SAVING WOMEN’S LIVES

Commission on Population and Development

At the 35th Session of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, April 1-5 in New York, the general debate covered reproductive rights and health with special reference to HIV/AIDS. China’s Xinhua General News Service reported April 1 that the commission also addressed follow-up actions to the recommendations of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)

In an April 1 speech to the gathering, the UN Population Fund’s Executive Director Thoraya Obaid said 120 million women who want to space births or stop having children were unable to get contraceptives, reported The New York Times April 7. "Today, we are faced with a paradox," she said. "The need for reproductive health services is great and growing. At the same time, the funding for such services is declining." Population Fund spokesman Stirling Scruggs said that according to its estimates, the loss of $34 million in U.S. funding "could mean 2 million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 induced abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths." The Times also reported agency officials and Obaid said the budget loss comes at a time when demand for contraceptives is rising in the developing world, where women are increasingly taking charge of their reproductive lives. Read: The New York Times and statements by: UNFPA’s Thoraya Obaid and UNPD’s Joseph Chamie.

[NOTE: See www.PLANetWIRE.org for the feature story: Commission on Population and Development Opens 35th Session.]

Violence against Women

From honor killings to female genital mutilation, the eradication of "cultural" violence against women is one of the greatest challenges facing the world. "Because of the link to notions of culture, these forms of violence are tenacious and extremely difficult to eradicate," Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka said in a report to the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission, according to an April 10 story by the Associated Press. Coomaraswamy catalogued violent attacks on women that are not considered crimes on grounds they are approved by culture, tradition or religion. These include female circumcision, rape-marriages and sexual slavery. “The killing of female babies is another common practice in Asia,” Coomaraswamy said. “In many cultures, the revulsion of having a daughter is so strong that female infanticide is accepted as a necessary evil. Females are killed as fetuses or left to die when born. A study of 10,000 abortions following gender tests by amniocentesis in Bombay, India, revealed that 9,999 of the fetuses were female.”

The Associated Press reported April 9 that in Kenya, most of the 61 Masai girls who arrived at the V-Day Safe House for Girls came for a short course on the consequences of female circumcision. But 14 of them, including 16-year-old Solio, sought refuge in the haven that was formally opened by Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues.” According to the AP story, the project was launched by Agnes Pareyio, a 45-year-old Masai woman who began visiting villages throughout southwestern Kenya a decade ago to educate women about the dangers of female circumcision. As a member of a local village council, Pareyio noted, "When the girls get circumcised, they are considered women, they can't go to school anymore....If they are married, they must stay home and take care of their husbands.” In Masai circumcision, the clitoris is removed, usually without anesthesia. Some women bleed to death during the procedure, and others are infected with HIV/AIDS because the razor blades are unclean, Pareyio said. Read: Associated Press

Four of five judges of Australian’s highest court upheld a decision to grant asylum to Naima Khawar, a Pakistani woman who fled her home to escape beatings by her husband and family. The panel argued that women in Pakistan can be considered a social group facing persecution, according to the Associated Press on April 11. The court noted that the U.N. Refugee Convention obliges Australia to protect those persecuted because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group. Chief Justice Murray Gleeson said the fact that women are half of Pakistan's population does not prevent them being a persecuted social group. Read: The Herald Sun (Australia)

Maternal Health

The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA) reported April 8 that every two months, Doug Beane of the Christian World Service departs Spokane for Pakistan and Afghanistan to oversee two health education programs. In a 2 ½-month program, refugee women are trained in the basics of midwifery, the importance of following through on immunizations and other basic health measures. “The level of knowledge about sanitation is low among Afghans, which contributes to one of the highest birth mortality rates in the world. Out of every 1,000 births, 147 babies die,” Beane said. “The Pashtun people have a number of very old traditions about birth, and one of them is that when it is time for the birth, the mother is put out in the stable with the animals. She might be attended by her mother, but not by anyone trained, and when time comes for the umbilical cord to be cut, the grandmother would reach for anything handy, often using a sharp rock from the stable floor.” Read: The Spokesman-Review

DEMOGRAPHICS

U.N. World Conference on Aging

The New York Times reported April 9 that a million people now turn 60 every month, a demographic revolution that will mean older people will outnumber the young by 2050 for the first time in history, according to the United Nations' Second Assembly on Ageing in Madrid, April 8-12. Reuters reported April 14 that after four days of heated debate, the gathering agreed unanimously to a 44-page plan of action that lists scores of objectives, including work and education for the elderly, pension guarantees, housing and health care, and preservation of the rights of older women. "We have put aging on the agenda for the 21st century," said Paul Hoeffel, a United Nations spokesman. "We need to recognize that as more people are better educated, live longer and stay healthy longer, older persons can and do make greater contributions to society than ever before," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told the delegates. The Times also noted that the UN Population Fund had commissioned a study of the elderly in South Africa and India, and concluded “that urbanization, migration, the breakdown of traditional social structures and the AIDS crisiss have forced many older people, especially women, into extreme poverty and isolation.” Read: Reuters, The New York Times, Associated Press: April 6, April 11 and the UN Population Fund’s statement at the UN Conference on Aging.

Urbanization

Within the next five years, half the population of the world will for the first time live in cities, a milestone that has been more than a millennium in the making. Joan Lowy of the Scipps Howard News Service reported April 3 that the trend toward urbanization is as old as civilization, although it accelerated with the industrial revolution of the 19th century and kicked into overdrive during the last 50 years. "We can't really stop urbanization,'' said Joseph Chamie, Chief of the United Nations Population Division. "It's going to continue. We project it to be increasing throughout the 21st century. We have to adjust to it.” Don Hinrichsen, a Senior Consultant to the Population Fund, said, “The great challenge and the great worry is that urbanization in developing countries - particularly poor ones like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa - is happening at such an incredibly fast pace that they are way outstripping infrastructure and services.” Read: Scripps Howard News Service and information on urbanization from The Worldwatch Institute

HIV/AIDS

AIDS in China

The Chinese government announced a 17 percent increase in the number of Chinese infected with the AIDS virus and sharply raised its estimate of the disease's spread, according to an April 11 story by the Associated Press. The official tally is 30,736 people confirmed to be carrying the virus and 1,594 people with full-blown AIDS, though the true number of cases could be as high as 200,000, reported the Xinhua News Agency. The report said up to 850,000 people could be infected with the HIV virus, and 100,000 might have died from the disease. The New York Times reported April 12 that the Health Ministry said 68 percent of China's HIV cases were caused by needle-sharing among intravenous drug users and 7.2 percent by unprotected sex, while 9.7 percent of the cases were the result of blood collecting and transfusion through unclean methods. Read: The Associated Press and The New York Times

Reluctance in Condom Use

The New York Times also reported April 4 that “teach[ing] teenagers about safe sex without even whispering the word condom is one of the delicate questions facing the Islamic Republic as it grapples with a surge in AIDS cases.” Take the pamphlet designed for adolescents by the Iranian Center for Disease Control. “The best way to avoid AIDS is to be faithful to moral and family obligations and to avoid loose sexual relations,” it says. “Trust in God in order to resist satanic temptations.” Condoms are not mentioned. "As officials, we cannot talk about things that are opposed to our culture, opposed to our religious beliefs," said Dr. Muhammad Mehdi, a specialist in infectious diseases who runs Iran’s Center for Disease Control, which is trying to check the small but rapidly growing number of AIDS cases. "Premarital sex is inappropriate and un-Islamic. So we can't say things to teenagers like, 'Use a condom.'" Read: The New York Times

The Washington Post’s April 14 story highlighted “the AIDS warriors,” President Jimmy Carter and Bill Gates Sr., and their quest to bring greater attention to HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa. “They have visited some tragically bleak places, but today's stop in the Central African Republic -- population 3.5 million, annual per capita income $310 -- is the bleakest of all, reported The Post’s Karen De Young. At the Gates-funded Zola Clinic in Soweto, one of the few facilities in South Africa to offer [Nevirapine] free to infected women and their infants, President Carter observed, “The true heroes in this building are the four mothers who have come here to this program. They were courageous enough to submit to a test, and when it turned out positive, they showed the epitome of a mother's love, saying, 'I want to save my baby.' Read more about their trip in The Washington Post.

OPINIONS AND EDITORIALS

The Trenton Times’ April 10 editorial noted a Bush administration promise to send a fact-finding delegation to China to resolve questions about U.N. family planning work there, saying it “sounds reasonable, except the delegation has not yet been formed. With each passing day the suspicion grows that this is a classic stall - and that the president's chief interest lies not in finding the truth but in appeasing a group of ideological extremists at the expense of some of the poorest people in the world.” The Wichita Eagle agreed in its April 10 editorial: “The Bush administration should send an impartial team to review the facts in China. Then it should promptly release funds for this effective and desperately needed program.“ Read: Trenton Times, Wichita Eagle

An April 10 editorial by The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) noted, “Nelson Mandela has pleaded repeatedly with the Mbeki government to relent on Nevirapine -- persisting despite his successor's ire.” “When people are dying -- babies, young people,” Mandela has said, “I can never be quiet.” Agreeing with AIDS activists that the government is constitutionally obliged to try to save children's lives, the South African high court ended a long legal battle by ordering that Nevirapine be made immediately available to all who could benefit from it. Mbeki’s government plans to appeal, but “the court's stance seems clear: South Africa shall be governed by reason and rule of law -- and never again by delusion or prejudice.” The Star Tribune concluded, “This is great news for the coming children of South Africa, and all who stand ready to welcome them.” This includes both President Jimmy Carter and Bill Gates Sr., who wrote in their April 7 Los Angeles Times op ed: “The more we realize that pennies a day can save millions of lives, the more we should insist that the world's wealthiest nation continue to increase its health aid and take a lead role in ending this disease.” Read: Star Tribune and Los Angeles Times

“The call of Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican, for $500 million to be spent protecting young children and their mothers is right on the mark: a down payment on a world that respects the dignity of every life, regardless of income or the accidents of geography,” wrote Louis Sullivan, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Nils Daulaire, President of Global Health Council, in an April 12 Washington Times op ed. They also noted, “Yet, even without AIDS, 10 million young children will die needlessly in poor countries this year (more than 10 times the number infected with HIV), almost all from diseases easily prevented or readily treated.” In their final point, they wrote, “We must assure that we not only prevent infection of newborns but also help the survival of their already-infected mothers.” Read: The Washington Times

In an April 7 Chicago Tribune op ed, Paul Kennedy, a professor of history at Yale University, referred to the UN Population Fund’s State of the World Population Report 2001 as: “One of the most significant commentaries on the future of our world and certainly a lot more important than the multitude of writings about terrorism.” Kennedy noted that the findings show that the population of the "Occupied Palestinian Territory," a mere 3.3 million today, is growing almost twice as fast as Israel's. Put another way, the average Israeli woman bears two to three children, but the average Palestinian woman bears five to six…these estimates spell deep trouble. How could they not, when in some of these countries 45 percent of the population will be younger than 15?” Read: Chicago Tribune

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.

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