Author: Feminist Majority Foundation Blog

Yesterday marked the 25th annual World AIDS Day, an opportunity for people around the world to unite in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

“We remember the friends and loved ones we have lost, stand with the estimated 35 million people living with HIV/AIDS, and renew our commitment to preventing the spread of this virus at home and abroad,” said US President Barack Obama in a statement. “If we channel our energy and compassion into science-based results, an AIDS-free generation is within our reach.”

As a direct result of increased availability of HIV testing, counseling, and treatment, new HIV infections around the world dropped 33 percent between 2001 and 2012, and AIDS-related deaths have dropped 30 percent since 2005. Current treatment can reduce infectiousness by 96 percent, and great progress has been made to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, with “more than 850,000 new childhood infections averted between 2005 and 2012 in low- and middle-income countries,” according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Despite significant progress in fighting HIV worldwide, there are still 35 million people living with HIV, and over half of those are women. It is the leading cause of death for women of reproductive age worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa, where 69 percent of all people with HIV live, women are over half of the epidemic with women ages 15-24 as much as 8 times more likely than men to be HIV positive.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged an end to discrimination and violence against women, which can increase risk of HIV infection and death from AIDS, and a focus on increasing access to treatment for pregnant women and children. “To create conditions for an AIDS-free generation, we must also step up efforts to stop new HIV infections among children and ensure access to treatment for all mothers living with HIV,” he said.

Today marks the fourteenth annual United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and the start of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, a part of the United Nations Secretary General’s Campaign to End Violence Against Women (UNiTE). Through these campaigns, the UN seeks to raise awareness of the epidemic levels of violence against women and to increase political will and resources for preventing and ending all forms of violence against women and girls around the world.

Globally, 70 percent of women experience violence in their lifetime. In the United States alone, more than one million women are raped every year, though that number may be higher due to low reporting levels. The World Bank estimates that women between the ages of 15 and 44 are more at risk of injury or death from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car accidents, war, and malaria.

“This International Day to End Violence against Women is an opportunity for all people to recommit to preventing and halting all forms of violence against women and girls,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. “I welcome the chorus of voices calling for an end to the violence that affects an estimated one in three women in her lifetime.”

Political leaders and health advocates from around the world will meet in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Abba, this week for the third annual International Conference on Family Planning. The conference, held by the Gates Institute, will take place from November 12 to 15. Those in attendance, including Malawian President Joyce Banda and Melinda Gates, will discuss their continuing commitment to ensuring every woman has access to comprehensive family planning services.

The theme of the conference, “Full Access, Full Choice,” encourages governments and charities who committed to expanding family planning access at the 2012 London conference to honor their commitments. The conference hopes to provide a platform for successful strategies in expanding access to 120 million women by 2020 as well as many of the hurdles that countries and organizations have faced in trying to reach the goal thus far. Attendees will also discuss the role of political leadership in expanding access to family planning services, the involvement of female advocates to champion such efforts, and effective teenage pregnancy prevention programs.

“Access to family planning information and contraceptives empower women to plan their families, get a better education, and provide a healthier future for their children,” said Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation.

While there has been a global drop in the rate of unintended pregnancies, the proportion of unintended pregnancies remains high, especially in developing regions. High rates of unintended pregnancies reflect the barriers to contraceptive methods that women and men face: in many developing countries, the high cost of quality contraceptives, unpredictable donor funding, and cultural and knowledge barriers all prevent women from accessing family planning services. Additionally, women living in rural communities are often geographically removed from reproductive health care facilities, only compounding the difficulties in being able to regularly access contraception.

Garment workers protesting for a higher minimum wage in Bangladesh yesterday were attacked with water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas.

The workers, who closed over 100 factories to protest, were demanding a raise in the minimum wage from the current $38 per month to $100 per month. Bangladesh’s wage board has proposed to raise the minimum wage by 77 percent to $66 per month – far less than the requested $100. According to the International Labor Organization, Bangladesh garment workers are the worst paid in the world; they make only 14 percent of a living wage.

“Owners are indifferent to our demand,” said a protester, according to Reuters. “They are not even ready to pay what the wage board proposed.”

Bangladesh’s Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association believes that raising the minimum wage will increase costs too much and require Western customers to pay more for exported products. However, raising wages would have a miniscule effect on prices that Western consumers pay. “Raising wages by 80% would add only about 25 cents per T-shirt,” Rubana Huq, managing director of large garment exporter Mohammadi Group, told The Wall Street Journal. “As manufacturers, we can only hope for the retailers to accommodate this increase.”

Garment workers have held several strikes and protests demanding better pay and working conditions since the deadly Rana Plaza collapse that killed 1,127 people in April.

Two recently released United Nations reports emphasize the importance of women’s access to and control over land to their ability to protect human rights.

Released today, the report Realizing Women’s Rights to Land and Other Productive Resources shows how women’s right to land is directly linked to food security, sustainable development, economic empowerment, and protection against HIV/AIDS. According to UN Women, “Women who have secured land rights acquire more independence and power in their families and communities, as well as in their economic and political relationships” and face “lower levels of violence and reduced vulnerability to HIV.”

Complementing the findings of the report on land rights, last week the United Nations released a report detailing the importance of women in natural resource management in countries recovering from conflict. That report, entitled Women and Natural Resources: Unlocking the Peacebuilding Potential, finds that ensuring women’s access to and control of land and other natural resources can improve prospects for long-term peace in war-torn countries.

“Women bear the brunt of conflicts in many ways. They often have to become the sole caretakers of their families and communities and are agents of peace and recovery,” said Phumzile Mambo-Ngcuka Under Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director. “Sustainable natural resource use is the cornerstone of development. Women’s full participation, and access to natural resources, are urgent priorities for rebuilding peaceful societies.”

According to the report, women in conflict-affected countries must often meet the water, food, and energy needs of their communities, and they play a crucial role in the use and management of natural resources. However, these women rarely have the same economic control over these commodities as men, leading to the exclusion of women-and their specific needs-in peace negotiations over land and water. This exclusion often lead to increased vulnerability for women, who are insufficiently targeted by conflict recovery programs, and can undermine recovery efforts. The research conducted by the UN suggests including women in peace negotiations will lead to better outcomes and greater stability post-conflict.

“Women continue to be disenfranchised across the globe particularly in countries that have endured violent conflict,”said Judy Cheng-Hopkins, Assistant Secretary-General, UN Peacebuilding Support Office. “This research shows that when women have a seat at the table and their concerns are taken into account in the management of natural resources, the impacts on families, communities, and peace are positive and significant.”

The United Nations and World Bank have pledged $200 million to improve women’s reproductive health and girls’ education in the Sahel region of Africa. The $200 million Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographics Project will be added to the World Bank’s existing $150 million contribution over the next two years.

The pledge comes a month after the UN held a forum to discuss what needs to be done to achieve the fifth Millenium Development Goal (MDG5) of improving maternal health. They acknowledged that although progress has been made, MDG5 efforts must be scaled up to prevent 120,000 girls and women from needlessly dying by 2015.

Family planning is key to improving maternal health and achieving MDG5. Representatives at the United Nations emphasized the importance of all-inclusive access to contraception–a goal that has often been hampered by condom shortages and the precedence of abstinence-only sexual health programs. “It is about making sure that we can reduce maternal deaths through the reduction of bleeding, infections and blood pressure,” said United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Babatunde Dr. Osotimehin.

While the pledge will have a positive effect, the total cost of medicine and health supplies needed for the next two years to prevent more maternal deaths is around $650 million. More funding, more access to birth control, the training and deploying of more midwives, and many other changes will help save hundreds of women’s lives. “Raising the age of marriage, keeping girls in school, enabling women through family planning to decide the spacing and number of their children, and investing in the health and education of young people, particularly young girls, can unlock a powerful demographic dividend and set countries in the Sahel on the path to sustained, inclusive social and economic growth,” said Osotimehin.

Kenya faces a condom shortage next month if Kenyan and international leaders do not work fast to obtain more. The shortage threatens to put Kenyans at a greater risk of contracting HIV and other STIs.

According to Nelson Otwoma, Executive Director of The National Empowerment Network for People Living with HIV and AIDS in Kenya (NEPHAK), Kenya obtains 83 million male condoms per year. Many of them come from international partner programs like the United States’ President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)–which has faced controversy before for promoting abstinence-only programs and diverting funds away from family planning commodities. This amount is not enough for a country of over 44 million people, as evidenced by another previous shortage in 2011.

The stockout puts more people at risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections–especially people who cannot afford to pay for condoms. Around 1.6 million Kenyans already currently live with HIV, and there are nearly 100,000 new infections each year, according to the National Aids Control Council (NACC).

“Kenya’s low investment in the national response to HIV is set to hurt its ambitious goal of achieving zero new HIV infections,” NephaK reported in a weekly bulletin last week [see PDF].

NEPHAK is pushing for President Uhuru Kenyatta to direct the National Treasury to create a supplementary budget for obtaining more condoms and to take more responsibility for obtaining condoms for people nationwide, rather than relying on county governments to procure them.

However, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Health James Macharia denies that a shortage is coming and claims that there are 52 million more condoms set to arrive in December.

Twenty thousand girls under age 18 give birth every day in the developing world, adding up to 7.3 million births each year. Of that number, 2 million births occur to girls under age 15, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) which released its 2013 report on the State of World Population yesterday.

Entitled “Motherhood in Childhood: Facing the Challenges of Adolescent Pregnancy,” the report calls for a shift away from interventions targeted at the girl, towards interventions that address the underlying causes of adolescent pregnancy, including gender inequality, poverty, sexual violence and coercion, child marriage, lack of access to education, and lack of economic opportunities, among other multidimensional factors.

The report also highlights the need to reframe adolescent pregnancy, and challenges policy makers to see the problem as a result of girls’ lack of choices and autonomy. The report notes that most adolescent pregnancy occurs among girls who are marginalized, have limited access to services, and have little decision-making power. This reality is made stark when the picture of these young mothers becomes clear. According to the report, 90 percent of pregnancies to girls under age 18 occur within child marriage. One in nine girls in the developing world are married before age 15. Lack of education opportunities is often tied to child marriage. The report indicates that girls who are allowed to attend school are less likely to become pregnant or be married.

Adolescent pregnancy can have long-term consequences for girls, their families, and communities. Young girls are more at risk for maternal death and obstetric fistula. About 70,000 girls in developing countries die each year from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.

The report makes several recommendations for improving the outlook for girls globally. These include the elimination of child marriage, enforcement of laws against sexual violence and abuse, engaging men and boys to support girls’ human rights, expansion of comprehensive sexuality education, increasing access to reproductive health services and contraception, and ensuring access to education through targeted interventions.

People around the world are calling for justice for a 16-year-old Kenyan girl who was brutally beaten, gang-raped, and thrown into a 20-foot latrine by six men in June.

The girl, whom media outlets are calling “Liz,” was walking home from her grandfather’s funeral in Kenya’s northwestern county of Busia when the men attacked her. The attack caused severe spinal cord injuries and fistula, leaving her reliant on a wheelchair to get around and unable to control her bowels.

Liz was found crawling out of the latrine and crying for help by villagers nearby. She knew some of the attackers, so she gave the people helping her their names. They then chased three of the men down and took them to the local police station. There, police ordered the men to to cut grass as their only punishment; the men were then let go–even though under Kenya’s Sexual Offences Act they should receive no less than 15 years in prison. In addition, Liz’s mother was told to clean her off, destroying potential forensic evidence.

In a statement, the Kenya Coalition on Violence Against Women called the situation “yet another example of blatant impunity and repeated noncompliance by the police and other government authorities. Rape and other gender crimes have consistently been treated as lesser crimes–this is unacceptable.”

The attack came to the world’s attention thanks to Jared Momanyi, the director of a Kenyan clinic that specializes in treating victims of sexual violence. He was so outraged when Liz’s case was referred to him that he called a reporter at the Daily Nation in Nairobi. He said of this case, “This was an attempted murder and it’s not an isolated case; it’s one among many.”

Since then, 4,000 pounds has been raised to pay for an operation to repair Liz’s internal injuries, and the global campaigning network Avaaz launched an online petition calling for immediate arrest and prosecution of the rapists and disciplinary action for the police officers. It currently has over 1,270,000 signatures, and that number grows every second. The director of public prosecutions in Kenya has ordered the national police to investigate why the local force did not investigate the rape, but so far there have been no updates.

“My wish is to see justice done,” Liz said.

Afghan journalist Najiba Ayubi will be honored with a 2013 Courage in Journalism award at a second awards ceremony hosted today by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) in Los Angeles.

Najiba Ayubi is the managing director of The Killid Group in Afghanistan, a public media group made of eight local radio stations and two weekly, national magazines. She also co-founded the Afghan Independent Media Consortium and the Freedom of Expression Initiative to promote free expression in journalism.

During Najiba Ayubi’s 25 years as a journalist, she has faced threats from every direction, including from members of Afghanistan’s parliament, the country’s secret service, warlords, and anonymous aggressors, but she courageously continues reporting on politics, women’s rights, and other sensitive issues. “Every time I confront a threat in journalism, I feel some sort of satisfaction in my heart, and I recognize I am doing something very important that I am being threatened for,” Ayubi said.

Despite the challenges facing journalists in Afghanistan, Ayubi has said that media has grown in the country. “When the Taliban was overthrown in 2001, all journalists, raised their voices and created a new Afghanistan media,” she said, “and with the support of the international community Afghanistan media has become as extensive as it is today.”

IWMF will also honor Nour Kelze, a photojournalist for Reuters in Syria, and Bopha Phorn, an investigative reporter for The Cambodia Daily, with Courage in Journalism awards. Edna Machirori, the first black female editor of a newspaper in Zimbabwe – considered one of the most dangerous countries for journalists – will also be honored with the IWMF annual lifetime achievement award.

You can watch the livestream of the award ceremony here.

Over 60 women claimed to have driven in Saudi Arabia this weekend in an ongoing campaign to obtain the right to drive. Some 35 women filmed and uploaded videos of themselves driving on Youtube. Although there is no official traffic law that bans women from driving, women are not allowed to get licenses, and the government issued a decree just last week making it illegal for women to drive.

Because of the ban, women must rely on male relatives or drivers to get around. This unjustifiably limits women’s mobility and constrains them economically, especially because there is no mass transit system in Saudi Arabia. Women need to drive to get to schools and jobs, making this an economic issue as well as a human rights one.

The freedom to drive is an important part of the right to mobility, recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not permitted to drive. This prohibition directly conflicts with the commitments the Kingdom has made to protect the human rights of Saudi women, including those in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which Saudi Arabia has ratified.

This is the 3rd of this kind of campaign since 1989, and it has been the most successful effort so far. Mai Al-Swayan, an economic researcher, told CNN she drove on Saturday. “I’m very proud,” she said. I feel like we accomplished the purpose of our campaign.”

The campaign went ahead despite some obstacles. Several prominent women leaders received phone calls last week from the Interior Ministry warning them not to drive Saturday. One woman, Saudi professor and campaigner Aziza Yousser, also had two “suspicious cars” following her for the whole day. Roadblocks were set up in Riyadh and police checked cars to make sure that women were not driving.

Some news outlets report that there were no arrests, but a few women have come forward to say they were stopped and held briefly. In Jeddah, Samia el-Moslimany said she had been taken into detention and was later forced to sign a pledge that she would not drive again. Saudi news website sabq.org reports that six women had been stopped for driving in Riyadh.

In Washington, DC, several feminist leaders, including Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal, gathered at the Saudi Embassy to show their support for the women driving.