They were usually the first to arrive at work and the last to leave, and often took the blame for boo-boos in the following day's issue of the newspaper. Now the newsroom's unsung heroes, who engage in a daily deadline battle armed only with their sharp eye for detail and those squiggly proofreading marks, are facing a new kind of threat — extinction.
In what is considered a milestone in the fight against gender-based violence, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the Philippines-based Coalition Against Trafficking in Women- Asia Pacific (CATW-AP) conducted the first ever all-male youth workshop on gender sensitivity in Thailand on May 9-10. Of those who applied for slots, 30 university students from Bangkok were selected to participate. CATW-AP executive director Jean Enriquez talks to IPS about the significance and impact of the workshop on changing the misconceptions of men about women and helping put a stop to violence against women.
Like all forms of abuse, ending violence against women is as much men's fight as it is women's. It's a good thing some members of the opposite sex are taking on this challenge.
"Thank God for condoms!" Donald Messer of the U.S.-based Centre of Church and Global AIDS declared during one of the many sessions at an AIDS conference for the Asia-Pacific, which ended here Thursday.
"There has been so much confusion going around transgenders. We are not MSMs [men who have sex with men] and don't lump us under the transvestite [category either] because we have different needs," declared Kartini Slemeh at the 9th International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) here.
The scant presence of mainstream media organisations at the 9th International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) was a sad reflection of how the press was overlooking the big story on HIV/AIDS, say some journalists and development analysts at Asia's largest meeting on the pandemic.
The failure to reach the neediest, often the most stigmatised, people and the global financial crisis, loom as Asia-Pacific's biggest challenges in coping with HIV and AIDS at this point, despite the major headway it has made in expanding the number of people with access to treatment.
"Please help me find a way to have some money for milk," pleaded Benjawan Marongthong, mother of two young boys and former worker in a garments factory.