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human rights

Archive for 'human rights'

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CEDAW!

Posted on December 18, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, harmful practices, health, human rights, politics, religion, reproductive health, violence, women, men and more.

Ask the woman sitting next to you in the bus, train, plane, taxi-brousse or donkey cart what is CEDAW, and most probably you will draw a blank look. C’est quoi?

Yet CEDAW - Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women - has likely impacted on her life and her daughters, if she has any, in many ways, from pension and inheritance rights to the passport they hold.

Quilt made by women of Kyrgztan. (Unifem)

Quilt made by women of Kyrgztan. (Unifem)

CEDAW, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly 30 years ago today, is the global Bill of Rights for Women, the first international human rights treaty devoted to gender equality.

Through its 30 articles, CEDAW has boosted women’s rights worldwide in many ways.

(more…)

82 Comments

Women human rights defenders under attack

Posted on December 10, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, human rights, media, violence, war rape, women, men and more.

Let’s do a quick review of women and violence in the news in the last weeks.

What's in the news on Human Rights Day?

What's in the news on Human Rights Day?

Why today? Because it’s the last of the 16 Days against Violence against Women, arguably the best known global campaign of the women’s movement, and also Human Rights Day.

Today, Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar starts her fourth week of hunger strike at Lanzarote airport in the Canary Islands. She is so weak she has to be transported to court by wheelchair or stretcher. Last week, the head of UNHCR called on Spain and Morocco to resolve her issue on humanitarian grounds.

The award-winning Haidar is known as the Sahrawi Gandhi for her non-violent protests for the independence of her desert country, the Western Sahara, ruled by Morocco since 1975.  (more…)

127 Comments

WORLD AIDS DAY 2009

Posted on December 1, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, HIV/AIDS, arts, children, gays and lesbians, harmful practices, health, human rights, media, politics, religion, reproductive health, stereotypes, truth commissions, violence, war rape, women, men and more.

We share the wish of Marie Mendene Owono:  SEND AIDS AWAY.

By M. Sayagues

By M. Sayagues

Marie Mendene  is an extraordinary activist from Cameroon and one of the first African women to say publicly that she lives with HIV, in the 1990s, when AIDS was a disease of shame and blame.

This is one of my favourite photos about AIDS in Africa. I took it at Sunshine, her NGO in Douala, in 2003, before antiretroviral treatment became widely available. Only a few Cameroonians in cities could get the life-saving pills.

The day I took the photo, Marie had queued for seven hours and  received only half of her monthly ARV pills. She was understandably upset about the poor logistics and delivery of medicines. AIDS magnified all the inadequacies of health systems.

That was then. Today, nearly three million people in Africa are on ARV treatment. This seemed like a dream then, but activists were campaigning hard to make it come true.

Marie had a clear vision of activism. “We should go beyond the begging bowl and the appeal to compassion, beyond the stage of being used to do prevention and awareness, and become part of real-decision making around AIDS,” she told me.

Marie is to the right in the pic, with a fellow activist.

132 Comments

Watchdog citizen journalism against gender violence

Posted on November 27, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, harmful practices, human rights, media, politics, stereotypes, violence, women, men and more.

The sisters can do it by themselves. By A. Vilanculos

The sisters can do it by themselves. By A. Vilanculos

The buzz in Mozambique during the recent elections was not the TV debate among presidential candidates debate (there is none) or their programs  (all vague).

What had tongues wagging was citizen’s journalism, dispatches by ordinary folk about electoral irregularities from the Rovuma to the Maputo rivers.

Good stuff: government cars illegally used for campaigning, with cellphone pics of their registration plates (until officials wised up and started covering up plates and ministry logos with party posters). Reports of youth tearing downs other party’s posters, fistfights, intimidation, and police lack of impartiality.  (more…)

22 Comments

A spiritual gift

Posted on November 23, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, arts, children, culture, human rights, religion, stereotypes, violence, women, men and more.

Patriarchal in all senses. By M. Sayagues

Patriarchal in all senses. By M. Sayagues

What drives a 17-year-old girl to enter a monastery? Today she is 30, and still happy about her choice. Her eyes sparkle and her laughter comes easy. She exudes peace.

I will call her Gabra (gift, in Amharic), for our conversation was private. I met her at a monastery near Lalibela, the mystical city of rock-hewn churches in northern Ethiopia.

Monastic life has a long tradition and prestige in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The oldest monastery dates from the 6th century. A monastic renaissance between the 13th and 16th century brought great moral and political authority to clergy.

Custodians of tradition

Custodians of tradition

Gabra’s rock-hewn monastery dates from the 12th century. Her room is excavated in the pink tufa rock. Two built-in-the-rock platforms, covered with a thin mattress, do as couch and bed. An old cupboard holds a few plates and cooking utensils, three of the long green robes worn by Ethiopian peasants, the white headscarves that nuns wear, and two pairs of sandals.

(more…)

140 Comments

Being male was the cameraman’s bad luck

Posted on November 3, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, human rights, media, stereotypes, women, men and more.

Guest blogger: Suad Hamada, IPS correspondent in Bahrain

Shall we talk about it?

Shall we talk about it?

A Saudi woman journalist escaped punishment last week but her cameraman wasn’t so lucky.

Rozana Al-Yami, 22, was pardoned by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah after the court sentenced her to 60 lashes for her work at the talk show  Red Line in LBC, a Lebanese satellite TV.

She made international news. He didn’t. No one mentioned that he has to serve a two-month jail term.  His name remains anonymous  in press reports.

Some would call this positive discrimination in favour of women but to me iit s a general bias. Women have been striving all over the world for equality,  not favoritism. (more…)

13 Comments

Red light for Burqa-wearing drivers in Bahrain

Posted on October 5, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, human rights, politics, religion, stereotypes, women, men and more.

Guest blogger: Suad Hamada, IPS correspondent in Bahrain

Dressed to drive? By S.Hamada

Dressed to drive? By S.Hamada

Burqa-wearing women may lose the right to drive in Bahrain over a conflict between government and conservative lawmakers.

The government wants to amend the traffic law and grant male traffic officers the right to ask women to lift the veil and show their faces.

On the other hand, some lawmakers are loath to approve the amendment or at least demand that female traffic officers be employed for this task.

Let’s hope that in either way it will be a win-win situation for women: that they will continue to drive, and enter a job sector that has been reserved for men since the 1970s.   Bahrain doesn’t impose a dress code on women. Wearing a burqa (or Niqab, in Bahrain) is a personal choice.

OK, not all women here wear a burqa as personal choice; some do it to obey their male relatives or conservative families. (more…)

32 Comments

Breakthrough for Women at the UN

Posted on September 18, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, human rights, media, politics, women, men and more.

Guest blogger:  Ann Ninan, IPS Gender Editor

Is there room for us as well? M. Sayagues

A breakthrough for us as well? M. Sayagues

The UN has finally decided to stand up for women!  A decision to create a new agency for women was taken by the General Assembly on September14.

Our colleague Thalif Deen, IPS bureau chief in New York, was the first and only journalist to report it for the first several hours.

But this blog is not to crow about our scoop.

I’m quite excited by the prospect of a new women’s agency with money and political power. No longer will the world’s feminists have to lobby from the outside to put their views on the table. They have now won admission to the high table.

Any one of those bright, articulate, activist women can emerge to lead the agency. The reality is likely to be less rosy. But chances are that, because it’s new, it will be less under the thumb of the old boy network.

You think I’m a romantic? What the hell, there is no harm in dreaming, is there?  (more…)

187 Comments

Missing the Point? A critical review of MDG

Posted on September 14, 2009, by mercedes, under children, health, human rights, women, men and more.

Next time you read a story or a press release moaning about how country X will not reach the Millennium Development Goals, think twice - whose goal and whose target is it? We know the deadline but do we know the baseline?

Instead of striking a balance between ambition and realism, the MDGs have become “money-metric and donor-centric”, “meaningless catch-all phrases.”

So says Jan Vandemoortele, a Belgian national, a United Nations senior official and one of the architects of the MDGs, in a thought-provoking article in the July issue of  Development Policy Review of the Overseas Development Institute. (read it here)

Unrealistic? A crowded classrom in Guinea Bissau...

Unrealistic goal? A crowded classroom in Guinea Bissau...

The author recalls that the MDGs were set up in 2000 as collective targets based on extrapolations of global trends.  They are vague by definition; they are not one-size-fits-all.

Instead, one should look at countries’ historical backgrounds, natural endowments and specific problems, then adapt the Goals to each circumstance, as Mozambique, Cambodia and Ethiopia have done.

Otherwise, this puts undue pressure on the poorest countries and, given that most of these are in Africa, nurtures Afro-pessimism.

For example, the global target for education “is not realistic” for countries in conflict, he says.                              (more…)

81 Comments

Italian Women – The Horror

Posted on September 10, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, adolescents, culture, human rights, media, stereotypes, violence, women, men and more.

Guest blogger: Miren Gutierrez, IPS editor-in-chief

Have you seen the Italian documentary Il corpo delle donne (available with English subtitles)?

It is horrifying, like a horror movie.

“Women –real women— are an endangered species on television, one that is being replaced by a grotesque, vulgar and humiliating representation,” says an introduction to the documentary by Lorella Zanardo.
women_han_
This picture shows a woman hanged from the ceiling, like a ham, surrounded by legs of ham. This and other images, taken from real TV shows, speak for themselves.

Il corpo delle donne is a 25-minute terrifying documentary that undresses the degradation of women in Italian television. (more…)

137 Comments

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