Seventy percent of France’s 20,000 sex workers are migrant women. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2013 (IPS)

The age-old debate over how to regulate sex work has led to a rift between the United Nations and anti-trafficking organisations, which are pressuring the world body to rethink its position following two reports that advocate decriminalising all aspects of prostitution.

“When we saw the reports we became very concerned,” said Lauren Hersh, New York director of Equality Now, which is leading the public campaign that launched this week. “To have U.N. agencies call for brothel-keeping is egregious,” she told IPS.“People in prostitution need to be recognised as trafficking victims… We don’t believe anyone chooses.” -- Stella Marr of Sex Trafficking Survivors United

The coalition of 98 groups is asking the U.N. to update and reissue the reports, which were published last year, to reflect the experiences of survivors of prostitution, and include a wider range of views on the impact of legalising of the sex industry.

The two reports, Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific, backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Joint United Nations Programme of HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and HIV and the Law, published by UNDP’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law, are focused on reducing HIV/AIDS while simultaneously protecting the rights of those involved in prostitution.

Survivors say that addressing the demand that keeps the cycle of prostitution in motion is imperative and is not adequately addressed in the reports.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for UNDP said in a statement that the reports examined the issues of sex work through a specific lens of the HIV epidemic and strongly condemned sex trafficking.

“UNDP advocates and promotes the respect of human rights for all, especially the most excluded and marginalised. The report on Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific… clearly distinguishes between adult consensual sex work and human trafficking for sexual exploitation,” the spokesperson said.

Spokespersons from UNFPA and UNAIDS told IPS that the UNDP statement accurately reflects their agencies’ position.

The reports also see decriminalisation of the sex industry as a way to promote the ability of prostitutes to negotiate condom use, but Equality Now says that for many women in prostitution, there is an economic dependency, thus pressure, to have sex without a condom as clients will often offer more money for sex without one.

If women are trafficked or controlled by a pimp, they have less ability to insist on the use of condoms.

In a statement, UNDP said that the criminalisation of sex work increases vulnerability to HIV and limits access to condoms and sexual health services.

But Hersh says that, “Often it’s the pimps and buyers that dictate condom use as women can get more money from not using one.”

Hersh emphasises that the coalition is not trying to undermine the efforts of the campaign against HIV/AIDS. Equality Now has spent nearly a year reaching out to the U.N. through internal channels, including sending a letter co-signed with over 80 organisations, to Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS.

Prostitution is legal in many countries, including Switzerland, where “sex boxes” were recently introduced in Zurich to promote the safety of prostitutes in what the city considers a more pleasant environment. But the situation for men and women in countries where prostitution is legalised and decriminalised remains dire, according to Equality Now.

“One of the major issues is that the reports did not consult with our partners on the ground, particularly survivor-led organisations,” Hersh told IPS.

Stella Marr, executive director and one of the co-founders of Sex Trafficking Survivors United, an international organisation of over 100 survivors of prostitution, is herself a survivor, first trafficked at age 20 and involved in prostitution for 10 years.

“If we don’t address demand, there will always be trafficking,” Marr told IPS, adding that she is “saddened” at the reports.

Marr believes the best solution is the Nordic model, which criminalises the purchase of sex, but decriminalises being a prostitute.

Marr left prostitution after a buyer offered to help her, giving her a safe place to live for two years. She is the only person she knows who this has happened to.

“The fact that I got out doesn’t mean I was strong. I was lucky,” Marr said.

Survivors of the sex industry do not have their voices heard as loudly as those who are currently involved due to the amount of shame around it, said Rachel Moran, a founding member of Survivors of Prostitution-Abuse Calling for Enlightenment (SPACE) International, who was prostituted from age 15 until she was 22.

Another facet of the reports Equality Now wants to address is the definition of “trafficking” by the U.N. In 2000, in the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, commonly known as the U.N. Trafficking Protocol, members states agreed on a broad definition of trafficking that reflects a variety of experiences from sex trafficking survivors.

The 2012 U.N. reports recommend narrowing down and redefining the definition, which could mean many trafficked persons would no longer be considered victims and their traffickers would not be held accountable.

“I understand that it’s difficult… you have to have a way to help people out of that life,” Marr said. “People in prostitution need to be recognised as trafficking victims… We don’t believe anyone chooses.”

Equality Now is optimistic about future reports, including a recent study from Asia and the Pacific, launched by UNDP, UNFPA and U.N. Women, that reports the purchase of commercial sex in the region is strongly associated with widespread rape and sexual violence against women.

Disaster Risk Management Project (DRM). An elderly person with a disability goes down the stairs of the Cyclone shelter in Mohanagar, Sitakunda, Bangladesh. Credit: Brice Blondel/Handicap International

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 2013 (IPS)

Upon first glance, the emergency checklist distributed in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake looks like any other. Organised into key categories like water, sanitation and hygiene, and psychosocial support, the information is typical of the kind circulated for emergency response.

But after a closer read, with recommendations for latrines to be built with a 90cm diameter so a wheelchair can turn around, and 80-cm-wide doors for wheelchair or crutch-users to pass through comfortably, it is clear that the checklist, distributed by Handicap International, was intended for persons with disabilities living in the disaster-ravaged country.“When we don’t include people with disabilities, that’s when the most deaths and casualties happen.” -- Fred Doulton of UN Enable

Natural disasters are common in many developing countries across the globe, and organisations like Handicap International are helping communities plan better for their disabled populations. There are between 2.9 and 4.2 million persons with disabilities among the world’s 42 million forcibly displaced population, according to data from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

For many people living with disabilities in developing countries, social stigma and cultural barriers prevent community cohesion, which is essential for emergency planning and preparedness, Annie Lafrenière, social inclusion and technical adviser at Handicap International, told IPS.

“People won’t speak about social barriers… they’ll talk about ramps [instead],” Lafrenière said. “[People with disabilities] are not considered the same as everyone else.”

Developing countries are vulnerable and at a higher risk of disasters because they are less prepared and equipped to deal with them, and not necessarily because they are more exposed to hazards, Lafrenière says. Persons with disabilities are often invisible to relief activities and unable to reach food or water checkpoints due to destroyed roads or non-accessible transportation.

“Meeting basic needs… remains a priority and often a challenge for communities affected by disasters, whether they are persons with or without disabilities,” Lafrenière says. “What our experiences have shown us… is that the presence of disability amplifies the impact of the disaster on a person’s life… and reduce[s] the range of strategies to cope with them.”

Inclusive planning is one improvement that can be made by communities in developing countries, and one that Handicap International stresses. It’s vital that disabled people are part of planning meetings and committees, as they help to spread awareness while offering their expertise.

“When we don’t include people with disabilities, that’s when the most deaths and casualties happen,” Fred Doulton, social affairs officer at UN Enable, which focuses on the rights of disabled people and is part of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), told IPS. “By asking [people with disabilities] directly about what they think, you get to the core issues.”

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) recently released a survey asking persons with disabilities around the world about their experience living with and preparing for disasters.

In the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT province), Handicap International is working with schools and children with disabilities and their families to improve awareness and response to disasters. The region is prone to flooding, landslides and whirlwinds; in 2012 there were 258 whirlwinds, 28 times the number recorded in 2002, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB).

“We are implementing activities within the community to increase resilience to natural disasters, but we are also implementing activities within schools to be sure that children with disabilities will be taken into consideration,” Catherine Gillet, programme director for Handicap International in Indonesia/Timor-Leste, told IPS from the ground.

The NTT province consists of rural communities living in hilly areas and on dry and rocky land. The terrain can be treacherous, with communities staying either in valleys near the rivers, where there is a high risk of floods during the rainy season, or on the slopes of hills near areas suitable for crop cultivation, but where landslides pose a huge risk.

The children, mainly in grades three to five, raise awareness among their peers about disaster risk and are involved in risk assessment and identification. Disabled and non-disabled schoolchildren also demonstrate good practices for evacuation in disasters and work together in mock drills.

“For children with disabilities [the main challenge] is the problem of access, the problem of moving around,” Mathieu Dewerse, regional operational coordinator for Handicap International in Indonesia/Timor-Leste, told IPS.

“This is compounded in the case of disasters. If we think about a landslide, the road may be cut, there could be rocks on the road. If this is a child that uses crutches, it’s very hard to move around,” Dewerse says.

During past disasters, children with mobility disabilities have been supported by tricycles or motorbikes, Dewerse says.

For children with sensory impairments in the region, access to information is one of the main concerns. Communities have set up flag systems to compensate for the sound of an evacuation signal, which can’t be heard by children with hearing impairments, and have recruited friends and family to make sure they get away safely.

“Take the example of a child who doesn’t see. It’s a very big problem, especially if they have to evacuate quickly,” Dewerse says.

The provision of more mobility devices adapted to the needs of children with disabilities is an important step in helping communities the next time there is a flood or landslide, Dewerse says.

In the neighbouring Philippines, Handicap International replaced the cumbersome wheelchair of Joshua Degas, a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, after Tropical Storm Washi in 2011, with one his own size, improving his future mobility in the face of potential disasters.

(See Part One and Part Two)

Excerpt:

A fisherman and other Gulf Coast residents at a community meeting in New Orleans in 2010. Experts say that trauma related to the record-breaking BP oil spill in the region could last for decades. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Aug 15 2013 (IPS)

Although Hurricane Sandy made her final sweep through the Northeastern United States nearly 10 months ago, for many people the stress caused by the storm lingers.

(See Part One and Part Three of the series)

In Lower Manhattan, two hotlines, the Disaster Distress Helpline (DDH) and Project Hope, which is part of the New York City-wide helpline Lifenet, and specifically for those affected by Sandy, are at the frontline of disaster counselling, listening to myriad concerns ranging from queries about post-storm open hours of drug rehabilitation programmes to anxious parents reluctantly sending their children back to school in the days after the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting last December. Both programmes are administered by the Mental Health Association of New York City.

“Typically the kind of disasters that result in a spike of calls at the national level are those that are larger in scale. The impacts tend to be greater in terms of loss of life, loss of property or the potential for psychological distress on a sizeable population,” Christian Burgess, director of the DDH, told IPS.

Following the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York City, there was a need for a nationwide, phone-based crisis counselling service, Burgess says. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) established the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in 2005, but created an entirely separate hotline for disaster counselling after the 2010 BP oil spill.

Transitioning from the Oil Spill Distress Helpline, the DDH went live in February 2012, receiving its first major spike in calls following Hurricane Isaac, which tore through the Gulf Coast on the seven-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

“It’s not therapy, it’s not a substitute for therapy. Really, it involves listening,” Burgess says, comparing the helpline to triage for mental health.

Counsellors are trained to listen for symptoms of distress that may indicate the need for crisis intervention, like suicidal or homicidal intent, and callers may also be at risk of depression or substance abuse.

The DDH saw spikes in calls after the Newtown shootings, in which a lone gunman killed 20 elementary school students and six staffers, and the Boston Marathon bombing in April, as well as the Oklahoma tornadoes in May.

“School shootings in particular tend to trigger stronger feelings of distress, simply because it’s easier for a large part of the population to identify with the sadness and grief,” Burgess says. “It shakes our foundation of what is supposed to happen, the order of things… especially if you were already feeling vulnerable before the event.”

Burgess says that the majority of calls following the Newtown shooting didn’t come from Connecticut, but from all over the country.

After a major disaster, repeated coverage on the 24-hour news cycle, sensationalised headlines and the easy accessibility of Internet allow for the vicarious trauma of rewatching distressing events, which adds to anxiety, Burgess says.

“The event in and of itself is traumatic… but it’s heightened by the constant media exposure, particularly for those who would have been at risk before the event,” Burgess said.

Trigger events still loom, like the State Department’s closure of 19 U.S. embassies across North Africa and the Middle East in early August. The DDH have received calls from people concerned about what the terror alert means, Burgess says.

Calls related to Hurricane Sandy marked the first time the DDH received sustained levels of calls over a period of time, Burgess says. At its peak, Sandy resulted in a 2,000 percent increase in calls from two weeks prior, before the forecasts began to take shape. Texts increased by 600 percent.

“In December we were starting to get longer calls from people, and mental health concerns were coming to the surface,” Burgess says, due to fewer resources and the emotional fatigue of still-displaced people.

Melany Avrut, programme manager for Project Hope, which has received nearly 4,000 calls since the hurricane, told IPS that the needs of callers have changed. In the weeks following the storm, callers wanted to know about filing FEMA applications, but six months later, there were more concerns about anxiety, mood and children having trouble sleeping.

“A big component of Project Hope is using your strength… recognising what [people] have used in the past to get them through a hard time,” Avrut says. “They want to talk about what it was like to go through this traumatic experience.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released new guidelines on how to care for those with mental health issues following trauma. The guidelines emphasise the use of behavioural therapies, such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) rather than relying on medications.

Although unusual, EMDR can be effective, Dr. Mark van Ommeren, a scientist in the WHO’s department of mental health and substance abuse, told IPS.

It likely works when a patient, focusing on the traumatic event, follows a therapist’s hand with their eyes. The working memory is taxed as the patient thinks about both the event and their eyes working to track the hand. The painful memory becomes less prominent, and upon revisiting the memory, it is less vivid and emotional in the long-term memory, van Ommeren says.

For people living in disaster areas who are vulnerable to mental health issues, van Ommeren suggests that stress management is a good way to prepare, as it makes going through difficult moments a slightly easier, adding that there are no concrete studies about this.

To contact the Disaster Distress Helpline, call 1-800-985-5990, or text “TalkWithUs” to 66746. To contact Project Hope, call 1-800-LIFENET (1-800-543-3638). 

Excerpt:

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Aug 14 2013 (IPS)

Like many people living in the path of Hurricane Sandy last fall, Lauren Scrivo needed more battery power. Despite a call offering help from the mayor of Fairfield, New Jersey, where Scrivo lives with her family, her concerns went far beyond extra water bottles and flashlights.

An emergency shelter at Seward Park High School in Lower Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy that disabled people had a hard time accessing. Credit: Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York (CIDNY)

Scrivo, a communications specialist at the Kessler Foundation, has a form of muscular dystrophy and uses a ventilator and power wheelchair. When the electricity went down during the storm, she only had battery power to fuel the machine; leaving the generator running outside was too risky.

“When we lost power it was a little scary, we didn’t know how long it would be for. I couldn’t leave the generator running at night because people were stealing them, so [I] had to use battery power,” Scrivo told IPS.

The gas shortage also presented an enormous danger for Scrivo as her generator began to run low on fuel.

“You can’t just go out and stand in the gas line,” she said. “If we couldn’t fuel our generator, we wouldn’t have been able to recharge my [ventilator] batteries or use my other necessary medical equipment.”

Now Scrivo, along with the global disabled community, will have the opportunity to voice her concerns after the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) launched a survey asking people with disabilities about their experience living with and preparing for disasters.

The survey, believed to be the first time global data on emergency planning and disabilities is being collected, asks participants what kind of emergency, from landslides to insect infestations, their communities are vulnerable to, and whether they have been involved in municipal emergency management planning.

“We know from a number of major disasters that disabled people are overlooked… twice as many [disabled] people died in the Fukushima disaster [than non-disabled people],” Denis McClean, spokesperson for UNISDR, told IPS from Geneva.

Roughly 10 percent of the world’s population is living with a disability, according to data from UN Enable, the United Nations body that focuses on disability issues.

“It’s quite clear that we need to pay more attention and talk to disabled people,” McClean said, adding that disabled people are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to early response in emergencies.

New York City’s disabled population, which numbers over 800,000 according to data from the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York (CIDNY), recently had to deal with devastation from Sandy.

During the storm, there were 118,000 disabled people in the Zone 1 evacuation area alone, according to CIDNY.

Milagros Franco, a disaster case manager for Sandy survivors at the Brooklyn Centre for Independence of the Disabled (BCID), believes that disaster planning and response for disabled people in New York City is inadequate.

“I was kind of snobbish… I got some food beforehand, I had two flashlights. I live in Manhattan, so I didn’t expect the lights to go out,” Franco, who has cerebral palsy and uses a power wheelchair, told IPS.

The day before Sandy made landfall in New York, Franco’s superintendent told her the building’s elevator would be shut down as the lobby of her East 21st Street building is prone to flooding. Although she lives on the second floor, “When you’re in a wheelchair, that’s pretty far,” Franco says.

Franco was stuck in her building for three days, but did have a friend with her who ventured to 34th Street for food and phone recharging. In lieu of the buzzer system, which was a victim of the power outage, Franco lowered her keys, tied to a piece of rope, out her window to let her friend inside.

But some people aren’t so lucky to have a support system, said Margi Trapani, communications and education director at CIDNY. Enlisting the support of family and friends is one of the main ways the City of New York tells disabled people to prepare for disasters, along with preparing a “go bag” of emergency supplies and knowing how and when to evacuate.

Trapani’s organisation, alongside BCID and two individual plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City of New York in 2011 after perceiving a lack of help from the city for people with disabilities during disasters in the decade following the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks. The case was heard in March, with the judge’s ruling expected at the end of the summer.

“During 9/11, people with disabilities had been left off the map,” Trapani told IPS. “There were a lot of respiratory problems and mental health issues [after], tonnes of issues no one was prepared to deal with.”

Hurricane Sandy revealed the inadequacy of emergency shelters for the city’s disabled population. Issues with the shelters include non-accessible and stairs-only entrances, lack of accessible bathrooms and cots, and staff who are underprepared to respond to disabled people, Trapani says.

More inclusion of disabled community in the emergency management planning process is a step the city can take to improve its response, Trapani says.

“Our community can help in these situations… we’re experts in figuring out how to deal with problems,” she says.

When a disaster strikes at short notice, there is sometimes a limit to how ready people can be.

“No matter how prepared you think you are, you’re never prepared until after the fact,” Franco said, adding that at least now she has a hand-crank radio.

(See Part Two and Part Three of the series)

Excerpt:

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Wednesday  launched a new initiative to curb violence against children around the world.

The End Violence Against Children initiative urges global citizens to make the invisible visible, and speak out against child violence at local and national levels. UNICEF is encouraging people to form new ideas and ways to combat violence against children.

The UNICEF initiative was born out of public outrage over highly-publicized cases that have involved the maiming and killing of children, including the shooting of Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, who was then 14-years-old, by the Taliban as she was walking to school and the gang rapes of young girls in India and South Africa this year.

“In every country, in every culture, there is violence against children,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake in a statement  released  here. “Whenever and wherever children are harmed, our outrage and anger must be seen and heard. We must make the invisible visible.”

Liam Neeson, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, helped to launch the initiative by featuring in a video showing various scenes of invisible violence against children. The camera pans from a peaceful bedroom illuminated by the light of a computer on which a child has been cyber-bullied, to a dark and dirty street where a child sleeps or is sexually abused.

“Just because you can’t see violence against children doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Neeson says in the video.

Violence often occurs in areas meant to be the safest for children, at home and in school. The December 2012 shooting of 26 primary school children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut is one of the horrific events the new initiative is responding too.

There were at least 3,600 documented attacks against students, teachers and schools last year, according to UNICEF statistics. And with 41 percent of all homicides occurring to people aged 10-29 years old, UNICEF says, violence against children is a persistent problem.

The recent arrests of pimps and their associates in what is the largest trafficking crackdown in U.S. history also reveals the continued threat of sexual violence against children. 105 trafficking victims, aged 13-17 years old, were rescued. Worldwide, an estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked, according to the International Labour Organisation.

Cyber-bullying is a relatively new form of abuse, and one that will continue to grow with the prevalence of mobile technology. According to DoSomething.org, a U.S.-based non-profit for youth and global change, 43 percent of children have been bullied online, with a quarter of them saying it has happened at least once.

UNICEF also points out that abuse and violence against children isn’t always physical, but includes insults, isolation, threats and rejection.

Smartphones are a new phenomenon in trafficking; a couple of years ago the majority of crimes were being committed using desktops. Credit: Yuichi Shiraishi/cc by 2.0

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 28 2013 (IPS)

In the second half of June, law enforcement in Chişinău, Moldova’s capital city, received an email from a parent telling them their child had been kidnapped.

A mixed group of police and prosecutors, they had to trace the email back to the kidnapper, a skill that is becoming essential in an increasingly digital age.“Nearly every crime seems to have some kind of phone involved in it.” -- Adam Palmer of UNODC

Thankfully, it was only a training exercise. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) visited Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, at the request of authorities there, who were struggling and under-trained to deal with an increase in cybercrime and Internet-based human trafficking.

UNODC provided three days of training in basic forensic techniques, such as tracing a criminal across the Internet and finding images and other information on a locked computer.

“[It’s] old-fashioned detective work in a digital age,” Adam Palmer, a senior expert in cybercrime and emerging crimes at UNODC, told IPS.

While official figures on human trafficking are notoriously hard to come by due to the crime’s secretive nature, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that 21 million people are forced into labour around the world, including 4.5 million victims of forced sexual exploitation.

With the pressure of emerging technologies, anti-trafficking organisations as well as law enforcement need to adapt their knowledge of new techniques and devices used by criminals. Smartphones are a new phenomenon, Palmer said; a couple of years ago the majority of crimes were being committed on desktops.

“Nearly every crime seems to have some kind of phone involved in it,” Palmer said.

For authorities in Moldova, a Tier 2 ranked country in the U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, many of the training exercises were new. Before the ubiquity of electronic devices, vital information might have been written in a notebook, accessible by simply reading the pages, Palmer said.

Now, police are more likely to have to crack codes, with information saved on password-protected devices.

But the problem of Internet-based sex trafficking, which is the use of the Web for the recruitment, advertisement and sale of people, overwhelmingly women, is not confined to Moldova. It is also an issue in developed countries like the United States.

Amy Fleischauer, director of victim services at the International Institute of Buffalo, a group that helps immigrants and refugees settle in Western New York, has found survivors of sex and labour trafficking being recruited and advertised via the Internet. The institute spends time with survivors so that they know how easily they can be tracked through Facebook, GPS on their phones and their Internet history.

It’s important to realise the inherent interrelation between sex and labour trafficking, Fleischauer told IPS. She recalls a number of cases involving agricultural workers in the United States, where brothels were established on farms to “satisfy workers”.

“Sex trafficking almost always involves labour trafficking,” Fleischauer says. “Focusing on just sex trafficking does a disservice to victims.”

Increased awareness of trafficking through the Internet has caught the attention of companies that run the Web, and whose products are being used to facilitate the crime.

“The most effective way to investigate cybercrime is… to work with private sector companies,” Palmer said, adding that these companies are willing to help as traffickers are abusing their technology.

Jacquelline Fuller, director of giving at Google, told IPS the company has a “long-standing interest” in helping to combat child exploitation and trafficking over the Internet.

“More recently, we took a deep dive to see… how we could help,” Fuller said.

Google has provided several grants, including one for 11.5 million dollars, to help three anti-trafficking organisations, Polaris Project, La Strada International and Liberty Asia, partner together to more effectively combat the crime.

In April, Google gave three million dollars to help fund the Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network, and two Internet companies, Salesforce and Palantir Technologies, provided technology that allows the organisations to share data.

“[These groups can] use technology to get ahead of the bad guys,” Fuller said.

Bradley Myles has seen first-hand the changing face of sex trafficking. The CEO of Polaris Project, a U.S.-based non-profit that works directly with survivors of human trafficking, Myles told IPS that from 2005 to 2008, Craigslist was one of the worst channels for Internet-based sex trafficking.

After Craigslist removed many of the advertisements that led to women and girls being exploited, Myles now sees similar issues with the website Backpage.

“There’s a very clear, identifiable pattern there,” Myles says. “Sometimes it’s parents calling in after seeing their child’s ad on Backpage, their 16-year-old daughter being advertised as a 19-year-old.”

Backpage has been made aware that traffickers are using their site, but Myles wonders whether protective measures put in place are enough.

“It’s a fluid crime,” Myles told IPS. “We’re in a new world of having the technology partnerships to make everything we’re doing more robust.”

The true extent of Internet-based trafficking is still unknown, Fleischauer says, but increased awareness and getting police more educated on types of cases, recruitment and strategies could help.

“I think we have no idea what’s out there,” she says.

FGM is a taboo and complicated topic in Liberia and it is dangerous for women to speak out about it. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2013 (IPS)

The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF released a report Monday that gives the most complete picture of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) ever published.

Over 125 million women and girls have undergone the practice, and there are 30 million women and girls at risk of the procedure in the next decade. The report is a culmination of 20 years of research from 29 countries across Africa and Asia, using national surveys. UNICEF began to look closely at FGM/C 10 years ago.

Egypt is the highest-ranking country in terms of numbers, with 27.2 million women and girls, or 91 percent, having undergone the procedure. Despite being illegal, an overwhelming majority of FGM/C cases in Egypt are carried out by a medical professional.

In a number of countries, FGM/C is a near-universal practice. In Somalia, the rate is 98 percent, the highest percentage in the world, and in Guinea and Djibouti the rates are 96 percent and 93 percent respectively. The likelihood of a girl undergoing FGM/C is also higher if her mother has had it.

The younger generation of girls is less likely to undergo FGM/C and is more educated and aware of the negative health consequences of the procedure, which include complications during birth, infections and excessive bleeding, Claudia Cappa, author of the report and a UNICEF statistics and monitoring specialist, told IPS. These also include mental health problems, Cappa added.

“Girls can be seen as important agents of change across generations,” Cappa said.

The report contains the first published data from Iraq, which only started conducting a nationally representative survey on the practice in 2010, where prevalence of FGM/C has been reduced by half, Cappa said, adding that this is a positive development.

“These girls have also had the opportunity to interact with girls who have not been cut, and can see that they aren’t exposed to [social] stigma,” Cappa said.

The importance of including men in the fight against FGM/C was one of the key findings from the report, which reveals that many men and boys across the 29 countries investigated want to see an end to the practice.

The amount of hidden support, which includes the men and boys who oppose FGM/C, means that UNICEF has to put resources into bringing these attitudes to light, helping societies to shift towards complete abandonment of the practice.

Yet FGM/C continues, and there are large discrepancies between the attitudes of mothers, many of whom want the practice to stop, and their behaviour of allowing their daughters to have the procedure.

Reasons for continuing with FGM/C include cleanliness and hygiene, preservation of virginity and social acceptance, which is the most commonly reported factor. In some countries, increased sexual pleasure for men was also cited as a reason to keep the practice alive, the report says.

“It’s something that’s always there,” Francesca Moneti, senior adviser in child protection at UNICEF, said at the press conference. “The daughter reaches the age of cutting and she is cut.”

By conforming to the practice, girls gain social acceptance and have a “good conscience”, the report says.

Efua Dorkenoo, OBE, advocacy director of the FGM project at Equality Now, sees the need for more protection measures to be established in communities where FGM continues, as well as support systems for girls who flee their families and communities to escape the practice.

It’s also important for organisations, including UNICEF, to realise that a “multi-pronged approach” is necessary, involving health workers and authorities as well as focusing on behaviour change in the community, Dorkenoo says.

“In the UNICEF model they tend to focus on community behaviour change… behaviour change is more of a long-term process,” Dorkenoo told IPS.

“We don’t know how far village empowerment models have gone, we don’t know if they’ve actually stopped,” she says. “Our work on the ground doesn’t mean they’ve actually stopped.”

For Dorkneoo, FGM directly concerns violence against women and revolves around sexuality and social and gender control. And stopping a deeply entrenched cultural practice isn’t as easy as communities saying they’ve abandoned FGM.

“It is too simplistic that public declarations means FGM has stopped. It is more of a feel-good factor for a Western audience,” Dorkenoo says. “There isn’t a one-size-fits-all model.”

When communities make a declaration to stop it is significant, Cappa says, and that it’s often difficult to see if the practice has been fully abandoned due to the time between the declaration and subsequent data collection.

Dorkenoo says that while the UNICEF model of community education, which includes emphasis on democracy and human rights, is a good foundation and contributes to raising awareness about FGM, more needs to be done at a structural level.

“It’s very simplistic to think you can go into a community for 30 years, talk about human rights and democracy, and expect change,” she said, adding that FGM manifests itself in a complex way across each country.

Alfredo Corchado. Credit: Samuel Lopez

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

The violent drug war in Mexico’s borderlands has changed the face of the country, injecting fear into both average citizens and the journalists trying to tell their stories.

Alfredo Corchado, Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, reported from the sidelines, and received death threats while bearing witness to the upheaval in his country. He chronicles these stories in his new book, “Midnight in Mexico”, which will be published in Spanish this fall.

For journalists in Mexico, the situation is dire. Often cited as one of the worst places in the world for the press, a 2011 joint U.N. and Organisation of American States report ranked Mexico as the fifth most dangerous country in the world for reporters.

There are currently 12 journalists missing in Mexico, more than anywhere else in the world; Russia ranks second, with eight missing, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Offices of newspapers have been attacked with a car bomb, arson and gunfire.

IPS correspondent Lucy Westcott spoke to Corchado, who was born in Mexico but grew up in El Paso, Texas, about belonging to two cultures and the situation on the ground for journalists south of the border. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What has the reaction been to your book, particularly from those who belong to two cultures? How do they feel about you bringing border issues to light?

A: I usually find people who want to connect with Mexico, or those who want to reconnect. There are many Americans who used to travel there, but have grown afraid and now stay away. They want to hear that Mexico is getting better, that there is hope and life there will return to “normal”, whatever that means.

People are also seeking to reconnect to the land of their parents and ancestors, and questioning whether it’s okay to embrace Mexico and its culture and language.

While some are genuinely curious about what went wrong with Mexico, others are annoyed that I picked a title like “Midnight in Mexico” for my book. All I ever wanted to do was speak to the possibility of the country. The reaction, though, has been overwhelmingly positive.

Q: What was your experience like covering the border? Did the death threats you received make you think twice about what you were reporting on?

A: As I grew up in El Paso, covering the border was always like sidestepping in two worlds; it was the best laboratory for someone who dreamt of becoming a foreign correspondent. But it became a nightmare and a place of anguish and pain.

Sometimes as a journalist, you work in these places and don’t quite understand what the rules of engagement are, which makes it much more dangerous for those trying to tell stories and investigate murders. There are several times I have thought about not setting foot on the border again.

But I can’t turn my back because to honour my profession, we have to find ways to tell those stories. They need to be told, or more than a generation will be wiped totally from our memory.

Q: What is the state of journalism like in Mexico due to the drug war?

A: You have two Mexicos: one is more prosperous, with a more vigorous press trying to hold government accountable, seeking answers and doing hard-hitting stories.

Then you have regions where the press has generally been silenced and forced to censor what they write, and where reporters live in fear for their families and for themselves. In these regions, there is no such thing as investigative journalism; democracy is just a term because readers aren’t informed to make the right decisions.

Being a reporter in these regions is being in a state of constant fear. Imagine working in a newsroom surrounded by suspicion and mistrust of your own colleagues. That happens in many parts of Mexico today.

Q: What steps can Mexico take to regain its footing? Can anything be done to solve the drug problem?

A: I think in some ways Mexico had to go through this painful awakening. Did 100,000 people have to die, or disappear? Of course not, but I think the violence has brought some Mexicans closer together.

There’s also a real effort to strengthen judicial institutions and to try and make rule of law work in real life. Yes, the U.S. can try to do a lot more to curtail drug demand, the flow of guns heading south and corruption seeping into U.S. agencies. But powerful organised criminals will continually find a way to challenge government, societies and undermine the potential of any country, particularly Mexico.

Q: As a journalist and someone who is used to reporting, what was the experience like of writing a book?

A: It was the most painful, difficult process I have ever experienced, to go from a reporter, comfortable on the sidelines, watching and recording events, to suddenly searching within myself.

I was a reporter by day and a writer in-between. It took a lot of music, deep reflections and opening up my soul, often with the help of some tequila, to get in touch with myself. In the end I poured every bit of me into those pages. I now have to get used to both sides, living simultaneously.

Excerpt:

Two Saudi Arabian women’s rights activists are filing an appeal on Friday after being sentenced to 10 months in prison for helping a woman who had allegedly been abused by her husband.

On Jun. 15, Wajeha Al-Huwaider and Fawzia Al-Oyouni were convicted by a district court in Al-Khobar of “takhbib”, an element of shari’a law that states they incited a woman to defy her husband and supported a wife without her husband’s knowledge. A two-year travel ban will follow their prison term.

Saudi Arabia follows conservative interpretations of Islam that often place tight restrictions on women’s rights. Credit: Retlaw Snellac/CC by 2.0

The women came to the assistance of a Canadian woman, Nathalie Morin, who called Al-Huwaider asking for help after being locked in a room by her husband without adequate food or water.

But as the women approached her house they were ambushed and arrested, Suad Abu-Dayyeh, programme consultant on Middle East and North Africa for Equality Now, told IPS. Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, is calling on supporters to send letters in preparation for the appeal deadline on Friday, Jul. 12.

“They did not conspire to turn Nathalie against her husband or attempt to convince her to abandon him. In fact, they have never met her,” Abu-Dayyeh told IPS.

Abu-Dayyeh believes the allegations against the women are false and that Saudi Arabia is instead cracking down on the two women for their history of human rights activism.

“The Saudi government has clearly created a scenario whereby Fawzia and Wajeha, brave women who wanted to help another woman in need, were arrested for the activism they carry out,” Abu-Dayyeh said.

“These two women have been activists for a long time, and the Saudi government has been keen to silence them for a long time. They are now being made an example of to ensure that other activists don’t speak out either,” Abu-Dayyeh added.

Al-Huwaider and Al-Oyouni have been active in a number of human and women’s campaigns in Saudi Arabia, including Women2Drive, which encouraged women to defy Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving.

In a YouTube video filmed on Women’s Day in 2008, Al-Huwaider is seen driving around an empty countryside and talking to online supporters from the driver’s seat. Saudi Arabia follows very conservative interpretations of Islamic law that forbids women from driving.

Last year, Al-Huwaider was listed as number 82 on Arabian Business’ list of the 100 most powerful Arab women, but she was missing from the list this year. She is also the co-founder of Association for the Protection and Defence of Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia."[Wajeha Al-Huwaider and Fawzia Al-Oyouni] are being made an example of to ensure that other activists don't speak out."
-- Suad Abu-Dayyeh

“These two women are being persecuted for their work on human rights and women’s rights,” Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “It’s not a criminal offence.”

The application of “takhbib”, where a man or woman interferes with a marriage or engagement, turning one spouse against another, is curious in this case, and it is possible that it is being used to mask what authorities see as the real crime: Al-Huwaider’s and Al-Oyouni’s activism.

“It seems a little unusual from the point of view of classical Islamic law, which may not line up with current Saudi practice… takhbib is more usually associated with seducing a woman to leave or divorce her husband, or marry somebody unauthorised,” Marion Katz, associate professor in the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies department at New York University, told IPS.

When Al-Huwaider was first questioned over a year ago about the incident, the questions authorities asked were mainly about her work as a human and women’s rights activist, Stork said.

The success of Friday’s appeal, based on Saudi Arabia’s track record, seems unlikely, Stork said.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Stork said. “[Saudi Arabia] has made a decision to really stamp out human rights activism.”

On the ground in Saudi Arabia, gaining support is difficult for Al-Huwaider and Al-Oyouni, as women cannot speak out freely in the country and the government controls the media.

“The rights of women and girls are often deeply compromised,” Abu-Dayyeh said. “In Saudi Arabia, there are no civil society organisations that can pick up such issues.”

Despite recent small glimmers of positive developments to improve and expand the rights of women in Saudi Arabia, including sending its first female athlete, Sarah Attar, to the Olympic Games in London last year and giving girls in private schools the right to play sports, as well as allowing women to ride bikes, the case of the two activists is a step backwards for the Kingdom.

“Saudi Arabia still needs to do a lot more to ensure that women and girls are protected and that their fundamental human rights are safeguarded,” Abu-Dayyeh stated, pointing out, “Allowing this to happen would benefit the entire society.”

U.S. President Barack Obama with the Navy's F/A-18 Green Hornet. Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/ CC by 2.0

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 5 2013 (IPS)

The United States military, an organisation that consumes 90 percent of the country’s federal oil allowance, is trying to become a greener institution.

The U.S. Navy has said that by 2016 it will run one of its 11 carrier strike groups using biofuel. In a test run of the new approach in the Pacific Ocean, a novel mixture of jet fuel, algae and cooking grease powered FA-18 Super Hornets, a type of fighter aircraft.

Within a decade, half of the Air Force and Navy’s fuel needs will be met by alternative energy sources, according to Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writer’s Program at the University of Iowa.

Merrill, who penned an essay for Orion Magazine titled ‘The Future of War‘, suggested that with climate change posing an increasing threat to U.S. national security, another name for this pioneering strike group could be the Great Green Fleet."I view this as somebody trying to...figure out what (we) are going to have to do to defend the country."
-- Christopher Merrill

The military also believes that the threat of climate change to U.S. security is not simply a temporary trend, Merrill said.

“I don’t view this as a one-off thing, I view this as somebody trying to look into the future, trying to figure out what (we) are going to have to do to defend the country,” Merrill said.

Climate change and security

In 2010, the Department of Defence recognised in its Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) that climate change and energy will both play “significant roles in the future security environment”.

The military’s look towards a more sustainable future was confirmed by a report released by the Executive Office of the President last month, which affirmed U.S. President Barack Obama’s commitment to lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020.

The report rendered the effect of climate disasters difficult to ignore: last year was the second most expensive year on record for the United States, with 11 weather-related natural disasters costing over 110 billion dollars in damages.

Marcus King, associate research professor of international affairs at the George Washington University, believes that threats from climate change would affect not only the United States through phenomena such as sea-level rise and droughts but the rest of the world as well.

The United States ought to be concerned that other nations, including U.S. allies, “could be constrained because they don’t have (the) adaptive capacity (to deal with climate change),” King told IPS.

Some, such as journalist Thomas Friedman, believe that issues around food security in Syria were the catalyst for the uprising there that began two years ago. And as climate change causes more humanitarian crises, the U.S. Navy will continue to assist in disaster relief and recovery, King pointed out.

“Once you look at global climate change as a threat, Africa has the least resistance…(and) it’s of strategic importance to the U.S.,” King said.

The Department of Defence recognised the potential increase in the Navy’s response to disasters abroad, reporting in the QDR that climate change is one factor “whose complex interplay may spark or exacerbate future conflicts”, along with cultural tensions and new strains of diseases.

Good PR?

But Leah Bolger, formerly with the U.S. Navy and now a peace activist, believes the green move to be more a publicity stunt than a progressive statement signalling changing times.

“I spent my (twenty) years in the military ambivalent about what the military policies were in foreign policy. It was a job…I didn’t really question my part in the military machine,” Bolger told IPS.

Now, however, Bolger called the Navy’s decision to make one carrier strike group green by 2016 “laughable”.

“(The green move is) like a page out of a PR book – something they can put out in their public affairs office to say, ‘We’re so mindful of the environment,'” Bolger said.

Still, one additional advantage of the green move is that the potential demand for alternative fuels could create a new market, Merrill told IPS. Already tax credits are being granted to wind farms, according to him.

“Once that market gets established, it’s likely that you’ll see the kind of innovations that came in the wake of the invention of the Internet,” he predicted.

Nevertheless, a change in the military’s energy consumption doesn’t necessarily mean a change in the behaviour of Americans, who consumed 19 percent of the world’s total energy resources in 2010, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, despite comprising around five percent of the global population.

Even if Americans knew about the Great Green Fleet, Bolger said, it wouldn’t do much to change their habits.

While the Great Green Fleet doesn’t necessarily improve the operational abilities of the Navy, the impetus is noble, King said. “If they have the ability to create demand (for alternative fuels)… I think that’s great, as long as it’s consistent with national security, which it is.”

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2013 (IPS)

Bogaletch Gebre knows exactly what women in her Ethiopian community are going through. Along with her sisters, the women’s rights activist was a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) when she was a child in a part of Ethiopia where the practise was carried out on every girl.

In 1997, Gebre and her sister, Fikrete, founded Kembatti Mentti-Gezzima-Tope (KMG), which means “women working and standing together”. For her work with KMG, Gebre won this year’s King Baudoin African Development Prize.

Bogaletch Gebre, a women’s empowerment activist, in her signature sunglasses. Credit: Lucy Westcott/IPS

Gebre believes that a trifecta of issues – economic, societal and ecological – combine to oppress women, so KMG works on a range of issues, from improving infrastructure to encouraging communities to confront customary practises like bridal abduction and FGM, which it has helped to dramatically decrease.

IPS correspondent Lucy Westcott spoke to Gebre in New York about the practise of and attitudes about female genital mutilation, as well as the power of women’s economic independence.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Your encouraging communities to discuss FGM and other taboo subjects has been called a rebellion. Do you agree with that label?

A: One of KMG’s aims is eliminating gender-based violence, which includes customary practises such as FGM, bride abduction and widow inheritance.

In 1998, when we did our baseline survey on FGM, we were touching taboo issues. So somebody called it a rebellion and me a renegade for touching things like that, because people do not dare to.

Q: Was it difficult to start talking about these issues? What was the culture like when you were growing up?

A: When I was growing up, body parts and anything taboo were not pronounced by girls – only by grandmothers, mothers and married elders. FGM is called “removing the dirt”."[In Ethiopia], female genital mutilation is called 'removing the dirt'."
-- Bogaletch Gebre

I was awakened to the harmfulness of FGM because somebody took the time to explain to me that I didn’t have to go through it. When I underwent it, it was a celebratory event. Everyone was dancing and celebrating.

But my sisters, my mother, myself – we were crying, because they knew how harmful and painful it is. My mother said, “I wish they would do away with it.” She knew what was being done to her daughter, but she felt she was mandated, that this thing should be done in order to make her daughter acceptable and marriageable, and this is what the girls should go through.

Q: How did your organisation achieve such a decrease in FGM cases?

A: In 1998, we found that FGM was happening to 100 percent of girls in the areas where KMG worked in Ethiopia. Today, that is changing. We have reduced the FGM rate by 97 percent, according to UNICEF, so right now those rates are just under three percent.

What’s important is not just change through workshops, but also girls becoming social forces in the community. They’re organising clubs, going to school and passing exams. It’s not like it used to be.

We discovered that we didn’t know where FGM and other practises came from. We asked the elders, the community leaders, anyone who would know the myths, oral traditions and history of the area, but nobody can tell you where it comes from.

How did it become our tradition? And why did it become Ethiopian or African culture? Why are we killing our children?

Q: When people realised that no one knew where FGM originated, did they change their minds or did they still want to hold on to tradition?

A: Nothing is automatic. It doesn’t change overnight, so we have continuous engagement as a community. We see change coming, individual behaviour changing and the community arguing among itself.

There’s no parent in the world that would knowingly hurt his or her children. That FGM is mandated by in their religion or culture is a misconception and misunderstanding that nobody has questioned.

When people start reasoning and questioning, there’s no answer to the question of why, so one person at a time, it stops. They’ve built their own contract, with the community punishing those who continue with the crimes.

Q: Is there a correlation between the decrease in FGM and the rise in opportunity for young women in Ethiopia?

A: We are not addressing just FGM through the organisation, but a whole array of social change. We’re helping to send girls to school, and we are improving economic opportunities for mothers. Women are establishing militias to protect each other and are accessing justice.

There is huge change taking place. Building roads and improving infrastructure is also a big part of what we do, as it helps women become economically independent.

Economic empowerment gives women a voice, confidence and also space and respect in the community. Once they start talking, there’s no stopping.

Excerpt:

Ensuring that women, youth and other marginalised groups are employed is a challenge in combating poverty. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Walter García and Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2013 (IPS)

In the aftermath of the global economic crisis and with three years to go until the 2015 deadline of the Millennium Development Goals, global leaders are struggling to formulate a post-2015 agenda that can address the widespread dilemmas of employment and inclusive growth.

At a meeting attended by global leaders, ambassadors and civil society to discuss the post-2015 agenda last Friday, panellists agreed that better and more job opportunities are high priorities that must be included in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Created in 2000 at the Millennium Summit, the MDGs include eradicating extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education and improving maternal health.

At the meeting, speakers critiqued a report on jobs and growth issued by the high-level panel for post-2015, co-chaired by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Civil society leaders found the report too conservative, as it failed to properly address structural issues and income inequality.

For people under the age of 35, the desire for employment opportunities is particularly high. According to data from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), unemployment increased from 170 million people in 2007 to 200 million people in 2012, 75 million of them young people.

To give experts a better understanding of global workers’ views on employment and growth, people were consulted through World We Want, an online platform.

The information they shared was “well-rounded and insightful”, Selim Jahan, director of poverty practice at UNDP, told IPS, and revealed civil society’s seemingly inherent, if surprising, understanding of the risks and issues at hand regarding jobs and growth.

“These are no economists we are talking about. These are not policymakers. But people talked about macroeconomic policies and…different measures to deal with inequality, about measures to deal with education and skill training,” he said.

Their ideas and comments reveal the myriad and complex issues people face in securing and keeping a job. One World We Want user, an executive assistant from Brazil, believed a more open dialogue about HIV/AIDS to be vital in job development.

“[There should be] government incentive for companies [and] tax deduction to hire HIV employees. We still suffer [from] prejudice. We still need to keep this disease as a secret to maintain the job,” the user, who remained anonymous to protect his or her identity, said.

For another user from India, renewable energy was an integral part of future development.

Challenges to job creation

Strong population growth presents a huge challenge for future job creation. With the world labour force growing by 40 million people a year, according to the report, 470 million new jobs will have to be created from 2016-2030 to keep up with the demand for work.

Engaging women, youth and other marginalised groups in employment is another difficulty, with a huge gender disparity in some regions. In the Middle East and North Africa, the gaps are the biggest, with male employment at around 60 percent and female employment hovering around or below the 20 percent mark.

While bringing more women into employment could require a shift in cultural norms, the low numbers of employed women in the MENA region also has to do with the way data is collected, Martha Chen, international coordinator at Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), told IPS.

“In the MENA region, it may also be the case that there are a lot of women doing home-based work and other forms of [paid] employment that do not get captured in the official statistics,” Chen added. “So the gap may not be as big as we think, but the problem may be that women’s work is not being fully captured.”

“It’s a mindset of those who do the interviewing and those who design the questionnaires,” she pointed out. “It’s a mindset about what…work [is], and the fact that women can be doing work in the home.”

“I think there [are] probably a lot of women in their homes doing something for the market, not just for subsistence,” Chen noted.

Youth are not the only ones who will be vying for future jobs. An aging population means that older people will also be looking for work.

“Job training, education, jobs, these are all issues important to older people. We don’t just stop living when we reach age 60,” said James Collins, U.N. representative of the International Council on Social Welfare and chair of the Committee on Aging in New York.

“As governments raise the retirement age, it’s very important that at the same time, they improve access to employment for older people who want to work,” Collins added.

Over 700 people were arrested in a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge in October 2011. Credit: Paul Stein/CC by 2.0

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Jun 17 2013 (IPS)

Stories of struggle can be found all over the world, from a law classroom in Oklahoma and the brutal borderlands between the United States and Mexico to a Bedouin village in Jordan and wedding parties in Morocco, as the 24th Human Rights Watch Film Festival is showcasing.

Some films cover subjects that have been widely reported, such as the Occupy movement and Anita Hill’s sexual harassment case against Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas, but they nevertheless delve beneath the surface, bringing fresh perspectives to well-known events.

In New York, the festival runs through the end of the week in two Manhattan cinemas. The festival revolves around themes such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, disability rights and migration. It has a separate category this year for U.S. human rights issues."The audience was really upset and moved by how far this country has gone in suppressing protests."
-- John Biaggi

“We don’t want anyone to ever think that we’re giving our country a pass,” John Biaggi, director of the festival, told IPS.

“99 Percent – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film” (Audrey Ewell, Aaron Aites, Lucian Read, Nina Krstic, 2012), which presents the story of the Occupy movement, is part of this theme and has been of particular interest to moviegoers, Biaggi said.

“People have reacted very strongly to [the] film in a positive way…the audience was really upset and moved by how far this country has gone in suppressing protests,” he said.

Remembering Occupy

Kindled by the Arab Spring and a summer of European unrest, the Occupy movement began in downtown New York City on Sep. 17, 2011 as Americans felt the rush of revolution take hold in Zuccotti Park.

Filmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites told IPS that the film was set up as an experiment with 100 collaborators.

“We went to Zuccotti Park and saw how everyone congregated; [there was] a pastiche quality, a collage-like element, with people talking about a patchwork of issues,” Ewell said.

The filmmakers issued press releases and created a web site asking for collaborators on their project, with a large response. While some people who signed up were inexperienced, Ewell and Aites ensured that an experienced filmmaker always led shoots.

It wasn’t a “free-for-all”, Ewell said; rather, it was a highly coordinated and organised process between coasts.

“A lot of people just wanted to go and film a rally or a march and that was fine,” Ewell said. The filmmakers wanted collaborators to be able to choose the extent of their contributions.

Ewell and Aites became interested in the Occupy movement on Oct. 1, 2011, the day 740 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. They noticed that the mainstream media wasn’t covering the event at all.

“I was so disturbed by that…I grabbed my camera and went down,” Ewell said. After the Brooklyn Bridge arrests, the media switched from a blackout to a circus, Aites added.

“Now the media writes history,” Ewell said.

The primary goal of “99 Percent”, the filmmakers said, was to present an accurate history of what really happened with Occupy, especially for those who didn’t have access to footage of the movement, whether on television or the Internet, at the time protests and demonstrations were taking place.

Invisible tales of hardship

South of the U.S. border, “The Undocumented” (Marco Williams, 2013) examined the lives of those working on the border, watching hawk-eyed for migrants and tracking the patterns of soles in the sand.

Deaths of border-crossing migrants have increased since the 1990s, with hundreds of bodies found in the scorching Arizona desert every year.

As the immigration reform debate continues in the U.S. senate, “The Undocumented” shows the lengths some migrants will go to achieve their dream of coming to America, even to the extent of ultimately losing their lives.

“Fatal Assistance” (Raoul Peck, 2012) revealed the complications of humanitarian aid following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, uncovering the destructive decisions made by foreign governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Haiti received 5 billion dollars of aid money in 18 months, but the funds were not allocated rationally, Peck, former minister of culture in Haiti, argued. Two years after the devastation, by which time many outside Haiti cease to remember the earthquake, the rebuilding continues.

On the other side of the world, “Camp 14 – Total Control Zone” (Mark Wiese, 2012) followed a former North Korean labour camp inmate, Shin Don-Hyuk, as he adjusts to a new and normal life in South Korea.

Two hundred thousand people live in North Korean camps. Shin was born in one, his first memory of a public execution he watched with his mother.

Shin’s story of escape, which he now travels the world to tell, seem almost unbelievable, but footage smuggled out of North Korea by activists of a violent interrogation show that the horror is indeed real.

“Energising people who come and see the films, to get involved and to take action, that’s really what the festival is about,” Biaggi said.

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival runs until Jun. 23. Co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Centre and the IFC Centre, the festival has included a number of New York premieres.

Human Rights Watch recently established a disability rights division, which accompanies the festival’s dedication to screening films that focus on the issue of disability. The group estimates that there are around 1 billion disabled people across the world.

More films showing this week include “The Act of Killing”, executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog and directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, which shows a group of Indonesian former killers re-enacting their crimes in by mirroring films they enjoy, and “Camera/Woman”, about a divorced Moroccan woman who films wedding parties in Casablanca.

Families For Freedom protesting outside Senator Chuck Schumer's office in New York City calling for an end to deportations. Credit: Lucy Westcott/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Jun 16 2013 (IPS)

As the debate on immigration reform continues in the Senate and fractured talks persist about the future of 11 million undocumented migrants, one New York-based group took to the streets to ask their senator a question.

Stationed outside Senator Chuck Schumer’s office in midtown Manhattan Friday, Families For Freedom, an organisation fighting against the detention and deportation of immigrants, particularly parents, asked their leaders, “Obama, Schumer, would you deport your papa?”

The protest, held two days before Father’s Day, was meant to highlight the trauma deportation and detention causes by separating families when parents are held in facilities or sent home.

“We’re demanding that President Obama stop deporting fathers and that the fathers that have been deported are able to come back,” Esther Portillo-Gonzalez, spokesperson for Families for Freedom, told IPS.

“We have families from Africa, from the Caribbean, from Latin America mostly, and those are the continents that are most affected by these deportations,” she added."Everybody in this country, it doesn't matter where they come from - they're immigrants too."
-- Jeanette Martinelli

Nearly 2 million people have been deported under President Obama up to the end of last year, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2012, Obama deported 409,849 immigrants, a record high, with 55 percent of them convicted criminals, according to ICE data.

“Many of those [who were deported] are parents and fathers, breadwinners, and a lot of the kids who are here [at the protest] today…will not be with their fathers on Father’s Day,” Portillo-Gonzales said.

The number of “criminal aliens” the United States has removed has increased dramatically over the past decade, mirroring the overall number of deported persons. According to ICE, in 2002, 71,686 criminals were deported; 10 years later, the number swelled to 225,390, an increase of 214 percent.

Marco, 23, was brought to the United States from Mexico when he was nine years old. He has felt the pain of threatened family separation but was lucky enough to see an uncle fight his deportation trial and win, letting him stay in the country instead of returning to Mexico.

“I saw my cousin suffer; she’s a little girl, she was just a newborn, and hearing that they were going to be separated…kind of broke my heart,” Marco told IPS at the protest, adding that Families for Freedom is seeking humane immigration reform.

“Ever since [I arrived], I’ve adapted to American culture. But once I [went] to college, I started realising things, especially that there’s suffering in my people, and I have to help them out,” he said.

Outside Schumer’s office, sons, daughters and a grandchild of the deported spoke through the small red cone of a makeshift megaphone, telling their stories into the shuffling rush hour throng.

One of the speakers, Alyssa, 14, is still feeling the effects of her grandfather’s removal in 2010. He is now in Panama City.

“It makes me upset, depressed, sad,” Alyssa told IPS.

Her grandmother, Jeanette Martinelli, recalled her husband’s seizure by the authorities.

“He was in a store and the cops came and started searching people and just…they picked him up. When he went to court, jurors dismissed the case, but ICE took him and that’s it,” Martinelli told IPS.

All of Martinelli’s children were born in the United States, and she is also an American citizen. The depression and trauma Alyssa has felt since her grandfather’s deportation have had wider repercussions throughout the family, Martinelli said. In addition, Martinelli’s daughter has stopped attending college because her father can no longer finance it.

A report published by Human Impact Partners on the health status of documented and undocumented migrants and their families shed light on the physical and mental tolls that detention and deportation can cause.

Higher proportions of children of undocumented parents felt fear and anxiety than those with documented parents, reporting sleeping, eating and exercising less out of fear of family separation.*

The report also said that 77 percent of undocumented parents felt feelings of racial profiling, and with less access to health insurance and medical services, they will have shorter lives and decreased health.

Around 23 percent of all deportations, or 205,000 people, from Jul. 1, 2010 to Sep. 31, 2012 were of parents with children who are U.S. citizens, according to data obtained by Colorlines.com through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

If she could speak to ICE, Martinelli would ask officials to think not only about their own families but also the history of the United States.

“We are all human beings. They have families too. Everybody in this country, it doesn’t matter where they come from – they’re immigrants too,” she said.

The children at the protest held purple and white balloons, representing parents, including their own, who have been deported from the United States and separated from their families, before releasing them into the sky, much to their delight.

“It’s not fair that they call people illegal,” Martinelli said. “Nobody is illegal.”

*An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the findings of the HIP report and said that children of undocumented parents felt higher levels of fear and anxiety than those with documented parents.

In June, New York state legislature will vote on a bill that will increase protection for sex trafficking victims. Credit: Bigstock

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Jun 13 2013 (IPS)

It started for Ruth when she was 12 years old and for Lowyal when she was 13. After being raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Ruth ran away from home and was picked up by a pimp, who sold her into prostitution.

Lowyal, bullied at school and facing a deteriorating situation at home, dropped out of school and eventually began working on the streets. In a drawing Lowyal created to depict this traumatic time in her life, a wide eye reflects a city skyline as red flames curl at the bottom, with menacing faces on both sides.

This month, New York’s legislature will vote on the New York Trafficking Victims and Protection and Justice Act (TVPJA), which would give more protection to girls like Ruth and Lowyal, and harsher punishments for those who trafficked them. It is part of the Women’s Equality Act that supporters hope will be voted on before the legislative session ends Jun. 20.

Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, is working with the Jewish Child Care Association and the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition to get the law passed.

The organisation is encouraging supporters to send letters to Governor Andrew Cuomo, Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, and State Senator Dean G. Skelos.

The TVPJA will direct resources to toughening laws to target and arrest pimps and buyers rather than victims. And under the new law, penalties for buying sex from a minor will be similar to those for statutory rape.

The law would also mean that all prostituted persons under the age of 18 are treated as trafficking victims instead of criminals in the state of New York. Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds arrested for prostitution are prosecuted as adults.

“There are two provisions that we are having a hard time with and [are] getting opposition to,” Lauren Hersh, New York director of Equality Now, told IPS. Hersh is perplexed as to why these provisions are problematic."Sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born."
-- Lauren Hersh

The first is making sex trafficking a violent felony in New York State, which would send a message to law enforcement that trafficking is a violent crime, Hersh explained.

“Talk to any sex trafficking victim, and they’ll tell you how violent it is,” she added.

The second is aligning New York state law with U.S. federal law, which does not require prosecutors to prove that minors were coerced into sexual acts. Under the current law, with most cases in New York, victims have to testify in court, Hersh said.

“The New York State assembly is historically against raising penalties,” Emily Amick, staff attorney at Sanctuary for Families and legislative director for the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, told IPS.

“The law needs to evolve,” Amick said. “Albany is letting politics get in the way of helping people,” she added, with state lawmakers who oppose these provisions working against the livelihoods and futures of sex trafficking victims.

Despite some opposition, Hersh sees the bill as “excellent and comprehensive”.

The fact that women and girls are being trafficked not only inside U.S. borders, but also within city limits, may be a surprise to some people, Hersh said.

“When people think of sex trafficking, they often only think of women and girls being smuggled across international borders. But sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born,” Hersh said in a statement.

Legislative justice is one part of the solution. Sexually exploited girls like Ruth and Lowyal should also be given a voice in the process of advocacy and justice, Hersh said. Project IMPACT, a New York-based programme that allows trafficking victims to share their stories, if and how they choose to, is one way to do so.

“I think telling my story matters because it could help other girls like me,” Veronica, another formerly trafficked girl, said, after sharing her story at Project IMPACT. “Storytelling is important because I lived this – I’m the one who knows what it’s really like.”

Ruth, Lowyal and Veronica are part of Gateways, a residential treatment program for commercially sexually exploited youth that is run by the Jewish Child Care Association and allows them to rebuild their lives and self-esteem. Some Gateways residents visited Albany in May to lobby for the bill’s passing.

Reliable statistics on sex trafficking are difficult to obtain due to the hidden and underground nature of the crime, according to Hersh, but a 2010 State Department report put the number of people trafficked to the United States each year at around 15,000.

Two million children are exploited each year in the international commercial sex trade, according to 2012 data from the International Labour Organisation, which also estimates that women and girls make up 98 percent of sex trafficking victims.

And in the United States, while little data is available for the number of victims, the FBI estimates that 293,000 American children and teenagers are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

“The only way we’re going to have justice in New York is to pass this bill in its entirety,” Hersh told IPS.

Anna MacDonald of Control Arms speaks at the start of the ceremony for the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty at United Nations headquarters in New York, Jun. 3, 2013. Credit: Keith Bedford/INSIDER IMAGES (UNITED STATES)

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

The United Nations witnessed a historic moment Monday with the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty, first adopted in April by the General Assembly, and the first time the 85-billion-dollar international arms trade has been regulated by a global set of standards.

Negotiations took place between 193 countries, 63 of which signed on Monday. More countries are expected to sign by the end of the week.“We all know about history, so [the U.S. has] a big responsibility." -- Alex Gálvez of Transitions Foundation of Guatemala

The treaty will regulate all transfers of conventional arms and ban the export of arms if they will be used to commit crimes against humanity.

The treaty also calls for greater transparency and for nations to be held more accountable for their weapons trading. States will undergo rigorous assessment before they move arms overseas and have to provide annual reports on international transfers of weapons.

But some of the world’s major arms importers and exporters, whose inclusion is crucial for the treaty’s success, have abstained or declined to give their signatures. Syria, North Korea and Iran were the only three countries to fully oppose the treaty, while Russia, China and India abstained.

The United States, the world’s largest arms exporter, did not sign, but is expected to by the end of the year. Technicalities in the language of the treaty were the reason for not signing; while U.S. support for the treaty is “strong and genuine,” there were inconsistencies in comparison between the English-language and translated versions of the treaty, said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

“All other countries are looking to what the United States does,” Kimball added.

Ray Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, said it is “critical” that the United States sign the treaty, which has been “10 years in the making.”

In a statement released by the State Department Monday morning, Secretary John Kerry welcomed the treaty, ensuring that the U.S.’s signing would not infringe on the fiercely debated Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.

“We look forward to signing [the treaty] as soon as the process of conforming the official translations is completed satisfactorily,” Kerry’s statement said.

The treaty is a crucial step towards ending the deaths of the 500,000 people Oxfam estimates perish from armed violence each year.

“The most powerful argument for the [treaty] has always been the call of millions who have suffered armed violence around the world,” Anna Macdonald, head of Arms Control, Oxfam, said in a statement. “Their suffering is the reason we have campaigned for more than a decade,” she added.

When asked if the treaty could prevent atrocities like those which have occurred in Syria, Macdonald said she believed it could, if implemented correctly.

With such vast negotiations taking place, disagreements were bound to arise.

“Items [such as] the scope of weapons covered by the treaty and the strength of human rights provisions preventing arms sales in certain circumstances are not as strong as we would have wished,” Jayantha Dhanapala, president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs and former under secretary general for disarmament affairs, told IPS.

Nevertheless, he believes the treaty is a “long overdue step” in realising Article 26 of the U.N. Charter, which calls for the “establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments”.

And considering the treaty was adopted just weeks ago, 63 signatures is an “excellent number,” Macdonald said.

The treaty will go into force after it receives 50 ratifications from states that have signed. This is expected to take up to two years, but some states, including the United Kingdom, have agreed to already start enforcing the rules of the Treaty.

One victim of gun violence was at the U.N. to witness the signing, the first step on the path to the treaty’s ratification.

Alex Gálvez, 36, was 14 years old when he felt a bullet course through his right shoulder, exiting through his left one. Buying sodas for lunch in Guatemala, Gálvez was caught up in a territorial dispute. The bullet perforated his lungs, but Gálvez said he was too young at the time to realise that he was dying.

Gálvez is now executive director of Transitions Foundation of Guatemala, an organisation that helps Guatemalans living with disabilities, many of whom have been injured by small weapons.

“They left a lot of small weapons without control” after three decades of violence in Guatemala, Gálvez told IPS.

“Unfortunately not everyone had had the opportunity to get treated in time, to get educated [about arms],” Gálvez said. “It’s not just Guatemala that is suffering [from armed violence]; many other countries are suffering too.”

While he received his medical treatment in the United States and understands that it’s a complex process, Gálvez would like to see the country sign, especially as it has provided small arms to many countries, including his own.

“We all know about history, so they have a big responsibility,” Gálvez said.

Eid Jahalin. Credit: Lucy Westcott/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, May 30 2013 (IPS)

For thousands of years the Bedouin people have made their home in the desert of what is now Israel. But for almost the last six decades, the Bedouin have been on the move, repeatedly relocated to make room for Israeli settlements.

As the Bedouin fight to be recognised as an indigenous people by Israel, Eid Jahalin, 49, who lives in the desert near the Jerusalem area, is advocating for them. Jahalin believes that “land without people” is Israel’s sole focus, while the Bedouin’s vast knowledge about living in the desert, practiced over centuries and crucial to preserve with climate change looming, stands to be lost."Many children, some eight and younger, have diseases after being born next to the garbage dump." – Eid Jahalin

IPS correspondent Lucy Westcott spoke to Jahalin, who was in New York City and the United Nations for the first time, about the current state of the Bedouin and how their relocation impacts climate change.

Q: What are the most recent developments by the Israeli government concerning relocation of the Bedouin?

A: The Israeli government is continuing with the same proposals, the same project, and they’re working faster. There is no pressure on Israel and nobody is stopping the plan.

A few days ago there was resistance to the plan because when it was published at the beginning of last week, the settlers talked about a Bedouin city in Nuweimeh. The settlers said they don’t want to give a “prize” to the Bedouin when they have been told, because of Secretary of State John Kerry, who recently visited Israel, that they have to stop their settlement plans.

Moshe Ya-alon, the minister of defence, is new and he said he will study the Bedouin relocation plan, so at the moment there’s a little less pressure. I believe that the government and settlers are working together, that they’re partners. When there is pressure and the government is stuck in the mud, then they activate the settlers, and then they say it’s the settlers. What they can’t do, they get the settlers to do.

Q: How long has this situation been going on for?

A: It’s been going on since 1967. From 1967-78, it was only an issue with the army, who would take land and declare it as a military zone. A year and a half later they would give that land to the settlers. After 1978 began all the chaos with the settlers.

The last major forced displacement was in 1997-8 and almost 2,000 people were displaced. During that time, there was a process of taking those families and people and putting them in containers, leaving them next to the garbage dump. To this day, there are some people who don’t have money who are still living there, in tin shacks.

Q: What is the situation like for the Bedouin in 2013?

A: One of the worst problems is that many children, some eight and younger, have diseases after being born next to the garbage dump, that not even Hadassah, the main Israeli hospital in Jerusalem, recognises. There is one family – a mother, father and three children – that have this disease, and nobody knows what it is. Hospitals have said it’s the first time they’ve seen this disease and it’s unusual. The children are sick to this day, staying at home with the parents.

If you go down to Jerusalem from the Bedouin valley you’ll see Bedouin living next to the side of the roads. The government pressured the Bedouin: they can’t be on the desert on either side of the road, so they’re only able to be next to the road. If you allowed them, if you gave permission, you wouldn’t find one Bedouin next to the road. The Bedouin don’t always need to be near the road for communication and transport.

Q: What has your contact with the Israeli authorities been like?

A: If only the Israeli government would leave the Bedouin alone. They’ve closed access to the road for the school, for the whole community, and that’s their help?

The government won’t allow us to have any access to natural spring water, and if a Bedouin goes out into the desert, they take you to court and put you in prison with a fine of 1,000 to 2,000 shekels. The desert is the natural place for Bedouin, but the government won’t allow it. They’re closing the Bedouin off as though we’re people in a box.

And if they, the Israeli government, say ‘we’re helping the Indigenous people,’ I want to hear one example.

Q: What specialised knowledge about living in the desert do the Bedouin stand to lose with continued relocation?

A: A month ago, for example, I was down in the JordanValley in Jericho, and everybody was complaining about the unusually extreme heat. When I went home, none of my family was complaining about the heat because as Bedouin, we’re used to the heat and know when to go in the sun and when not, when there is danger in the desert and when there’s no danger.

In New York, I don’t know exactly where I am, but if I’m in the desert, I know everything. The weather is changing these days, but now we have to think forward and think what needs to be done. Because I live in the desert, it’s easy for me to deal with the changes, not like in the city or in villages.

This planet is a very small ball. If somebody makes a problem or damages on one side, then we feel it on the other, so we have to protect the land.

Q: As this is your first time at the United Nations, what do you hope the community will learn about the situation of the Bedouin people?

A: I hope they learn a lot. We hope to shine a red light on the situation of Bedouin, what’s happening to them, and the situation of global warming. I came here to alert the world to that.

Excerpt:

Courtesy of Andrea Landry

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, May 24 2013 (IPS)

Aboriginal youth are making their mark at the two-week United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. And this year, the gathering’s twelfth, 24-year-old Angela Landry, whose Anishinaabe name is Eagle Heart Woman, is representing them.

The world is getting younger. With global population surpassing seven billion last year, more 50 percent of the people around the world are under age 30 – 3.5 billion people, according to a 2012 report by Euromonitor International. The majority of them are in developing countries."You see the love, you see the friendship, and you see the connection." -- Andrea Landry

Throughout Landry’s life, she has existed in multiple spaces at once. The youth rep is half French-Canadian and has lived in both cities and in her native community, Pays Plat First Nation, two and a half hours east of Thunder Bay, where she currently resides. Pursuing a master’s degree in communications and social justice at the University of Windsor, she defends her thesis in August.

IPS correspondent Lucy Westcott spoke to Landry, who was in Thunder Bay, Ontario on a flight layover, about the challenges facing aboriginal youth around the world, and new ways that young people can reconnect with their cultures via technology.

Q: How did you become involved in advocacy for Indigenous peoples?

A: My father was in the military, so I grew up all over the place. I went to high school in Thunder Bay, but there weren’t many aboriginal students. Every couple of weeks my mother would take me and my sisters (Landry, a twin sister and an older sister) back to our community.

My mother would also take us to Friendship Centres to help us reconnect with our history, our culture, and constantly remind us of who we are. Three years ago I started my advocacy work with the National Association of Friendship Centres (there are 119 across Canada) and became a youth executive there.

I serve on the board and have meetings with the Canadian government about issues related to the country’s Indigenous youth. I’m making sure our stories are being told first-hand, instead of by the government.

Q: Do you think Indigenous youth who move away to cities feel disconnected from their culture and find it difficult to reconnect?

I think it depends on the family, as a lot of Indigenous children are placed into foster care. (A recent news article reports that aboriginal children under the age of 14 make up over 50 percent of children in care in Canada).

Even when children are placed into care, it’s inevitable that they feel the pull of their aboriginal culture and history. It’s inside you: I feel indigenous no matter where I am and where I’m going. Friendship Centres across Canada also offer opportunities to reconnect with your communities through speaking with elders and learning the language.

In Thunder Bay, the city where I lived, there was a lot of racism toward aboriginal people, and that gives you feelings of shame. I’m mixed-race and would ask myself, “OK, what am I, am I brown or am I white?” as white girls would say, “You’re too brown” and the aboriginal girls would say, “You’re too white.”

In Canada, we have Aboriginal People Television Network (APTN) which provides media and programming for Indigenous peoples, by Indigenous peoples. We also have many Indigenous media outlets but they are underground and not well known. In mainstream media there is a high lack of representation when it comes to healthy outlooks of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Q: Is the Internet being used as a valuable source for Indigenous youth to reconnect with their culture?

A: A lot of Anishinaabe youth are learning the language through an iPhone app. (Neechee is an Anishinaabemowin language app, with scrollable lists of pronouns and verbs to help speakers string together sentences.)

Some young people in the community will say, ‘I’m learning the language through an app,’ and the elders will say, ‘You should have come and talked to me.’ Social media and the Internet are good, but not at the expense of learning in the traditional way, from our elders, and having the language and knowledge passed down orally. Now, learning from an elder doesn’t seem as important as it should.

Q: Are there many opportunities in Canada for Indigenous youth to learn about their history and culture in schools?

A: The educational system in Canada doesn’t provide an adequate history or opportunity to learn about the country’s Indigenous cultures, or to talk about the different nations. During my Masters I didn’t review a single article dedicated towards Indigenous peoples or by Indigenous academics. I told my professors that it was important to include Indigenous culture in the dialogue and in the class.

Q: What challenges or problems do indigenous youth face across the world?

A: Indigenous youth globally suffer from low socio-economic status, high unemployment rates, low education, and isolation. Many communities, especially in the Pacific Northwest, you can only fly to, and they’re two and a half hours away from any other place.

Indigenous people also face health problems and difficulties adapting to a Western diet. Our systems weren’t designed to handle fat-laden American food. We were eating bear and moose and berries, now we’re eating McDonald’s and Burger King.

But whenever we talk about Indigenous youth, or Indigenous people, it’s always about what bad things are happening, the negatives. When I go back to my community, you see the love, you see the friendship, and you see the connection. We also have different perceptions when it comes to the idea of success. The Western idea of success, which is material and financial, is different than mine. We’re successful in our culture, our community.

Q: What does the future hold for indigenous youth?

A: Now youth are being taken seriously, allowing us to say our statements loud and proud. We’re being recognised in Western systems like the United Nations, and we as youth are being prioritised.

After my masters, I want to continue advocating for Indigenous youth and peoples. It is truly my passion. I hope this generation will keep pushing for a brighter future.

Excerpt:

An eight-month-old boy with pneumonia is examined by a doctor at Amana Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, May 22 2013 (IPS)

PATH, a Seattle-based global health development organisation, is aiming to save two million lives by 2015 by jointly tackling diarrhea and pneumonia, the leading killers of children globally.

Steve Davis, president and CEO of PATH, delivered the message at the ninth annual PATH Breakfast for Global Health held in Seattle on Tuesday.

“Today we placed a bold stake in the ground, with partners around the world, to save two million lives by the end of 2015,” Davis told IPS.

PATH will begin its efforts in India, Cambodia and Ethiopia, where intervention is most urgently needed and PATH has resources. While all three countries have seen their child mortality rates from diarrhea drop, India’s pneumonia death rate remains stagnant, accounting for 24 percent of deaths of children under five, the same as in 2000, according to 2013 World Health Organisation statistics.

“No parent should have to bury a child because of something we can help prevent or treat,” Davis said.

Diarrhea and pneumonia are two diseases that overwhelmingly affect children in African and Asian countries, Davis said, with diarrhea claiming around 760,000 lives a year. And while the number of children dying in Africa before the age of five has decreased, it still vastly outnumbers all other parts of the world, according to the 2013 WHO statistics.

Melinda Gates, philanthropist and founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps fund health development and vaccines world wide, spoke at the breakfast of the importance of vaccinating children as well as “appropriate” science that meets the needs of communities in the developing countries.

“[The] developing world is littered with pilot programmes,” Gates said.

As he took to the stage, Davis pointed to a tool belt around his suit jacket. A visual aid, the belt allowed Davis to show and carry some of the tools that can prevent the deaths of so many children from diarrheal disease, tools that will be used to achieve PATH’s life-saving goal.

Clean water, soap, zinc tablets for oral rehydration therapy and the rotavirus vaccine, which stops some diarrheal diseases before they start, were all included.

But it’s not just science and vaccines that can improve the lives of communities ravaged by diarrhea. Deeply held cultural traditions and ideas about the disease have to be altered as well.

Dr. Alfred Ochola, PATH’s Technical Advisor for Child Survival and Development in Kenya, spoke about educating Kenyans on how to reduce the risk of diarrhea in their communities through hygiene practices like hand washing.

But Ochola, who lost a brother and sister to a diarrhea outbreak in Kenya as a child, has found that at first, people are reluctant to embrace change.

“A big [challenge] is combatting old beliefs that diarrhea is a curse and not an infection, and that the death of a child is an inevitable part of life. ‘God will give you another one’ is a common saying in Kenya,” Ochola said.

Many people believe a child who has diarrhea is cursed, Ochola said. Vomiting and diarrhea are welcomed because it rids the body of the evil inside it, while it should be taken as a sign that something is seriously wrong.

Poverty is another challenge in combatting the diseases. Although heart disease and diabetes are becoming the new illnesses of poverty, according to Davis, diarrhea and pneumonia still adversely affect children of developing countries in Africa and Asia.

In Africa and Southeast Asia, the percentage of child deaths are higher than the global average and have not significantly decreased in 10 years. Both regions have seen child mortality from diarrhea fall from 13 percent to 11 percent of deaths from 2000 to 2010, but in Africa, the rate of death from pneumonia has actually increased, from 16 percent to 17 percent.

“Too many people lack the financial means to seek care when it’s most needed, like paying for transportation to get to a health facility far from home… We often reach women and their children too late,” Ochola said.

Ochola told the story of Jane Wamalwa, a Kenyan woman who came to understand the reasons behind making a change in long-held practices in treating and preventing diarrhea. Wamalwa lost three children to the disease, and has now become a trusted source of information on good anti-diarrhea practice in her community, Ochola said.

“It has become her calling,” he added.