“By 2025, 66 per cent of the world’s population will be impacted by limited or no access to water.”

http://www.mindfood.com/?article=women-and-the-water-crisis&loc=all

Women and the water crisis.

Women are at the front lines of the global water crisis, carrying the burden of water every day.

By Efrosini Costa

Water is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about women’s rights. But, globally, women and girls spend an estimated 200 million hours each day collecting this life necessity. We speak to Dr Kanyoro, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, about the global water crisis and find out why it is at the forefront of the women’s rights struggle across the world.

How is access to water becoming one of the most critical issues across the globe today? Why is it a women’s issue?

Issues of “access” to anything at all define the haves and the have nots and they often also define who will live and who will not. Today as we talk about millions of children are dying on the African continent because of lack of clean water. By 2025, 66 per cent of the world’s population will be impacted by limited or no access to water.

Australia has also just emerged from a decade of drought that must have its consequences; whether it translates into more fires that destroy peoples’ lives or the loss of livestock, the experience shows just how water manages our lives.

In the US, where I currently live, the drought that ravaged the Midwest was one of the most under-reported stories, because it is one of the biggest producers of corn and soybeans for export in the world, and a drought has worldwide consequences.

Millions of people, including millions of women, earn their livelihoods from the land. Without water, one has fewer products to sell, less income means, and you have less to pay your expenses – to put back in your business, buy food to feed your family, and pay for school. Water is a woman’s issue, with 60 per cent of the 1.2 billion people in the world without access to clean water are women.

How is the issue being tackled by women? What roles do they play in finding a solution to this water crisis?

In many parts of the world, women are the ones who must collect the water for drinking, cooking and cleaning. Women are the first to know when water sources become polluted, and the first to experience the impact of deforestation as they are forced to walk further afield in search of wood. They are the ones who struggle up mountain sides that are washed away in annual floods because they no longer have vegetation. This means they are the first to be impacted by lack of water.

Places with no access to water are also the same places where people are extremely poor. Lack of water is often the best indicator of absolute poverty. Lack of water means that for many, you bury your children young, and you worry everyday about where the next meal will come from. If a child is sick, there is no doctor because educated people move to where there is life and water is life. Even if there are medicines, taking them to a place with no water or dirty water does not bring healing.

What technology and skills are women utilising to achieve their goals and challenge oppression? 

If women don’t have access to water or technology, you can’t have a meaningful discussion of liberation. It reminds me of the 1970s when African feminists were debating the development people who came to help us. They would tell us, ‘How could you be concerned about women’s rights when African women can’t even put food on the table?” To which we replied, “Yes we need food. But we also need dignity.”

The same kind of dichotomy exists today with regards to women, water and technology. It is true for example, that if women have low technology like a water pump, their lives will be better – to a point. I say ‘to a point’ because if she has the tools and the knowledge to build the pump herself, if she is empowered knowing that she can actually do things that she once considered only to be in men’s domains, if she can work with other sisters to advocate for more control over water and land rights – then we will see transformational change. And that is what the Global Fund supports: organisations that use a rights based approach.

How is the Global Fund for Women helping women around the world?

At the Global Fund for Women, it has always been crystal clear that advancing women’s rights – increasing their access to technology, education, political participation, and economic empowerment, not only enables women to be a powerful force for change, but is one of the most effective ways to realise a more sustainable future.

We invest time, expertise and money in local, courageous women and women-led organisations to advance the rights of women and girls; connect women to women’s rights funding, influencers and potential partners. So advocate for the issues impacting women and girls and use our voice, platform, networks and influence to lift the voices of local women and girls.

Dr Musimbi Kanyoro will visit Australia this month to speak at Women, Water and Technology: Stories and Solutions. The free public lecture is jointly presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre and Global Fund for Women and supported by UN Women Australia Adelaide Chapter. Click here to find out more about the event. 

The Global Fund for Women celebrates its 25th anniversary this year; find out more about the organisation at: www.globalfundforwomen.org

Time to Reform India’s Sex Trafficking Laws.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/05/16/time-to-reform-indias-sex-trafficking-laws/

 

When Ayesha was 13, she fell in love with a man who promised to marry her and nurture her singing aspirations, but instead turned out to be a sex trafficker. He took her far away from her family and village in Bangladesh to Kolkata (also known as Calcutta), India, where he promptly sold her to a brothel. Young and alone in a huge city, Ayesha tried in vain to escape; instead she was sexually exploited for years, suffering repeated rapes and beatings by her “owners.”

Ayesha gave birth to three children while in captivity. When it became evident that the local pimps wanted to prostitute her oldest daughter, Ayesha knew she had to protect her family. With the help of Apne Aap, a local NGO working to empower girls and women to resist and end sex trafficking, Ayesha was able to get support for her children and eventually exit prostitution. Instead of becoming another victim, her daughter received professional training and now supports her family through her job as a gas station supervisor at the first all-women run petrol pump in Kolkata.

In January 2013, amidst an outcry to end violence against women in India, a committee led by recently-deceased former Indian Supreme Court Chief Justice J.S. Verma, released an investigative report that noted the high prevalence of sex trafficking of women and girls in India. While actual numbers are difficult to obtain, government and NGO reports suggest that hundreds of thousands to millions of women and girls are prostituted in India (median age of entry is 11 years old), many of whom are victims of sex trafficking. However, despite the high prevalence, very few cases of sex trafficking are actually reported and prosecuted. In 2011, the arrest rate for people accused of “kidnapping and abduction of women and girls” was an incredibly low 3.7 percent, according to the latest report by the National Crime Records Bureau of India.

On the recommendation of the Verma Report, the Government of India recently adopted anti-trafficking provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) through the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 2013, to conform to the internationally-recognized definition of the crime of trafficking as outlined in the Palermo Protocol. However, India’s other anti-trafficking legislation, which includes more comprehensive anti-trafficking laws, the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA) of 1956, has not been changed in nearly 30 years. Therefore, Equality Now and Apne Aap are calling on the government to amend the ITPA by including specific provisions that will improve anti-trafficking efforts, protect children and survivors and address other shortcomings still remaining. Amending this Act will put India in line with its international legal obligations under the Protocol. The provisions are:

  1. Legal protection and removal of criminal sanctions from women and children in prostitution.
  2. Criminalization of pimps and brothel keepers, not women or children in prostitution.
  3. Punishment of those who pay for sex.
  4. Strict liability for traffickers and buyers of a minor regardless of whether the perpetrators knew the victim’s age.
  5. Establishment of a fully government-funded Trafficking Victims Rehabilitation and Welfare Fund.

humanrightswatch:

Victims of sexual assault in Washington, DC, are not getting the effective response they deserve and should expect from the district’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Sexual assault cases are too often not properly documented or investigated and victims may face callous, traumatizing treatment, despite official departmental policy to the contrary.

unicef: CAN YOU SEE ME? Annie Sumo (age 13) laughs while walking home with a friend. Annie contracted a leg infection as a small child, during Liberia’s civil war, when medical facilities were inaccessible. Untreated, the infection caused a leg deformity that makes walking difficult. Annie and her friend live in Nyeamah Village, where UNICEF supports a range of services for children. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure has continued since the end of the country’s 14-year war in 2003. © UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani To see more: www.unicef.org/photography
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unicef:

CAN YOU SEE ME?
Annie Sumo (age 13) laughs while walking home with a friend. Annie contracted a leg infection as a small child, during Liberia’s civil war, when medical facilities were inaccessible. Untreated, the infection caused a leg deformity that makes walking difficult. Annie and her friend live in Nyeamah Village, where UNICEF supports a range of services for children. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure has continued since the end of the country’s 14-year war in 2003.

© UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani

To see more: www.unicef.org/photography

fotojournalismus:

India’s Missing Daughters

(via Reuters’ Photographers Blog)

By Mansi Thapliyal

“Atika, 10, woke up early one morning in August 2008 and was sent by her mother to buy a few items from a nearby shop. She returned and told her mother she would prepare tea for her father before quickly going to use a communal toilet close to her house. She never returned.

Ambika was a feisty 15-year-old high school student who took wrestling classes. Her mother returned home from work late in the night on October 10, 2010. She woke up the next morning and found her daughter missing.

Atika and Ambika are among the thousands of children who go missing from India’s streets, schools and homes every year.

Following the case of a 5-year-old girl in Delhi who went missing and was then allegedly raped by a neighbor, I chose to find out what happens to girls who go missing and the struggles their parents go through to find them.

According to a report by Delhi-based child rights NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan, from January 1, 2013-April 20, 2013 there has been approximately 680 cases of missing children in Delhi, 65 percent of whom are girls. In most cases girls are either forced into the sex trade or trafficked to placement agencies to work as domestic workers.

For four days, I met parents of girls who had gone missing. Every story was different, every story was equally sad. I spent hours with them, listening to their harrowing tales, understanding the grief and misery these families were going through. Only then did I turn my camera on to take pictures. Despite retelling their stories again and again over many years to hundreds of people, the mothers I met still cried their eyes out for their missing daughters when they spoke to me.

For four days, I met parents of girls who had gone missing. Every story was different, every story was equally sad. I spent hours with them, listening to their harrowing tales, understanding the grief and misery these families were going through. Only then did I turn my camera on to take pictures. Despite retelling their stories again and again over many years to hundreds of people, the mothers I met still cried their eyes out for their missing daughters when they spoke to me.

The family of Tyaba, who went missing in Delhi at the age of three in 2009, have searched across the country, visiting adoption homes, red light districts and orphanages in all of India’s major cities.

Other families, however, simply don’t have the means to actively look for their missing daughters, like Mamta’s family from Bihar, India’s poorest state, who work in Delhi as laborers. They lost their seven-year-old daughter Bharti in April this year. Living on a construction site where they work, they earn around $4 a day and have to rely on the police, who have a reputation for being inactive and corrupt when handling such cases.

I found that parents were keeping memories of their missing daughters alive through the objects left behind. The mother of Atika, the 10-year-old who went missing in 2008, continues to stitch embroidery for her daughter’s “bistra” – a bedsheet gifted to Muslim brides on their wedding day – hoping that one day she’ll return.

Nothing can surpass the agony and desperation that has become their lives. The haunted looks on their faces speak of pain which is beyond all comprehension. I’m not sure if my pictures will bring these missing daughters back to their parents, but maybe they’ll make people stop and think about the next time they see a girl begging on the side of the street or a young maid working inside a home.

It’s time to stop being silent spectators and take steps in the right direction or else who knows if the nightmare might come knocking on our doors…”

(via humanrightswatch)

Source: fotojournalismus

humanrightswatch: Every industrialized nation in the world—except the United States—guarantees paid leave for new mothers, and 81 countries do for new fathers, generally financed by social insurance systems. Countries that provide better protections for working families reap gains in economic competitiveness and productivity. Paid leave research in many countries has shown that such policies increase breastfeeding, immunizations, and health visits for babies; reduce infant mortality and postpartum depression; raise productivity and employee morale; and decrease employee turnover costs. Paid leave can help avert family poverty spells, which often coincide with the birth of a baby. Public debate on US work-family policies ignited this year, triggered in part by Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book, “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.” Both Slaughter and Sandberg call for paid family leave, among other steps to reform the US work-family culture. Critics claim that Slaughter and Sandberg are out of touch with low-income women. But when it comes to paid family leave, reforms they call for would make a profound difference for low-income workers.  A great Mother’s Day gift? Guaranteed paid leave for new mothers, and fathers, in the United States! Photo: Getty Images
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humanrightswatch:

Every industrialized nation in the world—except the United States—guarantees paid leave for new mothers, and 81 countries do for new fathers, generally financed by social insurance systems. Countries that provide better protections for working families reap gains in economic competitiveness and productivity. Paid leave research in many countries has shown that such policies increase breastfeeding, immunizations, and health visits for babies; reduce infant mortality and postpartum depression; raise productivity and employee morale; and decrease employee turnover costs. Paid leave can help avert family poverty spells, which often coincide with the birth of a baby.

Public debate on US work-family policies ignited this year, triggered in part by Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book, “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.” Both Slaughter and Sandberg call for paid family leave, among other steps to reform the US work-family culture. Critics claim that Slaughter and Sandberg are out of touch with low-income women. But when it comes to paid family leave, reforms they call for would make a profound difference for low-income workers. 

A great Mother’s Day gift? Guaranteed paid leave for new mothers, and fathers, in the United States!

Photo: Getty Images

Say No to Dumping Trash in Arctic Waters.

http://blog.oceanconservancy.org/2013/05/07/say-no-to-dumping-trash-in-arctic-waters/

Posted On May 7, 2013 by 

Everyone knows dumping trash into the ocean is a bad idea, right? Well, apparently not everyone. At a recent meeting of the International Maritime Organization, the U.S. delegation—led by the U.S. Coast Guard—opposed a proposal to ban the dumping of garbage in the Arctic Ocean.

The Arctic is one of Earth’s most pristine ecosystems, home to some of the world’s largest seabird populations and iconic wildlife like polar bears, belugas and the extremely long-lived bowhead whale. The unspoiled nature of the Arctic doesn’t mean it’s without threats.

In fact, today the Arctic faces unparalleled challenges from oil and gas development and other industrial activity, increasing water temperatures and climate change impacts—all jeopardizing the integrity of the Arctic marine ecosystem. Adding ocean trash to this list of pressures is simply not acceptable.

Ocean Conservancy is working to help employ science-based solutions that will ensure Arctic waters remain healthy and clean. Allowing vessels to deliberately dump waste into the Arctic just doesn’t fit into the equation for a resilient Arctic ecosystem.

Canada and Russia banned ships from dumping their garbage in Arctic waters with no adverse consequences for shipping.  However, this ban applies only to these countries’ territorial waters. The Arctic Ocean is a single ecosystem, and we know all too well that trash does not abide by country boundaries. This means garbage dumped into territorial waters of the United States can endanger wildlife inside and outside of our borders, potentially compromising the Arctic’s entire marine ecosystem.

Arctic summer sea ice is shrinking to ever-lower levels, and more and more vessels are venturing into the open water. As vessel traffic in the region grows, so too does the threat posed by discharging trash and other waste into Arctic waters. Therefore, it’s critical that we put in place strong environmental protection measures for the Arctic now, before the pressures of shipping in the region escalate even more.

We are working hard to keep plastics and trash out of our global ocean, yet the Coast Guard seems OK with allowing ships to litter our Arctic waters. I don’t get it. There’s no good reason for the United States to oppose a garbage ban in the Arctic.

The decision at hand is a simple one: ships simply should not be allowed to dump their garbage in the remote and beautiful waters of the Arctic Ocean. Join Ocean Conservancy in urging the Coast Guard to reverse course and support a ban on the discharge of garbage in the Arctic.

Needing Help After Lifetime of Trauma and Abuse.

http://coerciontofreedom.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/needing-help-after-a-lifetime-of-trauma-and-abuse/

by 

Written by Veronica
Posted by Melissa Grace Hoon, Veronica’s case worker

Even though I’ve been rescued from sex trafficking and am seeing a sex trauma therapist, sometimes it’s still hard for me to feel stable because of all the things that have happened in my life, from the time I was very young up until when I was abducted and forced into sex trafficking.  When I was 6 years old, my mom became sickly addicted to shooting heroin.  I never had a dad.  My mom’s boyfriend was the only dad I ever had.  He is not my biological father, and he is controlling and abusive.  My mother abandoned me when I was 6 years old and left me for anyone to find me.  I went to a friend’s house after she left me.  My friend’s parents couldn’t take care of me for long, so I went to live with my aunt and uncle in another state.  I’m not sure if anyone even realized the hurt, the pain and the struggle I went through from day to day by being raised by people who were not my natural birth parents.  I suffered from an identity crisis and confusion by not knowing my father and not being around my mother.

I had to live with my aunt and uncle for over 12 years.  They were torturous and terrible.  They treated me like an evil stepchild.  They had one son who was two years older than me and he sexually harassed me for six years.  I was afraid to tell anyone or even try to make him stop.  He never had sex with me or made me do anything to him, but he screwed me up in the head because of the sexual harassment he put me through.  I had severe anxiety.  I couldn’t sleep.  I was scared every day, every minute of my life, especially when I was at home, which is the one place I should feel safe.  Nighttime was the only time when he would do anything to me.  He would come into my room completely nude and crawl into my bed with me, telling me sexual things he wanted me to do to him and things that he wanted to do to me.  No one was around us then.  This was terrible and severely confused me because he’d act normal around our family the next day, playing and teasing me like his little cousin.  But when everyone was asleep, he would sneak into my room and would try to have sex with me almost every single night year after year.  Just his verbal abuse was enough to make me anxious and feel guilty and scared.  I never told my aunt until after he stopped and moved away around the time I was 16 years old.  I don’t even know if my uncle knows the truth to this day.

When I was 18 years old, on the day I graduated from high school, my aunt and uncle told me I had to get out of their house and leave permanently.  They told me that because I was 18, they didn’t need to help or support me anymore.  So I left and started house-hopping, going from one friend’s house to the next.  I was always trying to be settled, but I never had a real chance in my life during that time to be okay and happy.  I was confused, lost and scared.  I was running around and I didn’t know what I wanted or what road to take to get to where I needed to be.  I was living everywhere.  My personal belongings were everywhere.  My life was in complete disarray.

After being kicked out of my aunt and uncle’s home, and house-hopping for what felt like far too long, I went back to live with my mother after 12 years of living with my aunt and uncle in a different state.  It quickly became yet another life experience I never wanted.  It’s sad to say that I’m upset I had to go through certain things in life with my mother, but I am sad, very sad.  Her boyfriend was in a gang and owns guns.  He controls her.  He tried to do the same to me.  He talked down to me to try to make me feel worthless.  I didn’t realize then, but it worked; he did made me feel worthless.

Not long after moving in with my mother and her controlling, dangerous boyfriend, I was kidnapped and abducted by a pimp who raped me and forced me to have sex with over a dozen men every day.  He took all the money the johns (guys who I was forced to have sex with for money) paid me.  After being sold to another pimp and working for him, I was rescued eventually by Aaron Cohen and Chris Baughman of Abolish Slavery.  Aaron and Chris reunited me with my mother at her house because that’s where I chose to go.  I wanted to be with my mother.  But it wasn’t long before her boyfriend kicked me out.  I had nowhere to go, so I moved in with my grandmother in another state.  At least I knew people there since it’s where I grew up (near where my aunt and uncle live), and at least I’m away from my mom and her boyfriend.  I’m just trying to do my best and be safe.  Pretty soon, after I finish my counseling that my Abolish Slavery case worker set me up with, I’ll get vocational training, live in transitional housing and enroll in higher education.

When I got kidnapped and was forced into sex trafficking, I was in a different city every day and every night.  I was in a different hotel every day.  I had to drag my personal belongings from place to place.  My personal belongings would get lost or stolen.  I didn’t have a safe, secure place to put anything, not even money.  My pimp stole thousands of dollars from me.  It was money I was trying to save for myself to try to take care of myself somehow.  But when my pimp found out I had money, he stole it from me and beat me.

Now that I’m back with my grandmother, she’s getting older and has her own rules and it’s her own house so she won’t let me live my life.  I have to live her life, which is really hard for me because I’m at a place where I need to start making positive decisions to move forward and make something of myself and my life.  She doesn’t let me go out or leave the house even though I’m 21 years old.  I can’t wait to live in transitional housing and get the vocational training and education I need to move forward with my life and make my own choices to achieve my dreams.

You have no idea how much it would mean to me to be able to have this.  I feel it in my heart and soul that I was made for great things.  I’m on a journey to recovery and I’ve made a commitment to myself to never stop or give up on my journey or on myself.  I can’t make believe that I’m okay now.  I’m not okay and I need to continue to receive a lot of help.  I’ve been through a lot and the worst that I’ve been through is the sexual trauma.  I’ve been so sexually traumatized and I never realized how badly it affected me until recently.  I feel so weird sometimes, like this unexplainable, disgusted and confused feeling – especially when it comes to the idea of sex.  I hardly ever feel comfortable because I get flashbacks of all these bad times and it’s hard for me to live a life where I’m constantly looking back on these disgusting, painful times.  It makes me feel lost in life.  I’ve gone through so much, but I know I’m strong and can get through this with the right help.  But I still get so numb when I think about the really bad stuff that’s happened to me.  I feel so numb when I think about it sometimes that it feels like it actually happened to someone else and not me.

I know I don’t deserve what happened to me and I know it’s not my fault, but I still have to live with it every day.  I can’t take back what happened to me, so I just have to move forward.  This is why I’m committed to accepting the help that’s been given to me and I need to make sure to continue to allow myself to get this help.  I need help to move forward.  I need a lot of help because I’ve never had help for these issues before, so I’ve never opened up about it all or felt okay.  I just want happiness and peace of mind.  Sometimes I just want to fly.  I know that can’t happen, but that’s how I feel – I just want to get away…to get away to a place where I can be helped and live the life I was put in this world to live.  I want to love myself and be okay with the decisions I make.  I want respect.  Most of all, I want help and support because without that, I’m lost.

REPORT: The U.S Has The Highest First-Day Infant Death Rate In The Industrialized World.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/07/1973341/us-infant-mortality-rate/?mobile=nc

By Tara Culp-Ressler on May 7, 2013 at 12:05 pm

(Credit: March of Dimes)

Each year, about one million infants around the world die on the same day they’re born. That figure includes about 11,300 U.S. babies — the highest first-day infant mortality rate of any other country in the industrialized world, according to a new report from Save the Children. In fact, the United States’ rate of first-day infant death is 50 percent more than all the other industrialized countries in the report combined.

Many babies who die at birth were born too early, and others suffer infections or complications at birth. Many of those infants could be actually be saved with fairly cheap medical interventions, the advocacy group says. The first day of life is the most dangerous day for mothers and babies, but expanding access to several products that cost under $6 each — bag-and-mask devices to help babies breathe, antiseptic to prevent umbilical cord infections, antibiotics to treat infections, and steroids to delay pre-term labor — could help save an estimated one million infants around the world.

Save the Children isn’t sure exactly why the United States has such a high rate of first-day infant mortality. But the group suspects it’s partly related to the country’s high rates of unintended pregnancies and teen births, as well as persistent issues of economic and racial inequality:

Teen births are partly to blame, the report says — echoing other research that has shown this. The U.S. has the highest teenage birth rate of any industrialized country.

“Teenage mothers in the U.S. tend to be poorer, less educated, and receive less prenatal care than older mothers. Because of these challenges, babies born to teen mothers are more likely to be low-birthweight and be born prematurely and to die in their first month. They are also more likely to suffer chronic medical conditions, do poorly in school, and give birth during their teen years (continuing the cycle of teen pregnancy),” the report says.

“Poverty, racism and stress are likely to be important contributing factors to first-day deaths in the United States and other industrialized countries.” […]

Half of all U.S. pregnancies are unplanned, another complicating factor, the report says. Women whose pregnancies are accidental are much less likely to take good care of themselves and to get thorough prenatal care, from vaccines to vitamins, that can protect the baby and her.

Considering the United States’ dismal record on infant mortality, it seems to follow that advancing programs to support youth who may become pregnant, as well as expanding women’s access to preventative health services like contraception and prenatal and maternal care, would be a top priority for both women’s health groups and pro-life groups. But that hasn’t exactly been the case in the United States. Intent on attacking family planning services as well as abortion, anti-choice activists have successfully waged a war against some of the same health resources that could help the U.S. prevent infant deaths at rates closer to other industrialized nations.

Many far-right abortion opponents have fought hard against Obamacare, which helps expand women’s access to gender-specific health care services like birth control and prenatal check-ups, because they claim that insurance coverage for contraception is a violation of religious liberty. And Republican lawmakers have continued to target Planned Parenthood, advancing measures to defund the national women’s health organization even at the expense of the low-income women who rely on those clinics for their primary care. At the education level, anti-abortion activists often fight against comprehensive sexual health resources in public schools — particularly when those services are provided by Planned Parenthood — even though those programs have been proven to do a better job at preventing unplanned pregnancies than abstinence-only curricula.

Instead of focusing efforts on policy solutions to help lower the nation’s infant mortality rate, the right-wing has most recently been fixated on the high-profile trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, accused of killing live babies in his illegal Philadelphia-area clinic. Declaring Gosnell’s crimes as proof that all late-term abortion services represent “infanticide,” abortion opponents have raised alarm over what they perceive as a widespread human rights issue.

Sexual Assaults In Military Rose To Over 26,000 In 2012: Pentagon Survey.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/sexual-assaults-military_n_3229790.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003&ir=World

By RICHARD LARDNER 05/07/13 10:49 AM ET EDT AP

Sexual Assaults Military

This image released by the Arlington (Va.) County Police Department shows Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski. Krusinski, an Air Force officer who led the branch’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit has been charged with groping a woman in a parking lot. Arlington County Police said Monday, May 6, 2013, that they charged Krusinski of Arlington with misdemeanor sexual battery following an alleged assault about 12:30 a.m. Sunday in the Crystal City section of the county.

WASHINGTON — The sexual battery arrest of the Air Force officer who led the service’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit underscores how far the Defense Department has to go in addressing the plague of sexual crimes in the military, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., told a committee hearing that a Pentagon report to be released later Tuesday reportedly estimates that, on average, there are more than 70 sexual assaults involving military personnel every day.

Authorities in Arlington County, Va., said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski was charged with groping a woman in a northern Virginia parking lot on Sunday. Krusinski was removed from his post in the sexual assault unit after the Air Force learned of his arrest. He started in the post in February

“While under our legal system everyone is innocent until proven guilty, this arrest speaks volumes about the status and effectiveness of (the Defense) department’s efforts to address the plague of sexual assaults in the military,” Levin said.

The Pentagon report says that the number of sexual assaults reported by members of the military rose from 3,192 to 3,374 in 2012, while the department estimates that as many as 26,000 service members were assaulted, based on anonymous surveys, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the report.

Gen. Mark Welsh, the Air Force’s chief of staff, told the committee that he and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley were “appalled” by Krusinki’s arrest. Although the case is being adjudicated by the Arlington County police, Welsh said the Air Force has requested jurisdiction.

A police report said that the 41-year-old Krusinski was drunk and grabbed a woman’s breast and buttocks. The woman fought him off and called police, the report said.

The Arlington County Sheriff’s office said Krusinski was released Sunday on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond. An arraignment is scheduled for Thursday.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has spoken with Donley about the matter and “expressed outrage and disgust over the troubling allegations and emphasized that this matter will be dealt with swiftly and decisively,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a statement.

Two cases involving decisions by three-star generals to overturn guilty verdicts in sexual assault cases have outraged members of Congress and propelled a bipartisan push to change the military justice system to essentially strip commanding officers of their ability to reverse criminal convictions.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is holding up the nomination of Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, tapped to serve as vice commander of the U.S. Space Command, until the Missouri Democrat gets more information about Helms’ decision to overturn a jury conviction in a sexual assault case.

Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, overturned the conviction against Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Wilkerson had been found guilty last Nov. 2 of charges of abusive sexual contact, aggravated sexual assault and three instances of conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman. The incident had involved a civilian employee.

Dubai’s child labor complicity.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/03/dubais-child-labor-complicity

Dubai’s child labor complicity

Emirate should do more to stop abuses in gold trade

MAY 3, 2013

Author(s): 

 Juliane Kippenberg

Published in: 

 Executive Magazine

Dubai confirmed its position as an international trade hub for gold in April. At a precious metals conference in the city, the United Arab Emirates’ government announced that the gold traded in the country in 2012 exceeded $70 billion, more than a quarter of the world’s global gold demand that year. Gold refiners and traders like Dubai as a tax-free, business-friendly, well-functioning location.

I recently had a chance to see for myself — I met with gold companies at Dubai’s Gold Souk as well as Jumeirah Lakes Free Trade Zone, where shiny skyscrapers in extraordinary shapes house some of Dubai’s precious metals companies.

The wealth of Dubai’s gold companies contrasts sharply with the poor conditions under which some of the gold is being mined. According to the International Labor Organization, more than 1 million children work in mining globally. In mining areas across Africa, Asia, and Latin America children as young as 6 work in small-scale gold mining and risk their lives as a result.

They work in unstable shafts that often collapse, haul backbreaking loads of heavy ore, and use toxicmercury to separate the gold from the ore. During field research in Tanzania in late 2012, Human Rights Watch interviewed 61 children working in gold mining. A 14-year old-boy retold how a mine pit collapsed on him. He was hospitalized and said “I fear a lot.”

Nineteen children also described how they handle mercury on a regular basis, often with their bare hands, when they create a mercury-gold amalgam which they or others then burn, causing the mercury to evaporate and leaving behind the raw gold. Mercury causes brain damage and is particularly harmful to children — to those who breathe in the fumes because they work or live nearby as well as those who work with it.

Tanzanian traders and officials told us that Dubai is one of the export destinations for Tanzania’s gold.

The gold industry has a responsibility to ensure that gold is not being mined under conditions that violate human rights. In line with the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies should implement due diligence to ensure they do not benefit from unlawful child labor, directly or indirectly. Much more needs to be done to reach that goal.

One important opportunity for action is Dubai’s initiative for responsible sourcing of gold. At the precious metals conference in Dubai, the Dubai Multi Commodities Center — a government regulatory body and licensing authority for the Jumeirah Free Zone — presented its guidance standard for responsible sourcing, aimed at preventing support for warlords in conflict countries. This had become extremely necessary as a UN investigation found Dubai had been involved in illicit gold trade benefiting armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The guidance seeks to ensure that precious metals companies conduct due diligence and develop a risk management framework. It closely follows a standard developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

Unfortunately, the Dubai standard for responsible gold does not seek to address child labor in the supply chain. It is also purely voluntary and therefore lacks teeth. Dubai’s guidance, like several other voluntary standards for “responsible gold”, was developed after the United States adopted a law requiring publicly-listed extractives companies to disclose the source of minerals that originate from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries. The law — part of the Dodd-Frank Act — is unusual because it makes due diligence a legal requirement.

To ensure that gold businesses in Dubai respect and protect rights, due diligence procedures should be made mandatory and include measures to check for child labor. And if child labor is found in a company’s supply chain, the company should make specific efforts to address the problem, for example by helping to transition children out of work and into education. 

Dubai should use its position, as a leader in the gold trade, to advance the rights of children at the bottom of the gold supply chain.