“We want to start an honest conversation that can also raise…limitations and tough questions,” explained Haneen Maikey, director of the Jerusalem-based Al Qaws Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian society. “It’s not to be accepted, but rather to bring the society to a safe place that we can discuss these issues.”

Al Qaws is behind a new project called Singing Sexuality, or “ghanni a’an taa’rif” in Arabic, launching May 25 in Haifa after nearly two years of preparation and the work of about 80 volunteers.

Combining photographs, videos, music and written testimonials and information, the project aims to educate young Palestinians about gender diversity, sexuality, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. The goal is to initiate conversations between friends, family members and society in general throughout all of historic Palestine.

Activists launched an interactive website with information about these issues earlier this week, while three short videos and an entire music album, featuring the work of local Palestinian musicians and writers, were also posted online.

“This project was able to push [the artists] even farther, to touch more taboo questions and to play on sexuality, sexual minorities and gender in a new way,” Maikey explained, about the creative process.

By including different genres of music, from rock to traditional Arabic songs, and using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to share material, the project also has the potential to reach Palestinian youth directly.

“This project in my opinion is unique because it uses music to reach out to people, and I don’t think that we could reach out to them before,” explained Alaa, an Al Qaws volunteer from Haifa who has worked on the Singing Sexuality project from the very beginning and gave IPS only his first name.

“That’s why this project is very, very important; it’s on the Internet [and] everyone can see it,” he explained. “If we made some people think about it and rethink about it, I think we reached [the goal of] this project. We are not aiming to change peoples’ minds; we just want to make a dialogue. We just want to say that this issue is here.”

Safa Tamish is director of Muntada, the Arab Forum for Sexuality, Education and Health. She explained that while sexuality in general and LGBT rights in particular and are not openly talked about, Palestinian society has seen an increased willingness to discuss these issues in recent years.

“I think there has been a shift in peoples’ perception. I’m not saying that Palestinian society is so pro-gay rights. I cannot say that, but I can say that it is more and more acceptable. The fact is that we know of many, many families that accepted their children,” Tamish told IPS.

“Within Palestinian society, I see that there is a real transformation in the last four or five years.”

She explained that the evolution of the LGBT and queer struggles in Palestine is similar to what has happened in other countries, insomuch as these movements are more visible in modern Palestinian cities, like Ramallah or Haifa, than in smaller towns or villages, where society is generally more conservative.

“Sexual liberation is part of our national liberation. It has to be in parallel,” Tranish said. “My struggle is to contribute to the building of the civil society in Palestine, and part of that building is working on sexual rights.”

Al Qaws’ Haneen Maikey also sees the Singing Sexuality project as part of the larger Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation, colonialism and discrimination, both inside Israel proper and the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Part of how I see and understand resistance is that when we decolonise Palestine, I will have a society that I can rely on, a society that is ready to [respond to] different social and political processes, that can respect the Other, [and] have openness about different sexuality and behaviour,” she explained.

“Our contribution to building a more open Palestinian society is part of an anti-colonial struggle.”

Marchers in a conga line ended four days of activities against homophobia in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Cuba has won advances on issues like the change of name of pre-operative transgender persons, while they continue to fight for the right to same-sex civil unions.

For the first time since 1997, a transsexual woman who had not undergone sex-change surgery was issued a photo ID card this year reflecting her chosen name and gender identity, Manuel Vázquez, a lawyer with the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), a government-funded body, told IPS.

“We will continue supporting efforts to attain name changes in other cases, and we hope it will become the norm,” said Vázquez, who is head of the legal services unit in CENESEX, which reports that the family and the workplace are the spheres where the rights of LGBT persons are violated the most.

Up to now, the photo on the national ID card of trans women and men has had to reflect their biological sex.

In 1997, CENESEX managed to reach agreements with the ministries of the interior and justice to change the names and photos on the ID cards of 13 transgender people who had not undergone sex-reassignment surgery, although other civil registry documents, such as their birth certificates, were not modified. But that had not happened again until now.

Transgender people who have undergone sex-change surgery, which is provided free of charge in Cuba since 2008, are allowed to modify their ID cards. In Cuba, 19 people – two of them female-to-male transgender persons – have had sex-reassignment surgery so far, according to CENESEX.

“Now a trans person who has not had surgery is free to seek and win a name change, thanks to this precedent,” Vázquez said.

Speaking to IPS during the month-long events surrounding the International Day Against Homophobia, celebrated May 17, Adela Hernández, the only transgender member of a municipal assembly in Cuba, said she had started the process of applying for a name change on her ID card.

Hernández, a nurse and now a municipal assembly member in the city of Caibarién in the central province of Villa Clara, had to register as a candidate in the October-November 2012 municipal elections under the name José Agustín Hernández and with a photo that looks very different from the woman who won a majority of votes in her district.

Hernández is one of the special guests on this year’s agenda of educational, cultural and – for the first time – sports activities organised by CENESEX, which has led a month of anti-homophobia events every year since 2008.

On this occasion, the central activities took place May 14-17 in the city of Ciego de Ávila, 434 km east of Havana, ending with a festive march down the central avenue Libertad, with the demonstrators waving rainbow and Cuban flags and dancing in a conga line.

Mariela *, a 36-year-old mother, came to watch the conga line with her nine-year-old baby. “I haven’t taken part (in the activities), but I’m not against it,” she told IPS. “These events help families learn about sexual diversity and to respect it more, and help children and young people grow up better.”

But other people are still opposed to the campaign for respect for free sexual orientation and gender identity, which CENESEX carries out all year long, culminating in the May schedule of events, dedicated this year to families.

CENESEX director Mariela Castro said “the hardest thing is to change people’s mentalities,” in a country that is still heavily machista and homophobic. In fact, until the 1990s, “ostentatious public displays of homosexuality” were illegal.

Since 2012, the LGBT community and CENESEX have stepped up their activism demanding recognition of sexual rights as human rights in this country, which has no specific law against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Cuban parliament has not yet debated the bill for a new “family code”, sponsored in 2008 by the non-governmental Federation of Cuban Women and other institutions. Among other things, the bill, aimed at updating the family code in effect since 1975, would recognise same-sex civil unions.

In Latin America, same-sex marriage is legal only in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as Mexico City and three states in Mexico. In Brazil, meanwhile, civil unions that confer nearly the same rights as marriage are legal, and on May 14, the National Council of Justice ordered civil registries to allow same-sex couples who apply for a marriage license to marry.

Vázquez called for a law on civil unions in Cuba, and said he supported the creation of a law on gender identity, as advocated by legal experts and activists.

But until such legislation is approved, the 26-year-old lawyer’s strategy is to train attorneys and judges on how to take advantage of existing laws in cases of violations of LGBT rights

“People also have to be brave, and report these crimes,” he said.

He mentioned the first workshop on the question of LGBT rights for lawyers and judges, held in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. CENESEX also plans to expand its legal services to other parts of the country.

“There is no law on the rights of homosexuals. There is only very vague language about it,” said Raquel Fernández of the Red de Lesbianas Atenea, a network of lesbians based in Ciego de Ávila. Domestic violence and limited access to housing or jobs due to homophobia are among the limitations that lesbians suffer the most, she told IPS.

*The source asked that her last name not be used.

Burqas fail to shield many Afghan women from daily harassment, both in the street and at the workplace. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

While global attention is fixed on the scheduled pullout of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan in 2014, women here have a much more immediate concern: how will they survive another day at work?

Having a job is now considered a routine aspect in the lives of many women around the world, but here, female employees are forced to navigate entrenched sexist and patriarchal attitudes, dodge sexual advances, and live with memories of harassment, abuse and even rape.

Last month, the international watchdog Human Rights Watch drew attention to the plight of Afghan policewomen who were being raped and harassed on the job due largely to a lack of gender-segregated bathroom facilities.

A flurry of press coverage ensued, drawing the ire of the Interior Ministry, which grudgingly promised to take action but has yet to implement any concrete safety measures or bring the perpetrators to justice.

In the face of apparent indifference on the part of many officials to a growing trend of sexual abuse in the workplace, one branch of the government has stepped up, drafting a set of anti-harassment guidelines that, if enforced, all employees will be required to abide by.

Spearheaded by 26-year-old Matin Bek, deputy director of Afghanistan’s Independent Directorate for Local Governance (IDLG) and the youngest deputy minister in the country, the draft regulations acknowledge that workplace safety is a fundamental right and provide women with mechanisms to seek redress should this right be violated.

The son of a mujahedeen leader credited with fighting to keep girls’ schools open in his northern Takhar province during years of civil strife from the late 1970s until the end of the Taliban era in 2001, Bek is well aware of the challenges that lie ahead.

In a country where most women languishing in prison are there for committing so-called “moral crimes” – such as having been raped, leaving abusive marriages or choosing their own partners  – he recognises that attempts to improve workplace safety may be perceived by some as “quixotic.”

But, as Bek tells IPS, he grew up in an “entirely different environment” to the urban patriarchal landscape. Since his father’s untimely death in a bomb blast in late 2011 he has been helping to dismantle the patronage networks that have traditionally been responsible for appointing district governors.

The IDLG now promotes a professional, merit-based body of civil servants accountable to the constitution.

This year, his ministry chose the date of Mar. 13, in honour of International Women’s Day on Mar. 8, to institute the anti-harassment guidelines as a national commitment to stop “treating women as commodities,” Bek said.

The guidelines define harassment as either verbal or physical intimidation, including unnecessary physical contact or drawing attention to an employee’s “sex appeal’’. Employers are obliged to follow up on complaints made via email or telephone and take disciplinary action against the perpetrators.

Economic benefits of workplace safety

The threat of rape, harassment and the “loss of honour” are thought to play a bigger role in keeping Afghan women at home than religious motivations.

Sexual harassment is pervasive in the country’s larger cities, like the capital Kabul, the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif and the western city of Herat. One NGO worker who did not wish to be named told IPS the harassment she faced in the capital was so extreme that she left the country in search of work elsewhere.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said.

A large part of the female workforce is employed in the government sector, but even here women are far outnumbered by their male counterparts: last year the Reuters news service reported that out of a total of 363,000 state employees, only 74,000 were women.

According to a report by the World Bank, the labour participation rate of women over the age of 15 years was 14.4 percent in 2012, compared to 80 percent for men.

Increasingly, even this small portion of women who are able to secure jobs are being forced by their male relatives to stay home, or are doing so out of fear of being attacked on the job.

This trend, according to Bek, is a dangerous one, as a result of which entire communities suffer significant economic losses: in a country where per capita GDP is about 1,000 dollars, a woman’s salary can mean the difference between healthy and malnourished children, or between sending youth to school versus forcing them into child employment.

Thus the new anti-harassment regulations, implemented in hundreds of local government offices under the IDLG’s beat, aim not only to raise respect for individual rights within Afghan society but also to foster economic growth, Bek said.

Various studies show that women’s participation in the workforce and in leadership positions play a vital role in economic and overall development.

One such report claims that if female employment rates were to match male rates, Japan could see a rise in GDP of nine percent, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of 12 percent and Egypt of 34 percent.

If women were allowed to concentrate on their jobs instead of looking for ways to avoid harassment, molestation and violence, their potential to the Afghan economy could be “vast,” Bek noted, adding that women’s participation in economic activities could also contribute to overall stability in the region, as fears of “chaos” and even civil war proliferate ahead of the 2014 departure of Western troops.

Entrenched sexism

Despite ample evidence on the need for such guidelines, enforcing them will not be easy. Reports of misconduct by public officials often meet with accusations that such claims by women or their advocates “insult the honour’’ of the alleged perpetrators or the public institutions to which they belong.

For example, the Apr. 25 HRW report on the need for safe bathroom facilities for Afghan policewomen provoked the wrath of the Interior Ministry, which demanded the rights group “apologise” for its findings.

HRW Afghanistan Researcher Heather Barr told IPS that the ministry “seems determined to claim that there have never been any cases of sexual harassment, sexual assault or rape of female police officers by male police officers.”

The government of President Hamid Karzai had set itself the goal of recruiting 5,000 women into the Afghan National Police (ANP) before 2014 to boost the miserable one percent female participation rate that currently exists.

Barr says this move is crucial, since most Afghan women are too frightened to report rape to male officers and cannot be searched by them. But, she said, the Interior Ministry’s attitude towards reports of rape and harassment could “harm efforts to recruit female police.”

Women’s advocate Shazia Bashir leading a rally in support of women’s right to vote in Paikhel, Pakistan. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

For the first time in her life she will step out of her house on Election Day and join the throng of people heading to the neighbourhood polling station in Paikhel union council, an administrative unit of Mianwali district in the northwest Punjab province, to exercise her right to vote.

Fatima and the roughly 6,000 eligible female voters in this community have been barred from the ballot box for half a century. They were disenfranchised in 1963 when tribal elders and rival castes decided that women must “respect traditional values” of tribes like the Niazi, which dominate this area.

According to Shazia Bashir, a programme specialist at the national advocacy group Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), local male leaders agreed that the sight of women at polling stations was indecent, and would attract the unwelcome gaze of strangers. They also disliked the idea of women “confronting” or interacting with men at the ballot box, Bashir told IPS.

Tribal elders command a great deal of authority here. A local justice system known as “jirga” acts as a substitute for courts, and few political parties have a presence in the community.

Thus the ban remained in force until Herculean efforts by local activist groups succeeded in bringing stakeholders to the table to finally overturn the archaic law in December 2012.

Struggle to achieve voter literacy

Fatima says her son, who in previous election years had supported wholeheartedly her exclusion from the ballot box, has this year agreed to accompany her to the polling station, since she is completely ignorant of the voting process.

NGOs committed to bringing women into the electoral sphere are conducting practical trainings to develop basic voter literacy, but they face obstacles in the form of deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes.

The SPO’s repeated attempts to set up an adult literacy centre for women in Paikhel have been consistently thwarted since 2009 by locals determined to keep women “in their rightful place.” At most, two or three women would attend classes intended for at least 25 people.

For years, women themselves resisted attempts to reverse the ban, refusing to attend events on voter rights and preventing SPO activists from entering their homes.

Shazia says she even received death threats from some locals who wanted to maintain the status quo, but she stayed her course.

Eventually the campaign turned its attention to the men, spelling out the cost of keeping a huge section of the community out of the electoral process.

Seen by mainstream political parties as an “insignificant” electorate, Mianwali bears all the signs of government neglect, says Muhammad Ziaullah, president of Al Rehman Welfare Development Society.

Only one basic health unit, one dispensary and two secondary schools for boys serve this community of 4,000 households, he told IPS. There are no secondary schools for girls or higher secondary schools for male or female students.

Employment here is restricted to small-scale agricultural production, menial labour and honeybee farming, bringing families an average monthly income of between 30 and 50 dollars.

Children are forced to work to supplement their parents’ income, often employed as assistant mechanics in auto repair shops or helpers in tea kiosks. Inadequate health and education facilities feed this vicious cycle.

In a bid to promote voter participation, activists urged the influential District Steering Committees (DSCs) to revive welfare centres, known as Zakat Committees, capable of doling out funds to the needy.

SPO Regional Head Salman Abid told IPS the ensuing influx of government aid “helped locals to understand the benefits of staying in the political mainstream. They started listening to us seriously.” From there, activists moved to advocating for women’s right vote as crucial to maintaining government support and financial assistance.

By Dec. 12, 2012, tribal chiefs aligned with leading political parties like the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) agreed to lift the ban on women voters, with endorsement coming directly from the descendants of those who imposed it 50 years ago.

Raza-ul-Mustafa, a tribal chief whose grandfather was instrumental in implementing the ban, announced in a meeting held in December last year that his wife would be the first to cast her vote. He is currently contesting elections on the PTI ticket.

To help publicise their efforts, local advocates erected a large board at the main junction in Paikhel, in between the central bus station and rickshaw stand, and asked male members of the community who supported women’s right to vote to sign it.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has promised to set up women-only polling stations at a maximum distance of two kilometres away from the men’s, says Abid. It has been decided that husbands or sons will accompany their female relatives on Saturday.

Zaitoon Bibi, a middle-aged mother of two, told IPS she is “happy to go along with the change”.

“We refrained from voting as our elders decided it was against tradition; this time we will vote, as there is a unanimous decision on it,” she said simply.

But others see this as a monumental development, one that could impact other regions in Pakistan where women’s turnout at the 2008 general election, though not banned outright, was “abysmally low” according to Abid, who cited Punjabi districts like Attock, Chakwal, Sargodha and Jhang as examples of low female participation.

“The Paikhel decision is a historic one and could be an example to be followed,” he said. “If such a strong decision can be made here, why not in other places?”

Indeed, many women’s rights groups around the country have mobilised ahead of May 11 to provide protection to women voters on Election Day. Memories of 2008, when polling stations were torched to prevent women from casting their ballots, are fresh in people’s minds.

Analysts have praised the ECP for publicising the fact that “undue influence” on prospective voters is a punishable offence under the 1976 Representation of the People Act, carrying a one-year jail sentence or a fine.

Kashif Nawab, an election observer with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told IPS that banning women from voting falls under this category.

Nawab’s duties include timely reporting of violations of the code of conduct issued Wednesday by the ECP. He says he witnessed religious groups attempting to convince women to remain home on May 11 during his recent visit to the Attock district in Punjab. After he recorded his observation, the district election commissioner reprimanded the groups involved.

In Paikhel, the SPO has engaged a local task force to observe and report on possible violations, and ensure that women reach polling stations in time to cast their votes.

This past week volunteers visited hundreds of households and conducted “voting exercises” with women to ensure that they understand the procedure.

Encouraging support for women voters has also come from the most unlikely place: the Pakistan Ulema Council, which issued a decree last month calling voting an “Islamic responsibility” and non-voting a sin, including for women.

School children in Gaza face early gender segregation. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS.

The Islamist resistance group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is being accused by its Palestinian Authority (PA) rivals in the West Bank of Talibanising Gaza and turning the coastal territory into a new Muslim Brotherhood neighbourhood.

Earlier in the year Hamas launched a “virtue campaign” aimed at spreading Islamic Sharia and fighting against “Western dress and behavior.”

Following a recent law passed by Hamas, when the new school year begins from September this year, it will now be illegal for male school teachers to teach Palestinian girls in Gaza’s schools. Furthermore, girls and boys from the age of nine upwards will be forcibly segregated throughout the Gaza Strip, including those in private and Christian schools where co-education exists to a certain degree.

The law will affect the seven percent of schools in Gaza that are private, including Christian schools. They will need to finance the expansion of their buildings to be able to hold special classes for each gender. Gaza has 690 schools with 466,000 students for a population of 1.7 million.

Another article of the law regulates relations between Palestinian educational institutions and Israel, by banning schools from receiving aid meant to encourage or promote the normalisation of relations with Israel.

This latest crackdown on civil liberties follows earlier campaigns which have seen women banned from riding on the back of motorcycles, a common form of transport in the territory where fuel is scarce. Women have also been banned from smoking water pipes in public, and couples on the streets have been subjected to interrogations by Hamas security members.

Male hair stylists are forbidden from styling women’s hair while female runners were banned from taking part in a marathon organised by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, leading  UNRWA to cancel the event.  The marathon went ahead in the West Bank, attracting international competitors and Palestinian women.

In the West Bank there is no law segregating boys and girls in early school. However, apart from some schools including private and Christian schools, there is a general segregation of the sexes in high school.

But choice is an issue for many Palestinians, and Hamas legislation on “how to be a good Muslim” is seen as enforcement of the Hamas political agenda.

“This is ridiculous. What is wrong with boys and girls learning together? As a Muslim and a parent I want the choice as to whether I send my children to a mixed school or a gender segregated one,” says Rana Atta from the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC) in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Atta, who wears a head scarf, says that the new legislation introduced by the Hamas authorities not only violates human rights but is contrary to the spirit of education which should be promoting gender equality and an inclusive society representative of all.

“It’s illogical that male teachers will now be forbidden from teaching girls. Just as boys should be exposed to female teachers as an integral part of our society, so should girls be exposed to male teachers. I seriously wonder about the educational background of the people who are introducing these new laws in Gaza,” Atta tells IPS.

In a press statement, the Gaza Centre for Womens’ Legal Research and Consulting condemned the decision as “gender-based discrimination.”

When Hamas took over full control of the Gaza Strip it promised to respect the civil liberties of Palestinians, a promise that the Islamic movement has increasingly broken with growing militancy.

“Hamas is slowly engaging in a process of the Islamisation of Gaza. A process which is not constitutional on the one hand and neither is it popular with Gazans on the other,” says Dr Samir Awad, a political analyst from Birzeit University, near Ramallah.

“They have gone so far as to threaten the Palestinian contestant of Arab Idol with legal action and accusing him of engaging in illegal and immoral behaviour,” Awad tells IPS.

“Hamas’s draconian legislation is unwarranted, neither by the constitution nor the Palestinian population. These latest developments are further entrenching the political divide between the West Bank and Gaza.

“Those schools in Gaza were there long before Hamas and will be there long after Hamas is no longer around. Palestinians have stated repeatedly that they want self-determination and that applies to Gazans too.”

LGBT activists, human rights observers and police officers wait outside a courtroom in Uganda's constitutional court. Four activists had brought a case against Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo. Credit: Will Boase/IPS

Ishita Chaudhry spent the past 36 hours listening to U.N. delegates discuss population growth and development. She noticed that on “controversial” topics, such as sexual and reproductive rights, young people’s voices often get lost.

“For us as young people, it’s really not as controversial as it is for governments,” said Chaudhry, a member of the High-Level Task Force for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), at a press briefing Thursday.

“We know that we need to be empowered to claim our human rights… And we understand that access to sexual, reproductive health and birth services, and comprehensive sexuality education is a key aspect of that empowerment,” she explained.

Joaquim Alberto Chissano, a former president of Mozambique and co-chair of the task force, added, “Fulfilling sexual and (reproductive) health and rights is not only a human right… it also offers solutions to many of today’s global problems.”

Chissano – often credited for ending civil war and strengthening democracy in Mozambique – cited the links between sexual and reproductive health and national progress.

He explained that by promoting sexual and reproductive health, the international community can “fully unleash human potential, energies and talents… to nurture the human capital that countries need to reduce poverty and inequality”.

If sexual and reproductive rights are not addressed, “those who will feel the pinch more are the coming generations”, he warned.

The task force’s work – entitled “Policy Recommendations for the ICPD Beyond 2014: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All” – reaffirms values established almost twenty years ago in Cairo, where 179 governments gathered to adopt a Programme of Action that placed the human rights of women at the centre of international development goals.

The task force calls on the governments to address Cairo’s “unfinished agenda” by: ensuring sexual and reproductive rights through law; working towards universal access to sexual and reproductive health services; providing sexuality education for all young people; and eliminating violence against women and girls.

It argues that governments should expand access to safe abortion and to services for victims of gender-based violence, and that the international community should adopt a definition of “comprehensive sexuality education”.

The task force’s work will inform U.N. negotiations for a new development framework, to replace the expiring Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) post-2015.

According to the task force, the sexual and reproductive health of young women and girls are particularly compromised. It cites that one in three girls in developing countries are married without their consent; 2,400 young people are infected with HIV every day; and up to 50 percent of all sexual assaults are committed against girls under the age of 16.

Asked if sexual and reproductive rights are often barred by social or cultural norms, Chaudhry – founder of The YP Foundation, a non-profit organisation in India – said, “I come from a country that has a broad representation, both in terms of religion (and) culture. It has a lot of sensitivities.”

She emphasised the importance of providing information and sexuality education to approach such sensitivities. “You’re not telling the young person that they should or shouldn’t do something, you’re giving them access to evidence-based information, which means that they are in the best place to decide (for themselves).”

She said, “Because there’s such a broad lack of understanding… the fear and stigma and discrimination around issues of sex and sexuality therefore remains very high.”

Chaudhry argued that some of the most effective cases in achieving sexual and reproductive rights are when governments invest at community levels in reducing levels of related stigma.

She explained, “One of the biggest misconceptions of sexuality education is that if you provide sexuality education to an adolescent, you’re going to decrease the age of first sex.”

She added, “Once you start breaking the stigma and the silence around issues of sex and sexuality, you find that even parents and religious leaders themselves have questions… They (just) haven’t had anybody else to ask.”

Tarja Halonen, former president of Finland and co-chair of the task force, posed a question of her own: would you want to perpetuate socially rooted injustices, “or would you like to be the founding father or mother with a new way of (doing things)”?

She explained that while it is important to respect traditional values, it is also important to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She emphasised the need to work with experts from schools, health centres and religious communities.

Halonen noted that social stigmas on sexuality are prevalent even in Finland – ranked the second happiest country by the U.N.’s World Happiness Report. These stigmas discourage victims of sexual abuse from seeking the help they need, while providing impunity for perpetrators.

Halonen told IPS, however, that there has been some progress. She shared her experience fighting for sexual and reproductive rights, which started over four decades ago when she was a young lawyer.

“In the late 1960s, when I spoke on behalf of young Finnish students… I said that (students) need more information for these issues,” said Halonen.

“I remembered how they answered me in Parliament. They said, ‘(Students) are in the university in order to study, not to have sex’.”

Despite social stigmas and Parliament’s neglect, Halonen was able organise sexual and reproductive health services and information for the university’s health care centres.

Her national progress for sexual and reproductive rights continued from there.

“We changed the legislation in 1970s concerning minorities (and) homosexuals. Then we changed the abortion law, little by little. Now when we look at statistics, we see afterwards that it has worked well. We have less abortions, we have better birth rates, we have fewer HIVs,” she said.

“So what are we afraid of?” she added.

The effort points to creeping conservatism in the thinking of Kyrgyzstan’s leaders.

“The Vagina Monologues” is an episodic play where woman address how they relate to their bodies, discuss their sexual experiences, and confront the topic of sexual violence. Since American Eve Ensler wrote the play in 1996, it has been performed in over 140 countries and translated into 48 languages. A performance is scheduled for Apr. 12 in Bishkek.

The Culture Ministry sent a letter to local media outlets on Apr. 1 saying the Vagina Monologues advocates “unnatural, perverted sex under the slogan of feminism”. The letter warned that Kyrgyz law prohibits the distribution of materials that “promote pornography and offend human dignity”.

Organisers say authorities are rushing to judgment. “The play is aimed at stopping violence against women, a very important thing for our society where there is a lot of violence against women,” Aikanysh Jeenbaeva, one of the organizers and a co-founder of the Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ, told EurasiaNet.org.

“The ministry did not say which parts of the Vagina Monologues are supposedly offensive or promote pornography. I think none of them have actually seen the play and they’re just judging it by its name.”

A ministry representative, Ermek Jolochuev, admitted he had not seen the play, but said it “contradicts our mentality. You know that nationalities living on the territory of Kyrgyzstan, and Eastern people in general, are not used to talking about such topics openly or to speaking publicly the names of women’s body parts.”

He confirmed that “prominent” cultural figures stood against the play, but would not name them over the phone. He also did not follow through with a promise to email EurasiaNet.org their names.

Jolochuev said the ministry has no legal recourse to ban the performance. Nevertheless, organisers fear the ministry’s recommendation will engender hostility toward the production. The Russian-language version of the play is scheduled for 7 pm Friday at the Metro Pub theater; 100 percent of proceeds will benefit Chance, a local women’s shelter. If it goes ahead uninterrupted, it will be the Vagina Monologues’ third season in Bishkek, after debuting in 2009 and returning in 2011.

Bishkek was the first location in Central Asia to host the Vagina Monologues; Almaty hosted a sold-out performance this past February.

Organisers have received threats in the past, but have never experienced such interference from authorities.

Kyrgyzstan remains an entrenched patriarchal society where, despite Soviet attempts to extend equal opportunities to women, today women’s rights appear to be backsliding. There is little quantitative data available, but a 2008 U.N. study found one in four Kyrgyz women had suffered from domestic violence.

Stigma is widespread: women who speak out about sexual and domestic abuse are often shamed both as something sullied and as backstabbers betraying their families. Moreover, bride kidnapping, though illegal, has become more common since the Soviet era, activists say.

Given the seriousness of the issue, when the Culture Ministry statement appeared on Apr. 1, “We thought it was an April Fools’ joke,” Jeenbaeva said. Cancelling the play would send a message, members of her group said, that domestic violence is not a serious problem.

The dispute underscores a trend in which the Kyrgyz government is shunning Western liberalism. Last fall, for example, the State Committee on Religious Affairs successfully blocked, with a court order, the screening of a documentary film about gay men in the Muslim world.

In recent weeks, parliament has discussed a bill that would ban young women from traveling abroad, supposedly to protect them from sexual abuse and, in the words of the bill’s author, Irgal Kadyralieva, “increase morality and preserve the gene pool”.

Prominent human rights activist and lawyer Cholpon Djakupova is worried by the trend and feels Kyrgyz society is lashing out at perceived foreign ideas with growing cynicism. She added that, despite years of promises, Western liberalism has done little to improve living standards or confront widespread corruption.

The Culture Ministry’s attempted ban “is the reaction of people who do not like [what has turned out to be a] false and empty democracy. In NGOs and even the term freedom, people see the failed realization of foreign promises,” Djakupova told EurasiaNet.org.

“This concept of freedom is only important for creative people and self-reliant people. Poor people have no access to education or justice. For them, all these liberal concepts are estranged from their difficult lives.”

*Editor’s note: David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Still from TV spot in favour of equal marriage. Credit: Colectivo Ovejas Negras

Activists in Uruguay hope the passage of the “Equal Marriage Law” Wednesday will help bring about recognition that society is heterogeneous.

The law approved by the Uruguayan Congress modifies the civil code and recognises the marriage of two people of any gender identity or sexual orientation.

This small country wedged between South America’s two giants, Argentina and Brazil, has thus become the second nation in Latin America, after Argentina, to adopt same-sex marriage.

The law, approved by 71 of the 92 lower house lawmakers present for the vote – out of a total of 99 – represents “the cornerstone of a change in our society’s perspective,” said Michelle Suárez, a lawyer for Ovejas Negras (Black Sheep), an organisation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

“In Uruguay we have a very fundamentalist, homogenising view. We believe there is a kind of hegemonic moral, which we use to categorise practices and conducts,” she told IPS.

But “Uruguayan society is totally heterogeneous and should be recognised as such,” she added. “So no one-size-fits-all utopias should be imposed; instead there should be an archipelago of utopias, all of which merit a space for development and should be connected under the principle of freedom,” said the lawyer, who drafted the original bill.

The law, which was introduced by the governing leftwing Broad Front coalition, also allows gay couples to adopt children or conceive them by means of in vitro fertilisation. The partners only have to sign a legal parenthood contract in which they assume rights and obligations as parents.

The order of the child’s last names – in Spanish, both surnames form part of the full official name, with the father’s surname coming first – will be decided by the partners, or by drawing lots if they fail to reach a decision.

The age requirement for marriage was also raised, from 12 for females and 14 for males, to 16 for both. But parental consent is necessary until the age of 18.

Uruguay had already taken significant steps towards becoming the 12th country in the world and the second in Latin America to approve same-sex marriage.

The Civil Unions Law was passed in 2007, providing legal recognition of stable unmarried couples, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

But registering under the civil union law is a complicated and costly process that requires couples to demonstrate that they have lived together without interruption for at least five years, in an exclusive relationship.

In 2009, a law was approved authorising partners in civil unions to adopt children. And that year, a law was passed allowing transsexuals to change their names on official documents.

But representatives of the LGBT community stressed that there was still much to be done. “One of the goals we have to focus on is an overhaul of the laws and regulations that have to do with discrimination,” Suárez said.

The lawyer insisted on the need to improve regulations for providing assistance to victims who are discriminated against on the grounds of gender or sexual orientation.

Last week, the Senate approved the bill (with slight modifications) in a vote of 23 to 8. Opposition mainly came from lawmakers of the conservative National Party.

The Catholic Church was one of the voices that most vehemently criticised the bill.

As for public opinion with respect to the question of gay marriage, poll results vary, but generally reflect an evenly divided society.

Senator Carlos Baráibar, the only member of the Broad Front who opposed the bill, left his seat to his alternate at the time of the vote in order to avoid going against the party line.

“I don’t agree with calling it ‘equal marriage’, and the bill itself doesn’t even explain why it’s called that,” he told IPS while the vote was taking place.

Baráibar said he was in favour of recognising the legal rights of same-sex couples. But he said they were not in a situation of “igualdad” or equality with respect to heterosexuals. (In Spanish, “igual” means both “equal” and “the same”.)

“Equality means giving equal/same treatment to things that are equal/the same,” the senator said. “For me, marriage still has an essential reproductive purpose, which comes from history, biology, culture and society.”

Baráibar also said adoption by same-sex couples merited a broader, more thorough debate, and cited studies arguing that children who are raised by their biological parents have better prospects for psychosocial development than children raised by homosexual couples.

“In adoption, it is not the welfare of the adults – who can think for themselves – that must be protected; it is the welfare of the children, who sometimes are babies only a few months old without the power of judgment and who, when they grow up, discover that they are surrounded by a world that is made up of mainly heterosexual couples, while they come from a homosexual family,” he told IPS.

Gay marriage is now legal in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Uruguay.

It is also legal in some states in the U.S., the Mexican capital, the southeastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, and some states in Brazil.

In addition, a gay marriage law was approved Wednesday by the French Senate, and similar bills are in debate in Colombia and New Zealand.

Badam Zari (right) campaigning ahead of the elections. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

“My sole motive is to serve my people, especially women who have had no role in politics so far. I feel we can make progress only by bringing in women into mainstream politics.”

These are the words of Badam Zari, 40, who has filed her nomination papers with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). Zari is contesting from the militancy-hit Bajaur Agency, one of the seven districts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) near the Afghanistan border.

Zari’s tiny but lush green house in Arang village is buzzing with activity as women from the neighbourhood come in droves to congratulate her for the exemplary courage she has shown in standing for elections.

Forget standing for election, women in FATA do not vote. It was only in 1997 that the federal government gave the six million residents of FATA the right of adult franchise. Before that, only a few government-nominated elders called Maliks were entitled to cast votes or stand in election.

In January this year, the Election Commission of Pakistan proposed an amendment to the Representation of People Act, 1976, making it compulsory for every polling station to have at least 10 percent of its total votes cast by women. It went so far as to suggest that results from polling stations not be taken into account till that provision was met. The government, however, paid no heed to the suggestion.

“I am extremely worried about tribal women, most of who stay in their houses, which has prevented them from making any progress,” Zari told IPS. “My only ambition is to struggle for the improvement of women’s conditions in Bajaur Agency. Women here are suffering as none of the lawmakers in FATA have ever worked towards their development.”

Her action, she is sure, will motivate women to come to the polling booths on polling day and vote in her favour.

However, the indications are that women will continue to stay disenfranchised not only in FATA but in the majority of the country, especially in rural areas where people are reluctant to allow them to cast their vote as it would constitute a break with tradition.

Free and Fair Election Network, a local NGO, says that women were barred from voting at 564 of the country’s 64,176 polling stations in the 2008 general elections. Political parties in Dir, Kohistan, Battagram and other districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province decided to bar women from voting citing local traditions.

Government data indicates that Pakistan has more than 48 million registered male voters and just more than 37 million female registered voters. For the 12 National Assembly seats that went to the polls in 2008, only 394,977 or 30.37 percent were polled out of the total registered votes of 1,280,897. Women, as usual, had stayed away.

Women have never voted in FATA either, which has a total population of 1,749,331. Of these, 1,153,073 are male registered voters, and 596,258, female. In Bajaur Agency, female voters make up 132,134 of the total 355,969 population.

This is the reason why Zari’s decision to take part in the election is both unprecedented in Pakistan’s history and a crucial step in the emancipation of women in the area. “No women have so far turned up at polling stations on voting day in FATA,” Prof. Zahra Shah of the sociology department at the University of Peshawar told IPS. “Zari’s decision to jump into the race is likely to be welcomed given the boldness and courage she has shown.”

Educated up to eighth grade, Zari has no children. Yet she is determined to work towards the education of the children in her region and help them play a part in development.

Zari told IPS she is undeterred by the presence of wealthy and influential people in the elections. She is determined to give women a voice in the National Assembly.

She has the full support of her husband Sultan Khan, a teacher in the government-run Bajaur Public School and College. Khan says he will strive for women’s development with her.

“Despite being poor, we are committed to running a full-scale campaign and seek victory. Zari’s win would mean a victory for all FATA women,” he says. “There is tremendous pressure on us to withdraw her from the election but there is no looking back and we will go to the polls with complete preparation.”

Zari has much support from other women in the area. “We will support her as she is the only woman to have mustered courage against all odds. She requires our unflinching support,” Jamila Bibi who hails from the National Assembly constituency NA-44 Bajaur-II from where Zari is contesting, told IPS.

“I also hope that men will throw their weight behind her,” she says. “We have planned to make door-to-door visits to canvass for Zari. She is our beacon of hope.”

Zari is not alone in her act of courage. The submission of nomination papers by another woman, Nusrat Begum from Lower Dir district NA-34 of adjacent KP province, is also being hailed by womenfolk.

Begum, 28, a graduate from the University of Peshawar, also happens to be the first woman in Lower Dir ever to have the courage to contest elections.

Both are contesting elections as independent candidates.

There are many demands on a communal water tap in the Lord Howe Settlement in Honiara in the Solomon Islands. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS.

The Solomon Islands, a developing island nation in the south-west Pacific Islands, has one of the highest urbanisation rates in the region, and the basic service infrastructure is struggling to cater for the influx of people from the provinces to the capital, Honiara. Thirty-five percent of the city’s population, who live in informal settlements, are facing the health consequences of a dire shortage of clean water and sanitation.

Located on the main island of Guadalcanal, Honiara is a coastal city and port of 64,600 people growing at 2.7 percent a year. Thirty informal settlements in the capital are home to more than 22,500 people. Many have come for economic opportunities and better access to public services, while others were displaced during the ‘Tensions’ (1999-2003), a civil conflict between communities over access to land and resources on Guadalcanal.

Households throughout Honiara experience shortages of clean water for cooking, drinking and washing on a daily basis. But in the informal settlements a household survey has revealed that 92 percent do not have any water supply to their homes, 27 percent use communal stand taps and 20 percent collect water from wells, rivers and streams.

Sanitation coverage in the Solomon Islands is 32 percent, according to the Solomon Islands Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Sector Brief (WASH), while the regional average is 46 percent. In the urban settlements of Honiara, only 2 percent of people have access to flush toilets, 20 percent use pit toilets and 55 percent use the sea, river or nearby land.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) population growth is one factor impacting the availability of fresh water in many Pacific Island nations, as it is in the Solomon Islands.

But much of the water supply and sanitation infrastructure in Honiara was seriously damaged during the ‘Tensions’ and, since then, development funding has prioritised peace and reconciliation, law and justice, governance and economic development.

A spokesperson for the Solomon Islands Water Authority (SIWA), which is responsible for the urban water supply, explained to IPS that the “current (water supply) network is not able to supply the water demand due to pipe restrictions and the limited and aged pipe network cannot meet the demand of the rapidly expanding population in Honiara.”  Thus regular water shortages result when “rationing of water has to be implemented to ensure that everyone has access to water.”

However, in squatter settlements most people live without piped water.

Water for washing and bathing is from the well,” Alison, a resident of Henderson Settlement, home to 3,000 people on the urban outskirts told IPS. “But we have to go far to look for our water for drinking and cooking. We just look for where people have tanks and then ask them if they will allow us to use some of their tank water.”

Lord Howe Settlement, situated adjacent to the city centre, comprises several hundred migrants from the Polynesian island Ontong Java in the eastern Solomon Islands.

The community has access to one communal tap for every three to four families which provides town supplied water during certain hours of the day,” Father Muliava, the local pastor said. “But there are days when the tap is dry and there is no water. We store water in plastic containers and try and manage the supply.”

The state of sanitation is equally critical. “There are about three houses here which have proper sanitation, but most people use the nearby beach, even though it is not safe to use at night,” Father Muliava said.

At Henderson, Ruth and her husband have access to a pit toilet. But she told IPS:  “We cannot use the toilet during the day. It is an open toilet and the other families sit around, so there is no privacy.”

One outcome is regular cases of dysentery, diarrhoea and cholera. According to UNEP, 10 percent of all fatalities of children under five years throughout the Pacific Islands are caused by diarrhoea related diseases. In the Solomon Islands it is 8 percent.

At Henderson, Alison recounted: “I was admitted recently to hospital after I suffered a miscarriage. I didn’t use proper water and developed an infection and became ill. The doctor said I need access to clean water.”

“My little child has skin rashes all over her body from the water,” she added.

Water and sanitation deprivation has also been linked to violence against women, according to a 2011 Amnesty International report.

Women and girls are vulnerable to rape and sexual harassment when they have no option but to walk considerable distances unaccompanied, in some cases round trips of three to six kilometres per day to collect water, use water sources for bathing or when there are only exposed places available for sanitation purposes.

The government introduced a national policy to combat violence against women in 2010. But gender violence remains a concern with the Solomon Islands Family Health and Safety Study confirming that 64 percent of women aged 15-49 years, who have been in relationships, experience some form of domestic abuse.

“If there is no water available, men harass women because it is the role of the woman to go and find water,” Ruth said.

One of the main challenges facing water resource management in Pacific Island nations is limited technical, resource and governance capacity to address complex infrastructure challenges and implement development strategies.

A current project being conducted in collaboration with the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) is creating 16 new bore holes which will lead to a future increase in the city’s water supply capacity.

The Honiara City Council only provides services to communities that fall within the city’s boundary, but has a long-term strategy to eventually incorporate many of the informal settlements into its urban plan. A spokesperson told IPS that the council had constrained resources, but was subsidising the manufacture of latrines, which are available to people in Honiara and the settlements at reduced cost, monitoring sanitation usage and implementing community awareness of sanitation and health issues.

A spokesperson for local women’s organisation, Vois Blong Mere (Voice of Women), commented that the problems faced by women in the settlements will only diminish when basic services are improved, emphasising that women must be empowered to be involved in the decisions made about the health and safety issues impacting their lives.