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Sept. 17-30, 2001
SAVING WOMEN’S LIVES
Women as Refugees
Responding to the grave health emergency now facing Afghan women, the United
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is mounting
its largest-ever humanitarian operation. According to UNFPA’s press
release on September 28, the agency is asking international donors for $4.5
million to support the effort. Thousands of pregnant women are among the Afghan
civilians who have fled their homes in recent days and are massed along the
country's borders. The lack of shelter, food and medical care, and unsanitary
conditions pose a serious risk to these women and their infant children. "When
it comes to access to nutrition during a crisis, we've seen studies that show
that women and, of course, children suffer more in comparison to men,”
said Roxanna Bonnell, a public health expert at the New York-based Open
Society Institute, in a September 30 story by Womens
Enews. “Men tend to gain first access to nutritional resources and
women get whatever is left over." Other UN divisions that called for support
for Afghan women and children include UNICEF
and UNHCR.
In an email to ABC
News on September 17, an Afghan woman who called herself Mehmooda, a member
of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA),
a grassroots pro-democracy group that provides education, healthcare and economic
opportunity to Afghan women, wrote, “If life in Afghanistan has been bleak
since the Taliban took power in 1996, its confrontation with the United States
promises to make things worse still for the millions of ordinary Afghans who
struggle each day just to survive.” She added, "According to people
who crossed into Pakistan, thousands of people who can't pay that much money
are waiting on the border with their children." The
Washington Post also covered Afghan women on September 24.
The call to help aid Afghan women and children was supported by Mavis Leno,
chair of the Feminist Majority's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan.
In an interview with USA
Today on September 27, Leno said, “I would like Americans to call
in to our State Department and ask them to deal with this situation humanely.
Punish the people who deserve to be punished. Don't harm thousands of innocent
people.” She was also interviewed on CNN's Larry
King Live on September 26.
[NOTE: See PLANetWIRE.org’s feature story on “’Saving
Womens Lives in Afghanistan.”
Solutions for Women: Education
In Malawi, authorities are battling to keep young girls in school. A September
27 story disseminated by Africa
News quoted Kuthemba Mwale, Director for Education, Planning, Policy and
Budget: "Girls opt for early marriages. As a poor country, Malawi is experiencing
a great deal of girls who drop out from school because they are enticed by men
to marry or because they get pregnant." He said girls accounted for the
majority of Malawi’s 18 percent drop-out rate in its primary schools, one
of the highest in the southern African region. HIV/AIDS has contributed, he
said: “The HIV pandemic has taken away most breadwinners in most families.
Consequently, girls take care of their families more than boys.” At a seminar
in Pakistan on "Role of Women in the Freedom Movement," organized
by the Institute of Women Development Studies, Mazhar-ul-Haq Siddiqui, the vice
chancellor of Sindh University in Jamshoro, Pakistan, said it was the responsibility
of scholars to create awareness among women to solve their problems, according
to a September 21 story by The
Business Recorder. He also emphasized “the need for greater concentration
on uplifting women of rural areas,” because “the majority of them
have no knowledge about their rights.” A September 24 story by Women's
Enews stressed that global education of girls is the key to development:
“The world over, schooling girls makes economic sense. A similar increase
in the number of boys finishing secondary school doesn't yield the same returns,
according to UNFPA. Part of the reason is
that women are more likely to invest in their children's health and education,
further boosting economic growth.”
HIV/AIDS
Although Brazil, Latin America's largest country, has one of the most progressive
anti-AIDS programs in the world, women -- and housewives in particular - are
becoming infected at an alarming rate, in part because of cultural norms favoring
sensuality and male chauvinism, according to a September 30 story in The
Washington Post. "One of our biggest enemies in AIDS prevention
is machismo," said Paulo Roberto Teixeira, secretary of Brazil's AIDS program.
"We need to empower women, especially those living in poverty, who have
even less ability to negotiate sex with their partners. But we also need to
educate wives of all classes, who often don't see themselves with any risk factor.
The solution will go hand in hand with feminism and women's liberation. It is
the only way."
AIDS was found to be the leading cause of death in South Africa, according
to a report titled “The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Adult Mortality in South
Africa” by the Medical Research Council (MRC)
of South Africa. About 40 percent of South Africans aged 15 to 49 who died last
year died of AIDS related illnesses, said the MRC
report, as reported by The
Sunday Times (South Africa) on September 16. If the epidemic goes unchecked,
the number of AIDS-related deaths could rise to twice the number of all other
causes of death in the country combined and could bring population growth to
a halt, the report said. This story was also reported by the Associated
Press and Agence France Presse on September 16.
In an effort to combat rising HIV/AIDS infections in Swaziland, a small, impoverished
and landlocked kingdom between South Africa and Mozambique, King Mswati III
announced on Sept. 9 the reinstatement of the traditional chastity rite of umchwasho.
Under the tradition, put in place for the next five years, all unmarried girls
under the age of 18 must wear the multicolored, woven scarves signaling they
are not to be touched by men. The Associated Press reported on September 30
that nearly three weeks later, two scarfless teen-age schoolgirls waited for
a bus on the streets of the capital, Mbabane, and openly questioned their ruler's
edict. "Five years is too much," said Siphiwe Nkosi, a 14-year-old
wearing a maroon school uniform. "If they had said two years, we could
have observed the tradition." Reuters
also ran a September 18 story on this event.
Agricultural output from small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe may have fallen by
as much as 50 percent over the past five years, mainly as a result of the AIDS
pandemic, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)
said in its latest report.
A September 28 story by Africa
News said that according to the FAO
report, overall agricultural production in 1999 failed to keep up with population
growth for the third consecutive year, rising by only 2.1 percent while population
growth was 2.5 percent. Preliminary estimates for 2000 were that agricultural
production would only increase by 0.5 percent.
ENVIRONMENT: FOOD SECURITY
According to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP),
more than 1.5 million people in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador
have been affected by drought, nearly 700,000 of them farmers who lost half
to all of their crops. The Washington Times reported on September 17
that at least 50 malnutrition deaths, many of them children, have been reported
in the area along Guatemala's border with Honduras. In Chiquimula province,
the town of Camotan alone has reported 41 deaths in the past eight months, and
doctors say malnutrition is to blame for many other deaths where the cause is
listed as "headache" or something else. Other areas affected by drought
include Sri Lanka, Iran and Ethiopia.
The
Associated Press reported on September 20, that Sri Lanka, known for its
lush jungles and tea plantations, made a surprise international appeal in August
for $700,000 in aid to feed 300,000 drought victims. Since then, the government
has said 1.5 million are affected by drought in seven southeastern districts.
“Of the 411,000 people directly hurt by the drought in Hambantota, 48,000
are children,” said Ananda Amaratunga, District Secretary of the region.
The Secretary noted that Sri Lanka has an agriculture-based economy, and when
so many crops are lost, “it not only affects the economy of the district,
but of the entire country.” Drought has also affected Iran’s economy.
A United Nations report pegged losses for the first six months of this year
at $2.6 billion. The report said the drought last year forced Iran, with more
than 70 million people, to become the world's largest importer of wheat - seven
million tons - and the situation is still worse this year, according to The
New York Times on September 18.
GLOBAL POPULATION COVERAGE
Pakistan and UNFPA on Tuesday signed three
projects totaling $3.451 million for achieving better family health services,
especially for women and children. The
Business Recorder (Pakistan) reported on September 19 that the projects
are for promoting intervention for safe motherhood, managing information for
better family health, and strengthening quality and supervision of family health
workers. Agence France Presse reported on September 20 that Kenya will host
international talks September 24-28 aimed at improving reproductive health in
Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Only 10 percent of the world's women live
in Africa and the eastern Mediterranean but they suffer 40 percent of all pregnancy-related
deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO)
said. The meeting sponsored by WHO, World
Bank and various other UN agencies is expected to take stock of what scientists
have achieved in the two regions and to seek solutions to reproductive health
problems based on sound scientific research. Also, The
New Vision (Uganda) reported on September 22 on that the European Union
will spend 3.5 billion Uganda shillings (about U.S. $2 million) to improving
sexual and reproductive health in eight districts in northern Uganda.
OPINIONS AND EDITORIALS
In light of the September 11 terrorist attack, opinion pieces and editorials
continue to reflect on the underlying causes of terrorism, saying those are
U.S. foreign policy and abuse of human rights. However, on September 27, The
Indianapolis Star ran an opinion piece by Ruth Holladay that opened
with the question: “Was it really a good idea for Planned Parenthood of
New York City, in the wake of more than 6,000 deaths in Manhattan, to offer
free reproductive services, including abortions, to frightened women?”
She then targeted UNFPA’s new campaign to aid Afghan women by noting, “UNFPA
has opportunistically turned natural disasters and wars into chances to pass
out ‘reproductive health kits’ in refugee camps.” Holladay concluded,
“If we truly want to defeat the culture of death, we must be responsibly
in favor of life -- not self-serving, theatrical or promotional, but genuinely
concerned for each other. And of course, that concern must extend to the unborn.”
Time
Magazine ran an October 1 opinion piece by rabbi Michael Lerner, editor
of TIKKUN Magazine: A Jewish Critique
of Politics, Culture and Society. In it he wrote, “We are naive to think
we can rid ourselves of this form of evil [terrorism] till we confront the deeper
realities that produce it.” He added, “If we want to be effective
in a long-term struggle against terror, we need a strategy to marginalize the
terrorists by making it much harder for them to appeal to legitimate anger at
the U.S. Imagine if the bin Ladens and other haters of the world had to recruit
people against the U.S. at a time when: The U.S. was using its economic resources
to end world hunger and redistribute the wealth of the planet so that everyone
had enough; The U.S. was the leading voice championing an ethos of generosity,
leading the world in ecological responsibility, social justice and openhearted
treatment of minorities, and rewarding people and corporations for social responsibility;
and The U.S. was restructuring its internal life so that all social practices,
corporations and institutions were being judged not only on whether they maximized
profit but also to the extent that they maximized love and caring, sensitivity
and an approach to the universe based on awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation.”
In another opinion piece that ran in Newsday
on September 20, Jamie F. Metzl, former National Security Council and State
Department official, asserted that “President George W. Bush and his Administration’s
unilateralist approach to foreign policy that has isolated America and alienated
our allies” was one of the underlying causes for the terrorist attack.
He also echoed Lerner’s Time piece by offering a similar solution: “One
major step toward limiting the terrorist recruitment pool is working with our
allies even harder to promote development and basic education in the poorest
parts of the world.”
An added dimension to the complexity of the U.S.-led international coalition
against terrorism is potential humanitarian disaster. A Financial
Times September 25 editorial warned that the UN predicted “more
than 5 million people in Afghanistan face an increasing danger of starvation.”
The editorial emphasized, “The high probability that vital food aid would
continue to be blocked should not be dismissed as ‘collateral damage’.
In planning its strike against terrorists, the United States must therefore
think simultaneously of ways to resume the supply of food, particularly in the
north and west where starvation is most imminent.”
OF SPECIAL INTEREST
A number of NGOs have been wondering about the appropriate time to pitch stories
to the press in light of the September 11 events. The
Wall Street Journal’s September 27 article titled, “In Attacks'
Wake, PR Firms Find Their Pitches Fall Flat” may be of special interest.
----
The above analysis was written by Elena M.
H. Cabatu and Kathy Bonk at the Communications
Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington,
DC 20005, 202/326-8700. Redistribution is encouraged with credit to CCMC.
Read more about global population and related issues in the online newsroom
www.PLANetWIRE.org.
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