Opening of the 54th Commission on the Status of Women. Credit: Bomoon Lee/TerraViva

By Thalif Deen and Anna Shen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 (IPS/TerraViva) – When a two-week meeting on gender empowerment concluded at U.N. headquarters Friday, there were several lingering questions crying out for answers. Continue Reading

Lesotho's Gender Minister Mathabiso Lepono. Credit: Bomoon Lee/TerraViva

By Christian Benoni

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 (IPS/TerraViva) Female migrant workers play a critical role in promoting development in their home countries, but continue to face discrimination in host nations, even ones that have policies on the books designed to protect them.

“Most of the immigrant workers are undocumented and when they seek basic services like health care, they are met with negative attitudes from health staff. Some may easily die,” Bijaya Rai Shrestha, a returned migrant from Nepal, told TerraViva.

“There are women who are forced to do sex work, subjecting them to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. It is even hard for them if they have to seek treatment,” she said.

Similar sentiments were echoed by Marieta de Vos, director of the MOSAIC Training, Service and Healing Centre for Women, whose organisation runs a small clinic in Cape Town, South Africa that has been offering services to migrant women. She sees at least 50 in a month.

“We get women who need contraceptives, ARVs or pap smears. They don’t get them at all at public facilities because they are met with negative attitudes from health workers who are already overburdened,” she observed, adding that many health workers do not have the patience to deal with migrants who cannot speak English.

In addition, there are increased cases of gender forms of racism and xenophobia against women migrant workers in South Africa, a country that, according to Vos, has a policy that bans discrimination, and guarantees protection and security of migrants.

A recent International Organisation for Migration survey conducted in the country supports this. The study, ‘Towards Tolerance, Law and Dignity: Addressing Violence Against Foreign Nationals in South Africa’, also indicates that while foreign nationals remain subject to xenophobic violence, women are the most vulnerable group.

Emphasis at the CSW meeting has been on getting governments to adhere to the United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. The international agreement, which came to force in 2003, also stresses the importance of migrants’ remittances in reducing poverty in their home countries.

U.N. studies indicate that migrant women workers contribute to the development of both sending and receiving countries – remittances from their incomes account for as much as 10 percent of the GDP in some countries.

For example, Lesotho, one of the most migration-dependant countries in the world, has over 240,000 people outside the country, most of them women, according to the gender minister, Mathabiso Lepono.

“When the women are not working as farm or domestic workers in South Africa, where they have migrated in large numbers, they are engaged in other activities like hawking or sewing, to earn more money to fight poverty in their families back home,” she said.

In many countries like Lesotho, remittances from migrant women are used to buy food, and pay for schooling and medical care, but there is also a need to help women learn to save and invest their earnings.

A U.N. study launched at the CSW, ‘Migration, Remittances and Gender-Responsive Local Government’, highlights the need for migrant women to ensure sustainability of their remittances through investment. It calls on governments to ensure protection of women migrant workers, and to provide policies that “link remittances with sustainable livelihoods”, at the same time building social capital.

Margot Wallström, special representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, says that women's security is the best measure of national security. UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Marguerite A. Suozzi

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 (IPS/TerraViva) There is little disagreement among United Nations member states that involving women in peace processes is crucial to their success.

But despite of this consensus, manifested in the unanimous support of Security Council Resolution 1325, passed in October 2000 and which addresses the impact of war on women, challenges remain for the international community to debunk many prevailing attitudes about gender, and to achieve gender parity in conflict prevention, resolution, and peacekeeping efforts.

In January, the gender statistics of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) indicated that women constitute just over three percent of peacekeeping personnel in its 19 missions, employing nearly 97,000 male military and police personnel, versus less than 3,000 female personnel.

In Nepal, women have been largely left out of peace negotiations since 2006, according to Bandana Rana, the regional coordinator of the South Asian campaign for gender equality and the executive president of Sati Organisation, an NGO working on violence against women and children in Nepal.

After Nepal’s 13-year civil war, where women constituted approximately one-third of the armed rebel army, it was not until the last stage of drafting Nepal’s new constitution that four women were included in the drafting committee.

“All the peace agreements and peace negotiations and the talks that took place between different political parties did not see women’s participation at all,” Rana said.

“Women were more or less perceived as passive victims of war, rather than active agents of change, where they had actually gathered and got a lot of knowledge and expertise and experience,” she said, “That was not recognised.”

At the most rudimentary level, sustained threats to women’s dignity and security hinder their active participation in the peace process.

In her first presentation as Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Margot Wallström cited the Democratic Republic of Congo as the epicentre of the crisis of sexual violence against women.

 ”My message to the guardians of global public opinion in the global peace and security sphere: rape is never inevitable, it’s a crime of concern to the international community. And the U.N. estimates that over 200,000 women have been raped during 12 years of war in the DRC,” she said.

“In my view, women’s security is the best measure of national security,” said Wallström.

“Strategies to protect women, are also strategies to protect women’s participation. If women are unable to safely access fields, or go to the well, marketplaces, or polling booths, if girl’s are unable to safely get to school, then social-economic recovery will be stalled.”

Audun Lysbakken. Credit: Bomoon Lee/TerraViva

Christian Benoni interviews AUDUN LYSBAKKEN, Norway’s first male minister for Gender Equality

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 (IPS/TerraViva) Gender equality in all its aspects has been the primary issue on the minds of delegates attending the two-week U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. And one factor that has emerged clearly is the need for involvement of men in this fight.

Audun Lysbakken, Norway’s first male minister for Gender Equality and Children’s Affairs, is the epitome of this fight. The 32-year-old deputy leader of the Socialist left party has sought to revitalise the gender equality debate in Norway, where he is involved in a spirited campaign to raise men’s awareness about the importance of women empowerment.

He has successfully advocated for mandated paternity leave, one of the most extensive parental leave schemes in the world – 46 weeks, with 10 weeks for the father – fully paid. He is a firm believer in men staying at home to help in the upbringing of their children.

Lysbakken speaks candidly with Terraviva’s Christian Benoni about his campaign.   

TV: How do you feel being the first male minister for a ministry that has in most instances been headed by women?

AL: I am very proud to be a minister of gender equality and children, and I believe it is important that men know and understand the necessity of gender equality. My point here is that if we are to have development, if we are to have economic recovery, equality is extremely important. If we continue to sideline half of the world’s population – women – then we will not see development. We see that the countries that invest in women and girls are improving and developing, whereas the countries that do not are lagging behind; they are slowing down their development.     

TV: What is the role of men in gender empowerment; and are they performing it?

AL: Overall, men today are not performing that role, but we are trying to encourage men in Norway to do it. I think more and more men are beginning to build an interest in gender equality and are realising it is a common good for our society. It means that our economic performance will do better, we will have more welfare if we use the resources of women as well.

But then I believe also, for a lot of men in our country, the right to choose to be at home with children when they are small, to be fathers the same way that women are mothers, is something more and more men are beginning to embrace.

Then lastly I believe men need to mobilise other men to change their culture and attitude when it comes to issues about violence against women, because all men have a responsibility to do something about this problem. As long as violence against women persists, we can never reach full gender equality.

TV: You are an advocate for mandated paternity leave. How has the response been in your country, and what lesson does it carry for developing nations?

AL: The response has been tremendous in my country. It means that it is possible for women to combine careers and having children, and it is even easier with the support of men who also stay at home for some time helping with taking care of the children. This creates more room for women in working life. I believe this is an important investment for countries.

Norway did not invest in paternity leave schemes after it got prosperous. We are prosperous because we invested in gender equality and it is important that all nations see that equality is a prerequisite for development, not the other way round.

 TV: How practical is this in the developing world considering the issue of affordability?

 AL: Of course there will always be a relation between what you can achieve and the economic situation. My point is that we must not see equality as something that we should create after a nation has become prosperous because equality is important to make a nation prosperous. This means that if we do not invest in the female population, a lot of problems will persist.

For instance, education for the girl child is probably one most effective investment for development. Over the last 15 years since we adopted the Beijing Platform for action, more girls across the world have access to education. But there are other areas where little progress has been made.

TV: Like which ones?

AL: In many parts of the world, the most dangerous thing a woman can do is to give birth. There has been practically no progress at all in reducing maternal mortality since Beijing. The same political will that has seen investment in education should be applied to addressing maternal mortality so that women have access to basic health services.

We need to ensure the right policy change, and back such change with adequate funding. If we neglect this, we will be treating women as second-class citizens despite all the international treaties and resolutions we have solemnly adopted.

Women informal cross-border traders negotiate a minefield ranging from bus drivers, customs officials and dangerous and unfamiliar environments. Credit: IPS

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 (IPS/TerraViva) Whenever gender empowerment is a vibrant topic of discussion internationally, some of the countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America are invariably singled out for their success stories in politics, education, health care or civil liberties even as Africa is mostly left out of political reckoning – and wrongly so.

Rwanda has provided global leadership in terms of women holding elected office, with more than half of all its parliamentary seats filled by women, says Litha Musyimi-Ogana, director of women, gender and development directorate at the 53-member African Union (AU), the largest single coalition of African nations.

Cape Verde, another African high achiever, has “had the highest level of cabinet ministers in the world:” at last count, about 12 out of 17.

But still, Musyimi-Ogana points out, the AU is aware that although 70 percent of its members have gender policies, there are “huge implementation challenges”.

The reason why most of these policies are not implemented is primarily lack of financial resources.

As a result, the AU has set up an African Women’s Development Fund to tide over “resource constraints”.

At the same time, it has also established a protocol – an addendum on the ‘Rights of Women’ ratified by 27 countries – to the existing African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Lalla Ben Barka, deputy executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), claims Africa has made “impressive gains” in closing the gender gap in primary education, largely due “to free, universal, compulsory education” – continent-wide.

She told the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which concludes a two-week session Friday, that 65 percent of the region’s countries were conducting research on the situation of girls, and some countries had revised school curricula to present positive images of women.

Still, there were gaps in several areas: inheritance rights for women, higher education and the elimination of cultural practices and barriers to women’s advancement.

She said Liberia has had the distinction of having elected the first female African president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who took office in January 2006.

Ben Barka also said that 47 percent of countries had enacted laws to combat female genital mutilation (FGM), and many offered comprehensive services for victims.

According to Tsegga Gaim Misgun of the National Union of Eritrean Women, efforts to abolish FGM began as far back as the late 1970s  – even before the formal independence of Eritrea in 1993 – by the then de facto government, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front.

As a result of these efforts, the people of Eritrea had initiated community laws banning FGM. On the basis of these initiatives, the government of Eritrea banned the practice in March 2007.

“The proclamation made female genital mutilation a criminal offence,” Misgun said.

Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, South Africa’s minister for women, children and persons with disabilities, told delegates that although violence against women and girls remains a “major concern of government”, the country is in an advanced stage of developing a comprehensive framework to address gender violence.

These include, among others, legislation on sexual offences; trafficking in persons; domestic violence; and the children’s act.

The Thuthuzela Care Centre, described as a comprehensive one-stop service centre for victims of domestic violence, was hailed as an example of “best practice” in the 2007 report by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on violence against children.

“These are replicated and piloted in some countries at the global level,” she said.

Mayende-Sibiya also said that South Africa was proud of the high number of women deployed in peacekeeping missions, averaging about 40 percent of peacekeepers from her country.

Alphonsine Mbie N’na, Gabon’s minister of health and social affairs, said her country had created a poverty reduction strategy as well as an exam to promote socio-economic activities among women, with winners receiving 40,000 dollars and an overseas trip.

 In the field of employment, Gabon has no hiring or salary discrimination. Schooling and text books were free.

In Ethiopia, the ministry of women’s affairs was an integral part of the executive branch of the government.

And to boost gender equality in agriculture – the country’s main economic sector – Ethiopia registers names of spouses for land certification in order to ensure that women can own their economic assets.

Liberia’s new farmers like Jeanet Gay do not have husbands to support them and their children. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS

By Christian Benoni

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 (IPS/TerraViva) The African Union’s declaration that 2010/2020 is the African Women’s decade will mean little if governments fail to ratify and implement the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women.

Delegates at the Beijing +15 meeting in New York say implementation of the protocol, popularly known as the African women’s protocol, holds the key to advancing the rights of women on the continent. So far, only 27 countries, half of the continent’s nations, have ratified the instrument, regarded as progressive in safeguarding women’s rights.

The protocol, which came into force in 2005, requires state parties to eliminate sexual violence, discrimination and other harmful practices against women, and ensure gender equality and reproductive health rights, as well as the right to inherit property. While some countries have ratified the protocol, lack of implementation has seen continued human rights violations against women.

“The rights to cultivate and transfer customary land in Malawi are still granted by traditional chiefs who do not allow women to own land,” says Luciana Kuboma, a smallholder farmer in the southern African country.

“Women are in the process left poor and cannot even access credit at microfinance institutions because they have nothing to present as collateral,” she adds.

In most parts of Africa, women lose land or matrimonial property to in-laws upon the death of their husbands. Many become destitute because they are unable to use the land to feed their children.

Addressing such traditional practices calls not only for implementing the protocol, but urgent budgets to support the implementation.

“We must now move from rhetoric to action. Our governments must put money into awareness-creation programmes, and building partnerships with religious and cultural institutions so as to change their attitudes towards such practices,” says Elizabeth Musoke of Maarifa Community Women’s Group, based in Nairobi.

Training is also crucial for police and magistrates who handle rape and other sexual violence cases. According to Tina Musuya, executive director of the Centre for Domestic Violence Prevention in Uganda, negative attitudes and blame towards survivors of sexual violence discourage them from reporting crimes.

“We have unsupportive law enforcement officers who mock rape, blaming women for having been scantily dressed at the time of the rape occurred. Also, magistrates reduce jail sentences on rape on pretext that if the head of the house is in jail, the family will have no provider,” she notes.

The situation is similar in neighbouring Kenya, where despite the Sexual Offences Act stipulating a minimum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and a maximum of life imprisonment, offenders are sometimes released after a few months, making the law far less effective as a deterrent.

Kenya is among the countries that have signed but not yet ratified the African women’s protocol. The heat is on now for such countries to “put their money where their mouth is” to ensure women enjoy their human rights, says Musuya.

African women attending the Commission on the Status of Women chat in the lobby of U.N. headquarters. Credit: Bomoon Lee/TerraViva

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9 (IPS/TerraViva) – The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.

In the 1991 cyclone disasters that killed 140,000 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were reportedly women; in the 2004 Asian Tsunami, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of overall deaths were women.

And following the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States, African-American women, who were the poorest population in some of the affected States in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, faced the greatest obstacles to survival, according to the New York-based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO).

The 2007 Human Development Report, issued by the U.N. Development Programme, points out that women are particularly affected by climate change because they are the largest percentage – accounting for about 70 percent – of the poor population.

Amy North, a researcher working on gender, education and global poverty reduction initiatives at the Institute of Education in the University of London, told IPS climate change is also exacerbating existing gender inequalities, with a devastating effect on the quality of life of poor women and girls.

In many parts of the world, women and girls are responsible for collecting water and firewood.

As these resources become scarcer in the face of increasingly erratic rainfall, they must spend more time looking for and collecting them, further reducing the time they have available to engaging in economic activities, or attending school, she said.

Women are also the main producers of food, providing 70 percent of agricultural labour in sub-Saharan Africa, and so are particularly affected by reduced agricultural output, North added.

“The care responsibilities that fall to women and girls mean that health problems associated with climate change – including an increase in waterborne diseases associated with flooding – often result in them taking on an increased burden of care as they are required to look after sick family members,” she noted.

June Zeitlin, a former executive director of WEDO, has cited a study by the London School of Economics analysing disasters in 141 countries that provides decisive evidence that gender differences in deaths from natural disasters are directly linked to women’s economic and social rights.

That is, gender inequalities are magnified in disaster situations. So when women lack basic rights, more women than men will die from natural disasters.

The study also found the opposite to be true: in societies where women and men enjoy equal rights, natural disasters kill the same number of women and men.

In an interview with IPS, North said that in East Africa – a region that is acutely feeling the effects of climate change, with widespread drought resulting in critical shortages of food and water – research suggests that increased poverty levels is having serious consequences for the education of girls.

In Kenya, participants in the Gender, Education and Global Poverty Reduction Initiatives project have noted that increased poverty associated with drought has affected school attendance, with girls being more likely to be withdrawn from school than boys.

In neighbouring Uganda, the food crises associated with climate change have been linked to higher rates of early marriage for girls, as they are exchanged for dowry or bride price.

These “famine marriages” – as they are called – not only lead to girls dropping out of school, but also make them vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections and related reproductive complications.

WEDO’s Cate Owren told IPS her organisation is also deeply concerned about the political status of negotiations on climate change.

“We do not support the Copenhagen Accord (finalised last December) serving as the basis for ongoing negotiations this year,” she said.

But still, she said, “We are celebrating (and maintaining momentum from) great strides being made over the course of the last few years, during which time gender equality issues were substantively integrated into climate change negotiations.”

According to WEDO, not only did gender texts increase (peaking at 40 plus) in negotiating documents, but so did women’s participation.

At the Copenhagen talks, women comprised about 30 percent of registered country delegates, the largest percentage of women attending a climate change meeting on record.

Stefan Wallin, Finland’s minister of culture and sport, told delegates last week that one of his country’s “strong areas of emphasis” concerns decision-making processes on matters affecting climate change.

“Finland has taken an active role in ensuring that climate change decision-making is inclusive, both of women and men,” Wallin said.

He said climate change does not affect women and men in the same way. “It has gender-differentiated impact,” he noted.

Finland, he said, has argued that climate targets are reachable only “if the knowledge and views of both women and men are included, and if both women and men are committed to the goals.”

Asked how women could be protected from the after-effects of climate change, North said there are a number of important steps that must be taken.

Women’s groups mobilised around the climate talks in Copenhagen last year to demand that a gender perspective be integrated into the Copenhagen outcomes and follow-up activities.

“It is essential that these demands are taken seriously and that all future agreements around climate change recognise the differential impacts that climate change has on men and women,” North said.

For this to happen, she said, women’s participation must be ensured in the negotiation of policies and strategies to tackle the effects of climate change at international and national levels.

And as individual governments draw up National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) to outline their priorities for adapting to the effects of climate change, it is crucial that these take into consideration the particular effects of climate change on women and girls.

Moreover, serious attention must also be given to addressing the underlying gender inequalities that make women more vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the first place.

This includes taking action to ensure women are able to participate in decision making and political processes that affect them; tackling the inequalities that women face in accessing employment and childcare; and making concerted efforts to ensure real progress is made towards achieving gender equality in education.

North said this will be a key feature of discussions that will be taking place at the E4 (Engendering Empowerment: Education and Equality) conference in Dakar, Senegal in May this year, and in e-discussions that will be held from Apr. 12 to May 17 (http://www.e4conference.org/.)

Haitian woman wait to inoculate children. Credit: UN Photo/Sophia Paris

By Thalif Deen

Natural disasters hit women harder than they affect men.

During the 1991 cyclone that killed 140,000 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were women. During the 2004 Asian tsunami, 70 to 80 percent of those who died were women, according to the New York-based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO). Continue Reading

Women wearing the traditional Hijab attend the Commission on the Status of Women conference at U.N. headquarters. Credit:Bomoon Lee/IPS

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4, 2010 (IPS) – The status of women in a predominantly male-chauvinistic Arab world continues to fluctuate from one extreme to another.

The political and cultural life in the region, by and large, has been characterised by the good, the bad and the ugly.

On the one hand are child marriages and honour killings (deemed barbaric) in the rigidly conservative countries, and on the other, are the appointment and/or election of women to high office (hailed as impressive success stories) in the relatively liberal countries.

“Women can already been seen in greater numbers in our parliament, ministries, judiciary, armed forces and police, and they have also assumed very senior positions in both public office and the private sector,” says Hala Latouf, head of the Jordanian delegation to the Commission on the Status of Women.

She also proudly notes that Jordan now has women governors, mayors, judges and ambassadors, in addition to women chief executive officers (CEOs) in key industries and businesses, consultative bodies and chambers of commerce and industry.

“The new draft law on elections is expected to allocate even greater number of (parliamentary) seats for women,” she declared.

On an equally positive note, Dr. Jouhaina Sultan Seif El-Issa, vice chairperson of Qatar’s supreme council for family affairs, points out that Qatari business women account for more than 50 percent of the total equity investors and dealers in the Doha Stock Market.

At the same time, the number of women-owned companies in Qatar now amount to nearly 1,500.

She said Qatar has established two Foundations: one, for child and women protection, and the other, to combat human trafficking.

Still, says Nadya Khalife of Human Rights Watch, most governments in the region discriminate against women in personal status laws which govern their everyday lives, including issues of marriage, divorce, custody and guardianship, and inheritance.

In an interview with IPS, Khalife said that some provisions in penal laws also allow for perpetrators of so-called honour crimes to receive a mitigated sentence or be exempt from punishment based on “family honour”.

“These crimes are typically committed in cases of adultery or sex outside of marriage,” she said.

And some countries in the region, she pointed out, do not have laws to protect women from domestic violence.

“Women are often not encouraged to report abuses to police and find difficulties in seeking redress,” she added.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Thursday that most of the 5,000 honour killings reported to take place every year around the world do not make the news, nor do the other myriad forms of violence inflicted on women and girls by husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles and other male and sometimes even female family members.

“In the name of preserving family honour, women and girls are shot, stoned, burned, buried alive, strangled, smothered and knifed to death with horrifying regularity,” she added.

Although she did not identify any countries by name, Pillay said the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that in a number of countries domestic legal systems, including through discriminatory laws, still fully or partially exempt individuals guilty of honour killings from punishment.

“Perpetrators may even be treated with admiration and given special status within their communities,” she added.

A study released by the Washington-based Freedom House early this week singles out 15 countries in the region as having recorded “some gains in women’s rights” over the past five years.

Kuwait, Algeria and Jordan saw the most significant progress while Iraq, Yemen and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories – enduring internal conflicts and/or religious extremism – are the only countries to record overall decline.

Nadia Hijab, an independent analyst who works on gender, human rights, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, told IPS that Arab women are constantly making progress in securing political, economic, and social rights – but it is slow and incremental.

The obstacles are huge: women’s rights are tied to the struggle for democracy, defining the role of religion in the state, and the drive for equitable development, she said.

“That there is progress is a testament to the increasingly sophisticated and determined efforts of women’s groups that are pushing the boundaries of debate in all these areas,” she said.

Hijab said that as in many other parts of the world, the key is recognition that women are equal partners within the family and under the law.

This is why it is such a success when women gain the right to grant their nationality to their husbands and children, as they have in Algeria: it is recognition of their equal status at home and in the public sphere.

Similarly, the fact that there are women judges in Morocco and Lebanon sends a very powerful message in a region where some countries still consider women legal minors, Hijab declared.

She said the region is also heavily impacted by internal and cross-border conflicts that set women back.

In Lebanon, progress made by women’s groups ground to a halt recently when the country was in a political stalemate over the election of a president and formation of a government.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, gains women made in political development and economic empowerment have been set back as Palestinians struggle against the occupying Israeli forces’ encroachment on their lands and rights, Hijab said.

(END)

A mother comforts her child as he receives tetanus and diphtheria vaccinations provided by the World Health Organisation. Credit: UN Photo/Sophia Paris

By Marguerite A. Suozzi

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 (IPS/TerraViva) Women in Haiti are more vulnerable than ever to attacks on their dignity and gender-based violence after the massive Jan.  12 earthquake crippled the already struggling nation. Continue Reading