Africa

Former Ghana captain Asamoah Gyan must pay compensation to his ex-wife after a court ruled on their divorce case.

A five-year-old boy holds up his cat amidst the wreckage of his home in Gaza. Credit: UNICEF/Mohammad Ajjour

By Lana Nusseibeh
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 1 2023 (IPS)

Thank you for your presence here with us in New York, and for the special dedication that Brazil has given to peace in our region.

I also pay special tribute to our briefers, and to their teams’ dedicated work in the most unimaginable circumstances on the ground in the Gaza Strip.

Commissioner-General Lazzarini, I was very shaken by your recent words to your staff over the weekend, in which you said, “I am constantly hoping that this hell on earth will soon come to an end.” I want to extend the UAE’s deep condolences for the 64 UNRWA workers killed in this war.

They paid the ultimate sacrifice for the lifesaving work the United Nations does every day around the world, and we have failed to protect them.

Last Friday, 121 countries – representing an overwhelming majority of the world – issued an unambiguous call for an immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce in Gaza.

They stood up for the humanitarian imperative, for human rights, for international law, and most importantly, for the self-evident truth that Palestinian life is precious, equal, and deserving of the full protection of the law.

We have heard many say that the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza are not Hamas, that this is not a war against them. And while these are welcome words, it is time that action reflected them.

The more than 8,000 people that have been killed in Gaza, and as we heard today, 70 percent of whom were women and children, were surely not all Hamas.

Nearly 1,000 children are missing and may be trapped or dead under the rubble. They are not Hamas. Will we help them?

The number of Palestinian children killed in just three weeks of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza exceeds the total number of children killed in conflicts worldwide in each of the last four years.

As Ms. Russell has so eloquently said, that should stain our moral conscience, if nothing else does. Children do deserve our special protection, and are entitled to it today. If we lean on the General Assembly’s moral authority in other settings, we must also respect it in this one.

Indeed, members of this Council have repeatedly expressed their concerns about the fraying of the international order. This Council ignoring the expressed will of the majority of the world may be what breaks it.

Colleagues, we need a ceasefire now. As Foreign Minister Vieira said, we need to ensure that safe, sustained, and at scale humanitarian aid reaches Gaza, now. And that access to electricity, clean water, and fuel is restored now.

The shutdown of cellular and internet services over the weekend as part of the offensive meant that wounded civilians were searching for help in the dark. As we have heard today, there have been 76 attacks on healthcare, including 20 hospitals and clinics damaged or destroyed. More than 650,000 people are sheltering in UNRWA facilities.

Let me be absolutely clear on this point: these sites are protected by international humanitarian law. Announcements that they are targets or warnings for them to evacuate do not, I repeat, do not alter their protected status. We need to see the rescission of dangerous unrealistic evacuation orders.

On Saturday, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported warnings from Israel to immediately evacuate al-Quds Hospital which hosts hundreds of patients, including new-born babies in incubators.

Around 12,000 civilians are also seeking refuge there right now as we sit here in this chamber in New York speaking to each other again and again, and debating the language of our humanitarian resolution and response.

An evacuation order in these conditions is cruel. It is reckless. And so is our delay as a Security Council. All of Gaza’s civilian population is at risk by the escalating hostilities, as are the Israeli and international hostages taken by Hamas. Wrongly taken by Hamas.

While our eyes have been trained on Gaza, the occupied West Bank has not been spared from violence either. Israeli settlers are escalating their attacks against Palestinian civilians, and forcing their displacement. These attacks must be prevented by the State of Israel.

Across the region, there have been several credible warnings of a wider escalation. The drums of war are beating.

Colleagues, taking these warnings seriously begins with stopping this war in Gaza. We do not serve Israel’s security by enabling it to go on. We cannot reverse the heinous October 7th attacks by condoning this war in which civilians are paying the price.

Ignoring what could happen day after day, will have devastating consequences, not only for Israelis and Palestinians, but for the prospects of peace and stability in our region.

As we work on responding to the General Assembly’s clear call on this body to live up to its responsibilities under the UN Charter, we should also keep in mind, always, the dying words of the dead so that their memories are a blessing to us.

I’d like to speak today of an Arab poet, Heba Abu Nada, a Palestinian woman killed in Khan Yunis several days ago.

“My friend circle diminishes, turning into little coffins scattered everywhere. As missiles launch, I can’t grasp the fleeting moments with my friends. These aren’t just names, they are reflections of us, each with a unique face and identity.”

Colleagues, we may have failed the dead, but we must channel our sorrow into saving the living. The time to reverse course is running out. What we, and 121 countries, are advocating for may be the harder road, but history warns us of the consequences of not taking it.

Lana Nusseibeh is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the United Nations.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

In an address to the UN Security Council

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 1 2023 (IPS)

Governments the world over are worried about investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules. These allow foreign investors to sue them for billions over new laws or policies reducing their profits.

Typically favouring powerful transnational corporations (TNCs), ISDS blocks policy changes needed to address new challenges. Companies have successfully sued governments for policy changes which allegedly reduce their profits.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The wicked of Oz
Tobacco giant Philip Morris tried to block the Australian government’s demand for ‘plain packaging’, with larger and more graphic health warnings on cigarette packs, by suing under ISDS and also in Australian courts. In the domestic case, Australia’s highest court ruled the legislation constitutional.

The company then transferred Philip Morris Australia to Philip Morris Asia in Hong Kong. Invoking ISDS in the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) between Australia and Hong Kong, it sued Australia. Luckily, the ISDS tribunal ruled it had no jurisdiction as considering the case would constitute an abuse of process.

More recently, Australian Clive Palmer has hired a former Attorney-General to demand nearly A$341 billion from state governments after moving his major mining companies to Singapore in 2019. His two ISDS claims invoke the Australia-New Zealand-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (ANZAFTA).

The first seeks about A$300 billion in compensation and for ‘moral damages’ after Australia’s highest court ruled in favour of the Western Australian (WA) state government. Palmer is challenging the 2022 WA legislation to indemnify the state, ensuring he would get nothing.

He is also demanding A$41.3 billion in compensation for rejecting exploration permits for the Waratah coal mine in Queensland. The licence was refused on environmental grounds, including increasing carbon emissions.

Palmer is expected to take a third ISDS case against Australia’s Federal and Queensland government decisions to reject his coal mine licence application due to its likely adverse impacts on the local environment, including waterways, and the Great Barrier Reef.

Even if the governments win these cases, they would still incur millions in legal expenses. The Philip Morris cases against Australia took five years, and cost A$24 million in legal expenses, of which only half was recovered by the government.

Evading ISDS?
After such costly experiences, almost a decade ago, Australia successfully demanded a ‘tobacco carve-out’ to the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) ISDS provisions.

Australia’s new Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040, announced on 6 September 2023, promises to review existing free trade agreements (FTAs) with the region. This will include agreements containing ISDS clauses, including the ANZAFTA and other bilateral and plurilateral agreements.

Using side-letters, Australia has already opted out of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) ISDS provisions with both the UK and New Zealand.

In an ISDS case, the World Bank Group’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes ruled Pakistan had to pay over US$5.8 billion to an aggrieved investor. This is equivalent to its entire US$6 billion new IMF loan, about an eighth of its annual budget.

Other ISDS second thoughts
The New Zealand government is now also against ISDS. While ISDS is part of several of its FTAs – e.g., the CPTPP and China-New Zealand FTA – its government has opposed ISDS provisions in FTA negotiations since 2018.

Hence, there is no ISDS in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the New Zealand-United Kingdom FTA, and the New Zealand-European Union FTA.

While it was considered too late to exclude ISDS entirely from the CPTPP at a late stage in negotiations, New Zealand has secured side letters with Australia, Brunei, Malaysia, Peru and Viet Nam. This means ISDS does not apply between New Zealand and these countries.

The current Chilean government is also concerned about ISDS. Hence, it has asked all other CPTPP governments for side-letters excluding ISDS between them, but only New Zealand has agreed so far!

Rich nations wary of ISDS
The US removed most ISDS provisions when the Trump administration replaced the old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2020.

ISDS was in the TPP because Obama administration negotiators wanted it. But most 2016 presidential aspirants to succeed him, including Democrats, rejected the TPP. Trump’s US Trade Representative (USTR) Lighthizer specifically cited ISDS as the reason for US withdrawal from the TPP.

Biden and his USTR have maintained Trump’s anti-ISDS stance instead of reverting to Obama’s position. ISDS is not in Biden Administration ‘economic cooperation’ agreements such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.

Meanwhile, the EU is urging withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) as its ISDS provisions will block needed European climate policies. Several EU and non-EU countries have already begun withdrawing from the ECT, arguing it constrains their ability to act against global warming.

Developing countries saying no
Many developing countries have already been withdrawing from their BITs while the RCEP does not include ISDS. So, the CPTPP, other BITs and FTAs’ ISDS provisions are out of date. Worse, they block addressing emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and global warming.

Countries should reject and even withdraw from BITs and FTAs with ISDS. After all, there is no evidence ISDS attracts foreign direct investment. More and more developing nations – including India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Ecuador, South Africa, etc. – have already withdrawn from such BITs.

Governments should urgently review and remove ISDS provisions in all existing BITs and FTAs, or withdraw from them, to avoid more costly ISDS cases. They must be more critical and careful in ensuring future economic cooperation agreements to ensure they really serve their current and future best interests.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Creativity pioneers in Milan, group Photo. Credit: Luca Dimoon/Moleskine Foundation

By Elena L. Pasquini
MILAN, Italy, Oct 31 2023 (IPS)

It all fits into an off-road vehicle that can reach even the most remote parts of Southern Africa to bring cinema where the essentials are lacking, where there’s no electricity to power a projector, and where perhaps no one has ever sat in front of a screen to watch a movie. With just the sun and a solar panel, a theater can be set up in areas where people struggle to access food and water and make a decent living. But what it truly requires is the courage to not view creativity as a luxury. Sydelle and Rowand, the founders of Sunshine Cinema, a network of mobile movie theaters, are not just entertaining people; they are crossing a bridge.

Crossing a bridge. That’s what creativity leaders do, according to Lwando Xaso. She is a lawyer, writer, and storyteller from South Africa, and in mid-October, she was in Milan moderating a panel that posed a challenging question: “Can creativity change the world?” She was present at “A Creativity Revival,” an “un-conference” whose participants shape the agenda and content. They are the “Creativity Pioneers,” women and men whose work is supported by a fund from the Moleskine Foundation and who had gathered in Italy from various corners of the world. Much like Rowand and Sydelle, they answered that challenging question with a resounding “yes.” “Creativity is not just something cute. It’s not just something nice. But creativity is something relevant. That is the key element nowadays to transform society for the better,” said Adama Sanneh, CEO of the Moleskine Foundation.

Adama Sanneh, CEO of Moleskine Foundation. Credit: Luca Dimoon/Moleskine Foundation

Crossing a bridge. That’s what South Africa is doing as well. “Our starting point is a place of violence. We come from a history of inequality, injustice, indignity, and oppression … We are moving across the bridge towards freedom, human dignity, equality, and justice. We’re moving away from trauma toward healing,” Xaso said. The tool her country is employing is its democratic Constitution, its “transformative constitutionalism.” But how does creativity relate to this transformation?

According to “Assessing the Impact of Culture and Creativity in Society,” a course and publication from the Impact Research Center of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, one of the most significant challenges in effecting social change is changing people’s behavior. Or, perhaps, their “hearts,” as Xaso emphasized. “A revolution can change regimes, but for transformation, we need to change hearts.” Xaso also explained: “Creativity and art were instruments of liberation. At the core of the anti-apartheid movement lay creativity. The majority of the country was never going to win the war against the apartheid government with arms alone … It was never going to happen. So, what are the other tools that can change the world? There was music. There was poetry. The ANC built a culture and a department for culture because they saw it as an instrument that can liberate the country …Art and justice reinforce each other.”

Rowand Roydon Pybus is also in Milan, sharing his experiences in crossing bridges. His tool is a network of solar-powered theaters that screen films made in Africa for those who lack access or cannot afford it. These films spark conversations on critical issues such as land rights and gender rights, thereby fostering change. They shed light on often-overlooked subjects. It’s not about just screening; Sunshine Cinema engages young people and train them as facilitators for these discussions. They use a vast collection of African movies to address vital questions in hyper-local environments, where the impact is most significant.

Moments of the conference “A creativity revival”. Credit: Luca Dimoon/Moleskine Foundation

However, assessing the scale of creativity’s social impact remains a challenge. As Eva Langerak writes in Erasmus University’s magazine, “The assumption that the cultural and creative sector adds substantial value to society is widely debated, and the discussion on how that value takes shape is quite controversial.” The social impact of arts, culture, and creativity can be defined as “those effects that go beyond the artifacts and the enactment of the event or performance itself and have a continuing influence on people’s lives.” This definition draws from the 1993 multi-authored work “The Social Impact of the Arts: A Discussion Document.” Measuring the social impact of creativity is not a straightforward task, but the significance of the cultural dimension has been recognized to the extent that participation in cultural life is considered a human right, as outlined in Article 27 of the Universal Declaration. This participation is crucial as it underpins ‘the ability to represent oneself and exercise other rights, including freedom of expression.’

Representing oneself is closely tied to identity, which is one of the questions that “creative pioneers” in Palestine are addressing through the “Wonder Cabinet,” a project in Bethlehem. Designed by architects Elias and Yousef Anastas, the Wonder Cabinet is a space for creative communities to come together and establish a safe place for Palestinian voices to express themselves, not only with regard to creative fields but also to share, learn, and gain exposure to different experiences. As Ilaria Speri, managing director, explained, “It brings together communities that have been physically separated over decades of occupation, with 65% of the West Bank under military rule, including checkpoints and segregated roads with different access permits.” This space offers the Palestinian community machinery, tools, knowledge, and an opportunity for reflection on identity and self-representation, thereby ensuring that the regional and local versions of their story are heard.

Art and creativity have a profound impact on society, encouraging critical thinking and prompting individuals to question their own experiences as well as those of others. This perspective is championed by authors such as François Matarasso, an artist, writer, and policy advisor, as well as Pascal Gielen. These insights hold particular significance in regions affected by conflict and warfare. In the words of Olena Rosstalna, the founder and manager of the Youth Drama Theater “Ama Tea” in Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine near the Russian border, the impact of art transcends the physical battlefronts. She observed, “It’s not just the war on the land; it’s also the war in the minds and for the minds, because the propaganda is very big. Brainwashing has persisted for decades.” Countering propaganda is among Ama Tea’s actions devoted to engaging the youth. Olena explained the genesis of their project: “We conceived this project in the early days of April or late March 2022, when the full-scale invasion by the Russian Federation happened. We were in a bomb shelter, thinking about what we could do to help in this dire situation.” Teaching critical thinking through a “fresh perspective” on art and literature has been a central focus for her team: “We manage to show the cases of propaganda not only in Ukrainian history, but in European history, in Polish, in Germany, [and] also taken in the context of World War Two,” she said. Olena’s work is geared primarily toward the youth. She stressed the importance of nurturing “the small seeds of creativity, conscientiousness, and responsibility” in the young generation, firmly believing that by doing so, they can secure a future for their country.

Olena describes herself as a “very small fish in a very big ocean,” yet she believes that everything starts from the ground up. “That’s why I’m deeply involved in grassroots initiatives in my work. Supporting local initiatives worldwide is crucial. It all begins with small steps and grassroots efforts. If we have a world of pioneers, one by one, all these initiatives will flourish into a beautiful garden,” she said. Communities often play a pivotal role in propelling social change. Community-led art projects, unite people to brainstorm solutions for local issues, according scholars. Solutions even where it seems impossible – that’s the essence of creativity, as Adama Sanneh eloquently wrote in Folios, the Moleskine Foundation’s periodical: “Revealing and exploring what is possible in seemingly impossible contexts. It’s about radical imagination and enlightenment during times of ignorance and resignation”.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Without land rights, women cannot make the necessary decisions to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Oct 31 2023 (IPS)

Although women account for more than three-quarters of the agricultural labour force and manage 40 percent of small-scale farms, historically, they neither owned nor controlled the land because land rights were passed down to male relatives. It is a historic gender injustice whereby women could only access land through close male relatives.

But as the vagaries of drought wreak havoc in the agricultural sector due to more failed rainfall seasons – with 2022 alone showing signs of a serious hydrological and ecological drought – gender and climate experts, such as Grace Gakii, tell IPS that women’s decision-making powers are much needed to ensure that extreme weather patterns do not paralyse the agricultural sector.

“The agriculture sector is the backbone of Kenya’s economy. It accounts for an estimated 33 percent of the country’s GDP and employs at least 40 percent of its population and 70 percent of the rural population. Without land rights, women cannot make the necessary decisions to either adapt or mitigate climate change,” she says.

“In mitigation, they cannot, for instance, decide if and when trees are planted. In adaptation, they have no say in, for instance, shifting to more climate-resilient crops. We have no shortage of indigenous seeds to help us navigate the rainfall deficit we are increasingly experiencing. But women have historically been denied the power to make these decisions even though it is women who provide the day-to-day farm labour.”

The revolutionary SACCO scheme is increasingly putting land rights in the hands of women and enabling them to access much-needed tools to build climate-resilient farming systems. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

The agriculture sector is the backbone of Kenya’s economy. It accounts for an estimated 33 percent of the country’s GDP. Women play a critical role in the sector. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

The agriculture sector employs at least 40 percent of the country’s population and 70 percent of the rural population. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Serah Nyokabi says the revolutionary Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCO) is increasingly putting land rights in the hands of women and facilitating access to the tools needed to build climate-resilient farming and food systems.

“I am a member of Afya SACCO. We save and take loans at a low interest. I use the loans to hire land in Central Kenya for farming and buy items such as seeds, fertilizer and even water. We rely on rainfall, and these days you cannot tell when it will rain, and even when it rains, it is often not enough. I also hire people to help me around the farm because I am a full-time teacher. SACCOs also buy large pieces of land, subdivide, and sell to members. I bought a piece of land this way, and they allow you to pay in small amounts over a six-month period,” she tells IPS.

SACCOs are a cash pooling scheme by a group of people to save and borrow low-interest loans amongst themselves. Kenya’s SACCO sector is popular and on an upward trajectory. Recent reports show that accumulated total deposits of savings grew from USD 3.8 billion in 2021 to USD 4.2 billion in 2022 (Ksh 564.89 billion to Ksh 629.45 billion)– representing a 9.84 percent increase. In 2021, the total membership of regulated SACCOs was 5.99 million members compared to 6.42 million members in 2022, and this represented an increase of 7.02 percent.

Gakii says that regulated SACCOs represent about half of all SACCOs in Kenya, as many others are unregulated. She says there are at least 22,000 SACCOs and more than 14 million members overall in this East African nation, transacting billions every year amongst themselves. Some SACCOs, such as Afya SACCO, have thousands of members and others less than 100 members.

Others, such as the well-known Muungano (cooperative) Women’s Group, own prime land and a fully occupied commercial high-rise building in Ongata Rongai on the outskirts of Nairobi, have an all-female membership, and many others, such as Afya SACCO have both men and women as members. Muungano Women’s Group raises about USD 40,000 in rent per month from the Ongata Rongai commercial building, which is fully occupied, and members have also purchased prime land of their own.

“SACCOs are very important to women. They were shunned by banks because the profile of a Kenyan woman was too risky. The percentage of women in gainful employment was very low because many worked for their husbands or fathers in the informal settlements. Due to our customary laws that favour men over women, women did not own property or any assets and therefore lacked the collateral needed to take out bank loans. In fact, women could only open a bank account accompanied by a male relative, preferably her husband. SACCOs have helped women navigate these challenges as all they need is to save with a SACCO, produce three guarantors within the SACCO to take a loan or simply borrow against their own savings,” Gakii explains.

Although the percentage of women holding land title deeds is still very small, as only one percent of all land title deeds are in the hands of women alone and five percent held jointly with men, Gakii stresses that this is progress and is to be celebrated.

“We have another large category of women that hire land for commercial farming. This would not have been possible without the loans from schemes such as SACCOs,” she says.

Gakii says women need access and control over land to play a much-needed role in the five pillars of climate resilience, including threshold capacity, coping capacity, recovery capacity, adaptive capacity, and transformative capacity.

“I taught agriculture in secondary schools for many years, and during that time, I had access to the small farm at the school for practical sessions, but back home, I could only execute the instructions from my husband. He was an accountant, and I was essentially the farmer, but he made all the decisions. Women interact with the soil on a day-to-day basis, but they cannot make decisions about how to best address the climate crisis. The result is a serious food crisis. We have large tracks of fertile lands, but here we are with a begging bowl,” Nyokabi observes.

“We started by experiencing floods and droughts in close succession. In 2018, we had two extremes in one season, whereby March, April and May were very rainy, followed by a very dry season in October, November, and December. Last month we were repeatedly warned to prepare for El Niño in the October-November-December season, but now we have been told that there will be no El Niño. In fact, there is no rain at all, and yet we are in the short rain season where we plant in October and harvest in December-January. The person who is more likely to note these changes and see a pattern is the one who is doing the day-to-day farming activities, and so the role of women in building resilient farming systems cannot be ignored.”

With an estimated 98 percent of agriculture in Kenya being rainfed and as climate change becomes a most pressing issue as a result of cumulative rainfall deficits over many years, the role of women in building climate resilience cannot be overemphasized, as is the need for interventions that can facilitate women’s access to land rights and much-needed farm inputs.

Kenya: Agriculture by Numbers

Women in Agriculture

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Excluded by inheritance and ignored by big business, women farmers in Kenya are turning to innovative methods to become independent food producers and get the financial backing to ensure their success. Creating resilience is crucial to adapting to climate change and ensuring climate justice.
 

The record-breaking team were met at the airport in Johannesburg by a huge, rapturous crowd.

A rival presidential hopeful said Moïse Katumbi was not eligible to run on the grounds of nationality.

Uganda, Gabon, Niger and the CAR are accused of violating rights or not making democratic progress.

Aradhiya Khan, 25, a transwoman, got her vaccination in the middle of the night in July 2021, when the centre was less crowded, and stood in the women's line as there was none for her gender.

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Oct 31 2023 (IPS)

After months of warding off appeals from his employers to get vaccinated for the COVID-19 disease, Mohammad Yusuf, 24, working as a live-in domestic worker in Karachi’s Clifton area, finally relented and got his first shot.

“I believed that anyone who took the vaccine would die within two years,” he told IPS. He said he got this information from social media.

The people who finally convinced him were his parents living in the village of Rahil, in Sindh’s province of Umerkot district, where, according to Yusuf, “not a single case of COVID-19 has to date been found.” But because Karachi was rife with the virus then, his parents explained that he might catch the infection if he remained unvaccinated.

The other reason for his hesitancy was the fear that if he got COVID-19 and was hospitalized, he may die without saying goodbye to his family and be buried unceremoniously by strangers. “You either got well within ten days, or you’d die a very difficult and painful death with breathlessness, high fever, and then death,” is how he explained the disease and its symptoms.

Rakhi Matan, 40, a caretaker for the elderly, had heard, “If someone got COVID-19, the government would come and pick them up from their home and take them to a center, inject poison into you after which you died”. It was this fear that got her to vaccinate herself. But since the shot, she often falls sick and attributes it to the vaccine.

The country began its COVID-19 vaccination campaign first by inoculating health workers on February 2, 2021, a year after the first case was reported in February 2020. This was followed closely by senior citizens and gradually to everyone over 18 years of age.

According to data from the Ministry of National Health Services Regulations and Coordination (MoNHSR&C), by March 2022, of the total eligible population of a little over 143 million, more than 125 million had received their first jab.

Dr Rana Imran Sikander, executive director at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences and who was then heading the COVID-19 ward there, was the first person in Pakistan to receive the shot from the batch of 500,000 Sinopharm vaccines received from China.

It was also the time when “myths and conspiracies abounded,” leading to hesitancy and fear of side effects. The more far-fetched conspiracy theories circulating in his hospital included ‘Bill Gates wants to reduce the world’s population,’ ‘the United States is injecting microchips into humans to make them their slaves,’ ‘Gates wants to alter their DNA.’

“Seeing me well and alive gave a huge boost to my co-workers,” said Sikander, who luckily has not caught COVID-19 even once. It could also be because he had also volunteered a dose six months prior to the official shot for the vaccine trial, he said.

Gallup Pakistan carried out 13 surveys (from March 2020 to January 2022) to understand people’s attitudes towards the pandemic. It also recorded the change in their perception towards the disease and the vaccine over a two-year period.

“The most alarming finding was that for close to 60 percent of health professionals, social media was a key source of information, and as high as one in five doctors were not willing to take the vaccine,” Bilal I. Gilani, executive director at Gallup Pakistan, told IPS. A consistent perception among Pakistanis in general, during all these months, he said, was “that COVID-19 was a foreign conspiracy.”

Like epidemiologists study viruses and find solutions on how to control the spread of diseases, anthropologist Dr Heidi Larson studies misinformation and tries to contain it before it spreads like wildfire. She is, therefore, not surprised as to why Sikander’s colleagues were “hesitant or losing confidence in vaccines.”

She has been studying the trend of how rumors start, flourish, and then taper, for 13 years under her Vaccine Confidence Project that she started in 2010.

At a recent Global Media Dialogue, held earlier this month, organized by the Internews, Larson spoke to a group of journalists about how important it was for health workers and policymakers to “listen” to what people are saying and why and “even listen to the rumors,” and they will “reveal that they [people] are not being heard”.

“That’s the cue to address the rumors,” she said. Already the findings say there is a drop in confidence around basic childhood vaccines, which she finds “pretty significant” and worrying as “we’ve never seen such a drop,” she said.

But how did the Pakistan government manage to get 130 million (above the age of 15) of the 250 million Pakistanis vaccinated for at least two doses in two years (by May 2022) after the pandemic? Given that the polio virus has continued to be found in Pakistan with communities refusing to get their children administered the oral vaccine, there was a fear among government officials it may face the same challenge with the COVID-19 vaccine.

Looking back to the two years of the pandemic, when he was the federal minister for planning and headed the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) that had been set up to plan and contain the pandemic, Asad Umar said the two most important ingredients — “transparency and sharing of real-time data with the media when COVID-19 struck” was how they managed to dispel misinformation.

“By the time we were ready to vaccinate the people, the media had become our allies and played a huge role in supporting us in fighting misinformation and even disinformation.”

The other reason was that “for a change, all political parties were on board, and there was across-the-board consensus and confidence on the decisions made by the NCOC,” he said. The center disbanded as quickly as it was formed. “It’s a good model and needs to be institutionalized if we are to fight any future catastrophes, natural or health,” said Umar.

In July 2021, 76 percent of Pakistanis claimed that the government was controlling the COVID-19 situation well, according to a Gallup survey, although it diminished to just 41 percent by 2022.

It was “the oneness of message and consistency, coupled with an efficient vaccine delivery, which helped fight vaccine hesitancy,” said Dr Zaeem Ul Haq, a health and risk communication (real-time exchange of information, advice and opinions between experts and people who face a health hazard) expert who led communication and community engagement part of Pakistan’s response to the pandemic.

But to understand how the country succeeded in vaccinating millions of people, Haq said it was important to differentiate between vaccine-resistant (due to vested interests and political or religious beliefs difficult to convert) and vaccine-hesitant (if their questions around vaccines are appropriately answered can be converted) groups to be able to continue fighting misinformation. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, he said, these terms were used interchangeably and erroneously by the Pakistani media, which must be avoided, especially in the case of childhood immunization.

He shared that with simple and consistent messaging, combined with an age-appropriate, systematic administration of a vaccine, this reason-specific hesitancy declined in subsequent surveys.”

Dr Zafar Mirza, former special advisor to the prime minister for health, the government’s use of innovative approaches helped reach diverse and underserved populations.

“We put out pro-vaccination messages replacing the ringtones for nearly 150 million mobile phones, which made a huge impact,” he said. The Gallup survey found that by 2022, 84 percent of adult Pakistanis with mobile phone access had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Another task carried out successfully was by the brigade of female community health workers and vaccinators, who convinced people to get vaccinated.

“Through the over 8,000 vaccinators and health workers and 300,000 community leaders, we managed to reach a population of 35 million in the remotest parts of Pakistan,” said Mirza.

A toll-free helpline, the Sehat Tahaffuz-1166, launched just before the pandemic in November 2019 to provide guidance for polio and its vaccine, was used to disseminate information about COVID-19.

“At one point, we had 500 call agents and 30 doctors daily assuaging the apprehensions and concerns about the infection and later the vaccine itself,” Mirza told IPS. From approximately 300 calls per day in 2019, it reached to 25,000, although the agents have attended as many as 70,000 calls in a day, too, he added.

For its part, UNICEF helped the government in battling vaccine hesitancy on social media platforms. “Through regular static posts and short videos, we communicated verified information about the vaccine’s efficacy. We posted messages from doctors, religious leaders, youth representatives, celebrities, community leaders, and even vaccinated individuals on our social media accounts,” UNICEF’s communications specialist, A. Sami Malik, told IPS. In addition, it regularly organized live interactive sessions on FB, Twitter Space, and Instagram, with experts providing responses to people’s questions and concerns.

This is not the last of the pandemics. Scientists are already warning of the possibility of a COVID-19-like pandemic at the scale of 2.5 percent to 3.3 percent yearly and 47 percent to 57 percent in the next 25 years. While vaccine hesitancy may have lowered, it has not ended after the pandemic. In fact, it gets fueled every time there is a reemergence of measles and polio in Pakistan. While vaccines must be delivered to the public in a coherent and effective manner to ensure public confidence in them, it will pay dividends if, as Dr Larson says, countries in general and Pakistan in particular, can recognize “the importance of emotions in people’s decision-making and in their willingness to cooperate.”

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Air strikes continue in Gaza. Credit: World Health Organization (WHO)

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Oct 31 2023 (IPS)

For three weeks, President Biden has played a key role in backing Israel’s war crimes while touting himself as a compassionate advocate of restraint. That pretense is lethal nonsense as Israel persists with mass killing of civilians in Gaza.

The same crucial standards that fully condemned Hamas’s murders of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 should apply to Israel’s ongoing murders that have already taken the lives of at least several times as many Palestinian civilians. And Israel is just getting started.

“We need an immediate ceasefire,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote in an email Saturday evening, “but the White House and Congress continue to unconditionally support the Israeli government’s genocidal actions.”

That unconditional support makes Biden and the vast majority of Congress directly complicit with mass murder and genocide, defined as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” The definition clearly fits the words and deeds of Israel’s leaders.

“Israel has dropped approximately 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza so far and has reportedly killed multiple senior Hamas commanders, but the majority of the casualties have been women and children,” Time magazine summed up at the end of last week.

Israel’s military has been shamelessly slaughtering civilians in homes, stores, markets, mosques, refugee camps and healthcare facilities. Imagine what can be expected now that communications between Gaza and the outside world are even less possible.

For reporters, being on the ground in Gaza is very dangerous; Israel’s assault has already killed at least 29 journalists. For the Israeli government, the fewer journalists alive in Gaza the better; media reliance on Israeli handouts, news conferences and interviews is ideal.

Pro-Israel frames of reference and word choices are routine in U.S. mainstream media. Yet some exceptional reporting has shed light on the merciless cruelty of Israel’s actions in Gaza, where 2.2 million people live.

For example, on Oct. 28, PBS News Weekend provided a human reality check as Israel began a ground assault while stepping up its bombing of Gaza. “As Israeli ground operations intensified there, suddenly the phone and internet signal went out,” correspondent Leila Molana-Allen reported.

“So, people in Gaza, voiceless through the night as they were under these intense bombardments. People were unable to call ambulances, and we’ve heard this morning that ambulance drivers were standing at high points throughout, trying to see where the explosions were, so they could just drive directly there. People unable to communicate with their families to see if they’re alright. People this morning saying ‘we’ve been digging children out of the rubble with our bare hands because we can’t call for help.’”

While people in Gaza “are under some of the most intense bombardment we’ve ever seen,” Molana-Allen added, they have no safe place to go: “Even though they’re still being told to move to the south, in fact most people can’t get to the south because they have no fuel for their cars, they can’t travel, and even in the south bombardment continues.”

Meanwhile, Biden has continued to publicly express his unequivocal support for what Israel is doing. After he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, the White House issued a statement without the slightest mention of concern about what Israel’s bombing was inflicting on civilians.

Instead, the statement said, “the President reiterated that Israel has every right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism and to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law.”

Biden’s support for continuing the carnage in Gaza is matched by Congress. As Israel began its fourth week of terrorizing and killing, only 18 members of the House were on the list of lawmakers cosponsoring H.Res. 786, “Calling for an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” All of those 18 cosponsors are people of color.

While Israel kills large numbers of Palestinian civilians each day — and clearly intends to kill many thousands more — we can see “progressive” masks falling away from numerous members of Congress who remain cravenly frozen in political conformity.

“In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.”

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in summer 2023 by The New Press.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct 31 2023 (IPS)

In 1968, the tobacco company Philip Morris introduced a new cigarette brand called Virginia Slims. Under the slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby” it was exclusively marketed to women. The advertising campaign exploited the civil rights movements of the 1960s, indicating that those cigarettes were enjoyed by strong, independent, and liberated women. A blatant lie – why would “independent” women choose to poison themselves with a commodity which each year causes more than 480,000 deaths in the US alone – nearly one in five deaths? Another question arising from this deceitful ad is: “How far have women come on their way to independence and liberation?”

What is the global status of women today? Progress has been made, but this cannot fool us to believe that there is no difference to the plight of men and women. War is raging in Ukraine and Palestine, with all that this encompasses of human suffering and fake news. Israel and Hamas, Russia and Ukraine, are accusing each other of atrocities and for sure – abominable acts are committed by every warring faction. This is what happens in war – people are traumatized, mutilated, tortured, and killed. Nevertheless, the image of war we obtain from our daily news does in a way remind of tobacco ads. The crowning absurdity of war and cigarettes is ignored – they actually cause death and immense suffering. Crimes against humanity are presented as depending on which side perpetrators and victims find themselves, as well as their respective supporters, who generally are not suffering from the horrors of violence and displacement.

War is not healthy and it is far from normal. It makes people abnormal, and its fatal effects linger. Furthermore, war is affecting men and women in different ways. It is driving up domestic violence, as stress levels raise when traumatized men return to their families after long spells on the front lines, finding their domestic situation changed.

War veterans returning from Germany after World War I committed more crimes against women than ever before. The same happened after World War II in the US and the Soviet Union, a country where as late as 1959 there were still 20 million more women than men due to male casualties from war and repression. This is just one indication that war is extremely gendered. Police reports of domestic violence spiked in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many women and children fled the war and some of those who stayed behind bore the brunt of male frustration. Battered women confess: “With all due respect to our military, we may indeed find ourselves in a situation where a veteran returning from war will be respected and sympathized with to such an extent that such a minor offense as domestic violence may well be forgiven on all levels.” This occurs in Russia as well, and all over the world in countries suffering from armed conflicts. All levels of human interaction are affected by an unavoidable process of “militarization”, meaning that belligerent values become dominant, lingering long after armed aggression has ceased.

In modern warfare civilian casualties by far outnumber those of armed combatants. Defenceless civilians suffer human rights violations, while women are subjected to specific gender related abuses. Women and girls targeted by sexual violence often face insurmountable obstacles if they try to seek justice. Many suffer from social stigma, worsened by the fact that women and girls tend to have a disadvantaged social position . This despite the fact that women constitute the backbone of most communities. Their ideas, energy and involvement are crucial for maintaining resilience during conflicts, as well as they are important during the rebuilding of society in the aftermath of war. To ensure lasting peace, it is thus essential that women’s specific exposure to violence is recognized and that they are allowed to play an essential part at all stages of a peace process.

Combatting soldiers often find themselves surrounded by civilians who they consider to be their enemies, or even worse – inferior beings. It is quite common that soldiers are by their commanders’ eagerness to increase their fierceness are given licence to ignore normal boundaries of civil behaviour. Women might be perceived as upholding and embodying “enemy culture, and support”. Destroying the enemies’ domestic security and sense of cultural/ethnic belonging might become a military goal and violence against women thus becomes legitimized.

Attacks on women may sometimes focus on their role as mothers. During the Nazi regime’s ruthless extermination of Jews, Roma and Sinti, as well as several other ethnic groups, the elite troopers of SS considered their victims to be vermin “unworthy of life”. The leader of these ruthless exterminators, Heinrich Himmler, reminded them that not only grown-ups, but their children as well had to be killed: “Otherwise they will grow up and revenge themselves on their parents’ murderers”. Similar arguments have been used by other perpetrators of massacres on ethnic minority groups; killing children, destroying foetuses and mutilating women’s sexual organs to “eliminate guerrilla spawn”.

Young women and girls have been abducted and forced to become sex slaves, while children and youngsters have been forced to become “warriors”. Children are easier to influence and threaten than older people, who furthermore might be needed to supply troops and guerrillas through their agricultural work and other activities. China Keitetsi, a former child soldier from Uganda now living in Denmark, wrote in her book Child Soldier: “When I was nine years old, I came into the National Resistance Army. When I got there, there was not only me. There were many children. Some were only five years old. I thought at first it was exciting, it was like a game, they were marching left, right, and I wanted to be a part of it. The moment I became a part of it, that meant that all my rights were over, I had to think, to feel, according to my instructor.”

In more than 150 countries there are currently child soldiers within government and opposition armed forces and an estimated 30 percent are girls. China Keitetsi remembers :“We were bodyguards to our bosses, we cooked, and we looked after them, instead of them looking after us. We collected firewood, we carried weapons and for girls it was worse because we were girlfriends to many different officers. Today, I can’t think how many officers slept with me, and at the end it became like I don’t own my body, it’s their body. It was so hard to stay the 24 hours a day thinking which officer am I going to sleep with today.”

The widespread use of rape is common in any armed conflict. Rape is employed to intimidate, conquer and control women and all members of their communities. It is used as a form of torture to extract information, to punish and intimidate. Wartime rape is committed by a wide range of men. Even those mandated to protect civilians tend to sexually abuse women and girls under their care. Women may be targeted for rape not just because they are women, but also because of their social status, ethnic origin, religion or sexuality. In Rwanda, it is estimated that between a quarter and half a million rapes were committed during the 100 days of genocide between 7 April and 15 July 1994.

Rape is often accompanied by extreme brutality. Women and girls often die during the attack, or later of their wounds. This is particularly true of young girls. Other medical consequences include transmission of HIV and serious complications in reproductive health. Fear, nightmares and psychosomatic body pain are just some of the problems experienced by survivors. Sometimes women are raped in front of others, often family members, to deepen their sense of shame. Some rape survivors state they would rather die than let what has happened become public.

Widowhood and/or separation increase during armed conflicts and it is often women who have to flee and bring their children with them, since men and boys are targeted to be killed or forcefully recruited by warring factions. Homes are destroyed and entire families uprooted. The loss of the family home brings about specific problems for women, including rise in domestic violence, enormous practical and financial difficulties and a harmful dependency on strangers. Women and girls in flight may be forced to offer sex in return for safe passage, food, shelter and/or documentation. Government officials (such as immigration officials or border guards), smugglers, pirates, members of armed groups and male refugees have all been known to abuse refugee women in transit. Desperate women may be forced into illegal activities, putting them at risk for repercussions from authorities.

If homes have been destroyed and families evicted, women are particularly hard hit because of their responsibility for providing shelter and food for their families. Even in assumed “safe havens”, like refugee camps, women and girls are at risk of sexual exploitation by those who control access to food and supplies, and if they venture out of the camps to find water, food and fire wood, perpetrators may be lurking, ready to attack them.

A slogan like “You’ve come a long way, baby” is, to say the least, offensive to millions of women suffering hardship from war and displacement. The list of historical and current abuse and suffering of women in war is immense and constantly updated. Some examples:

During World War II women were by the Imperial Japanese Army forced into sexual slavery. Estimates vary with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000, to as high as 360,000 to 410,000 ( according to Chinese sources). In Europe, large numbers of women were during World War I “recruited” to “field brothels” by both warring factions and the practice was continued in the eastern territories occupied by the German army and its auxiliary forces. Even the horrific concentration camps were equipped with brothels.

During World War II, the eastern front was a veritable hell. German officers and soldiers were violating women and girls, while military commanders did not attempt to put an end to such atrocities. The Russian vengeance was horrible. The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million. During the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, Pakistani military and so called Razakar paramilitary raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls. There are no exact figures on how many women and children who were systematically raped by Serb forces in various concentration camps, estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000. In Eastern Congo, the prevalence and intensity of rape and other sexual violence is described as the worst in the world. A 2010 study found that 20 percent of men and 30 percent of women reported conflict-related sexual violence and the brutal bloodshed has not yet abated.

We may all agree that war is horrible and women and girls are suffering from its effects. However, we also have to admit that violence against women take such horrific proportions due to the fact that in most countries women are even in peacetime victims of misogyny, religious/traditional contempt and subjugation, unequal rights and a wide range of other types of discrimination. In war, injustices and mistreatment are multiplied many times over. One means to avoid the horrors of war would be to guarantee equal rights to women and men, ensuring that laws are enacted for that purpose, followed to the letter and that those who violate them are duly punished. Only then can women be said to have come a long way.

Main Sources: Keitetsi, China (2005) Child Soldier: Fighting for My Life. Johannesburg: Jacana Media. Lamb, Christina (2020) Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women. Glasgow: William Collins. Wiiliams, Jessie (2023) “’This War Made Him a Monster.’ Ukrainian Women Fear the Return of Their Partners”, Time, March 13.

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Brazilian women demonstrated in São Paulo on Sept. 28, International Safe Abortion Day, which began to be celebrated in Latin America. The activists are promoting the campaign "Neither imprisoned, nor dead" against the repression of women's right to abortion, which affects even young girls who are entitled to this right by law. CREDIT: Rovena Rosa / Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 31 2023 (IPS)

A total of 17,456 babies were born to girls aged 10 to 14 in Brazil in 2021. The annual figures are falling, but still reflect the plight of ruined childhoods and the failures of judges and doctors when it comes to the issue of abortion rights.

Data from the Information System on Live Births (Sinasc) of the Ministry of Health put the number of births to girls in this age group at 252,786 in the decade 2010-2019, compiled by the Feminist Health Network. That is an annual average of 25,278."This country does not take care of women. While cardiology has advanced a lot in Brazil, medicine dedicated to women, such as obstetrics and gynecology, remains stuck in the last century and resists updating. An example is the persistence of curettage, a practice abolished by the World Health Organization (WHO) more than 20 years ago." -- Helena Paro

This phenomenon has ceased to be invisible since 2020, when a string of scandals erupted involving girls prevented from having abortions by judges, hospitals and even authorities such as the then Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, during the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

In Brazil, abortion is legal in cases of rape, risk of death of the pregnant woman and anencephalic fetuses. It is also an unquestionable right of girls up to 14 years of age, since all of them are legally victims of rape and their abusers face sentences of eight to 15 years in prison.

But there were judges, even in the appeals courts, who ruled against the termination of pregnancy in girls as young as 10 or 11 years old.

At the base of this iniquity is the social criminalization of abortion, to which many religious people who identify “abortion as murder, as a repulsive crime” contribute, lamented Clara Wardi, technical advisor of the Feminist Studies and Advisory Center (Cfemea), based in Brasilia.

Religious morality infiltrates the State

“The stigma is strong, in the culture, in the family, even in schools. That is why girls are reluctant to choose abortion, even if it is legal. And to do it clandestinely is expensive and risky,” she told IPS from Petrópolis, the city near Rio de Janeiro where she lives.

Many doctors argue that they are “conscientious objectors” and refuse to carry out abortions, which forces the girls to go on a “pilgrimage” in search of respect for their rights in other hospitals and even in the courts.

In spite of everything, a Cfemea survey conducted since 2018 found a growing public opinion against the criminalization of abortion. To the question “Are you for or against the imprisonment of women who terminate their pregnancy?”, 59.3 percent said “against” in 2023, up from 51.8 percent in 2018.

Those in favor of imprisonment also increased, but less, from 26.7 percent to 28.1 percent, reflecting the ideological polarization during Bolsonaro’s administration, which caused the proportion of “undecideds”, those who answered “it depends on the circumstances”, to fall from 16.1 percent to 7.6 percent.

There are “institutional barriers” to legal abortion, an issue in which the State ceases to be secular by subordinating its services to religious morality. The most emblematic case is that of an 11-year-old girl pregnant for the second time in the northeastern state of Piauí, who in late 2022 was denied an abortion by a public hospital and by the justice system.

Taken to a public shelter, she gave birth to her second child in March 2023. In other words, the State acted to remove her from her family, deny her the legal abortion she demanded and force her to give birth, Wardi said.

Damares Alves, a radical evangelical Christian who was Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights (2019-2022) during the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, mobilized her officials to pressure young pregnant girls to desist from getting an abortion, which was legal in their case because they are recognized as victims of rape. CREDIT: Fabio Rodrigues-Pozzebom / Agência Brasil

 

Ignorance

All this occurs in the midst of “collective failures” of society itself, such as insufficient information on reproductive rights and the possibility of choice for women, especially girls. There is no choice without access to health services, she argued.

“The criminalization of abortion invalidates the legality of the three situations. It is necessary to get out the information that abortion is legal in Brazil and to train qualified personnel to offer the service, without the need for legal action to obtain access,” said Denise Mascarenha, executive coordinator of the group Catholics for Choice in Brazil.

The basic flaw is in the training of health workers, whether doctors, nurses or psychologists, who “do not recognize the violence involved in a pregnancy in girls under 14 years of age,” which has been present in the Penal Code all the way back to 1940, said Helena Paro, professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of Uberlândia.

Universities, she said, do not train doctors to take care of rape victims, but good teaching would not be enough, anyway, she added. There is a lack of experience in practical assistance to patients, with a focus on women’s human rights, said the physician specialized in gynecology and obstetrics.

In Brazil there are just over 60 medical centers offering legal abortion services – virtually nothing for a population of 203 million inhabitants in which women constitute a majority of 51.7 percent, she told IPS from Uberlândia, a city in the southern state of Minas Gerais.

Only about 2,000 legal abortions are performed each year in Brazil, where it is estimated that more than 400,000 illegal abortions are performed annually, resulting in many deaths as well as complications that overload hospitals.

 

Judge Rosa Weber seen passing her vote in defense of the decriminalization of abortion up to 12 weeks of gestation, in her last sessions as president of the Supreme Federal Court, before retiring on Oct. 2. CREDIT: Antonio Cruz / Agência Brasil

 

Medical care that discriminates against women

“This country does not take care of women. While cardiology has advanced a lot in Brazil, medicine dedicated to women, such as obstetrics and gynecology, remains stuck in the last century and resists updating. An example is the persistence of curettage, a practice abolished by the World Health Organization (WHO) more than 20 years ago,” Paro commented.

She coordinates the Uberlândia Comprehensive Care Center for Victims of Sexual Assault (Nuavidas), opened in 2017 at her university hospital. Since 2021, the center has been offering abortion-related services via telemedicine, following an initial face-to-face consultation.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the online assistance, also facilitated by the efficacy of the abortion drug misoprostol, approved by the WHO and Brazilian health authorities.

Paro’s activities led to an attempt to disqualify her by the Regional Council of Medicine of Minas Gerais, which accuses her of using her knowledge “to commit crimes” and not for the well-being of patients.

“It’s all upside down,” the physician replied, arguing that she cares for the health of patients “based on scientific evidence” that the Council denies.

The councils, one national and 27 regional (in each of the states), regulate medical practice in the country and several of them acted unscientifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, by approving, for example, the use of ineffective drugs such as chloroquine.

A conservative offensive in Congress threatens to further restrict the right to abortion in Brazil, contrary to what is happening in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay, which have decriminalized abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

A 2007 bill, called the Statute of the Fetus, gained renewed momentum last year in the lower house of Congress, at the initiative of ultra-conservative lawmakers. Its approval would prohibit any abortion, guaranteeing the fetus all the rights of a human being, especially the right to life, from the moment of conception.

Other measures to criminalize abortions even in the restricted circumstances currently permitted are under parliamentary discussion.

To counteract this conservative offensive, Brazilian women’s rights movements launched the campaigns for decriminalization “Neither imprisoned nor dead” and “Girls, not mothers”, the latter of which is being carried out throughout Latin America.

Feminists are also celebrating the ruling of Judge Rosa Weber, who recorded her vote in favor of decriminalizing abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy on Sept. 22, before leaving the presidency of the Supreme Federal Court and retiring 10 days later.

The highest court in the country, which has acted as a counterweight to the ultraconservative initiatives of the legislature and of the Bolsonaro administration, will ultimately decide whether to rule in favor of or against the legalization of abortion on any grounds up to 12 weeks.

Weber’s vote is in line with the demands of the feminist movement, especially with the strong, early contribution of black women, in advocating “reproductive justice as a tool for social transformations,” Wardi said.

“It is an important milestone in the fight for abortion rights in Brazil” and affirms “the legitimacy of the judiciary in ensuring women’s human rights,” Mascarenha said from São Paulo.

But the current circumstances are not very favorable to her argument, with a Congress dominated by conservative and ultra-conservative groups.

Also because the process within the Supreme Federal Court on the right to abortion is facing indefinite postponement since its new president, Luis Roberto Barroso, replaced Weber.

The British Empire brutally suppressed an uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. Its victims cannot forget.

The President said the rugby win should be seen as a sign of hope for the country.