Social activists say that attempts to rehabilitate sex workers in this former monarchy call for special efforts to uplift the Badi, a Hindu caste that has for centuries been associated with entertainment and prostitution.

Badi sex workers await rehabilitation. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

Sabitri Nepali was initiated into the traditional vocation of the Badis before she turned 14. Now, at 30, she is baffled by the changes taking place in a country struggling to climb out of a feudal past and transform into a modern, democratic republic.

“My family has survived on this trade for generations. My mother was a sex worker and I continued with the family profession. It was normal for us,” Sabitri tells IPS in this remote village in Kailali district, 700 km west of Kathmandu.

Badis, estimated to number 50,000, live in the western districts of Nepal but find work in the towns and cities of Nepal and neighbouring India, including Kathmandu, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Four years ago the Nepal government banned the Badis from pursuing their traditional occupation after it came under pressure from local communities fearing that the districts where there were Badi concentrations were turning into red light areas.

But, the government made no move to implement the ban, with the result that local communities formed monitoring groups backed by vigilantes that used violent methods to compel the Badis to give up their sole means of livelihood.

“We defied the ban and continued with our traditional occupation. How could we survive without incomes? Think about our children,” says Kalpana Badi,35, who like many others uses a surname that readily identifies her caste and her profession.

The word ‘badi’ is a corruption of the Sanskrit word ‘vadyabadak’, meaning one who plays a musical instrument, and suggests a degradation in the status of the caste over time.

South Asia’s rigid caste system once defined the occupation that people could engage in and Badis formed one group that has been unable to find its way out of an unfortunate position on the social ladder. “We didn’t want to continue with prostitution but the government has failed to fulfill its promises of rehabilitation,” says Bishal Nepali, husband of a Badi sex worker.

The government did announce a package that included housing, income generation activities and scholarships for Badi children, but these were never implemented.

“This has been a very frustrating process. We don’t know why the government has been so indifferent. The Badis are in a desperate situation,” says Uma Badi, a prominent activist and one of a handful of college-educated Badi women.

“Most Badis are uneducated and have no farms or livestock,” Uma explained.

Badis were denied citizenship until 2005 when the Supreme Court ordered the government to grant it to them and also extend financial support.

According to a study published in 1992 by Thomas Cox, an anthropologist then attached to Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University, Badi girls “from early childhood, know, and generally accept the fact, that a life of prostitution awaits them.”

Badi girls, the study said, do not get married and commonly bear the children of their clients.

Cox recorded that upper caste Nepali society gives little encouragement to Badi girls to pursue other professions and those among them who enter public schools are “often severely harassed by high caste students.”

Two decades after Cox’s study, the Badis, as members of an ‘untouchable’ Dalit (meaning broken people) caste, are still not permitted use of the village water pump or well and their situation may have worsened.

In Muda village, many Badi girls and women have fled their homes fearing the Muda Anugaman Toli Samiti (a vigilante group) whose members have been accused of beating up Badis and their clients.

Badis are not allowed to run legitimate businesses. “People fear to buy anything from my shop because they fear the villagers,” says Dinesh Nepali, a Badi male who runs a small shop selling cigarettes, vegetables and soft drinks. “How can we survive like this?”

Badi activists are aware that they are prime targets for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals that deal with women’s rights, education and poverty, and that their uplift calls for extraordinary and determined initiatives.

“A handful of non-government organisations and donor agencies have been supporting the empowerment of Badi women, but that is not sustainable. Projects come and go but only government support can provide a long-term solution,” says Uma.

There were hopes that the abolition of the monarchy in favour of republican democracy, at the end of the bloody 1996-2006 civil war, would bring positive changes to the lives of the Badis, but Nepal is still coping with political instability.

“I have met three different prime ministers in the past few years,” said Uma. “They promise support but forget us as soon as we head back to our villages.”

In 2007, Badi activists threatened to march naked through Kathmandu to embarrass the government into implementing the court-ordered rehabilitation, but that brought nothing except more promises.

The local monitoring committees – that are backed by the vigilantes – admit that the government has failed in its promise to help the rehabilitation of the Badis.

“We are trying to help the Badi women start new dignified lives but we do admit that there are no viable alternatives,” says Riddha Bhandari, a leader of Muda’s monitoring group. “The government needs to act now.”

Bhandari denied that the Muda committee was out to destroy the Badis, but said there were worries over adverse influences on non-Badi girls and the possible spread of HIV/AIDS.

Saffa Momoh Lahai was just two years old when his father was killed during Sierra Leone’s civil war. Rebels attacked their family home in Kailahun District, in the eastern reaches of the country, and shot Lahai’s father when he tried to resist.

Saffa Momoh Lahai lost his father in Sierra Leone’s civil war and said justice prevailed when former Liberian President Charles Taylor was convicted. Credit: Mustapha Dumbuya/IPS

More than a decade later, Lahai went to the local seat of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown to hear the verdict read out in the trial of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia (1997-2003) who was convicted on Thursday Apr. 26 of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sierra Leone.

The verdict, which was read out by Judge Richard Lussick from The Hague, was televised live across Sierra Leone.

“I am so happy that Taylor has been found guilty,” Lahai told IPS after hearing the verdict, which was handed down in The Hague.

“It cannot bring back my dead father, but it feels good that justice has now prevailed over injustice and evil, and that makes me very happy.”

Many victims of the war in Sierra Leone were quietly pleased with the ruling, though the response was muted. Thousands across this West African country sat glued to TV sets or transistor radios to hear the court’s findings. Most simply went back to their daily lives after the verdict was read.

Haja Bintu Mansaray’s husband was killed by rebels in Koinadugu District, northern Sierra Leone, right in front of her.

“This verdict cannot bring back my husband, but my children and I can take solace from it,” said Mansaray, who added that she would never forget seeing her husband murdered.

Like many Sierra Leoneans, she said she has struggled to survive since the war, finding it difficult to pay her children’s school fees. While the conflict ended in 2002, the country has remained near the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index, and much of the damage done is yet to be repaired.

Taylor was convicted of supporting the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel faction led by Foday Sankoh, which invaded the east of the country in 1991. The RUF unleashed 11 years of suffering on the civilian population, with mass amputations, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers characterising its campaigns. The RUF sought control of the rich alluvial diamond fields in the eastern part of Sierra Leone.

In Kono District, one of the longest-suffering regions during the war, survivors said they were happy with the guilty verdict, but were anxious to know what the sentence would be.

“I would give him a slow agony of a death, because he was the one responsible for the amputations, the killings, the destruction of lives and property,” said Eric Kellie, in Kono’s capital town of Koidu.

Kellie’s brother and mother were killed during the war, and his home was destroyed. More than a decade later, he is still trying to pick up the pieces.

“It has been very difficult for a long time,” said Kellie.

An estimated 50,000 people were killed during the war, with thousands more raped or suffering amputations. And since the war’s end, Sierra Leone has seen far less international support than neighbouring Liberia, which suffered a 14-year war after Taylor invaded the country with a small rebel faction in 1989. Taylor has not been indicted for any of the atrocities committed during the Liberian war.

Eldred Collins, the former RUF spokesman and current spokesman for the political party of the same name, said that Taylor was not to blame for the war, which he attributed instead to Sierra Leone’s long history of corrupt and unjust governance. In order to prevent another conflict, those conditions need to change, said Collins.

Abdul Rahim Kamara, director of Manifesto 99, a human rights organisation following the special court, said the trial had “sent out a loud and clear message, not only to Sierra Leone but to the whole continent: that the days of impunity are over.”

“This should be a warning to all sitting officials that one day they will be held accountable for what they do,” said Kamara.

In Freetown, Alhaji Jusu Jakka, the director of the War Amputees Victims’ Association, said he was “happy” and “relieved” after the verdict. But he pointed out that the Taylor trial cost a great deal when little has been done for the victims of the war. The trial reportedly cost 50 million dollars.

“The international community has spent more money on perpetrators, rather than victims, who suffered the atrocities perpetrated by these people,” said Jakka.

He said the judgment was a victory for victims, but he expected more reparations.

The verdict represents the first time a head of state has been found guilty of war crimes since the end of the Second World War. Taylor is the first former African head of state to be tried for crimes against humanity, and the case has been hailed as an end of impunity for African despots.

A sentence is expected on May 16. Taylor’s lawyers have said they will appeal.

*Additional reporting by Jessica McDiarmid in Kono District, Sierra Leone.

By Naresh Newar
DANG, Nepal , Apr 20 2012 (IPS)

Five years after Nepal abolished Kamalari, a system of girl slavery, thousands of young women are still awaiting promised rehabilitation and support from the new democratic republic.

Some 11,000 ‘liberated’ Kamalari girls, many of them from this impoverished southwestern district, hope to see some of the money accumulating since 2006 when the Supreme Court ordered the setting up of a fund for the welfare of the girls and their families.

In 2011 alone, the government allocated close to 2.5 million dollars towards the rehabilitation of the girls, which covered scholarships, vocational training and residential support.

But, so far, not even 70,000 dollars have been spent on the welfare of the former slave girls, according to the Mukta Kamalari Bikash Manch (Free Kamalari Development Forum), a network the girls have formed to fight for their rights.

“We know that there is a huge amount of money set aside for us, but we haven’t seen any of it being used for our rehabilitation,” says 20-year-old Urmila Chaudhary, a former slave girl who was rescued after 10 years of bondage in a wealthy Kathmandu household.

Speaking with IPS in Dang, some 200 km southwest of the capital, Urmila recalls how she was sold into slavery by her parents when she was barely six and deprived of a childhood.

In 2008, Urmila was rescued through the efforts of Friends of Nepal (FNC) and Nepal Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF), non-government organisations (NGOs), that jointly rescued over 11,000 girls from extreme exploitation.

Since then, she has been a leading activist against the Kamalari system, pressurising the Nepal government to fulfill its promise.

Introduced during the 1950s, mostly in the five districts of Dang, Banke, Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur in Nepal’s southern plains called the Terai, the Kamalari system was the only way the Tharu ethnic group could pay back debts owed to exploitative landlords.

While Tharu adults and male children were forced to work under a parallel bonded labour system, called ‘Kamaiya’, in the landowner’s farms and household, the girls were sold off under Kamalari.

Young Tharu girls were systematically sold off through middlemen to households in the capital and other major cities on verbal contracts that provided for the payment of 50-70 dollars a year to the parents.

“Rescuing the girl children was a huge breakthrough, but sadly, the girls never received much support from the government,” says Som Paneru, executive director of NYOF.

“We have to start a nationwide protest movement soon and we will take to the streets in the capital to push the government to help former Kamalari,” says Bhagiram Chaudhary, director of Society Welfare Action Nepal (SWAN), an NGO in Dang.

The neglect of Kamalari girls squarely blots the Millennium Development Goals pertaining to education and poverty. Although Nepal boasts of progress in the two concerned MDGs, there are wide disparities among ethnic groups and between rural and urban populations.

The MDGs are eight development goals that United Nations member states are committed to achieving by 2015. The first three pertain to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality.

Kamalari girls, due to the extreme poverty of their families, are unable to attend schools and most go hungry, according to activists.

Although enrolment rates in Nepal’s primary schools now stand at 93.7 percent, over 200,000 children from the most marginalised and hardest to reach are out-of-school, according to the MDG Progress Report 2010. NGOs say that most of those out-of-school are from among the Kamalari. “So far, I have only received seven dollars for a whole year and I don’t know what to use the money for,” says Kalpana Chaudhary, a young Kamalari who fears that she will have to drop out of school soon.

“Though they have freedom and no longer have to wake up to slavery each day, they often go to bed hungry,” Urmila said.

Activists fear that the girls will be compelled to return to working as slaves since their impoverished parents cannot afford to take care of them. NGOs like SWAN, NYOF and FNC are struggling to help them, but their funds are limited.

“At the NGO level, we are trying to help with their education and support for their families, but we have limited resources,” says Chaudhury at SWAN.

Chaudhary estimates that the cost of keeping a Kamalari girl in school is about 15 dollars a month. He and the activist Kamalari girls have often travelled to Kathmandu to visit the education ministry, but have only succeeded in spending more resources.

“The government should be taking the responsibility, and they have the funds. We cannot say when we will receive the promised money,” says Urmila. “The parents often scold their girls for coming back home instead of working to support the families.”

Some officials lay the blame on prolonged political instability. The former monarchy is still struggling with a difficult peace process that followed the end, in 2006, of a bloody civil war that lasted a whole decade.

“The price of freedom has been quite high for us, and while we enjoy so much from liberation, our struggle to lead a new life is yet to begin,” says Urmila.

The Aditmari Maternity Centre (AMC) is unpretentious but hygienic, and its staff of paramedics welcomes pregnant women from the poor farming villages of this district, 375 km northwest of Dhaka.

Nurse Afroz counsels an expecting mother at the Aditmari centre. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Asphalt roads lead up to the single storey, located in the centre of Aditmari sub-district, that has a labour room equipped for normal deliveries, a ten-bed post-labour room, two rooms for counselling and a waiting room with a wide porch for men.

Best of all, the charges for a normal delivery at the AMC are just 2.4 dollars, affordable in impoverished Bangladesh where the per capita income in 2011 was 818 dollars, according to official figures in the Bangladesh Economic Review.

It was at the AMC that Sajeda Begum gave birth to a healthy baby girl two weeks ago. “My daughter had no signs of pre-delivery complications,” says a smiling Tahmina, Sajeda’s 53-year-old mother.

Affordable but reliable maternal health services are what allowed Bangladesh to bring down the resource-poor country’s maternal mortality rate (MMR) from 322 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2001 to 194 deaths in 2010.

Bangladesh’s achievement is impressive considering its classification by the United Nations as a least developed country. Also, better-off neighbours, India and Pakistan, are faring worse with MMR ratios of 212 and 260, respectively.

Improved access to obstetric care, more institutional deliveries and better use of family planning methods are expected to help Bangladesh achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing MMR by three-quarters during the 1990–2015 period.

Also encouraging is the fact that the rate of decline in maternal mortality, at an average of 5.5 percent per year, is better than the 5.4 percent required for reaching the MDG by 2015.

As in many other LDCs, the gap between rich and poor in Bangladesh’s maternal health can be stark. Had Sajeda gone to a private clinic her delivery would have cost at least 60 dollars.

Sajeda also did not have to worry about access to care during pregnancy as she regularly received antenatal checkups.

“Sajeda attended the clinic eight times and followed instructions. It is quite amazing that she delivered on due date,” said Shaheen Afroz, chief staff nurse at the AMC, run by the Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Services (RDRS), a non-government organisation (NGO), since 1981.

There are now eight outreach maternity centres in Aditmari sub-district where pregnant women are referred to for examination, but deliveries are done only at the AMC. Patients are registered in coordination with regular government healthcare services to avoid duplication.

Mosammet Elifa, a community health worker at the Mohishkhocha outreach centre, said: “We go from door-to-door to meet pregnant women and invite them to register for antenatal care.”

“We also explain the risks of delivery at home at the hands of untrained birth attendants,” said Elifa. “In the last ten years we have had no records of maternal deaths in our community.”

“We charge only 24 cents for registering a pregnant woman. Thereafter, the consultations, drugs, such as those for sexually transmitted infections, iron and vitamin supplements, blood tests and routine examinations are given free of cost,” said Afroz.

Deepali Rani, 28, now in her second trimester, told IPS that she comes from Durgapur village for regular clinics at the AMC. “My relatives and friends told me about this centre and I find the treatment here good and systematic.”

Project coordinator at RDRS, Komol Kumar Joardder, told IPS that on average 30 women avail of the facilities daily at the AMC. “While the women are waiting to be examined we run awareness programmes on safe motherhood and try dispel traditional myths and old wives tales.”

Aditmari has handled 35,000 successful deliveries with no record of maternal deaths, although 464 cases with complications were referred to larger hospitals.

Aditmari’s is just one of thousands of stories of efficient maternity services that are helping Bangladesh reduce MMR and increase skilled birth attendance.

The proportion of women delivering at a facility or with assistance from a professional birth attendant has increased from nine percent in 2001 to 23 percent in 2010 and may well reach the 50 percent target by 2015. However, some 2.4 million deliveries still happen at home, annually.

The directorate of health services (DHS), the key agency implementing reproductive health programmes in collaboration with NGOs like RDRS, holds that the key lies in training a cadre of community health workers who are now gradually replacing untrained or traditional birth attendants.

DHS chief, Khondhaker Shefyetullah, told IPS, “Maternal deaths are decreasing in rural areas as expecting mothers are now more conscious of safety and prefer delivery at professional hands rather than at the hands of untrained birth attendants.”

Arthur Erken, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative in Bangladesh, told IPS, “The decline in maternal deaths suggests that many pregnancies with complications are now being selectively sent to facilities, as intended.”

Erken noted a substantial increase in women with obstetric complications seeking treatment at a facility – 29 percent in 2010 compared to 16 percent in 2001. “This indicates that both awareness and referral systems are improving.”

Prof. Nasima Begum, secretary-general of the Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society of Bangladesh (OGSB), attributes a major part of Bangladesh’s success to trained community skilled birth attendants (CSBAs) who are in direct contact with villagers and play a vital role in MMR decline.

“About 12 percent of all deliveries in the rural areas are caesarean, which means that the CSBAs are properly identifying the risk cases and sending them to the right place for emergency deliveries,” Nasima said. “Earlier, expecting mothers with complications simply died for lack of professional guidance.”

Training programmes run by the OGSB receive support from UNFPA. The UN agency also provides support for improved facilities at the health centres in rural areas and for emergency obstetric care at some 70 hospitals.

There are currently some 7,000 CSBAs serving 10,000 community clinics across Bangladesh and more are being trained to fill up vacant posts in community clinics – the first tier of health and family planning services at the village level.

As Western forces step up their military presence in Somalia, locals and experts are worried that the country – struggling under multiple crises from piracy, to drought – is doomed to churn in a cycle of violence that fails to acknowledge root causes of the problems.

Making bold moves to curb piracy efforts on the Somali coast, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union have decided to extend counter-piracy missions until the end of 2014.

The EU operation, called Atalanta, has also been extended to include land targets in order to work closely with the Transitional Federal Government and other Somali entities, according to a statement from the Council of the EU – a move that has been widely condemned by experts who believe these attacks will threaten civilian life and undermine anti-piracy efforts.

“Fighting piracy and its root causes is a priority of our action in the Horn of Africa. Despite pressure on defense budgets, EU member states demonstrate their renewed commitment to this successful operation,” EU High Representative Catherine Ashton said in a statement issued Mar. 23.

The announcement came days after Rear Admiral Duncan L. Potts, operation commander for Atalanta, addressed the Subcommittee on Security and Defense and announced it was time for the EU to “tighten pressure on pirates and reach out to Somalis.”

Already, operation Atalanta and NATO’s operation Ocean Shield, along with U.S. maritime forces and other national actors, can tentatively boast a decreased number of pirate attacks.

According to Potts, 2011 can be looked at as a “year of two halves” in terms of EU efforts—during the first half of the year, 28 vessels were commandeered, while the second half of the year saw only three vessels overtaken.

NATO reports decreased pirate activity as well. In Jan. 2011, there were 29 attacks and six ships overtaken, while numbers for Jan. 2012 showed only four attacks, none of which were successful.

Still, there has been widespread criticism over increased security in the country, with many experts arguing that international naval forces simply fuel a cycle of violence and fail to address the root causes of Somalia’s instability.

Others believe the use of violence to defeat piracy is misguided, since illegal fishing and dumping in Somali waters have been exposed as the root causes of piracy as a whole.

Desperate for food

Somalia remains one of the most difficult countries for humanitarian groups to operate in, owing to decades of violence and, in more recent years, a crippling drought that has left thousands dead and millions starving.

According to the World Food Programme, 2.4 million people are in need of assistance in Somalia, roughly 32 percent of the population. Currently, the WFP reaches up to 1.3 million people along the coast of Somalia, as well as in Puntland, Somaliland, and Mogadishu.

The goals of Operation Atalanta, according to the EU Naval Force (EU NAVFOR), include deterring and preventing acts of piracy, protecting shipping off the Somali coast, as well as protecting WFP vessels carrying food to displaced persons.

Thus far, EU NAVFOR reports the successful delivery of nearly 900,000 metric tonnes of food to relief efforts in Somalia, with 145 WFP ships escorted to shore.

The scale of violence has impacted other aid organisations as well, with aid workers often caught in the midst of deadly attacks in their line of work.

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF) recently condemned the shelling of the emergency room and surgical ward of Mogadishu’s Daynile Hospital in late March. MSF has worked in the hospital since 2006 as part of the organisation’s 13 operations within the country.

The organisation’s efforts in the Hodan district of the capital were cut in half this January, after two aid workers, Philippe Havet and Karel Keiluhu, were killed.

MSF continues to call for the release of two aid workers, Blanca Thiebaut and Montserrat Serra, who were abducted from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya in October last year, while providing assistance to Somali refugees.

Disrupting the ‘business model’ of piracy

Most experts are widely agreed on the fact that Somalia’s future depends on treating the “symptoms” of the failed state by eventually curtailing piracy, promoting a stable national government and establishing a robust judicial system.

Potts acknowledged that those who commit acts of piracy are part of the disenfranchised population, driven to the “cash-rich but asset-poor” business of piracy. He described the pirates as “criminals of opportunity” who don’t discriminate based on whatever national flag a ship raises.

Indeed, the fact that the most sophisticated aerial surveillance systems have been unable to take out the modestly equipped pirates is testament to the latter’s economic desperation.

Still, locals are losing tolerance for continued acts of piracy, according to Potts. Efforts to dissuade citizens from falling into piracy include involving clan elders in Somalia, who are poised to get the message across, particularly to the youth.

Alexander Rondos, the EU Special Representative for the Horn of Africa, described a “lost generation” of youth that pays an awful price for piracy.

Potts lamented the EU’s limited ability to properly handle underage suspects of piracy, given the lack of effective legal and rehabilitation systems capable of “processing” these criminal minors.

Cautious Optimism?

When Rondos visited Somalia just hours before addressing the Subcommittee on Mar. 20 he noted that the next several months are absolutely crucial to the country’s future.

He stressed the need for effective judicial systems and institutions that are rooted in the grassroots and affect the needs of local communities.

Efforts cannot rely solely on the “EU and a collection of white people who feel good about helping others,” Rondos claimed, highlighting the need for solutions that include local voices.

Still, Rondos mentioned signs of hope within Mogadishu— he described movements of people returning to the city, investing in day-to-day life and opening new businesses.

Though still a threat, the Somali-based terrorist group Al-Shabaab is beginning to “melt away,” according to Rondos, who added that he observed “indications of a growing number of people affiliated with Al-Shabaab that want to detach themselves” from the outfit, though the core of the group remains active.

With cautious optimism, the importance of providing security for the Somali people remains a priority, Rondos said.

It was personal experience that turned Gul Bano and her cleric husband, Ahmed Khan, into ambassadors against early marriage and its worst corollary – obstetric fistula which allows excretory matter to flow out through the birth canal.

Bano and her cleric husband campaigning against child marriage. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

As is the custom in the remote mountain village of Kohadast in the Khuzdar district of Balochistan province, Bano was married off as soon as she reached adolescence, at 15, and was pregnant the following year.

There being no healthcare facility near Kohadast, Bano did not receive antenatal care and no one thought there would be complications. But, events were to prove different.

After an extended labour lasting three days, Bano delivered a dead baby. “I never saw the colour of my son’s eyes or his hair. I never held him once to my bosom,” recalls Bano, now 20.

Her troubles had only begun. A week later, Bano realised she was always wet with urine and reeking of faecal matter. “I was passing urine and stools together.”

Unable to handle the prolonged labour, Bano’s young body had developed a fistula caused by the baby’s head pressing hard against the lining of the birth canal and tearing into the walls of her rectum and the bladder.

Bano’s family attributed her condition to fate, her father refusing to visit “due to the bad odour coming from me.” However, through those trying times, Khan stood by his young wife and sought medical help.

After Bano spent a year in a perpetually “wet and stinky” condition, her husband finally discovered a hospital in Karachi specialising in treating fistula and other conditions related to reproductive health.

Koohi Goth Women’s Hospital, where fistula victims are treated free, was started by Dr. Shershah Syed, one of Pakistan’s first gynaecologists to train in repairing a painful and socially embarrassing condition.

In addition to incontinence, the medical consequences of fistula include frequent bladder infections, painful genital ulcerations, infertility and kidney failure.

In 2006, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) launched a four-year fistula repair project as part of a programme to improve maternal health.

According to UNFPA, at least two million women in the world live as Bano did – in shame and misery. Most are not even aware that fistula can be repaired.

A major challenge for healthcare professionals is that the number of women suffering from fistula in the world is increasing by about 75,000 cases annually.

In Pakistan the true prevalence of fistula is unknown, but Syed estimates that there are about 5,000 new cases every year.

With only 500 – 600 women undergoing corrective surgery annually, Pakistan needs to put more resources into addressing fistula – which falls under the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015.

The MDGs are eight United Nations targets to be met by 2015 and, according to studies published by the International Youth Council, a major civil society organisation, Pakistan is unlikely to meet the fifth that deals with maternal health.

Pakistan, according to IYC figures released in 2010, has a maternal mortality rate (MMR) of around 500 per 100,000 births that is sought to be reduced to three-quarters from 1990-2015.

Pakistan’s maternal mortality ratio is wide-ranging, from 286 per 100,000 births in Karachi’s urban areas to 756 in rural Balochistan, where child marriages are compounded by non-existent health services.

“For both physiological and social reasons, mothers aged 15-19 are twice as likely to die of childbirth than those in their 20s,” says a UNFPA document. “Obstructed labour is especially common among young, physically immature women giving birth for the first time.”

Obstetric fistula is now generally acknowledged to be another burden on the girl child, deprived of basic education and forced into marriage – for which she is neither physically nor mentally prepared.

Pakistan’s Child Marriages Restraint Act passed in 1929 permits girls to be married at 16, but poverty, illiteracy and socio-cultural practices result in girls being married off as soon as they reach puberty.

Syed’s team continues to hold fistula repair camps in the remote areas of Pakistan that include training programmes for doctors and paramedics in fistula management. “The complicated cases come to Koohi Goth and simple repair is done in the field hospitals.”

The camps provided an opportunity to reach out to affected women and their families and encourage them to avail themselves of the free treatment in Karachi, where necessary.

Getting Bano to Karachi was not easy. Khan gathered a group of able-bodied men who took turns carrying her on a rope bed for three days just to reach a motorable road.

“It’s been almost three years and she has gone through six operations,” says Dr. Sajjad Ahmed, who worked at Koohi Goth as manager of UNFPA’s fistula project from June 2006 to February 2010. “She would not speak at all and she did not understand Urdu.”

Today Bano and Khan are regular visitors at Koohi Goth and vocal advocates of the campaign against fistula. They travel across Pakistan, spreading the word about how to prevent the injury and what to do about it.

“Khan is a cleric and yet he does not conform to the stereotype of a religious person,” said Syed. “He tells parents that fistula can be avoided if they stop marrying off their daughters at a very early age.”

Bano shares her story and tells married women about the importance of birth spacing, antenatal checkups and timely access to emergency obstetric care.

Syed says Pakistan badly needs a mass awareness campaign on fistula prevention and stresses the importance of social support for victims. “That’s the only way we can eradicate fistula from this region.”

“I smell nice now and it’s all because my husband wanted me to get well,” said Bano, who may have spent many more years in a miserable state if not for the treatment at Koohi Goth.

Donghyun Park, lead author of the ADB’s 2012 Asian Development Outlook, launched the report at Lowy Institute for International Policy, Sydney Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Apr 11 2012 (IPS)

While developing Asian countries have experienced robust growth – lifting living standards and reducing poverty – increasing wealth is fuelling income disparities and inequality, posing a major threat to the region’s stability, warns the Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s flagship report released Wednesday.

The Manila-based ADB’s 2012 Asian Development Outlook says if the spoils of growth had been more evenly distributed, another 240 million people in the 45 countries that make up developing Asia would have moved out of poverty in the last two decades.

Inequality widened in the three most populous countries – the People’s Republic of China, India, and Indonesia—which have been key drivers of the region’s rapid economic growth.

“A high degree of inequality breeds social tensions between the haves and have nots and tends to generate instability. One of the key ingredients of Asia’s economic growth in the past has been social and political stability and if that is jeopardised, it will inevitably undermine economic growth,” Donghyun Park, one of the lead authors of the report and principal economist at ADB’s Economics and Research Department, told IPS.

“Growing inequality also generates pressures for populist and inefficient policies, which again hamper growth.”

For developing Asia, the Gini coefficient – a key measure of income distribution on a zero to one scale, with one representing ‘maximum inequality’ – has leapt from 0.39 to 0.46 in the last two decades. The richest one percent of households accounted for six to eight percent of the total income while close to 20 percent of total income went to the top five percent in most countries.

Technological progress, globalisation, and market-oriented reforms, which have been the primary catalysts for the region’s growth, are said to have been the key forces behind the rise in inequality, particularly between rural and urban areas, and coastal and inland provinces.

“The more educated people are better able to capitalise on technology and that translates to higher income. However, technology can also be deployed to reduce inequality, such as ICT being used to better inform farmers about crops and weather, and ‘e-education’ reaching out to children in remote areas,” Park told IPS.

Unequal access to assets such as capital and land; human capital, such as education and training; and labour and financial markets is common in the region.

The report states that in order to address inequality, policymakers need to spend more on education and health; introduce better targeted social protection schemes; reduce or eliminate general price subsidies; broaden the tax base; create more productive jobs and assist lagging regions.

“Most Asian governments are very much aware that growing inequality is harmful for their country’s growth and social harmony. However, they have yet to take more concrete and specific measures to deal with this issue,” Park observed.

He suggests a closer partnership between governments and civil society groups for more equitable growth and gives the example of the Saemaul Undong (New Village) movement in South Korea. “The community-based movement was kick-started and then supported and partially funded by the government in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of which the rural-urban divide in South Korea didn’t go as high as in many other countries despite the country’s rapid economic growth,” he said.

The report says from a moderate growth of 7.2 percent in 2011, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth in developing Asia will slow to 6.9 percent in 2012 before rebounding to 7.3 percent next year. The region was shifting towards a “more sustainable long-run growth path” based on strong domestic demand.

The People’s Republic of China, the world’s second largest economy, is set to post GDP growth of 8.5 percent in 2012, and 8.7 percent in 2013 after expanding to 9.2 percent in 2011. The pace of India’s growth is projected to edge up to seven percent in 2012 and 7.5 percent in 2013.

’Wildly Optimisic’

But Satyajit Das, an international specialist in financial derivatives and risk management, says the report is “wildly optimistic”. The ADB has cut its forecast from the September projection of 7.5 percent to 6.9 percent.

“I think they have wholly underestimated the downside risks. European problems will get deeper before they get better and that is going to have two effects on Asia: first, the export demand will be much less than anticipated. Secondly, there are countries in Asia, particularly India, (that are) heavily reliant on foreign capital because of their current account deficit and that is going to become more difficult to finance in this particular environment.

“The United States’ recovery is very tepid and their biggest trading partner is Europe. As Europe slows, the U.S. economy is going to slow as well,” he stressed.

Major industrial economies like the U.S., Eurozone and Japan are collectively expected to expand by only 1.1 percent in 2012 and 1.7 percent in 2013.

Das said, “The policy moves that are being taken in developed markets are extremely destructive to Asia. The U.S., the UK, Japan and indeed Europe are now in a mode to monetise their debt and that has several effects on Asia. The first and most direct effect is that all the Asian central bank reserves are held in developed market currencies and there is an enormous loss of wealth is going to occur.”

“The next direct effect is that by pushing down these currencies they are effectively doing two things: One, they are pushing currency upward pressure on the Asian currencies making them less competitive. As most commodities are traded in U.S. dollars, the commodity prices go up (to compensate for the weak currency) and feed inflation in these domestic economies in Asia and that is the basic issue. This is absolutely…willful and malicious,” Das stressed.

The report says that oil-price spikes and volatility in food prices could revive the threat of inflation, but policy makers in developing Asia can refrain from further monetary and fiscal stimulus.

Robust expansion in the resource-exporting economies of Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands, and strong growth in the tourism-oriented economies of the Cook Islands, Fiji, Palau, and Vanuatu, lifted sub-regional growth to seven per cent in 2011. The Pacific countries have been relatively insulated from the Eurozone crisis.

According to the report, the Pacific is expected to slow to six percent and 4.1 percent over the next two years due to lower resource export revenue, the winding down of infrastructure projects, and lower international agricultural prices.

Women affected by HIV in western Nepal stick together to survive. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Naresh Newar
RAKAM KARNALI, Western Nepal, Apr 11 2012 (IPS)

Life, already hard in Nepal’s remote western region, is getting worse thanks to HIV infection brought back by men who go to neighbouring India for seasonal work.

Worst hit are the region’s women, many of whom have had to sell off their land and livestock to get HIV treatment for their husbands and, in many cases, for themselves.

Rakam Karnali is typical of the small hamlets that dot the hilly mid-west and far-west regions that are home to most of the seasonal migrants who cross over to India, a country which provides passport-less entry to Nepalis.

The destination for millions of semi-skilled and unskilled Nepali workers, India has 2.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS. Its big cities are also hubs for sex workers recruited from Nepal’s poverty-ridden regions.

“Nowadays, the men only come back with HIV/AIDS and bring more suffering to the family,” Jala Majhi, who is HIV positive, tells IPS.

Jala said women like her once dreamed of an end to grinding poverty by sending their husbands and able men to work abroad, but too many are coming back with the virus. “The wives not only become widows but are left destitute and infected with HIV/AIDS.”

“I don’t know how much longer I will live. I have accepted my fate, but I am very worried about my children,” says Purna Biswakarma, a 35-year-old widowed by HIV and living with the virus in this remote village.

Western Nepal has a history of neglect by governments in Kathmandu, resulting in deeply ingrained poverty. At least half the population of the region lives below the poverty line with the situation distinctly worse compared to other parts of this least developed country.

According to Nepal’s 2011 census, out of a total population of 26.7 million people, almost two million are working abroad causing hardships to households, but providing badly needed remittances.

Nepal’s 2010 progress report for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals predicts that the target of bringing poverty levels in the country down to 21 percent will be met by 2015.

Nepal, according to the progress report, has also succeeded in stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS, one of the eight MDGs, but ground realities in western Nepal appear to be far different.

It is common to see women widowed by HIV forced to work as labourers, in western Nepal, though even this is difficult because of social stigma attached to HIV and fears of contracting the virus among villagers.

“When my husband died, the villagers guessed that he succumbed to AIDS and I was blamed for that,” says 35-year-old Nani Devi Shahi, who was ostracised by the community and forced to live in isolation for many years.

“I was infected by my husband, but people accused me of being a sex worker and infecting more men,” said Jala.

The villagers banned her from walking near their homes and using public taps. Her mother-in-law finally threw Jala out of the house along with her young daughter.

Rakam Karnali village mirrors the harsh reality of Nepal where HIV positive women are stereotyped as having contracted HIV through immoral behaviour and blamed for spreading the disease.

Women infected with HIV are denied access to resources in their own households, according to the report ‘Women and HIV/AIDS – Experiences and Consequences of Stigma and Discrimination-Nepal’, published by Family Health International in 2004. That situation has barely changed.

“After all these years of sensitisation campaigns all over the country there has been little impact, especially for women living in remote areas as society is unwilling to change,” says Rani Devi Bohara, a community social worker.

Bohara blames apathy on the part of the government and development agencies towards the women who live with the multiple traumas of HIV infection, social stigma and extreme poverty.

According to the government’s National Centre for AIDS and STD Control (NCASC), women in the 15-49 age group form over 28 percent of the estimated 55,000 people living with HIV in the country.

“What is needed is not just anti-retroviral medicines but psychological counselling for both the victim and her family as also income generation support and welfare programmes,” she says.

A comprehensive package can be run for such women through the existing system of Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) centres, which are low-cost and needs only a few trained staff, says Bohara.

“Most of the remote villages don’t have VCTs and the few that exist are so poorly run that they hardly make a difference in the lives of these badly traumatised women,” said Ganashyam Bhandari from the HIV/AIDS Alliance, a non-governmental organisation.

Extreme poverty means that the women cannot afford to travel to CD4 count (immune strength testing) centres of which there are just 13 in the country, most of them in urban areas.

“We have been lobbying for travel allowances to be given to HIV positive people, especially those living in the remote areas, but we have not been successful,” Hemant Chandra Ojha, a senior NCASC official, told IPS.

“In this situation we have no choice but to try and survive somehow,” says Nani, leader of a group of widows living with HIV. “The government is not going to help us.

“We do have a united voice now,” says Nani, referring to her group, which resists social discrimination and has learned the value of standing together.

The broken display cases at Greece’s Museum of Olympia, the site where the first Olympic Games were held thousand of years ago, have stunned members of the Archaeological Service who have been registering a stream of missing cultural artifacts.

Despina Koutsoumpa, president of the Association of Greek Archaeologists (SEA), says treasure dating back to the Classical, Hellenistic and Byzantine periods has disappeared from the museum, including “a golden ring stamp, copper sculptures from the eighth century BC, coins and clay vases”.

The burglaries in the National and Municipal Galleries during February, as well as the armed robbery at the Museum in Olympia on Mar. 5, have exposed weaknesses in the protection of cultural heritage sites around the country, made worse by the so-called austerity programme that is slashing all national public service budgets.

To add insult to injury, the Greek Minister of Culture has decided to cut funding for museum security by 20 percent. According to a new law, the Greek government is also planning personnel cuts of 30-50 percent at the Ministry of Culture.

Furthermore, the law plans to combine various arms of the archaeological services into one in order to ‘reduce expenses’, thereby leaving sectors that need specific protection vulnerable to the massive budget cuts sweeping through each and every realm of Greek society.

SEA mobilised against the cuts with a press conference last month that received substantial international attention and is still attracting support messages from all over the world.

Koutsoumpa says that the Archaeological Service has never enjoyed an adequate budget anyway. “The ministry never received above one percent of the national budget, the service always lacked personnel. Whether coming from the national budget or European funds, over 60 percent of the money was always for wages,” she told IPS.

Today 66 administrative departments of antiquities throughout the country handle the workload and law enforcement pertaining to Greece’s cultural heritage, including permits for use of land where archaeological treasures are thought to be buried, the organisation and running of archaeological sites and museums, excavations and archaeological surveys, and archaeological scientific research.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism is comprised of 7000 employees, including 950 archaeologists, civil servants, and 2000 guards and night-guards. Moreover, each year 3500 extra employees are hired on short term contracts. In November 2011, 10 percent of the total workforce of the Ministry of Culture that represented the most experienced employees (with more than 33 years of experience) was forced to leave the service and retire, as part of plans to reduce the total number of public sector employees in Greece.

Further personnel cuts would mean that the Ministry of Culture will be unable to cover even its basic operational functions.

For many decades, the personnel of the Greek Archaeological Service have been working for poor salaries, with limited funding. Net salaries of archaeologists in 2009 ranged from 880 euros (for newly appointed staff) to 1550 euros (for those with over 35 years in the service).

In 2012, a newly appointed archaeologist receives 670 euros (after taxes and social security contributions), representing “a 35 percent wage reduction,” Koutsoumpa said. In 2011 the budget for the Archaeological Service was 12 million euros (down 35 percent from 2010) and in 2012 it is facing an even more severe slashing.

Apart from protection, the Archaeological Service is also responsible for 210 museums that include collections of pre-historic, classical and Byzantine antiquities; 250 organised archaeological sites; and 19,000 declared archaeological sites and historical monuments. It also runs 366 projects co-funded with the European Union with a total budget of 498 million euros.

As the Ministry’s ability to carry out its mandate of protecting ancient archaeological sites diminishes, so too does the future of various preservation projects.

Nikolas Zirganos, a journalist renowned for his investigation of organised trafficking of antiquities, which resulted in the return of ‘The Golden Crown of Macedonia’ from the Getty Museum, explained to IPS that cuts in public spending pave the way for a burgeoning illicit antiquities market.

“Organised crime mechanisms are sensitive and react faster than authorities. When a state and its structures are collapsing, like what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union, traffickers exploit the situation fast. In the midst of social and political crises, those countries all suffered a severe loss of symbols of their cultural heritage.”

While the Ministry of Culture has attempted to downplay the burglaries, characterising them as isolated events, Zirganos believes otherwise.

“I doubt that someone would steal from a museum, take antiquities that are famous and registered and try to sell them alone in the illicit market,” he stressed. “These are usually orders from specific rich collectors in Western Europe and the United States”.

He mentioned that there has also been an increase of illicit excavations over the last few years while the police dedicated to fighting illicit antiquities trade are limited in number. “The department of police responsible for fighting illicit antiquities trade has been a committed one. But it is a joke to think that 40 people involved in this department are able to stop a wave of organised trafficking.”

By Naimul Haq and - -
NOAKHALI, Bangladesh, Mar 28 2012 (IPS)

Kalpana Rani Pal’s pottery business is modest by any yardstick but it is small enterprises like these that are helping reduce poverty levels in Bangladesh.

Kalpana at her pottery Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Jhumur Majumder, 37, who also availed of pottery training under a small crafts producers development project, initiated by NRDS about five years ago, recalls a time when families like hers were living in penury. “I can’t imagine what we would have done had I not availed of the free pottery course.”

“The project is an effort to develop the skills of the local poor women who we find have potential in doing business,” Mohammad Kaiser Alam, programme coordinator at NRDS, told IPS.

It helped immensely that the women had organised themselves into a samiti (women’s group) in the Dewanjee Bari village of Noakhali district, located some 320 km southeast of the Bangladeshi capital.

Jhumur, who has just received a special order to supply 200 pieces of pottery items to a buyer from Dhaka, says the order will fetch her around 120 dollars as clear profit.

“There was a time when we had no work opportunities in this district. Thanks to the free NRDS training programme we now stand on our own feet,” said Minati Rani Sutra, 34, a samiti leader currently busy hiring hands to cope with increasing orders for quality pottery.

Some 30,000 women in over 1,200 samitis have benefited from skill development programmes run by NRDS in the district. Women are now being selected for further training as part of employment generation schemes.

NRDS also helps with the marketing of cotton garments, jute carpets and quality products made from bamboo and terracotta that are sourced from the samitis.

The ‘Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Bangladesh Progress Report 2011’, released by the Bangladesh Planning Commission on Mar. 22, commends the country for reducing poverty by nearly half over the past decade.

The MDGs are eight international development goals that all 193 United Nations member-states and at least 23 international organisations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. At the top of the list is reduction in extreme poverty.

“Economic growth has resulted in impressive poverty reduction from 56.6 percent in 1992 to 31.5 percent in 2010, the rate of reduction being faster in the present decade than the earlier one,” the report stated.

“If this trend continues, Bangladesh could well achieve its MDG target of halving the population under the poverty line well before 2015,” the report adds.

Debapriyo Bhattacharya, one of Bangladesh’s top economists and executive director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a reputed think-tank, told IPS that it is the work of NGOs that has been chiefly responsible for progress on the MDGs.

“Even with the failure of the state to provide social protection and failure of the market to provide adequate employment opportunities NGOs through their multiple interventions have definitely contributed to poverty reduction,” said Bhattacharya. “It has sustained and now gathered momentum.”

Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, chairman of Palli Karma Shahayak Foundation, a key funding agency that facilitates NGOs in poverty alleviation programmes, said what made the difference was the focus on women.

“Women’s empowerment has definitely contributed to poverty reduction. A significant number of women now work in medium to large enterprises and are also contributing to employment generation,” Ahmad said.

“Earlier, women borrowed money for small businesses under microcredit. If you notice, many of them are now borrowing at the ‘macro’ level too. This is one way you can see poverty reduction happening.”

Ahmad says that although the government has largely left the work of poverty reduction to NGOs, political commitment has been important in progress towards achieving the MDGs.

Evidence of poverty reduction can be seen mainly in the villages where NGOs, over the decades, have mobilised resources in a way that the government alone could not have done.

“Breaking the poverty cycle was not easy,” said Jalaluddin Ahmed, director of Trinamool, an NGO operating in the poverty-stricken northwestern Rajshahi district.

“There was a time when women were not allowed to work. Going outside the home was restricted under strict purdah (religious bar on women) rules. So, poor families depended on only the earnings of the men,” Ahmed said.

“Such social and religious barriers gradually disappeared as NGOs took charge of advocacy along with microcredit programmes. When men realised that women were equally capable of contributing to the family’s earnings, they began allowing them to go to work.”

“Today, women decide how to earn and when to send their children to schools,” said Abdul Awal, executive director of NRDS.

“It was not just about loans, but also skills development, advocacy, discussions among samiti members and, most importantly, a bottom-up approach,” Awal said.

Bangladesh is classified as a least developed country by the U.N. for its low socioeconomic development indicators.

Excerpt:

By Mona Alami
BEIRUT, Mar 26 2012 (IPS)

The Druze stronghold of Sweida, Syria, witnessed several pro-democracy protests last week. While the movement remains marginal, it is charged with symbolism: the Druze have long been considered the “spiritual cousins” of the Alawites, the religious group to which the Assad family belongs.

The question now on the table is whether or not the recent outbursts of Druze opposition to the regime could be a tipping point in favour of the Syrian revolutionaries.

Over the centuries the Druze minority, which make up about three percent of the Syrian population and are located primarily in the Sweida area, also known as Jabal al-Druze (the Druze mountain), has spearheaded various Syrian revolutions, including battling Ottoman rule and the authority of the French mandate system.

Over the last decade, the community developed excellent relations with president Bashar al-Assad, who could sometimes be spotted visiting local Druze families.

These close ties, however, did not make Sweida immune to the pro-democracy uprising, which has claimed almost 7,500 lives in Syria since Jan. 2011.

“Demonstrations are taking place more frequently although on a much smaller scale than in other regions. Last week, fifteen protests took place in several Druze villages,” Rima Fleyhan, a member of the Syrian opposition, told IPS.

Protests are mostly taking place in the Sweida capital and Qraya – the birthplace of the historical Druze revolutionary figure, Sultan Pacha al-Atrash, who led the Syrian Revolution from 1925–1927 – and springing up more regularly in Chahba, another city in the Druze region.

“While still marginal, the protest movement is essentially comprised of students, lawyers and engineers as well as leftists. Since its inception, it always consisted of the community’s elite,” acknowledged Talal el-Atrache, author of ‘When Syria awakes’, who spoke to IPS over the phone from Sweida.

Conversely, elsewhere in the country, the overwhelming majority of protestors have been from farming communities and impoverished areas, with the movement slowly expanding into the upper echelons of society.

“When the pro-democracy movement first started, Bashar al-Assad met with the (Druze) community’s three (highest ranking) sheikhs (clerics) and warned: ‘We are both Druze and Alawites, minorities in this country. Do not get involved in the protests’,” activist Muntaha al-Atrash, daughter of Sultan Pasha al- Atrash, told IPS.

According to several sources, Druze sheikhs tried to contain the movement before things got out of hand by intervening personally to quell demonstrations in order to avoid violent repercussion from the government.

In spite of such efforts, two local ‘popular committees’ have been formed, affiliated with the opposition’s Local Coordination Committee (LCC). “We have also formed a unit comprised of Druze military men,” added colonel Aref Hamoud from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who spoke to IPS on the phone from Turkey.

According to a post by the LCC, the FSA’s Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash Brigades attacked a military outpost yesterday, resulting in the killing of one officer from the national army and the defection of 28 soldiers, though this information is difficult to verify independently, due to the media ban enforced in Syria.

Several obstacles continue to hamper the Sweida-based pro-democracy movement. Security police and “shabiha” (thugs) loyal to President Assad have been able to disperse most protests rapidly. According to Fleyhan, the absence of religious centres poses a major logistical problem for the Druze, since mosques have served as convenient rallying points for protestors elsewhere in the country.

Another factor accounting for lower turnout at protests can be attributed to the massive emigration of Druze youth, leaving the region devoid of a group that has been at the very core of the revolution in other parts of Syria.

Experts like Talal el-Atrache cite several other reasons as possible causes, “mainly, the ongoing militarisation of the rebellion resulting from repression, which is diverting the popular uprising from its initial goals,” he said.

Ashraf Jaramani, a local resident also involved in politics believes that the deadly threat of civil strife as well as the Islamist dimension of the protests may have discouraged the Druze from plunging into the movement.

“If Syria follows Egypt and Libya, who will guarantee the Druze that the Muslim Brotherhood will not govern the country? What will happen to minorities rights then?” Jaramani asked IPS.

The community is also wary of an internationalisation of the conflict, in which Syria could become a battleground for the rivalry between Shiite and Sunni countries.

“The Druze do not want Syria to follow in Lebanese footsteps,” stressed Talal el-Atrache, referring to the decade and a half long civil war that plagued Lebanon from 1975 to 1990.

The Druze community in Lebanon has attempted to inflame their coreligionists. In several editorials in his weekly newspaper, Walid Joumblatt, the most prominent leader of the community, urged the Druze in Syria to take the side of the revolution.

“Beware you Arab strugglers in the Druze Mountain against yielding to the Shabbiha in confronting your brothers in Syria,” he said. The Druze leader had also previously called on young Druze soldiers in the Syrian army to “disobey military commands to kill their brothers.”

The Center for Documenting Violations in Syria, run by activists in the LCC, puts the number of slain soldiers from Sweida at 31, as of Jan. 25. Others believe the most recent figure is likely closer to 80.

For Muntaha al-Atrash, the Druze playing a larger role in the protests will be a major drawback for the regime, as Sweida, together with the Daraa province, form the District of Hauran.

The Assad regime, wary of the threat such a united front might pose, is still attempting to court the minority. Security forces have avoided killing any Druze demonstrators while activists say that detained prisoners were given preferential treatment. The regime is avoiding a violent crackdown in regions inhabited by religious minorities, in order to preserve the ‘Islamic label’ given to the Syrian revolution, said Fleyhan.

But some activists believe that security forces are losing patience and will end up making tactical mistakes, which will backfire as pressures mounts in the region.

“When (the whole) of Hauran rises,” predicts Muntaha al-Atrash, “it will be difficult to bring it down.”

Excerpt:

By Mantoe Phakathi and - -
MBABANE , Mar 18 2012 (IPS)

Margaret Gamedze earns a living doing laundry for people in her community in Msunduza Township, which lies about a kilometre outside Swaziland’s capital city of Mbabane. But since the country’s fiscal crisis began, she no longer earns enough to pay the rent for her one-roomed mud shack, which she shares with her five children.

Margaret Gamedze earns a living doing laundry for people in her community in Msunduza, Swaziland. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

“Most people I approach for employment complain that they don’t have money because they have lost their jobs or the government has not paid those who are operating their own businesses,” said Gamedze.

A fiscal crisis hit the country in 2010 after revenue from the Southern African Customs Union was reduced by almost 60 percent. Gamedze’s income was radically reduced and four of her five children dropped out of school.

A United Nations Impact of the Fiscal Crisis in Swaziland survey released on Mar. 16 said that 21.9 percent of surveyed households have experienced reduced income. About seven percent of households surveyed admitted to having a member who lost a job.

Gamedze is not the only one affected by the financial crisis because many of her neighbours in Msunduza Township are idling at home after losing their jobs.

“I was retrenched from a construction company after the government ran out of funds to continue with capital projects last year,” said Mancoba Gama, 32, as he sat in the township drinking the local brew. He added that he and others have given up on finding a job because prospective employers have turned them down on too many occasions.

The financial crisis has added to the unemployment strain in the country, which stands at 52 percent among the youth.

According to the United Nations Development Programme’s economic advisor Zuzana Brixiova, almost half of the surveyed households depend on formal employment for their income and they were severely impacted during the fiscal crisis.

People, especially those in the private sector, were retrenched or had their wages reduced last year while some small business operators closed down. As a result, the main challenge that 23.9 percent of the surveyed households complained that they faced are the high food prices.

The inflation rate now stands at 9.43 percent and it has become even more difficult for the 63 percent of Swazis living below the poverty line of two dollars a day to put food on the table.

The price of commodities, including paraffin, and other basic foods such as oil, maize meal and bread, has increased. And this means that Gamedze can only afford one meal a day.

Clement Dlamini, a training consultant, said the dependency of most households on formal employment is an indication that the country was training jobseekers rather than entrepreneurs.

“This is a challenge to training institutions to come up with programmes to assist the youth with entrepreneurship skills and business management,” said Dlamini.

Dlamini also called upon government to address the issue of access to land. Many Swazi people do not own the traditional land on which they live and hence banks cannot consider it as collateral when people apply for loans.

However, deputy president of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland, Sibongile Mazibuko, challenged development partners to refrain from funding the government’s social expenditure while authorities continue to be wasteful.

She said it is unfair for the government to keep attempting to cut the country’s civil servant’s wage bill. However, the wage bill is the second largest in the region at 18 percent of GDP. The Swazi government is proposing a 4.5 percent salary cut for public servants as well as freezing annual salary increases in an effort to reduce the wage bill by five percent.

“What about the over-expenditure at the army and traditional events that do not benefit us such as the Marula Ceremony?” asked Mazibuko.

King Mswati III and the Queen Mother, Ntombi Thwala, join throngs of women in song and dance on two separate occasions in the month of February. This is to commemorate the marula season and government funds these events. However, the cost of the festivals are not publically known.

She said it does not help the country when cooperating partners like the European Union (EU) pay for basic national services without forcing government to exercise fiscal discipline. This year the EU will pay for first graders under the Free Primary Education Programme until 2014.

Only one of Gamedze’s five children continues to attend school, as he is a beneficiary of the Orphans and Vulnerable Children Fund, a government project. Last year, government ran out of money and could not pay the fees on time for beneficiaries of the fund and for those who benefit from the Free Primary Education Programme.

“On several occasions my son was sent back home from school because the principal said I should pay his fees because government had not honoured its obligations,” said Gamedze.

Government finally paid the fees after borrowing money from financial institutions, but that was just enough to pay public wages and social grants for the elderly.

Swaziland entered the crises with existing economic and social problems, including an unemployment rate of 29 percent of the labour force while 29 percent of the population is food insecure, according to the survey.

The country is also leading the world with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence, at 26 percent of the productive age group according to the 2007 Swaziland Demographic Health Survey, showing an additional strain from the fiscal crisis to an already desperate situation.

Minister of Finance Majozi Sithole said poor people were neglected when the impact of the fiscal crisis was reported.

“Everyone concentrated on the impact on businesses, banks and even the lilangeni/rand parity, while not paying attention to poor households and how they were coping under the economic crisis,” said Sithole.

“Swaziland needs international assistance including the continued support of the international community, private sector, U.N. agencies and NGOs,” acting U.N. resident representative Dr. Jamab Gulaid said on Mar. 16.

Excerpt:

By Correspondents and - -
DUSHANBE, Mar 7 2012 (IPS)

When she was 16, Kibriyo Khaitova’s parents told her that if she didn’t marry, she’d soon be a spinster. So, like many girls from Tajikistan, Khaitova married a man her family found for her. Now 20, she has two children, no husband and is fending for herself.

“My parents told me that I was old enough and that I needed to get married,” said Khaitova, who lives in the Ferghana Valley, an area of Central Asia where traditional, conservative social attitudes are entrenched.

“I told them that I wanted to continue my education, but they said that men do not like educated girls and you do not need an education to be a good wife. The first time I saw my husband was at my wedding. I was very scared, but my grandmother told me I would be fine.”

Tajikistan’s widespread poverty is a major cause of early marriage in the country, according to a recent report by the Eurasia Foundation. In rural families, boys become the main breadwinners and girls are often considered financial burdens.

“Some parents feel that their daughters can be better supported by the husband’s family, and marrying them off (early) is a way to conserve their own limited resources,” Azita Ranjbar, the author of the report, told EurasiaNet.org.

The groom’s family also has a motive to push their sons to wed young girls. When Tajik girls marry they become “kelins” (daughters-in-law) and usually live with the husband’s family. While an educated woman might challenge the submissive role a kelin is supposed to play, Ranjbar says, “younger girls are seen as more likely to be obedient, assisting their mother-in-law with chores and, in some areas of the country, subsistence farming.”

Since July 2010, Tajik law has said men and women must be 18 years old to marry. But in practice underage marriage is still common. In fact, the law has had an unintended effect: Because couples cannot register a marriage wherein one party is under 18 years of age, many simply have a local religious leader perform the wedding ceremony. Later, without a civil registration certificate, the bride has few rights in the eyes of the courts.

“Harsh punishments are required to reduce incidences of underage marriage,” says Azim Bayzoev, a professor of gender studies at the Tajik National University. “But by increasing punishment, you also decrease the instances of registration.”

“To be effective, the law needs to be strictly enforced, but there is a lack of capacity and will from local government to do this,” he adds.

Throughout Tajikistan, there is also a growing dependence on Islam to fulfill functions the wilting state can no longer handle. In many rural areas, where local officials do not have the power or the motivation to help, religious leaders offer solutions for everyday problems.

“Islamic law supports early marriage, offering families a way out of supporting their daughters,” says Bayzoev.

Moreover, Islamic clerics are often willing to perform the religious ceremony regardless of whether the couple has registered with the state.

“The Koran does not define a minimum age for marriage,” a Dushanbe imam who asked to remain anonymous told EurasiaNet.org. “Islam encourages women to marry at a young age. This means that they can have children, which is a woman’s duty.”

Women entering polygamous marriages, condoned by Islam but officially banned by the state, also cannot register.

At age 15, Dilnoza Rahimova’s family forced her into a marriage with a man over twice her age. As his third wife, Rahimova endured abuse from his first wife, who felt threatened by the newcomer.

“One night he came home drunk and forced himself on me,” she told EurasiaNet.org. “I told him I did not want to and that he was hurting me, but he would not stop.” Her mother told her that was just part of marriage.

Spousal rape is not uncommon in Tajikistan. According to a 2009 report by Amnesty International, whereas 11.1 percent of men admitted forcing their wives to have sex against their will, 42.5 percent of women report being forced by their husbands.

Divorce for an unregistered wife is often a last resort. “Without a registered marriage, it is extremely difficult for the wife to claim rights to jointly acquired assets and property, alimony, or child support,” says Ranjbar of the Eurasia Foundation.

There are no government statistics on underage marriages. Bayzoev of the National University says the practice became more common during Tajikistan’s 1992-1997 civil war, when “girls were forced to marry early to prevent falling victim to rapists and losing their honour.” But the practice also was common in the pre-Soviet period.

Today, an upswing in underage marriages means more divorces, Bayzoev adds: “The immaturity of young couples and the forced nature of many marriages have undoubtedly contributed to the growing number of divorces in the country.”

Soon after she was married, Khaitova’s husband joined the legions of young Tajik men working in Russia as migrant labourers. After three years, he returned with a new wife.

“He told me that he wanted a divorce and that I had two days to leave,” she told EurasiaNet.org. “Where could I go? I have two children. I have no education. I was forced to live off the charity of my relatives. I make 100 somoni (about 21 dollars) per month repairing clothes, but I cannot support my children.”

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Excerpt:

By Miriam Gathigah and - -
NAIROBI, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

Each day after school, nine-year-old Nelly Wangui hurries home with a bundle of firewood balanced on her head. The paper bag in which she carries her schoolbooks sits precariously on top of the stack and every now and then she reaches out to ensure that her books have not fallen down.

In Kenya's urban slums the lives of many children remain a continuous fight for survival. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

While children in urban areas are more likely to survive infancy and live beyond their fifth birthday since they enjoy better nutrition, health and education, compared to their rural counterparts, this is not true for children in urban slums.

In Korogocho alone government statistics estimate that 200,000 people live in crowded conditions, plagued by extreme poverty and an absence of basic services. Here, the lives of many children remain a continuous fight for survival.

“As experiences of childhood become increasingly urban, so are the experiences of extreme deprivation and a continuous fight for survival for children living in urban slums,” says Dr. Ken Onyango, a paediatrician in Nairobi who often volunteers his services to slum areas around the city.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World, released on Feb. 28, an increasing number of children living in urban slums are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in the world.

As the world becomes increasingly urban with over half of its people living in urban areas, including more than a billion children, the urban experience is one of poverty and exclusion for many.

“When we think of poverty, the image that traditionally comes to mind is that of a child in a rural village,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake in a statement. “But today, an increasing number of children living in slums and shantytowns are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in the world, deprived of the most basic services and denied the right to thrive.”

According to the report, while cities offer many children the advantages of urban schools, clinics and playgrounds, the same cities the world over are also the settings for some of the greatest disparities in children’s health, education and opportunities. “About half the children in urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa are unregistered at birth,” and most of them are also not immunised, according to the report.

The report further shows that in areas where the population is high, immunisation levels are often low.

“Since slums are considered illegal, the government feels no obligation to ensure that slum dwellers have access to water and proper sanitation,” John Otieno, an urban real estate developer, explains.

“There is an absence of child-friendly initiatives in conceptualising urban infrastructure in Kenya. Space available for children to play is often grabbed by private developers,” he adds.

Globally, one out of three urban dwellers lives in slums, and in Africa the proportion is six out of 10.

The report states that the urban population is growing the fastest in Africa, followed by Asia. And while an increasing number of African children are growing up in urban areas, the proportion of children living in urban slums in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya is on the rise as well.

The report says: “Around two thirds of Nairobi lives in crowded informal settlements.” The city has an estimated population of 3.1 million people.

Wangui is part of this statistic. But hardships like hers are often concealed by national statistics that only report general averages.

“The lack of some is concealed by the excesses of others. In education for instance, East African countries are now implementing free primary education. Statistics show improved levels of enrolment but low enrolment in urban slums is often concealed,” says Dave Ndonga, a primary school teacher in Mukuru kwa Njenga, a slum in Nairobi.

The report states that in many African countries such as Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, children in urban slums are least likely to attend school. However, countrywide average statistics in Tanzania show that the enrolment rate has doubled to about 97 percent.

“Children in slum areas drop out of school due to the additional costs of having to buy uniforms and even writing materials. But, there’s really little attention to the nature of education available to children in urban slums. Some classes have as many as 100 students per teacher,” explains Muigai Ngugi, a child’s rights activist in Nairobi.

He further says that these children are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and engage in criminal activities at the onset of adolescence as a result of minimal supervision from adults.

And although many African countries have drastically reduced deaths of children under the age of five years, the rate is higher in slums.

This is because, according to UNICEF, women in urban slums are more likely to wean their children earlier than their rural counterparts, thereby exposing them to health risks, and possibly death, before their fifth birthday.

In Kenya, the infant mortality rate is 77 deaths per 1,000 live births. However, in urban slums in the country it is 151 deaths per 1,000 live births. The leading causes of these deaths are pneumonia and diarrhoea – both of which are preventable.

UNICEF urged governments to put children at the heart of urban planning and to extend and improve services for all. “Children’s well-being is determined in no small measure by their environment. Their particular needs and priorities must be incorporated into efforts to improve housing, infrastructure, safety and governance. It follows that the work of local government and urban planning must be carried out with explicit recognition of the rights of children and young people,” the report said.

Excerpt:

If the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had 1.28 billion dollars it could help 97 million people around the world.

UNICEF's funding shortfall could leave millions of children like these searching for a living in garbage. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

It could relieve five million drought-affected children in Ethiopia, give 360,000 children in Kenya access to quality education and treat 16,000 children for acute malnutrition in Madagascar. It could provide 2.2 million Somalis with safe drinking water and give a million children in the Republic of South Sudan basic health care.

And those figures are for Eastern and Southern Africa alone, just two regions of the world that UNICEF aims to reach.

Sadly, the U.N. agency secured less than 50 percent of its funding in 2011, suggesting that it will meet only half its expected goals this year.

Each January UNICEF releases its Humanitarian Action for Children report, which identifies children around the world in the most acute need of aid as a result of humanitarian emergencies – be they “natural disasters, human conflicts or chronic crises.”

The report is rife with pictures of children clinging perilously to survival; high-resolution images depict the protruding ribcages of malnourished boys and girls and the harsh realities of whole populations that are slowly starving to death.

Everything about the report is a desperate call for help. But help comes at a price, which, in this case, is a high one.

Released this year on Jan. 27, the appeal – 80 pages long and spanning 25 countries across seven regions – called for 1.28 billion dollars in aid, and breaks each country’s needs into categories such as nutrition, health, water sanitation and hygiene, education, child protection, HIV/AIDS and others.

UNICEF initially appealed for 1.4 billion dollars to be dispersed among 38 countries but revised its request mid-year to account for unprecedented crises like the famine in the Horn of Africa, among other disasters.

According to the report, 44 percent of funding for 2011 was funneled into the Horn of Africa, for which UNICEF activated its highest level of emergency response.

Meanwhile, other countries present new and equally dire needs. For example, UNICEF has appealed for more than 289.1 million dollars for Somalia in 2012, the largest funding requirement for a single country. The organisation has also called for 143.9 million dollars for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and 98.1 million dollars for Sudan.

The report adds that, as of October 2011, UNICEF had only received 48 percent of its projected needs, amounting to 854.7 million dollars, for all its humanitarian activities. Final numbers for the entire year are expected to be higher, but only moderately so.

For UNICEF, this means making heart-breaking decisions about which children to provide with life- saving services.

“Sadly, we never really (manage) to respond to all of the humans that are in need,” Marika Hofmeister, an emergency specialist at UNICEF told IPS.

Though a depleted resource pool is a setback for any organisation, a dearth of funding for UNICEF will have particularly severe repercussions, some bordering on disastrous for at-risk populations.

For example, South Sudan received just 36 percent of its projected needs last year, leaving its goal of providing 500,000 people with clean drinking water only partially met. Over 130,000 were excluded from planned supply since many water schemes could neither be rehabilitated nor constructed on the agency’s limited budget.

Meanwhile, armed with just 18 percent of its expected funding for the region, UNICEF’s plan to provide 75,000 children in the Philippines with schools supplies that had been lost or damaged due to floods failed woefully, leaving over 50,000 students without supplies.

Madagascar, Uganda, Congo, Iraq and Iraqi refugees, and Tajikistan were among several countries that received less than 10 percent of their planned funding, according to an October 2011 report.

Despite funding shortfalls, UNICEF reported helping millions of people worldwide during 2011, including providing de-worming, vitamin A supplementation and vaccinations for more than 36 million children; treating 1.2 million children for acute malnutrition; providing nutritional support for 19 million women and children; providing access to sanitation and hygiene facilities and safe drinking water for 16 million people and providing access to improved education for four million children.

Funding for UNICEF runs in two parallel streams, one of which contributes to development and programming for the achievement of long-term goals, while the other focuses on humanitarian action. Country offices have some “wiggle room” to divert funds from one stream to another, depending on specific needs.

Hofmeister explained this allows for flexibility in the event of an emergency.

“The import part is to strike the balance between huge emergencies that draw media attention… and the “silent emergencies” that very rarely hit the media and go unfunded for years and years,” Hofmeister said.

However, UNICEF’s efforts are not universally applauded.

In a Jan. 18 report entitled, “A Dangerous Delay“, Oxfam and Save the Children argue that governments, the U.N., NGOs and private donors need to change their approach to drought situations by “managing the risks, not the crisis.”

Referencing the famine in the Horn of Africa, the report claims, “It is clear that the opportunity to avert a crisis was missed.”

Oxfam and Save the Children further noted that the drought and subsequent famine, which has impacted 13 million people, displayed clear warning signs that indicated an impending crisis, including clues from measured rainfall and weather conditions linked to La Niña.

“If an early response had saved even a small proportion of these lives, then thousands of children, women and men would still be alive,” the report stated.

Hofmeister refuted the claim, asserting that unexpected disasters often lay waste to even the best laid plans.

UNICEF’s Global Support section in the funding requirements for 2012 – appealing for 21.9 million dollars – aims to scaffold a degree of preparation against such uncertainties by maintaining a reserve pool of funds that is not earmarked for a particular country or cause, but can be drawn upon for severely under-funded areas.

But this measure, too, is contingent on fund-raising. Last year, Global Support obtained only three percent of projected total funds.

As of October 2011, UNICEF’s 10 largest donors had contributed 74 percent of total donations, according to the report. The European Commission stood as the largest contributor, with 115.8 million dollars, followed by the government of the United States at 98.2 million dollars, the Japanese government with 97.4 million dollars and the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund with 97.1 million dollars.

Hofmeister said that UNICEF is encouraging donors to increase or maintain their commitments, in order to protect the basic rights of women and children.

“We are aiming for 100 percent funding, (which is) the only way we can achieve the results that we have planned,” Hofmeister stressed.

“He was a happy child, my younger brother,” Mohammad Ramzan, 18, reminisced, his voice steeped in sadness.

A Pakistani child domestic worker. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi /IPS

Eldest among six siblings, Ramzan is still coming to terms with the murder of his 11-year-old brother, Shan Ali, who worked as a child domestic worker in a posh locality in the national capital, Islamabad.

Ali was allegedly strangled by his employer, Atiya Al Hussain, on Jan. 5, for neglecting her child.

She and her husband, Mudassar Abbas, told police that Ali had committed suicide, though the autopsy suggested the boy had been strangled to death.

“The woman has since confessed that Ali neglected her seven-month-old son while she was trying to catch up on her sleep and had, in a fit of anger, strangled him,” Ramzan told IPS over phone from Islamabad, where he works as a security guard in an office.

Many wealthy households employ children, some even as young as six, a practice not prohibited by law in Pakistan.

Because of the invisible nature of this issue and the difficulty in accessing domestic child workers, no recent nationwide study exists. In 2003, UNICEF reported that eight million children, under 14 years of age, were engaged as labourers in brick kilns, carpet weaving units, agriculture, small industries, and in homes.

An International Labour Organisation (ILO) report in 2004 estimated that around 264,000 children were engaged in domestic labour in Pakistan.

Child domestic workers can often been seen sitting meekly in the corner of expensive restaurants keeping an eye on a sleeping baby while the employer’s family enjoys a sumptuous dinner. They accompany rich kids to birthday parties, but do not take part in the celebrations.

“In Pakistani culture it was once considered an act of charity to employ poor children,” explained Samar Minallah, an anthropologist and a documentary filmmaker.

“In the past, there was a culture of entire families of employees being looked after by feudal lords. With time we saw this disappearing and the child was separated from his parents and employed in a nuclear family setup,” she said.

In many cases, said Minallah, the child is the only worker in the house. “I witnessed this in many posh urban areas,” Minallah told IPS. Recently she made a film ‘I have a dream’, on the dark reality of what she calls the “worst form of exploitation of children.”

“Many families prefer to employ young boys and girls because there are women and daughters in the house. They feel safer around them,” explained Ramzan, who does not find children working in whatever capacity of any consequence or even hazardous.

Sending children off to work in homes could mean additional income, says Anees Jillani, an advocate at the Supreme Court of Pakistan. “And then there is the additional incentive of having to feed one less mouth and more space in the room that they call home,” he explained.

Over the years, however, the Pakistani media have been consistently reporting on the abuse and violence that child domestic labour often suffer at the hands of their employers.

In the last two years, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), a non-governmental organisation, has documented 18 cases of extreme violence inflicted by employers, resulting in the death of 13 children and serious injuries to five.

To date not one employer has been charged as guilty. “The perpetrators usually buy off the poor parents in out-of court settlements,” said Jillani, who is also a child rights activist. Last year, a six-year-old Laiba’s body was found in a deserted place in the eastern city of Lahore, in Punjab. She was beaten to death by her employers for urinating on the kitchen floor.

Taqi Usman, 12, was clubbed to death by his employer for not feeding her dog. In most cases, domestic workers were penalised for being just who they were – mere children.

In 2010, when 12-year-old Shazia Masih, a maid in an advocate’s house died, the media coverage was intense. The paltry sum of 720 rupees (eight dollars) a month in return for washing dishes, mopping floors and cleaning toilets helped pay off her family’s debts.

There were 17 blunt injuries on Shazia’s forehead, cheeks and scalp and she died after the wounds inflicted on her by the employer became infected.

“Clearly the profiles of the employers suggest that this has nothing to do with literacy levels. It is a reflection of how far a society tolerates injustice and exploitation,” said Zarina Jillani, who works for SPARC.

Reacting to such cruel deaths, SPARC urged the government to take immediate steps to ban child domestic labour in line with laws that already prohibit children from being employed in hazardous industries.

SPARC’s Jillani considers domestic labour even more hazardous than factory work because of its “hidden nature, slavery like conditions, the complete control of the employer and the absence of a protective parent or adult and the potential for all kinds of abuse.”

While the country has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child, advocate Jillani rues there is no legal validity for it in the country. “The ILO has lately introduced a domestic labour convention but Pakistan is yet to sign it,” he told IPS.

SPARC believes that the answer lies in extending existing labour laws to domestic work and making education compulsory.

Ramzan, who is completely unlettered like the rest of his siblings, says: “We don’t have the choice or the luxury to attend school. We all work, and the more hands there are, the easier it is to feed the many mouths.”

Experts agree that Sri Lanka’s free pre and postnatal clinics across the island nation have helped bring infant mortality down to 15 per 1,000 live births and the under-five mortality rate to 21 per 1,000 live births.

Children living in Sri Lanka's tea estates are among the country's most malnourished. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

But, beneath that general picture of success lie pockets of vulnerability where poverty and lack of awareness are causing high levels of malnutrition in this country, classified as a middle-income country by the International Monetary Fund in 2010.

According to a November 2011 paper released by the Institute of Policy Studies, a semi-government research body, a fifth of children under the age of five suffer from malnourishment, as also every sixth newborn.

“This is a fairly high rate,” Angela de Silva, lecturer at the Colombo University and a vice-president of the Nutrition Society of Sri Lanka, told IPS. She said the high rates of malnourishment were primarily “due to certain pockets with high levels of underweight.”

“Overall, there has been an improvement in underweight over the years and, for most areas, underweight is not a huge problem. But the government’s (most recent) demographic and health survey (2006-2007) indicated that certain areas were badly off,” de Silva said.

One of the areas identified by the Institute’s report was the Nuwara Eliya district, famed for its tea plantations. “Children in the estate sector are twice as likely to be underweight than children in the urban sector,” said the report titled ‘Eradicating malnutrition in Sri Lanka, looking beyond health’.

Around five percent of Sri Lanka’s 21 million people are from the plantation sector – descendants of workers brought from south India in the 19th century by British colonialists to work in the tea plantations.

The research paper said that one in three children under the age of five was underweight in the plantation sector and 40 percent of newborn babies had low birth weight.

The main reason for these levels of high undernourishment appears to be poverty. According to the government’s indicators, at least 11 percent of the plantation population lives below the national poverty line of 27 dollars per month.

The research paper said that over 60 percent of the same population was categorised as poor.

“Evidence from many countries has proved that poverty plays a large part in malnutrition as access to resources will reduce food insecurity in a household,” said Kumari Navaratane, a public health specialist with the World Bank.

Nutrition levels are also low among the tens of thousands of people returning to north after the end of the civil war that pitted separatist Tamil militants against government troops, according to de Silva.

An assessment carried out by the World Food Programme in August 2011 revealed that at least 60 percent of the war returnees in the northern province were food insecure.

Navaratane and de Silva stressed that one vital area that impinged on child malnutrition was the education level of the mother, the primary caregiver, and knowledge of matters relating to healthy hygiene.

In the estate sector, awareness remains low. The Institute of Policy Studies paper said that nearly half of women in the reproductive age in this sector had not finished primary level education.

“Poor education reduces the ability of mothers to benefit from the awareness programmes on family health and hygiene,” the paper said.

Sri Lanka has a successful programme of encouraging breastfeeding in the first six months with over 90 percent of newborns breastfed, reducing the risk of malnourishment and improving child immunity.

Healthcare centres and outreach workers ensure that pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and infants get dietary supplements.

The problem starts thereafter, especially in vulnerable pockets like the plantations. “You will see that usually a child gets malnourished after the period of exclusive breastfeeding period of the first six months,” de Silva said.

Poor feeding practices, such as giving the child food with inadequate energy density, following myths and practices that deny the baby certain foods, especially animal products, and lack of variety in the diet are to blame, de Silva said.

Poverty and low levels of awareness can combine to create a vicious cycle of intergenerational malnutrition, she said.

“If a low birth weight child does not receive adequate nutrition the child’s growth potential is not reached and when the girl child is underweight her body is not able to produce a good weight baby,” World Bank’s Navaratane said.

There are ongoing interventions that are being fine-tuned to target these vulnerable pockets, de Silva said.

The National Nutrition Council headed by the president has in fact launched pilot projects to fight malnutrition by adopting an integrated approach to health and other vital sectors like agriculture and education.

Such steps are expected to help Sri Lanka achieve the fourth United Nations millennium development goal of reducing the under-five mortality by 2015 to 12 per 1,000 live births and the infant mortality rate to 12.8 per 1,000 live births.

Experts like de Silva and Navaratane agree that the best option is to target those communities identified as vulnerable.

Even a year after Rani, a three-year-old tribal girl in the backward Wayanad district of southern Kerala state, was treated in a government hospital for gastroenteritis she remains grossly underweight and suffers from frequent bouts of diarrhoea.

Rani is one of millions of children in India who are victims of a faulty and neglectful public healthcare system that is proving to be an obstacle to human development in this rapidly growing economy of 1.1 billion people.

Earlier this month Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called malnutrition “a national shame” while releasing the report of a survey conducted by a coalition of non-government organisations (NGOs) that found 42 percent of Indian children below five underweight.

The report, called ‘Hungama’ (short for hunger and malnutrition and meaning uproar in the Hindi language), was based on a survey of 73,000 households across nine states.

Singh lamented that “despite impressive growth in our GDP, the level of under-nutrition in the country is unacceptably high.” He urged planners to “understand the linkages between education, health, sanitation, hygiene, drinking water and nutrition.”

Dr. R. Jayaprakash, associate professor of paediatrics at the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, told IPS that child malnutrition is mostly the result of poverty and inappropriate feeding practices.

“Malnutrition cases are visible in both urban and rural areas and cut across social strata. If we do not make a concerted effort to tackle malnutrition, India will miss a key Millennium Development Goal (MDG) – that of halving malnutrition levels by 2015,” said Jayaprakash.

Studies conducted by the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) in Hyderabad show that 45 percent of children in rural areas are underweight and that 49.6 percent of them show evidence of stunted growth.

Dr. A. Laxmaiah, deputy director at NIN, told IPS that besides poverty and faulty infant and child feeding practices, ignorance is an important factor contributing to the high malnutrition rate. “Nutritional illiteracy is seen even among educated people.”

A World Bank Report released mid-2011, ‘Undernourished children – a call for reform and action’, estimated that some 60 million children were underweight in India. The report also said 50 percent of India’s 1.1 billion people live on less than 1.25 dollars a day.

The United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) in New Delhi says India can easily tackle malnutrition. “As a food surplus and grain exporting nation, India can and must address malnutrition, which is caused by structural neglect and systematic failure, with resolute government and alternative interventions.”

The 2011 MDG report of the U.N. highlights the point that any real progress towards meeting the millennium goals must address the situation of the poorest and most marginalised sections. In India, this refers mostly to dalit (low caste) and tribal children.

National family health surveys conducted over the last 15 years by the government have shown under- nutrition rates to be highest among dalits and tribal children and constant at 55 percent.

Dr. Sivakumar, a Pondicherry-based social activist who works to improve the health of tribal children, told IPS that poor sanitation, lack of safe drinking water, inadequate healthcare facilities, vector-borne diseases and social barriers are among reasons for the higher prevalence of malnutrition in tribal areas.

Dalits and tribal people together make up about 25 percent of India’s population.

The government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme launched in 1975 is yet to make a dent in child malnutrition. Consequently, the Bank in its 2011 report called for “urgent changes to bridge the gap between the policy intentions of ICDS and its actual implementation.”

Anjali Verma, an activist in the child healthcare sector in Mumbai, told IPS that developing care-giving in communities has proven to be cost effective in fighting child malnutrition, but requires substantial investments at the grassroots level.

“Funds for child welfare schemes are being misused by some state governments in northern India. Any kind of misuse of nutritional schemes will affect achievement of MDGs,” she said.

The National Food Security Bill, which is expected to be passed by parliament this year, seeks to provide specific entitlements for pregnant and lactating women and children below the age of six.