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Afghanistan: Young voters aim to
change face of parliament
As Afghanistan prepares for its next test as an infant
democracy, a crop of bright young men and women is
challenging the traditional Afghan belief that power lies in
beards and turbans. The country's second parliamentary poll
is scheduled for September 18, with about 2,500 candidates
contesting the 249 seats in Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga, or
lower house of parliament. Afghanistan's politics are
infamously partisan, and the parliament is stacked with
people with bloody or questionable pasts, seen as using
their connections and positions to enhance personal power
and wealth. Fear that Karzai, who wants to make a deal with
the Taliban to end the war, will sacrifice hard-won
constitutional rights to do so, is the motivation for
28-year-old Farkhunda Zahra Naderi. She is campaigning for
one of Kabul's 33 seats, nine of which must be won by women.
The daughter of the spiritual leader of Afghanistan's
Ismaili sect, Sayed Mansoor Naderi, Farkhunda travels in a
red, armoured Hummer driven by a bodyguard, and is trailed
by a cameraman videotaping her every move. "My parliamentary
platform is on women's rights and human rights," she said.
"I believe the rights women have are not enough, women need
to ensure their rights through political rights. Women have
a presence in two of the three branches of government,
(legislative) and executive, but not the judiciary. Our
constitution is subservient to Islamic law, so women need to
know their Islamic rights. No women in the judiciary means
interpretation of the law is done by men, so women's rights
cannot be guaranteed. Until women get into the Supreme Court
their rights are superficial and symbolic only", she added.
Video Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhcpwaOURCA&feature=player_embedded
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Afghanistan: Elections record number of women stand for
parliament
A
record number of women are running in
Afghanistan's
critical parliamentary elections next month despite many being inundated with
threatening phone calls, including death threats from insurgents. Amid
ever-rising violence, which some people fear could foster a repeat of last
year's catastrophic presidential election, women are struggling to campaign at
all outside a few areas, poll monitors say. Even in Kabul, the capital, where
the Guardian has interviewed a number of female candidates, women say they are
facing daily obstruction from conservative hardliners. With voting billed for 18
September, Kabul's streets have been plastered in posters and billboards, many
of which show the faces of would-be female MPs in the capital, the number of
whom has more than doubled since 2005. However, many of the posters do not stay
up long, or get defaced with slashes of bright red ink. Other female candidates
have had to deal with the more general male prejudice, including Hamida Ameri, a
teacher whose attempt to campaign in a mosque prompted male worshippers to walk
out. "The mullah was a good man and had invited me to talk in his mosque," she
said. "But when I did, the men started shouting that I had destroyed the holy
environment of the mosque. Some people stayed … but most of them left." It said
that women candidates were "inundated" with late-night threatening calls both
from insurgents, political rivals and even some ordinary people.
Some
of these female candidates are Fareda Tarana, Najila Angira, Zahghona Bahkshi,
Hamid Ameri, and Farkhunda Zahra Naderi.
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Australia: Gillard rejects new vote,
vows stability
Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard has rejected the idea of a new election
to avoid a hung parliament. In her first major speech since elections on 21
August failed to deliver a clear winner, she said she could offer stability.
Four independent members of parliament appear to hold the balance of power amid
some talk of holding a new vote. The count continues, as the margin of victory
between the governing Labor and opposition remains too close to call. Ms Gillard
outlined a "new political landscape" in her speech to the National Press Club in
Canberra. What is needed more than anything now is continuity. Continuity,
certainty and delivery”, she said.
"Some say this situation is all too difficult and we should just return to the
polls. I disagree," she said. The Australian people have voted for this
parliament and our job is to make it work. Because if the new government doesn't
find new ways to establish consensus and parliamentary support then we will have
gridlock and we will quickly look more like Washington than Westminster, she
added. The prime minister, widely attacked for her putsch against former leader
Kevin Rudd which brought her to power a month before the elections, insisted
that she "stood ready to form government".
What is needed more than anything now is continuity. Continuity, certainty and
delivery," she said.
Analysts said her comments were geared towards garnering the support of crucial
independent members of parliament.
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UNIFEM: Prepare Women Candidates in
Lead-Up to 2010 Tanzanian Elections
In the run-up to Tanzania’s general elections 31 October,
the United Nations Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM (part
of UN Women), will conduct workshops throughout September
for women candidates in seven electoral zones to strengthen
their election strategies. The trainings seek to empower
women candidates by improving their skills in public
speaking, media engagement, campaign planning,
presentations, community mobilization, advocacy and
lobbying. The candidates will also learn about women in
Tanzanian politics, current political issues surrounding the
elections, the roles of Parliament, House of Representatives
and Local Councils, and relevant election laws, rules and
regulations. Women and men must “join hands to promote equal
representation, participation and leadership of women in the
political processes and representative institutions,” said
Ni Sha, UNIFEM’s Deputy Regional Programme Director for East
and Horn of Africa. In the country’s last general elections
in 2005,
women only accounted for 17 out of 232 contested seats in
parliament. However, Tanzania’s Constitution has
allocated 30 percent of its seats in parliament for women.
Thirty facilitators from across the country — whom UNIFEM
prepped in the first workshop of its kind in Dar es Salaam
on 12–14 August — will conduct the step-down sessions of
female candidates using training methods that have been
pre-tested by selected candidates. Further, UNIFEM, in
collaboration with UNESCO, will coach community radio
coordinators in Arusha, Pemba and Unguja in September to
spread awareness on voter information to women in remote
areas. Journalists will also be coached to provide fair and
equal coverage of female candidates.
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Malawi:
Campaign Against Female Vice President a Campaign Against
Equality
The future of women’s political representation in Malawi has come into question
as the ruling Democratic People’s Party (DPP) launched a smear campaign against
its own member, the country’s female Vice President Joyce Banda. Many had hoped
Banda would become the country’s first female president in 2014. But the
campaign against Banda has proved a set-back for women’s equality and has also
created a culture of fear as many of the country’s top women politicians are
scared to speak publically on the matter. One female politician was even
attacked for her alleged support of Banda. Female DPP Member of Parliament Anita
Kalinde was assaulted by male zealots because she was suspected of being a Banda
supporter. Although the incident occurred on Aug. 18, at a public function where
President Bingu wa Mutharika was present, police are yet to make arrests. "They
suspect that I am for Vice President Joyce Banda. I haven’t commented on what is
going on in our party though," Kalinde told the local media. The move has led
right’s organisations to accuse the DPP of being discriminatory and they have
demanded the party apologise to Banda and the women of Malawi. Banda was running
mate to President Mutharika in the 2009 presidential polls, which saw them win
the election. This was the first time Malawi had a female vice president since
it attained independence in 1964. "We were getting geared up to dance for a
female president in 2014 for a change but now it looks like we are not going to
be allowed that pleasure," said Grace Kamanga, one of the women who always sings
and dances at DPP political rallies.
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Gender in Climate Change and
Disaster Risk Reduction
Where climate change is not theory but
life threat
Lazing around in the shade and sheltering from the 40-degree
heat, domestic animals watch as their droppings are
converted into compost by toiling west African villagers. It
all seems part of a hopeless task, as men and women strain
to pound dried dung and plant stalks into fertiliser to be
spread across the arid land. The landscape should more
accurately be described as desert in the dry season and,
because of climate change, it’s becoming more of a struggle
every year to keep it productive. But in Burkina Faso, one
of the poorest countries in the world, land-locked and
dependent on remittances from its millions of migrant
workers in neighbouring countries, there’s no choice.
Instead, four-fifths of its 14 million populations try to
squeeze crops from the only soil they have, because there’s
nothing else to do.“Yes, we feel the impact of climate
change. Basically it’s getting hotter every year in the
summer, particularly since around the year 2000. It’s just
not the same as it used to be, it’s just too much,” says
villager Garbo Waongo. “We see and feel that it’s getting
dryer and hotter but, at the same time as climate change, we
are modernising our production which is helping compensate
for it. Actually the climate has now become too
unpredictable and there’s just not enough rain", he says.
"Every day, we start the field work in the morning. Then at
12, we get the water and we go again in the evening. It’s a
hard job but because there is nothing else we can do, there
is no choice,” says Bawa Zoungrana in the village of Dassui.
She has six children. “It’s getting worse and worse because
the soil is getting drier. There’s not enough rain and we
can’t get enough from the soil even by using fertiliser,”
she says. Zoungrana is a member of a local group called “God
will Provide”.
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"At least someone can come and listen
to our pain"
"The water is coming!" was the cry in the streets of Thatta,
about 200 km east of Karachi, as shutters came down on
shops; wives, children and a few belongings were packed into
vehicles and sent off to neighbouring Makli in the hills a
few kilometres above threatened city. Merchants closed their
shops and did what they could to strengthen their doors
against water and thieves. On 28 August, water gushing out
of one of more than 10 breaches in the embankment containing
the Indus River entered a suburb of Thatta, a town of around
200,000 inhabitants, a huge port on the Arabian sea where
the river debouches. At the same time, a bigger tragedy has
been unfolding in Makli, which usually houses about 30,000
people. In the past week, hundreds of thousands from Thatta
have sought shelter with friends and relatives in Makli, and
between 100,000 and 150,000 people have fled their drowning
villages in the district and moved into every available
space. The inhabitants of Makli have never seen so many
people - they are in the grounds of the hospital, in the
park, even in the graveyard. "This is like it was when
Pakistan and India were partitioned and we had refugees," an
older resident remarked.
Zohuar Khan, who drove my taxi from Karachi, has never
witnessed such destitution. "This is the end!" he says in
disbelief. There are 15 people from his village staying in
his one-room house in Karachi. Makli is filled with
heart-breaking sights: malnourished women trying to
breastfeed their babies, little children chewing on pieces
flat bread made of rice flour. Most of the displaced people
were paddy farmers in the Indus River Delta. "Rice is all we
had, and we are running out," said one mother, shaking her
almost empty flour tin.
As I leave Makli the taxi is mobbed by desperate and
sometimes angry people looking for any kind of aid. "Koi
aake humhara dukh dard hi soon le [At least someone can come
and listen to our pain]," says a displaced woman, wiping the
sweat off her face.
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Wisnawati used to meet all her family's needs from the forest but says
deforestation means she has to look elsewhere for her livelihood.
UNIFEM (part of UN Women) works to ensure that gender
concerns are fully integrated into
relief and recovery
operations in Pakistan,
following the floods that have affected the lives and
livelihoods of millions of people. Within the framework of
international humanitarian response in Pakistan, UNIFEM
leads the Gender Task Force with UNFPA to coordinate the
integration of gender issues across the work of all
humanitarian clusters. UNIFEM also collaborates with
national NGOs and with relevant national bodies, including
the Ministry of Women Development, the National Commission
on the Status of Women as well as the Women Development
Departments in the provinces, including the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Pakistan-Administered
Kashmir (PAK). In particular, UNIFEM focuses on supporting
assessments of the conditions and needs of women and girls
in affected areas, and on preventing, monitoring and
addressing gender-based violence among vulnerable
populations. At the same time, ongoing development work
carried out by UNIFEM will continue, with programme teams
making efforts to address some of the issues arising from
the emergency. UNIFEM participates in the
UN system-wide flash appeal
issued on 11 August for US$459.7 million to provide
immediate relief to millions of people affected by the
natural disaster. For more information, please contact Ms.
Alice Shackelford, Country Programme Director,
alice.shackelford[at]unifem.org, or Ms. Roshmi Goswami,
roshmi.goswami[at]unifem.org, +1 212 906-6891.
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Climate Change Policy Ignores Women
Farmers
The government's plans for
adaptation offer little to
smallholder farmers, who are
among those most
vulnerable to climate change.
Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS
When asked if they have already felt the effects of climate change, Mary-Anne
Zimri and Katrina Scheepers eagerly nod their heads. The two small-scale farmers
say lack of rain this winter has foiled their planting season, ruined their
harvest – and drastically slashed their income. "We have been hit on all sides,"
says Zimri, who together with Scheepers belongs to a farming cooperative in
Wuppertal, a small hamlet in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The coop
specialises in rooibos tea, but also plants vegetables and keeps livestock. "We
normally start planting rooibos in July, but this year it has been too dry to
plant," says Zimri. For decades, she and her colleagues have relied on the
steady rains of the South African winter to irrigate their crops. But now, a
change in weather patterns has caused a noticeable reduction in rainfall, she
says. Since the coop does not have access to an irrigation system, Zimri and her
fellow farmers have to fetch water from the river and carry it in buckets for
several kilometres back to their fields. But what they can carry is not
sufficient to generate a good harvest. Not only the rooibos has been affected.
Reduced rainfall also meant that their animal feed did not grow as expected, and
the farmers’ vegetable harvest is much smaller than the previous year. "It’s not
only us. Most farmers in the area lost their crop because it’s been so dry,"
says Scheepers. To make matters worse, due to unusually low winter temperatures,
frost has burnt the coop’s potato harvest. "This has never happened before; not
in the last 50 years," she notes. The farmers are in a tough situation. Their
remote community, 75 kilometres from the nearest grocery shop, has always relied
on the vegetables the farmers grow for food security. Adding to the
difficulties, the coop now has to buy animal feed at extra cost. "The issues of
climate change, poverty, environment and gender are tightly interwoven and
cannot be separated," explained WWF South Africa national climate change policy
officer Louise Naudé. "Women farmers are particularly affected by climate
change, food insecurity and disaster, so we have to drive gender equality and
decrease women’s vulnerability in the sector", she added.
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"Incomprehensible" Absence of Women in Global Environment Policy
Sandra Akpéne
Freitas
Credit:Courtesy of WEDO
There is a vacuum in the various texts that currently regulate global policy
against climate change: specific mention of the effects of global warming on
women and of the role women can play in protecting the environment. That glaring
gap, as well as the failure to refer to the impact on human health, was
highlighted by activists during the third round of United Nations climate change
negotiations in Bonn this week, designed to prepare for the 29 Nov. - 10 Dec.
U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico. The lack of references to the
role that women can play in global and local policy on climate change "is
incomprehensible," especially given the number of studies stressing that they
should play a central role, Sandra Akpéne Freitas, one of the activists who has
spoken out most loudly against the lack of a gender perspective during the talks
in Bonn, told IPS in this interview. Freitas is one of the two delegates
representing the New York-based Women's Environment and Development Organisation
(WEDO) at this week's meeting in this German city. Besides her work with WEDO,
Freitas forms part of the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA), which
brings together more than 35 U.N. agencies and NGOs. She is also executive
director of Actions en Faveur de l'Homme et de la Nature (AFHON – Actions in
Favour of Humanity and Nature), an NGO working on climate change adaptation in
the West African nation of Togo, her home country. U.N. Human Rights Council
Resolution 10/4 on "human rights and climate change" states that the adverse
effects caused by global warming will be more heavily felt by vulnerable
populations, such as women. The 2007-2008 Human Development Report also refers
to this. In addition, the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) repeatedly refer to the vulnerability of women in particular. In
developing countries, simply being a woman means being poor and more vulnerable
to disasters brought on by climate change. This particular vulnerability of
women implies numerous forms of injustice that we suffer in education, health
and social policies in general.
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Campaigns
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The 4th Global
Congress Of
Women in Politics
Theme: 'Maternal & Infant
Mortality a Gender Issue'
for
Parliamentarians, legislators (national and local)
political parties, local governments (city/municipality)
and
the government bureaucracy, training institutes,
international and local agencies/organizations,
human
rights and other civil society organizations
concerned with Maternal and Child Health
Watch
out for the venue & dates...
SECRETARIAT:
Center for Asia Pacific Women in Politics (CAPWIP)
4227-4229 Tomas Claudio Street,
Parañaque City, Metro Manila, Philippines,
Tel:
(632)8516934; Tele Fax:(632) 8522112; mobile phone
+639184596603
Email:
capwip@capwip.org;
onlinewomeninpolitics@capwip.org
Web:
www.capwip.org;
www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org
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Clinic Franchising Ready for Midwives
|
The Kapampangan
Development Foundation (KDF) is
now accepting Well Family
Midwife Clinics (WFMC)
franchisees in bid to promote
affordable maternity health care
in Pampanga, Philippines.
This was
announced by KDF Trustee Sylvia
Ordonez stressing that the
franchise would boost community
awareness of proper maternal
care and would greatly lower the
price cost of maternal and
birthing services.
Among the popular
WFMC franchisees include
corporate establishments like Mc
Donalds or Jollibee.
KDF is a member
of the Well Family Midwife
Clinic Partnership Foundation
Inc (WPFI), a nonprofit
organization that owns the
social franchise that uses the
brand name WFMC.
Through the WFMC
franchise, midwives will
establish their birthing
clinics, following standard
protocols and standards set by
the franchise. This will assure
the clients of the WFMCs quality
assurance.
The WFMC
franchisees can avail of KDF
services such as loan assistance
for the renovations/construction
of their clinics, rent to own
equipment, business advice,
medical/technical/scientific
trainings and other continuing
Professional Education (CPE)
programs on a continuing basis.
KDF announced
that for this year, 10 WFMC
franchisees will be assisted.
KDF recently signed a
partnership agreement with the
Love For Life Foundation (LFLF)
and the Datu Angeles David
Memorial Foundation Inc (DADMFI)
in operating the Jesus A. Datu
Medical Center (JADMC) in
Bacolor town.
KDF will
establish a birthing clinic at
the JADMC that will serve as a
training clinic for the
midwives. KDF will implement an
integrated Maternal – Newborn
Child Health and Nutrition (MNCHN)
program for Pampanga that help
in the reduction of maternal and
infant mortality in Pampanga.
KDF works through
a network of local organizations
as its partners. To date, KDF
has 98 local partners that are
working together in providing
health services for the
indigents.
In the last two
years, 1198 patients were helped
through cataract surgeries and
hundreds more in the prosthesis
for the amputees, wheel chair
distribution and harelip and
cleft palate surgeries.
The Rotary Clubs
of Pampanga, supported by the
district Governor Rolando “Oyan”
Villanueva, provided KDF a
matching grant of more than
P2,000,000 to help establish the
Clark Polytechnic Prosthetics
laboratory and Training Center
in partnership with the
Physicians For Peace.
The key partners
of KDF and JADMC in the
implementation of the Maternal –
Newborn Child Health and
Nutrition (MNCHN) will be the
Rotary Clubs of Pampanga, Social
Action Center of Pampanga,
Lions, Soroptimists, Love for
Life Foundation, Datu Angeles
David Memorial Foundation Inc,
Quota International Pampanga,
WPFI, and the Department of
Health and the Department of
Social Welfare and Development
to name a few.
“This is an ideal
opportunity for midwives who are
working overseas to come home
and be entrepreneurs and set up
their own birthing clinics,”
Ordonez told.
“I was told that
most of the WFMC franchisees all
over the Philippines are ex-overseas
workers. They are now
earning a lot, in fact, many
have become, millionaires,”
Ordonez added.
Midwives who are
interested to be the first ten
WFMC franchisees in Pampanga may
contact KDF Trustee Sylvia
Ordonez at
email: sylvia.ordonez@gmail.com.
Kapampangan
Development Foundation, Inc. (KDF)
33 Coconut St., Valle Verde 4,
Pasig City, 1600 Philippines
Tel : (632) 6310233/6310213 Fax
:
(632) 6332145
Website: http://kapampangandevelopmentfoundation.org/
Well-Family Midwife Clinic
Partnerships Foundation, Inc.
Ystaphil Bldg., 4227-4229 Tomas
Claudio St.,
Baclaran, Parañaque City 1700
Tel : (632) 852-9349 ; 331-9765
/ TeleFax : (632) 852-9349
E-mail :
wpfiheadoffice@yahoo.com
Website:
http://www.wfmc.com.ph/
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Other News
Niger: Local Plumpy’nut production
soars with demand
Severely malnourished children in Tahoua, Niger, with a
packet of local Plumpy'nut
Thousands of severely malnourished children in Niger are treated with locally
produced
Plumpy’nut:
40 percent of the
therapeutic food
used by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) comes from the capital, Niamey, rather
than France. “We had hoped to cover Niger’s needs this year, but the
demand is too large,”
said Fatima Cissé, the head of the Société de Transformation Alimentaire (STA),
which produces Plumpy’nut under licence. The factory has tripled its production
since the beginning of the year and is planning to double it again in September.
Buying locally does not always mean saving money, however. UNICEF pays US$60 to
purchase and ship a box of 150 packets from the main producer and patent holder
of Plumpy’nut, Nutriset, in France. It costs $65 in Niger. The difference adds
up to an extra $15,000 for the 3,000 boxes purchased in Niamey every week. “The
luxury of having no production delays and not fully depending on an external
provider is a price we are willing to pay,” UNICEF’s nutrition manager,
Eric-Alain Ategbo, told IRIN.
In
2005,
when Niger was experiencing another severe food crisis, MSF asked STA if it
could make the paste. “We needed a certification, so they put us in touch with
Nutriset, which was looking for partners for local production,” Cissé told IRIN.
“We started because we had an opportunity: there was a crisis and we had
customers.”
“We felt sorry to import when it could be produced locally,” explained Doyon.
When the nutritional crisis
currently affecting Niger
eases, STA hopes to expand its cover to other countries in the region, such as
Mali
and
Burkina Faso.
STA is the only producer of Plumpy’nut in West Africa but it is produced in four
central and east African countries.
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Haiti: Scraping by on Mud Cookies
At six in the morning in Cite Soleil, the poorest zone
of Haiti's capital city, the sun is already up. It's the
start of another workday for Lurene Jeanti, making
cookies from mud, butter and salt. She's been mixing the
ingredients on the side of the road to sell to her
neighbours for the past eight years. "The mud helps me
take care of my children," she says matter-of-factly.
Jeanti is a slight, muscled woman, one of millions of
Haitians who have migrated from the countryside to
Port-au- Prince over the past decade. She left her
hometown to find a way to feed her five kids. "My
children have no father. I am the mother and the father
of them," Jeanti told IPS. The father is gone and Haiti
has no statutes protecting women who are abandoned with
their children. Jeanti grew up in Anse D'Hainault, a
remote town in Haiti's southwest near Grand Anse, known
as the "city of poets". Ezer Villaire, one of the great
Haitian poets, was born and raised there. Unlike other
parts of rural Haiti, trees still populate the mountains
and little plateaus where yams and cacao are grown.
"Have you visited Anse D'Hainault? It's really nice. You
should go," she told IPS. "I used to farm. I am a
farmer." But the income from farming small crops wasn't
enough. Unemployment rates rise to 80-90 percent in much
of the countryside. Now Jeanti lives in Cité Saint
Georges, a tiny district within Cité Soleil. The
concrete canal running through the neighbourhood is full
to the brim with plastic bottles. She sits in a dirty
corner near the entrance to a narrow corridor where
people come to buy mud cookies or a gallon of water from
a neighbour. Most the houses are made with concrete
blocks and unfinished. During her first two years in
Port-Au-Prince, Jeanti managed the products she brought
from Anse D'hainault. But it wasn't enough, so she
started baking and selling mud cookies herself. "I buy
two bags of mud for 500 gourdes (12.57 U.S.). And I made
100 gourdes (2.50 U.S.)," she told IPS. Mud cookies are
big business. The mud mine is located in the central of
Haiti. A cookie-maker like Jeanti has to buy the mud
from middle-man who purchases it from someone with
access to the mine, then brings it to Port-Au-Prince.
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Nigeria: Group Emphasizes Quality
Healthcare for Women
Women and Children Committee, Breast Cancer Medical
Mission of the Anambra State Association in the United
States has emphasized the need for the Anambra State
Government to increase access to quality healthcare for
all women by establishing more breast cancer centers
that are fully equipped and staffed with trained
personnel, stressing that it should also provide free
and subsidized diagnostic healthcare services.
The Group, through its chairperson, Dr. (Mrs) Anthonia
Uche Umeh also charged President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
to focus part of his attention on women by establishing
functional mammography centres in all parts of the
country in order to combat breast cancer, a disease that
has claimed the lives of many women. The ASA, USA Women
and Children Committee which crowned its efforts of 2010
with the donation of two mammography units, one
stationed in Awka and the other in Onitsha General
Hospital also charged the Anambra State Government on
the sustainability of the mammography unit's projects to
assure the delivery of the critical services to the
people at the lowest cost. She continued that at the end
of the Breast Cancer Awareness Medical Mission which was
held between August 9 - 18, over eight thousand women
were seen by the physicians, adding that fifty two of
them had abnormal breast clinical examinations and were
referred to their Breast Surgeons and Radiologists
stationed at NAUTH for mammographic screenings,
biopsies, fine needle aspirations, pathology, lumpectomy
or mastectomy. While appreciating the efforts of all the
collaborators of the 2010 ASA USA Women and Children
Committee Breast Cancer Awareness Initiatives, the
Committee's chairperson said First Lady of Anambra
State, Mrs. Margaret Peter Obi was advancing the
awareness level of their women about the prevalence of
breast cancer.
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Gambia: Breastfeeding improves
physical development in children - UNICEF communication
specialist
Sally Sadie
Singhateh, the Unicef communication specialist, has outlined the importance of
breastfeeding in improvement of a child's physical and mental development.She
revealed that several studies conducted on children of various age groups have
shown tremendous increase in intelligence in children who are breastfed, in
comparison to those who were not being breastfed. Singhateh made these remarks
recently during a workshop organised by Unicef at the Paradise Suites Hotel in
Kololi, as part of activities marking the commemoration of the World
Breastfeeding Week. According to her, the importance and benefits of breast milk
to the child cannot be over-emphasised; noting that it creates a strong bond
between the mother and the child through and provides babies with their first
immunisation dose from infections and bacteria. This, she added prevents them
from sicknesses such as pneumonia and diarrhoea, which account for 17% and 16%
of child deaths globally. She added that mother's milk is the most ideal food
for the good growth and healthiness of a child. Unicef and partners, she
indicated, promote exclusive breastfeeding in order to save 24, 000 children
under-five that die every day mainly from preventable diseases. "Unicef
prioritises breastfeeding and maternity protection and encourages all employers
nationwide to support their female counterparts by putting in place policies
that would allow them a sufficient maternity leave time to facilitate the
continuation of breastfeeding when they return to work," Singhateh explained.
She added that job protection and non-discrimination are key aspects of
maternity protection and must be considered by all employers. She reminded that
The Gambia recently passed the Women's Bill into law, which according to her,
calls for the allocation of 6 months' maternity leave to all working mothers.
She urged companies and the private sectors to learn about the new law.
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UN Confirms Reported Gang Rape of Women by Rebels in DRC Congo
A United Nations human rights team has confirmed that
members of two armed groups in the volatile east of the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) raped more than 150
women during an attack on a village in North Kivu
province last month, a UN spokesperson said on Monday.
Victims of the attack, which occurred on 30 July in the
village of Bunangiri, which situated in the Banamukira
area of North Kivu, are receiving medical treatment and
have also been provided psycho-social care, the
spokesperson of the Secretary-General told reporters in
New York. Perpetrators of the attack are said to be
insurgents loyal to the Democratic Forces for the
Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a group of ethnic Hutu
fighters linked to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and
their accomplices believed to be members of a local
militia known as the Mai-Mai Cheka. The UN mission in
the DRC, MONUSCO, has a military company based at Kibua,
some 30 kilometres east of the scene of the attack, but
the assailants blocked the road and prevented villagers
from reaching the nearest communication point at the
time the crimes were committed. According to the UN
Population Fund (UNFPA), more than 8,000 women were
raped by warring factions last year in the provinces of
North Kivu and South Kivu. Although members of the FDLR,
which who have been active in eastern DRC since 1994,
are thought to be responsible for most of the rapes,
soldiers serving in the national army have also been
implicated in sexual abuse in North and South Kivu
provinces, according to UN experts. In many cases, women
are raped when they leave their villages or camps to
collect firewood, water and other essentials.
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