national zoo in Washington are also free of charge. According to the Smithsonian Web site, there were 23.2 million visitors to the museums last year.
Francoise Benhamou, a Sorbonne economics professor who studies the financing of culture, is skeptical of the French plan. She points out that many French museum-goers already get in for free because of open-house days and other offers, and she said those who would benefit from the free museums are foreign tourists who don't pay taxes.
At the Louvre, for example, two-thirds of visitors are foreigners.
"Free museums would in large part benefit tourists who have the means to pay," Benhamou said.
She also dismissed the idea that free entry can entice greater numbers of non-art-lovers into museums, and suggests they should instead institute more diversified ticket pricing for young people, the unemployed and frequent museum-goers.
Another idea, she believes, would be to reach out to potential art fans early on by boosting visits by schoolchildren — just the kind of programs she fears might be scrapped if museum coffers lose money.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_on_re_eu/france_free_museums;_ylt=AkHBItyJXmQGR7lfIEYM86x0bBAF

Romanian Gypsies - Apologizing for the Past

2007-10-25T05:23:00.001-07:00

An important step for the progress of the integration of particular groups is the recognition of past historical wrongs to those groups. So many human rights violations arise not simply out of fascist governments (with respect to curtailing civil and political rights) and lack or wrong application of resources (with respect to not developing social, economic and cultural rights) but there are also cases of active persecution based on irrational prejudice.

The Gypsies were shipped by the thousands to be killed for no other reason than the fact that they were Gypsies - were not of the 'pure' race.

Discrimination against the Gypsies is still rife today, as one can see from the closing comments of this article. However, in learning to see the injustices and even blatant crimes of the past for what they are, and making public acknowledgement and apology for them, hopefully we will sharpen the lens of the present - that by learning from history we can focus on the redressing of wrongs and the improvement of the peoples of today. Not only a question of education for all of us, but also a very real obligation to acknowledge the wrong that was done for the sake of those whose grandparents and relatives were murdered.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_on_re_eu/romania_holocaust_apology;_ylt=AhFhOXZCUZEM7EIUHwOL7J10bBAF

Romanian leader apologizes to Gypsies
Tue Oct 23, 3:36 PM ET
BUCHAREST, Romania - Romania's president apologized for the deportation of thousands of Gypsies to Nazi death camps during World War II, the first time a government official has done so publicly.
President Traian Basescu also awarded the Order for Faithful Service to three Gypsy Holocaust survivors at a ceremony Monday.
More than 25,000 Gypsies, half of them children, were sent from Romania to extermination camps in the eastern Moldovan region of Trans-Dniester, which was then part of the Soviet Union. About 11,000 of the Gypsies, also known as Roma, died there.
"The authorities were merciless. They took the Roma from their homes, from the towns and army and sent them far away, to obtain a pure nation," Basescu said.
"We must tell our children that six decades ago children like them were sent by the Romanian state to die of hunger and cold," Basescu said.
A lack of wartime records makes it difficult to determine the overall number of Gypsies killed in the Holocaust. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it is between 220,000 and 500,000.
Part of Basescu's apology was in Romanes, the language spoken by Roma, an unprecedented gesture by a Romanian head of state.
It was the first time a Romanian official apologized for the persecution of Gypsies during the Holocaust. Romanian leaders have in the past apologized for the role of the state in the killings of Jews.
Officially, about 500,000 Gypsies live in Romania, but surveys have put the actual figure at more than 1 million. The majority live in poverty and face discrimination in Romania and other parts of Europe.
Basescu said Europe should take steps to better include Gypsies in society, and Romanian schoolchildren should be taught about how they were enslaved and killed in the Holocaust.
Romania has begun work to improve the rights of its Roma minority, but many still do not have identity papers allowing them to receive social benefits. They also face discrimination in seeking jobs.
Gypsy children are more likely to drop out of school than their peers from other ethnic groups.

Abortions too common, British lawmaker says

2007-10-25T05:16:00.001-07:00

Reflection:
It is difficult to understand Lord Steel's position. What does it mean to have 'sadly necessary abortions'? If it is an infringement upon a human right, as some people claim, and if this right is included in the Universal Declaration, then what is the meaning of 'necessary' here? Can there be "wrong reasons" and "right reasons" for suspending fundamental human rights, e.g., the right to life?
Steel mentions 'backup contraception' as a wrong reason for having an abortion. He mentioned that as a society we need to address "these issues, as well as the questions of sexual ethics and sex education." The law in Britain allows abortions after 24 weeks only if there is a 'grave risk' to the mother's health or 'evidence of severe fetal abnormality'. In Canada, abortions are currently allowed right up until birth. When somebody's right to life is at stake, distinctions between ages seem arbitrary - as well as the difference between "sadly necessary" and "unnecessary".

Does the right to life admit of age or development? The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Rights speaks of the 'equal and inalienable' rights of all members of the human family. The right to life is expressly stated in Article 3.

On the other hand, there is an important question of 'infringement' of rights - for instance, if somebody is trying to kill me, and I can only prevent their doing so by shooting them in the heart (if shooting them in the leg is insufficient), the situation becomes more complex. There are two poles - one is the primary right to life of everybody, and the other is the 'necessary' protection of the rights of others who are involved.

Is abortion often a question of conflict of rights? One would suspect that each individual case must answer for itself. Lord Steel seems to suggest that most of the cases out there are not hard cases. Indeed, the slogans of the pro-abortion movement do not suggest anything of the "hard cases". They never speak of the 'Life" or "Health" or "Safety" of women - the only thing they advocate is "freedom of choice". ("Freedom of choice", as an ethical justification, is rather questionable. What is at stake in ethical discourse is not usually the freedom of choice, but the advisability of choice considering that we are responsible to others as well as to ourselves. If this is the only "right" which is supposed to be challenged by the life of the embryo or fetus, it seems to be outweighed by the more basic right to life of the human life that is unquestionably there, regardless of development. The life of the child is certainly an infringement upon a woman, as pregnancy can be enormously inconvenient! This is creating an easy case - the kind that falls into a similar category what Lord Steel deplored of 'backup contraception'. Sexual ethics and education are what need to be developed in this case, as well as a sense of responsibility, not only for women, but for society in general. What is there about bearing a child that is so traumatic to a woman of the developed Western world? Perhaps there are inequalities in social systems, and even within the family, which contribute to the undesirability of carrying a pregnancy to term. Maybe our appreciation for life and our support for those people who are capable of bearing children (women) have not caught up with our contemporary sexual ethics.
The 'hard cases' are still more difficult (rape and incest, ones that bring with themfor instance (threats to life or health need an entirely different reflection). The emotional trauma that attends the victim of such crimes, however, makes the victim who becomes pregnant as a result of the violent act, exhibits the necessity again for society to assume responsibility. Why do numerous (estimated) cases of rape go unreported? Why is there a shame in being raped that does not happen from being robbed, or otherwise physically harmed? Why, especially in a fairly promiscuous society, does rape remain the source of public shame that it is? Women are especially vulnerable to rape. There must be a way to raise public awareness of rape, and to aid the victims by all means possible - emotionally, monetarily, helping them to regain self-respect, etc. Abortion is a band-aid solution in such cases - it merely removes the physical inconvenience of pregnancy and the shame of the consequences of rape being shown.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071025/ap_on_re_eu/britain_abortion;_ylt=Atkqm8FcCSVIBQWZxpqIGkN0bBAF

British lawmaker: abortions too common
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 24, 8:26 PM ET
LONDON - The architect of Britain's abortion law said Wednesday that the procedure was too common and some women were using it as a form of birth control.
Lord David Steel, who introduced the 1967 Abortion Act that provided a legal defense to doctors performing the procedure, said that while he was proud of his achievement, too many women were terminating their pregnancies for the wrong reasons.
"Everybody can agree that there are too many abortions," he said in a speech to the Global Safe Abortion Conference in London, a copy of which was posted on his Web site.
"I would like to see more research as to why women present for abortion. I suspect that a fair percentage would be found to have used failed contraceptive measures or none at all.
"Abortion should not be regarded as long-stop (backup) contraception, and as a society we need to address these issues, as well as the questions of sexual ethics and sex education," said Steel.
The number of legal abortions in England and Wales has been on the rise since the 1970s and the number of terminations topped 200,000 for the first time last year, according to government statistics.
Steel's comments come as Britain weighs the consequences of 40 years of legal access to abortion. Under current rules, women can obtain abortions before their 24th week of pregnancy if they obtain the approval of two doctors, or only one in the case of emergencies. After 24 weeks, abortions are only allowed if there is a grave risk to the mother's health or evidence of severe fetal abnormality.
The British public is broadly supportive of abortion rights, and anti-abortion groups have tended to keep their ambitions modest. In an open letter to the British public published Monday, the Roman Catholic cardinals in England, Wales and Scotland urged Britons to "work and vote for achievable incremental improvement to what is an unjust law."
Abortion rights organizations, meanwhile, have argued for wider access to the procedure. The Voice for Choice consortium, which represents some 13 advocacy groups, announced on Wednesday a push to scrap the requirement for two doctors' authorization and allow nurses to perform abortions in early stages of pregnancy.
Steel said there was a strong argument for making it easier for women to get early abortions.
"I have always argued that, if abortion is sadly necessary, it is desirable that it should be carried out as early as possible," Lord Steel told the conference.
"Many argue that the two-doctors requirement causes undesirable delay, and, since 1967, many of our European neighbors have legislated for abortion up to the 12th and 13th week of pregnancy without such a requirement."
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On the Net:
Global Safe Abortion: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_eu/storytext/britain_abortion/24950583/SIG=114giduvv/*http://www.globalsafeabortion.org/

Maori head return sought in gesture of respect for human dignity...

2007-10-25T05:15:00.001-07:00

This reflection, I understand, is not directly relevant to current issues, and regard people who were violated in the past. And yet, the principles which are at stake in respecting the remains of these individuals are not completely irrelevant to a blog that is devoted to reflections on human rights - because human dignity is concerned. Human rights extend throughout time, and it is by showing respect and repentance for gross outrages and abuses that occur in the past that we are taught to reflect on our obligations to the living. It is usual for us to think of 'human rights' only in terms of those living (and understandably so!) And yet there are gestures to the dead, in terms of apologies for historical injustices, honors, and other things (whether or not in this we recognize some kind of immortality of the person would be interesting). Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae spoke of the service of burying the dead, and said it is out of regard for the love that the person would have had for their own body. There is a kind of right that is extended to the dead. It may be simply an extension of the right of the living to a kind of cleansing of conscience or memory, or a gesture that is intended to make us more aware of our responsibilities to the living, or it may reflect a real responsibility to those who have lived in the past. I tend to think the third reason is the essential reason, because what else is the purpose for punishing crimes of murder? The person who was murdered could not possibly be benefited by the punishment of the criminal (there may be a benefit to other affected persons, such as friends or relatives in knowing that the criminal is caught) and yet we seem to think there is a moral necessity for the conviction of such guilty persons and for some kind of reparation to be made for the sake of the victim. Whether the claims of the dead are 'rights' in the per se sense of the word, or are rights understood by way of analogy or extension, it is not absolutely essential to determine. There is some kind of duty that is owed to their memory - the dignity of each human person extends beyond the limits of their own earthly existence.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071025/ap_on_re_eu/art_warrior_s_head;_ylt=Akb_hTI64E2g3Ly64Q7CiXx0bBAF

French museum tries to return Maori head

By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 24, 11:30 PM ET

PARIS - The Normandy museum only wanted to do what was right: It offered to return a preserved, tattooed Maori head to New Zealand, an attempt to restore dignity to human remains that were long put on display as an exotic curiosity.

Instead, authorities in the Normandy city of Rouen got a scolding from the culture minister for not checking with national authorities first. A Rouen administrative court ruled Wednesday that, pending a decision later this year, the Maori head must remain in France.

For years, New Zealand has sought the return of mummified Maori heads and other remains, many of which were collected by Westerners in a grisly exchange for weapons and other goods.
Rouen's Maori head was given to the city's natural history museum in unclear circumstances in 1875. It was on display there until 1996. The museum reopened this year after being closed for 10 years, which had allowed officials to take stock, and they decided the Maori head should be returned to New Zealand.

"This is an ethical gesture based on the respect for world cultures and the dignity of every human being," Rouen Mayor Pierre Albertini wrote on his blog. Sebastien Minchin, head of the Rouen museum, says returning the remains would help bring closure to "the hateful trafficking of another era."

Some of the Maori heads, displaying the intricate tattoos of warriors, were traditionally kept as trophies from tribal warfare. But once Westerners began offering prized goods in exchange for them, men were in danger of being killed simply for their tattoos, Rouen museum officials said. Some slaves were forcibly tattooed, then decapitated once their scars healed, to meet the demand, according to the museum.

Rouen planned a handover ceremony for the remains on Oct. 23. But on the eve of the event, French Culture Minister Christine Albanel issued a statement saying Rouen did not follow the proper procedures and asked an administrative court to halt the transfer.

"Such a decision requires the advice of a scientific committee, whose role is to verify that there is no unjustified damage to national heritage," the statement said.

The following day, the ceremony in Rouen went ahead, attended by Paris-based New Zealand diplomats. But it was merely symbolic, and the Maori head remains in a storeroom.

The New Zealand Embassy declined to comment on the issue.

Officials of Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand that handles such repatriations, said they were not concerned about the French government's intervention.

"It's an issue between the museum and the French government and they need to be comfortable that everything is being done according to their own systems," said museum spokesman Paul Brewer.

Paul Tapsell, the director of the Maori collection at the Auckland Museum, said the preserved head, known as a toi moko, could not be considered part of France's national heritage.

"Basically, we're talking about the protection of the trade in human beings," Tapsell said.
Olivier Henrard, legal adviser for the Culture Ministry, stressed that France wasn't in principle opposed to the return of human remains. In 2002, it returned the skeleton and organs of Saartjie Baartman, long displayed under the pejorative nickname of "Hottentot Venus," to South Africa.

But the ministry worried that Rouen's act would set a precedent for unilateral decisions.

"Today it's a Maori head, but tomorrow it could be a mummy in the Louvre," Henrard said.
The culture ministry plans an international conference to set guidelines for such cases. Officials from Paris' Quai Branly museum for the primitive arts — which itself has about half a dozen Maori heads in storage — would put the conference together.

In another upcoming case in Europe, Liverpool's national museums said they were preparing to return all their human remains to New Zealand. In September, Chicago's The Field Museum became one of the first major U.S. museums to repatriate Maori remains. Arapata Hakiwai, director of Maori treasures at the Te Papa National Museum, said then that his museum had acquired remains from more than 30 institutions worldwide since 2003.

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It

quote st. Thomas - charity - 'love for his own body'

Prostitutes battle for right to work

2007-10-25T05:11:00.001-07:00

This is an interesting case. The right to work is certainly an undeniable right. The fact that some people are forced to resort to prostitution is unfortunate. How does one deal with the necessity of the prostitutes' earning a living and the interests of the community at large - for it seems a bonafide concern of the residents who are tired of 'underage drinking and crime'. Is there a right to prostitue oneself?

Is there not instead an obligation on the part of civil society to ensure that everybody is entitled to dignified labor? For there is no way prostitution may be understood to be dignified work. It places one at the disposal of strangers, and it is open to health and other risks that would not be admissible in any work environment.

These people must be provided for with respect to earning a living - if prostitution is the only way they can keep alive and if the city or the state does not intervene in some way to improve their lot, then it seems unjustifiable, even in the interests of what one might call 'public morality', to shut them down. The ideal solution would be to provide for their training and for forms of work that are more in accordance with their human dignity and which provide sufficient wages for a decent life. If, however, this project is not undertaken, it is not right to remove their only means of livelihood which is prostitution.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/oukoe_uk_bolivia_prostitutes;_ylt=AqVTsL_D1CQ_ZVsrPO9p0hflWMcF

Prostitutes sew lips together in Bolivia protest
Wed Oct 24, 7:27 PM ET
LA PAZ (Reuters) - Prostitutes in the Bolivian city of El Alto sewed their lips together on Wednesday as part of a hunger strike to demand that the mayor reopen brothels and bars ordered closed after violent protests by residents last week.
"We are fighting for the right to work and for our families' survival," Lily Cortez, leader of the El Alto Association of Nighttime Workers, told local television.
"Tomorrow we will bury ourselves alive if we are not immediately heard. The mayor will have his conscience to answer to if there are any grave consequences, such as the death of my comrades," she said, surrounded by about 10 prostitutes who had sewn their lips together with thread.
Some 30 other women were shown fasting inside a medical clinic nearby.
Mayor Fanor Nava told local radio he would not reopen the brothels and bars closed after city residents fed up with underage drinking and crime stormed the red-light district in El Alto, an impoverished city just north of La Paz.
Prostitution in Bolivia is legal but pimping is outlawed.
Student activists who want the bars and brothels permanently shut down were also on a hunger strike, along with the leaders of an association representing bars, restaurants and karaoke establishments.
"It's not only us owners and the sex workers who are affected, there are thousands of waiters, cooks, bartenders, taxi drivers and street vendors who will be without income," said Ramiro Orellana, spokesman for the business group.
El Alto is one of the largest urban areas in Bolivia, with nearly 1 million inhabitants, mostly Aymara and Quechua Indians.

Iraqi refugees turn to prostitution

2007-10-25T05:04:00.001-07:00

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_refugees_prostitution;_ylt=AhH.SB1ubjR6r7xtdT23O0wLewgF Iraqi refugees turn to prostitution
By OMAR SINAN, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 24, 3:24 AM ET

DAMASCUS, Syria -

The Iraqi women jump onto the stage at the al-Rawabi club, their long black hair swinging, their young faces caked with makeup. Iraqi pop music booms out as they sway and dance under strobe lights.

Nearby, a woman nicknamed At'outa meets her paying dates — men who hand over $90 a night for companionship and sex.

This club in northwest Damascus represents one of the most troubling aspects of the Iraqi refugee crisis — Iraqi women and girls who are turning to prostitution to survive in countries that have taken them in but won't let them or their families work at most other jobs.

No reliable figures of Iraqi prostitutes exist, but an increase in the number of Iraqi women seen in recent months in clubs and on the streets of Damascus, Amman and other cities suggests the problem is growing as more Iraqis flee their country's violence.

Most of the Iraqi women at the al-Rawabi club appeared to be in their late teens and early 20s although some were older. While some danced on stage, about a half-dozen others strolled around the tables, smiling at men and inviting offers to sit down for a drink.

Ayman al-Halaqi, a club manager here, said Iraqi dancers are cheaper to hire than Syrians. Back home, even dancing in a skimpy costume would be considered shameful. Iraqi women who go beyond that can earn 10 times more from a single encounter with a client than by working a full day as a housemaid.

At the al-Rawabi club, the usual customers are mostly Iraqi or Syrian men, but summer brought the annual flood of visitors from Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia.
Bassam Abdul-Wahid, a 27-year-old Iraqi who runs an import-export business in Damascus, was partying with three male companions at the club one evening. Sporting three gold rings and a flashy gold bracelet, he motioned for more whiskey as two slender young Iraqi women in tight jeans slipped into chairs at the men's table.

Abdul-Wahid, a regular at al-Rawabi, joked that he likes his table to be "an example of Iraqi generosity." As the liquor flowed, the women laughed and exchanged "high-fives" with the men — but refused to talk with a reporter.

At'outa, a blonde in her late 30s whose nickname means "little kitten" in Arabic, agreed to tell her story but refused to give her real name for fear neighbors or her children would learn what she does.

Last year, she fled Iraq with her son and two daughters, all teenagers, after her husband was gunned down by militants in Baghdad's volatile Ghazaliyah district.

After a few months in Syria, her late husband's savings were running out. She tried working as a tailor and a housemaid, but could not make ends meet, she said. Then, a man offer to cancel a $250 debt in exchange for sex. Since then, she has regularly met other dates at the al-Rawabi club, where sex earns her enough money to pay the bills.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that around 2 million Iraqis have fled to neighboring countries since 2003.

In Jordan and Syria, they struggle to get by.
"Men and boys are most likely to be deported, so women sometimes work illegally, but have no protection from employer abuse," the New York-based Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children said in a recent report.

After a fact-finding trip to Jordan, the group said it heard accounts of women and girls turning to prostitution. But its report provided few details.

Amnesty International also reported during the summer that its representatives were told on a visit to Syria that young Iraqi girls were being pressured by families to engage in prostitution. The group said it was worried that Iraqi child trafficking could grow.

Syrian officials are officially silent on the subject, but Amnesty International says they have voiced concerns in private.

An artists' professional group in Damascus forced the closure of almost 30 night clubs several months ago, saying the dancers and singers were not licensed — a sure sign the performers were Iraqi in tightly controlled Syria.

In Damascus neighborhoods full of Iraqis like Jaramaneh and Sit Zeinab, Iraqi women often approach men in the streets, asking if they "have a place" or "want to have some fun."

In Amman, Jordan, many Iraqi refugees flock to the districts of Shemisani and Rabai, where clubs feature belly dancers and hostesses. Male customers often are phoned later by the women and asked if they could meet.

Bassam al-Kadi, an official of the human rights group Syria Women's Observatory, said some Iraqi women had been deported by Syrian authorities because they were believed involved in prostitution.

Iraqi women whose husbands or fathers are dead or wounded from the war are most at risk, al-Kadi said.

"These women are being left with no supporter, under tremendous pressure and severe conditions," he said. "Thus they are being forced to do that, to fetch bread for their families."
The alternatives are menial household jobs or selling cigarettes and cheap goods on the street.

At'outa said she tells people that her relatives abroad pay for the $250 monthly rent for the family's apartment. She shares the single bedroom with her two daughters, while her son sleeps on a living room sofa.

Sobbing, she says she can never go back to Iraq and longs to settle her family in the West, but her prospects aren't good.

Laurens Jolles of the U.N. refugee office in Damascus said his agency wants to resettle 20,000 of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees by year's end. In mid-February, the United States announced it would let in about 7,000 Iraqis. Sweden has admitted more than 18,000 since 2006, the highest number in any European country, but now says it is tightening asylum rules.

But At'outa is just one of an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria alone.
"I ask myself every day, what did I get out of this life? No family, no home and no honor," she said. "The guilt is ripping my body to shreds."

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It is tragic that a person has to choose between her (or his, for that matter) dignity and security of person and earning a living. What is to be thought of countries that allow refugees to enter but do not allow them to work? Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes it clear that people have the right to enjoy asylum from persecution. In complying with this principle and allowing people from war-torn areas to enter your soil, is a country already engaging itself in certain obligations to provide for them?

In reading the Declaration, there are several pertinent articles to this question: Article 3 -"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." What does "security of person" mean? This has been interpreted in different ways (for example, in the question of abortion). It is not worded as "safety" of person, which would be perhaps address a more specific concern, i.e., that people have the right to not be in direct and immediate danger of their life (e.g., by living in a area subject to intermittent bombing or wanton killing). But even the qualifier, "of person" - shows that it is not only pertaining to the imminent danger to life, but with the whole person.

Someone who is forced to engage in sex (i.e., by their economic situation) is, by the nature of the "work" they engage in, not secure - they are prey to various infections and diseases, some of which can be fatal, such as AIDS. The level of risk that is present in indiscriminate sex (even 'protected' sex) would not be admissible in any other kind of work.

Article 22 of the Declaratoin states "Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality." Here one might face the argument as to what defines "a member of society" - does it refer only to citizens? Certainly we have cases where citizens of a particular area receive priority treatment, and this is reasonable (as in the case of the provision for preferential employment for current residents among the Canadian provinces where the employment rate is already low).

However, the responsibility for the "economic, social, and cultural" rights lies on the international community as well as the national community. What is important in this section is the emphasis on the rights that are indispensable for dignity and free development of personality. A prostitute has minimal self-respect. As At'outa says, "I ask myself every day, what did I get out of this life? No family, no home and no honor," she said. "The guilt is ripping my body to shreds." One might be inclined to dismiss prostitution as a less pressing issue than hunger, for example, or the position of not being able to get any work. And indeed, it can and does happen that a prostitue makes enough to pay the bills. But the emotional cost - the surrender of human dignity, is an exorbitant price to pay.

Article 23 of the Declaration says that "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment, to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." It would be interesting to reflect on how much "free choice" and "just and favourable" conditions are present in the sex trade.

Amnesty criticizes Hamas, Fatah over rights abuses

2007-10-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071024/wl_nm/palestinians_rights_amnesty_dc;_ylt=AjOBCURJvx9Ss3O7xgKXODvxrGIF

Amnesty criticizes Hamas, Fatah over rights abuses
Wed Oct 24, 8:52 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Human rights violations in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have become widespread since fighting in June between the Palestinian factions saw Hamas seize control of Gaza, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
Islamist Hamas and its secular rival Fatah each claims to represent the Palestinian national struggle, but their violent schism was widely seen as an unprecedented setback to hopes for a state in lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
In a 57-page report, Amnesty International noted that the June civil war in Gaza in which some 160 people were killed had led to the creation, effectively, of separate Palestinian administrations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank where political opponents have routinely been subject to abuse.
"Arbitrary detentions and torture or other ill treatment of detainees by Hamas forces are now widespread and the initial improvements in the security situation which followed Hamas' takeover are fast being eroded," the London-based group said.
Amnesty further criticized Hamas for entrusting its gunmen, who were trained to fight Israel and led the bloody rout of Fatah forces from Gaza, with law-enforcement duties.
"It appears clear that perpetrators of human rights abuses continue to enjoy impunity," the group said.
Amnesty also accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah of abuses in the larger West Bank, where it retains control and has conducted round-ups of Hamas sympathizers.
"Arbitrary detention of suspected Hamas supporters by Palestinian Authority security forces has become routine," it said.
According to Amnesty, Hamas and Fatah have each detained around 1,000 people since the June fighting, sometimes for periods of up to two weeks. Torture of detainees has been commonplace, the rights group said citing victim testimony.
Hamas called the report unfair, saying its forces had acted to rein in lawlessness in Gaza while Fatah was conducting punitive actions in the West Bank.
"There has been a constant improvement in the security of citizens in Gaza," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said, adding that any of the faction's fighters who acted unlawfully were "subject to constant monitoring and accountability."
Abbas's administration similarly shifted blame to Hamas while vowing a crackdown on abuses by Fatah fighters.
"There is a huge difference between an outlawed force committing human rights violations and legitimate security forces empowered by law," said Mahmoud al-Habbash, Palestinian minister for social affairs.
"Mistakes may happen but we are doing our best."
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah)

2007-10-11T03:48:00.000-07:00

It is astonishing that parents actually choose to send their troubled teenagers to places like these. On the surface, one is too astonished to comment about this from a practical perspective, the incredible stupidity of parents in these cases seem to be insurmountable. Who would send their beloved child away without thoroughly investigating the persons and the conduct to which their child would be subjected, without visiting? It is a risky game to judge people, but one would think that they had been glad to get rid of their children, not to discover these abuses much sooner. in the sense of gaining some constructive insight - when the problem came about it seems largely from the incredible stupidity of parents? Another question about accountability is how on earth were these places allowed to be in existence without licensing, without extensive education and training of the caregivers (for that is what they should have been), without character checks, without frequent random third-party investigations?
What were the options of these particularly vulnerable teenagers? I say 'particularly vulnerable' because their options were really non-existent. They were in that place for their bad behaviour - they were supposed to deserve the 'discipline' they got. If they wrote home, supposing that their letters were not censored, they were not likely to be believed - it was to be supposed that they wouldn't like their surroundings. Boot camp was supposed to be tough. In the testimonies just below, it is astonishing to imagine that parents would not have had the curiosity to inquire into their children's situation - Bob Bacon spoke in front of photos of his 'emaciated' son - if they had only visited their children they could have seen the neglect!
One expects civil society to step in and to correct abuses for those who have nobody else. But it is parents, legal guardians, who freely send their children to such places as these without apparently feeling the need to inquire much beforehand or after as to their child's progress. Parents should be prosecuted for such stupidity and neglect.

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Torture, starvation and death: how American boot camps abuse boys

Tim Reid in WashingtonThousands of teenagers sent to American boot camps have suffered horrific abuse and some have paid with their lives, according to a shocking new report by the US Congress.The report, presented with harrowing testimony from parents of three teenagers who died at boot camps, comes as a Florida manslaughter trial opened into the death of Martin Lee Anderson, 14. He was filmed being beaten by camp guards minutes before he died, footage seen not only inside the courtroom but on television screens across America.The Government Accountability Office, the US Congress investigative arm, identified 1,619 incidents of child abuse in 33 states in 2005. It selected ten deaths since 1990 for special investigation in boot camps and "wilderness programmes".Parents send their children to the privately run camps in the hope that their strict regimes and outdoor pursuits will instil discipline. But the findings suggest that instructors often go too far in trying to teach them good behaviour.Related LinksBoy's death blamed on beating at boot camp "Examples of abuse include youths being forced to eat their own vomit, denied adequate food, being forced to lie in urine or faeces, being kicked, beaten and thrown to the ground," Gregory Kutz, a GAO investigator, told a congressional committee.One teenager, Mr Kutz said, was "forced to use a toothbrush to clean a toilet, then forced to use that toothbrush on their own teeth". The abuse that preceded the deaths of the ten teenagers was particularly shocking. "If you walked in partway through my presentation you might have assumed I was talking about human rights violations in a Third World country," Mr Kutz said.Speaking in front of photographs of his emaciated son an hour before his death, Bob Bacon — the father of Aaron — described how his son had been starved, with his weight falling from 9st 4lb (59kg) to 7st 10lb in three weeks. He said that he and his wife had sent Aaron to the Northstar Expeditions in Escalante, Utah, in the hope that it would get him away from the drugs that he had started dabbling in at school.A "bloody and battered journal" that Aaron kept contained "an unbelievable account of torture, abuse and neglect", Mr Bacon said. He said that Aaron spent 14 of 20 days "without any food whatsoever" while having to hike eight to ten miles (13-16km) a day. When he was given food, it consisted of "undercooked lentils, lizards, scorpions, trail mix and a celebrated canned peach on the 13th day". Aaron died from an untreated perforated ulcer. His father said that he had been beaten "from the top of his head to the tip of his toes" during his month at the camp. "His mother and I will never escape our decision to send our 16-year-old son to his death," Mr Bacon said.At the American Buffalo Soldiers boot camp in Arizona, where Anthony Haynes, 14, died in 2001, children were fed an apple for breakfast, a carrot for lunch and a bowl of beans for dinner, the GAO report said. Anthony became dehydrated in a 45C (113F) temperature and vomited soil that he had eaten because of his hunger, according to witnesses. The programme closed and Charles Long, its director, was sentenced in 2005 to six years in prison for manslaughter. The report said that five of the ten programmes where teenagers died are still operating, sometimes under different names. Between 10,000 and 20,000 American children attend the camps every year. Some charge as much as $450 (£225) a day.Mr Kutz said that the programmes marketed appealing outdoor experiences to "desperate parents", who are often trying to keep their children out of jail or from getting into deeper trouble.Paul Lewis said that his son, Ryan, 14, committed suicide six years ago after one week at a West Virginia boot camp. "To turn your son over to someone else and hope they’re going to love and protect your child was naive on my part. We thought \ was an answer to our prayers. It turned out to be a living nightmare."Republican and Democrat members of the committee reacted with outrage and dismay at the report and the parents’ often tearful testimony. They called for new laws that would regulate the boot camps, some of which are not even licensed.In Panama City, Florida, seven guards and a nurse are on trial over Martin Lee Anderson’s death. The opening day was so traumatic for his mother, Gina Jones, that she ran from the courtroom, sobbing and shouting "I cannot take it."Prosecutors say that the guards suffocated the boy by covering his mouth, making him inhale ammonia. The guards and nurse each face up to 30 years in jail if convicted.Boot-camp fatalities— A 15-year-old girl collapsed of dehydration while hiking in 1990 and lay dead on road for 18 hours— A 15-year-old boy refused to return to camp in 2000. He was forcibly restrained and died of a severed artery - ruled a homicide— A 14-year-old boy punished for asking to go home in 2001 was made to sit in the desert, then left in bath to recuperate - later died— A 14-year-old boy complained of thirst in 2002, was left in sun for an hour and stopped breathing and died. Staff thought he was fakingSource: Government Accountability Officehttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2641635.ece
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Related links:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/17/national... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/17/national/main1329231.shtmlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7037893.stmhttp://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gKVEpEUAn-5PeOpsggoXT6rXN8YQD8S5VNU00http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=72246http://www.miamiherald.com/548/story/266196.htmlAutopsy shows Anderson's death not related to medical condition (or any natural cause)http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11823529/http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/03/14/bootcamp.death/Parents tell of horrors of boot camps http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1011campdeaths1011.htmlThis is a site that has collected many examples of abuse in boot camps from the media:http://www.nospank.net/boot.htmA sub-section of this site is "Flogging for God: Violence toward children under the guise of religion" - it is, frankly, disturbing.http://www.nospank.net/floggers.htm#n-r18r

Welcome!

2007-10-01T03:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome! This blog is a means to become acquainted with human rights issues around the world as they appear weekly in the media, as well as perhaps other general or particular human rights issues that are not the focus of public attention. The motivation for this project is due to a Human Rights course that I am currently taking at Dominican College. I hope that it will prove useful and informative to others as well as myself. There are two main goals in this site - to awaken interest in these issues and to encourage thoughtful and serious reflection where the issues may be difficult ones; and the second goal is dependent on the first - to become better equipped to render practical aid in the issues over which we may possibly have influence. To further this second end I would like to educate others and to become better acquainted myself with avenues for action, whether through official channels or grass-roots approaches. I greatly encourage any visitors to add their comments as well, or to provide any related information concerning either of these ends. Thank you for visiting and God bless!