Women's Health

RIGHTS: Disabled Treaty to Reverse Years of Neglect

By IPS Correspondents
After five years of debate on a draft treaty to protect the rights of the disabled, which will directly affect 650 million people, or 10 percent of the global population, the United Nations has finalised its first ever legally binding treaty on the issue.

RIGHTS: A Ghastly Disease Feeds Off a Ghastlier Oppression

By Stephen Leahy
Gender inequality has become the main driver of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially in Africa, where 70 percent of those infected are women.

DEVELOPMENT-SOUTHERN AFRICA: More Women, Please

By Moyiga Nduru
The annual summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) wrapped up Friday with a call to speed up the process of increasing women's representation at all levels of government in the 14-nation body.

HEALTH-COTE D’IVOIRE: Abortion – Illegal, Sought After, Sometimes Fatal

By Aly Ouattara
Poverty, civil war, fears of religious persecution: any one of these can push women to have abortions. In Côte d'Ivoire, however, all of these factors are present, leading to what some claim are substantial increases in the termination of pregnancies.

HEALTH: Mother’s Milk Saves Lives

By IPS Correspondents
Although experts say that breastfeeding gives children the best start in life, protecting them from life-threatening diseases and providing essential nutrients, barely a third of all infants in developing countries are exclusively breastfed for the first six months.

CARIBBEAN: HIV/AIDS Goes Primetime

By Stephen Leahy
With persistently high HIV/AIDS rates second only to sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean is stepping up outreach efforts with a new media collaboration that will use everything from documentaries to soap operas to haul the disease out of the shadows and into public consciousness.

HEALTH: Campaigns Urge HIV Tests, But What Then?

By Stephen Leahy
The promise of new vaccines and more effective prevention programmes will fail to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS unless fear and social stigma can also be eliminated - including among those living with the disease, experts say.

MEXICO: Gender Violence Continues to Claim Its Victims

By IPS Correspondents
No longer able to bear the physical and emotional violence she endured for years at the hands of her husband, Amelia finally committed suicide - just one more victim of gender violence in Mexico, which cost the lives of more than 6,000 girls and women between 1999 and 2005, according to official statistics.

RIGHTS-KENYA: Available for Serving Drinks – Not for Sex

By IPS Correspondents
When next in Nairobi, spare a thought for the women who will in all likelihood serve you, if you visit a bar or two in search of a drink.

POPULATION-INDIA: Crackdown on Sex Selective Abortions, Finally

By IPS Correspondents
For campaigners against the practice of selectively aborting unborn girls - that has already affected the gender balance in northern India - nurse Pooja Rani is something of a heroine.

HEALTH: Cautious Optimism on Eve of Global AIDS Meet

By Stephen Leahy
The world's largest gathering of HIV/AIDS experts and activists will meet in Toronto starting on Sunday with renewed hopes of halting the spread of this devastating disease, which an estimated 40 million people are currently living with.

LABOUR-COLOMBIA: Flower Power – But Not for the Workers

By Helda Martínez
The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Colombia and the United States that could be signed in October or November this year will maintain the tariff exemptions already enjoyed by Colombia's flourishing flower industry. But there are no plans for higher wages and better working conditions for the industry's 100,000 workers.

RIGHTS: HIV Is Treatable, It’s the Stigma That’s Fatal

By IPS Correspondents
When thousands of delegates from around the world gather in Toronto next month for the Sixteenth International AIDS Conference, a leading human rights group has urged them to consider the following cases.

WORLD POPULATION DAY: Crowded Planet Feels the Heat

By IPS Correspondents
Consider the following statistics: at the beginning of the 20th century, the world population was less than two billion, but at the dawn of the 21st century, there were more than six billion people on earth.

RIGHTS-PERU: Forcibly Sterilised Women Gain Voice in Congress

By Ángel Páez
Congressman-elect Alejandro Aguinaga, a former health minister during the Alberto Fujimori administration (1990-2000), as of Jul. 28 will have to share the legislative chamber with rural activist Hilaria Supa Huamán, who has denounced him for promoting the forced sterilisation of hundreds of thousands of Peruvian women.

RIGHTS-CAMEROON: Finally, a Law Against Female Genital Mutilation?

By IPS Correspondents
Recently, Cameroon's female legislators could be found under a tree in the garden of the country's parliament, listening to Hannah Kwenti: 17, the mother of a five-month-old baby girl - and a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM).

DEVELOPMENT: Sex and the Mega-City

By IPS Correspondents
As the World Urban Forum here drew to a close last weekend with vows to "work harder" to solve the global housing crisis, women at the meeting stressed that gender sensitivity must be included in policies to upgrade the atrocious living conditions currently endured by millions of human beings.

RIGHTS-CAMEROON: An Unwelcome “Gift of God”

By IPS Correspondents
Josiane Matia, making her way along a school route in the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé, is far less carefree than other 11-year-olds. Walking slowly, she complains of the pain caused by a breast band that her mother has forced her to wear for three months.

HEALTH-ARGENTINA: Women’s Care Blossoms at the Desert’s Edge

By Marcela Valente
The village bumps up abruptly against the plateau, framed by a halo of ochre peaks. In this last outpost before the freezing desert in northwestern Argentina, "perseverant women" are working hard to foster development that does not compromise community identities.

HEALTH-LATIN AMERICA: The Challenge of Paying for Unremunerated Work

By Daniela Estrada
María Angélica is a Chilean woman who could not work in her profession as a chef for nearly two years, because she had to look after her mother, who was ill. Including this kind of unpaid women's work in national budgets is one of the big challenges Latin America faces in order to make progress in gender equality.

WOMEN-PERU: The Enemy at Home

By Ángel Páez
The plot of the film "Sleeping with the Enemy" is not fictional in essence. Close to 70 percent of all the women killed in one year in Peru died at the hands of their husbands, partners, lovers or boyfriends, and the murders were committed at home or in a place that was frequented by the couple.
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