News roundup

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LESOTHO


Has Lesotho bridged the gender gap?

Lesotho sits like pearl in a shell, surrounded by the land mass of South Africa. But this tiny kingdom of 1.8 million people boasts another jewel, which is perhaps astonishing given its size.

Lesotho is ranked eighth in the world by the World Economic Forum (WEF) when it comes to bridging the gap between the sexes.

The reasons are cultural, political and economic, but one explanation keeps being repeated when you probe the gender issue, and it relates to Lesotho's recent past.

Historically, large numbers of men from Lesotho crossed the border to work in South Africa's mines, forcing women to step into their shoes and take up school places and jobs.

Many of the men have now come back, having been retrenched from the mines, and they face a more female-focused world.

In politics, one in five government ministers in Lesotho is female.

Dr Mphu Ramatlapeng, Lesotho's minister for health and social affairs, attributes this to the government's pro-women policies.

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MOZAMBIQUE

MOZAMBIQUE Educator in the foothills of her political career

NAMPULA PROVINCE, Mozambique, Mar 21, 2011 (IPS) - If women like Judith Mussacula realise their aspirations to become the next generation of Mozambican politicians, the country's future will be in safe hands.

Give a book to a woman and you will educate an entire nation. This aphorism might have inspired women like Mussacula to choose the teaching career, in a country facing as many education challenges like Mozambique.

"My main objective as a teacher is to guarantee that more women have the opportunity to be in decision-making positions. I wish we had more female principals in our schools," she says.

Thirty-two-year-old Judith Emilia Leite Mussacula is the principal of the Nampula Secondary School in the northern Mozambican province of the same name. MORE

BOTSWANA

BOTSWANA: Women in Politics – A House Divided… But Determined

GABORONE, Mar 29 (IPS) – “The Botswana Caucus for Women in Politics has failed to realise the objectives it was intended for, but we will not give up on it just yet,” says Margaret Nasha.


The BCWP is a platform established to enable women from all political parties to converge and support each other in their attempts to make their mark in a male-dominated field.

When it was set up 15 years ago, its membership was initially restricted to women in parliament. Nasha, the first woman to serve as Speaker of Parliament in Botswana, explained that four years in, they realised that only women from the ruling Botswana Democratic Party were benefiting from it and they decided to open membership to any active woman member of a political party.

The caucus was established to offer political education to the women with ambitions to stand for political office.

“We ran loads of seminars on that before the women contested the primary elections, and later those who won would be empowered on how to campaign and make a mark in their different areas of interest,” she said.MORE

ECUADOR

ECUADOR Trees on Shaky Ground in Texaco’s Rainforest

The extent and impact of oil contamination on the environment and human health in northeastern Ecuador are much worse than anyone could imagine, as Tierramérica discovered during an extensive tour of the area.

This reporter travelled 400 kilometres of highways and roads in the northeastern provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana and visited six communities affected and 12 sites contaminated by the U.S. oil company Texaco during its oil exploration and production activities between 1964 and 1990.

The swamp with the moving trees was the "pool" filled with oil waste from the Yuca 9 well, one of 162 that Texaco claims to have cleaned up or "remediated" between 1995 and 1998.

These pools or pits, some of them as big as a football field, were used to dump mud and other waste produced by oil drilling, and even human faeces and garbage, since there were no sanitary landfills or wastewater treatment facilities built.MORE

EL SALVADOR-HONDURAS

EL SALVADOR-HONDURAS Forgotten People of the Border Pact

SAN SALVADOR, Mar 29, 2011 (IPS) - Salvadorans who were transferred to Honduran jurisdiction following an international court decision in 1992, which settled a long-running border dispute between the two countries, are still calling for implementation of social and economic development projects needed to conquer poverty.

"Unfortunately, the Honduran government is apathetic towards us. After fighting so hard for these territories, now it ignores us completely," Eleutorio Gómez, leader of the community of El Zancudo in Nahuaterique, whose 162 square kilometres make it the largest of the six territories that used to belong to El Salvador, told IPS.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague settled the century-old border dispute, shifting some 12,000 Salvadoran citizens and the six pockets of land they live on into Honduras.

Two-thirds of the total of 450 square kilometres in dispute were transferred to Honduras, becoming part of the southwestern departments (provinces) of Ocotepeque, Lempira, Intibucá and La Paz. Conversely, some 3,000 Hondurans found themselves living in Salvadoran territory.MORE

YEMEN

EWAMT:Yemeni Women in Protest

The recent wave of uprisings in the Middle East And North Africa has also hit Yemen. In January this year thousands of Yemenis started demonstrating in the capital Sanaa and elsewhere demanding resignation of president Ali Abdulla Saleh, who has been in power for more than 30 years. Military crackdowns on protesters followed in many cities which killed a number of people and wounded many (read the Global Voices Special Coverage for details). The notable thing is that more and more women protesters have joined the demonstrations.MORE

Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques -Yemen

Introduction:

With international coverage of the Middle East focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the war in Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, and the financial markets of the Persian Gulf States, little attention is given to one of the region's poorest countries, Yemen. The few spikes in media coverage of Yemen over the past few years are all related to fears of al-Qaida presence.
In collaboration with the Hand in Hand Initiative, Ghaida'a al-Absi will organize a new media training course for female politicians, activists, and human right workers in order to bring a new perspective to the Arabic-language blogosphere and to build an online network of Yemeni gender activists. It is fitting that today, on the 98th anniversary of International Women's Day, we announce al-Absi's initiative to bring more women's voices to the internet. The deteriorating status of women's rights in Yemen is frequently documented and discussed, but rarely do women themselves take part in those discussions. By reaching out to NGO's and political parties throughout Yemen al-Absi aims to change that.
Latest Feature Posts on Empowerment of Women Activists

• EWAMT: Women In Protest
• Rising Voices: 2010 In Review
• Featured Blogger: Sara Abd Al-Maktari
• EWAMT: The Start Of The 2nd Phase In Taizz City
• EWAMT: 112 Yemeni Women Received Citizen Media Training
  
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INDIA

Deaf seek level field on disability

NEW DELHI:...

...Quoting Article 41 of the Constitution obliging governments to provide effective mechanism and public assistance to disabled people, the petitioners ["Deaf Employees Welfare Association" and " Railway Employees Association of Deaf and Dumb"]said prior to 1995, there was no specific legislation to address the rights and needs of the disabled people.

The governments confined their efforts to providing medical rehabilitation and removal of the stigma limited to visible disabilities like blindness, orthopaedically handicapped and leprosy, they said.

However, the concept of disability and the social attitude towards it has undergone a radical change since India signed the "Proclamation for Disabled, Full Participation and Equality for Asia and Pacific Region" in 1992. The Centre framed a national policy for disabled in 1993, which was revised in 2005, and provided 3% reservation to blind, hearing impaired and locomotory disabled people in government jobs.

However, the approach of the central and state governments underwent very little change and they have been discriminating against the the deaf employees by not providing them travelling allowance, on-job training and promotions on a par with the blind and orthopaedically handicapped. MORE

The Word on Women - Rehabilitation cuts no ice with India's sex workers\

It was a noble sentiment when India’s highest court proclaimed that sex workers had a right to life and dignity, just like anybody else under the country’s constitution.

Dismissing an appeal by a man sentenced to life for murdering a sex worker, the Supreme Court also directed the government to provide vocational training to sex workers to help rehabilitate them.

“A woman is compelled to indulge in prostitution not for pleasure but because of abject poverty,” the court said last month. “If such woman is granted opportunity to avail some technical or vocational training, she would be able to earn her livelihood by such vocational training and skill instead of selling her body.”

Sex workers were not impressed.

“This is feeble sympathy,” Veena, a transgender sex worker, told TrustLaw. Veena, who goes by one name, represents Karnataka Sex Workers Union in the southern city of Bangalore.

What many sex workers want more than anything is to have their work decriminalised. In India, selling sex is not illegal but activities around sex work, such as soliciting or running a brothel, are punishable with fines and even imprisonment.

“If we can’t solicit clients without getting arrested, we will naturally rely on pimps to carry on our trade,” Veena said. “What we need are practical measures that free us from exploitation created by the law itself.”


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The idea that sex workers should be rehabilitated may be almost as old as the profession itself. It comes from a belief that every sex worker wants to get out of sex work.

To be sure, many sex workers in India enter the trade against their will. Levels of violence against sex workers are high and they grapple with other problems, such as access to health care and high HIV infection rates.

But campaigners argue that this does not necessarily mean they want to change their way of life and enter rehabilitation schemes that are based on the moralistic premise that sex work is immoral.

They also say such thinking does a great disservice to the collective struggles by the sex workers’ movement in India, which for nearly a decade has been demanding rights, not sympathy.MORE

PANAMA

Panama says “NO” to Martinelli reelection: poll

A large majority of Panamanians were against the re-election of President Ricardo Martinelli even before the resignation of the head of the constitutional committee over a brewing scandal, according to a poll.


Whichever way the question was put, the answer was a resounding "no" Some 65 percent of those surveyed by Unimer for La Prensa said no to immediate reelection, and an estimated 60 percent said no to cutting the current 10 years prohibition period for reelection in half.

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The survey was conducted between March 17-21 throughout the country, with the exception of the province of Darien and the indigenous regions.

Italo Antinori, the head of the constitutional committee resigned on March 25, after published allegations that he headed a cabal of lawyers and judges in a conspiracy to get rid of former Attorney General, Ana Matilde Gómez.

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"I've made mistakes; I've done good things and bad. All former presidents have," said Martinelli. "But we all have experiences that can contribute a lot towards improving government and making this a better country."

One of the former presidents, Ernesto Perez Balladares is awaiting trial on money laundering charges, and is the subject of a second investigation.

Former president Martin Torrijos is part of an investigation into an alleged bribery scandal, which supporters believe is politically motivated.MORE

A wild weekend of rebellion and repression
Three journalists among those arrested, with deportation proceedings against a La Prensa columnist:Martinelli sends in cops, lashes out at anti-mining protesters

Some of his own advisors warned President Martinelli not to press the mining issue, that the country as a whole was strongly against strip mining and the rural communities mentioned as mining sites were ready to explode. He went ahead, got the National Assembly to rubber-stamp his bill without serious debate, and the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca predictably exploded. There, mining is a symbol of many other abuses of the past, present or foreseeable future.

The first Ngabe protests on February 7 were dispersed with tear gas, rubber bullets and shotgun pellets. A week later, the protests were bigger and the president's decision to select a general cacique for the comarca raised tempers above the boiling point. Then journalist and activist Claudia Figueroa, who calls herself Prensa En Resistencia on Facebook and whose writings are most often seen on the Comuna Sur website, did a little bit of Internet research and published her findings online: Rogelio Moreno, the alleged general cacique of the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca, is on the Ministry of Government and Justice payroll, at $600 per month. So here was Minister of Government and Justice Roxana Méndez "negotiating" with one of her own subordinates to end the protests. The revelation tore away the last shred of the government's already tattered credibility among Panama's 10 percent or so indigenous population, which is spread among seven ethnic groups with their own languages, cultures and political dynamics.MORE

Preliminary report on human rights violations during the days of protest against mining reform in Panama, January to March 2011 PDF Format


Rival leaders assert claims in the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca

The people with whom the government signed an agreement to repeal the recent mining law changes? They were at the traditional Ngabe-Bugle General Congress gathering in Pueblo Nuevo, outside the Bocas del Toro community of Chiriqui Grande.

Rogelio Moreno Montezuma, the pretended "general cacique" and a Ministry of Government and justice employee who signed an "agreement" with his undisclosed boss to end the anti-mining protests? He also went to the congress in Pueblo Nuevo, where he as promptly arrested. The congress, attended by more than 6,000 people from around the comarca, considered various punishments, one of which was the stocks and another of which was being stripped of his office as regional cacique for Nidrini. Instead it was decided that he and two other government employees who came to the congress with him would be confined until the congress was over. He was released on the morning of March 9, after about a day and one-half under arrest.

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Although the national government does not recognize the traditional congress as anything valid, there were observers at the gathering in Pueblo Nuevo from the Organization of American States, the Catholic Church and many of Panama's non-indigenous civic organizations.MORE

US citizen remains a political prisoner in Panama:WikiLeaks highlights, worsens US-Panamanian relations

The Panama portion of the WikiLeaks tale has taken some strange twists, but one unmistakable aspect of it is a serious deterioration in the relationship between the US and Panamanian governments. That trend is and was both past and present tense, applicable in 2009 and 2010 when the US diplomatic cables about Panama that WikiLeaks obtained were sent, and applicable now in the handling of those documents by a Martinelli-aligned newspaper and statements coming out of the Ministry of the Presidency.

The Martinelli strategy for relations with the United States appears to have at first included demands for US help in suppressing his political opponents, and when that was not forthcoming enhanced ties with right-wing US Republicans and actions based on the presumption that the Obama administration is powerless and temporary. Martinelli's right-hand man, Minister of the Presidency Jimmy Papadimitriu, is a US citizen, former aide to Speaker of the House John Boehner and on-leave employee of Karl Rove's consulting firm.MORE

WikiLeaks: Colombian company, subsidiary of Panamanian company, was doing Plan Colombia and US Defense Department subcontracting despite many reputed drug cartel ties

On March 6 WikiLeaks released a series of cables from the US State Department in Washington and the US Embassy in Bogota, about a Colombian company that wanted a permit to import what Washington considers sensitive US defense technologies. The company, Vertical de Aviacion, was a subcontractor of US mercenary corporation DynCorp and direct contractor with the Colombian government. It also was a direct contractor with the US Southern Command and a subcontractor in the US war in Afghanistan. Very important in the Latin American way of doing business, it also had key family ties: its owner, or purported owner, Byron López Salazar, is the son-in-law of former Colombian President and current OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria.MORE

The sexiest place west of Panama City's red light districts for gringos who can pay too much:Miami-based resort chain is turned off

Yes, Panama has a lot to recommend it, both for people who want to live here and for visitors. The rapacious business practices that go on here, however, go under the heading of "drawbacks."

The stench of burning garbage turned out not to be the only problem for Nikki Beach Panama, the condo resort whose publicity implicitly represented a Panama without black people and a resort where rich foreigners can have their every desire tended to by foxy young blondes.

The structure of the thing is something that can't be sold to wealthy Panamanians or to foreigners who have lived here for a few years and know the ropes. Think time share, but with a twist: you get three weeks a year in your unit, but you own it all year long. The rest of the time the resort manages it for you and rents it out to tourists, and after all the expenses and overhead are deducted, you get your share of the proceeds. The possible manipulations, and potential conflicts among owners and between owners and management, are almost endless.MORE

FRANCE
 

Nicolas Sarkozy makes populist play for welfare in country that still cares

The future of social care, President Nicolas Sarkozy declared, "is a matter of such importance and gravity that ideology has no place". His opponents scoff, among them Martine Aubry, one of the frontrunners to be the Socialist party's candidate against him in the presidential elections due in 2012. Viewed from the British side of the Channel, Sarkozy has made a striking promise to create a "new branch of the welfare state" to provide care for old people and those with disabilities. France has 1.1 million dependent old people, their numbers expected to grow by 1%-2% to the middle of the century, when the over‑85s could number 5 million.MORE

BRITAIN
 


No family in Britain will escape George Osbourne's cuts

THE headline figures are startling. As many as 50,000 NHS workers, 28,000 police jobs and more than 250 Sure Start centres all face the axe under Chancellor George Osborne’s programme of cuts. Add to that 450 libraries, the threat to 32 maternity units and the scrapping of the school building programme. But the headline figures do not tell the whole story. The vast majority of the cuts are taking place at a local level, allowing the Government to escape the blame as communities lose much-needed services. Take the decision last week by Hertfordshire County Council, which is cutting all the funding for Hertfordshire Action On Disability. Or the planned axing of all 65 lollipop men and women in Dorset. Or the cuts to the budget to Conflict And Change, a community mediation service in the London borough of Newham. These organisations may not be high profile but they can be deeply valued by the people they help. MORE

Diary of a disability benefit claimant

Nothing reforming about welfare bill

Last month the welfare reform bill was introduced to parliament. The bill legislates for the biggest change to the welfare system for over 60 years. But 'reform' is a troublesome word for Iain Duncan Smith. It means, according to the Oxford English dictionary, to "make changes (in something, especially an institution or practice) in order to improve it (my italics)."

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If 'reform' in the welfare bill were a matter of semantics, and nothing else it would be of fleeting interest. But the bill is a matter of life and death, quite literally. The Disability Rights Partnership, an umbrella group of 500 local and national disability groups, surveyed disabled people about the reforms. 9% of respondents were of the opinion that if the reforms were implemented and they lost disability living allowance then life wouldn't be worth living at all. And if that figure seems low, how about the 62% who highlighted the entitlement that DLA gives one to other support, and fear reform will cut the link and increase exclusion and poverty – with 35% reporting finding it difficult or very difficult to get by already? With the new, even more stringent re-assessments of existing and future DLA claimants soon upon us many are set to lose this benefit altogether. It is the same with the current employment support allowance 'work capability assessment' which is supposed to deem one capable of working during a thorough, exhaustive and comprehensive 45-minute computer generated tick box exercise. The WCA has found terminally ill people fit for work and is largely discredited.
 

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Personalization does not make me an accountant

Cutting subsidised travel will cut disabled people off


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'The medical was an absolute joke'

The government's reform of the disability benefits system has angered claimants, who say the new tests fail to identify why they can't work. Amelia Gentleman reports on the fallout of Cameron's war against 'sicknote culture'

In the windy courtyard of a new glass-fronted office development, several dozen protesters, many in wheelchairs, spent an afternoon last month shouting angry chants against the government's reform of disability benefits. "We can't work! We can't play! What do they want us to do? Die?"

The protest was held in front of the London headquarters of the low-profile but powerful French-owned company Atos, responsible for a new and controversial computerised test used to judge whether benefit claimants are genuinely sick or merely skiving.

A surprisingly large number of police officers were on hand, and swiftly erected barriers around the protesters. Inside, employees in suits huddled at the window, peering down at the commotion. Protesters waved banners in the shape of coffins, marked with the slogan "Atos doesn't give a toss". A man warned through his megaphone: "We are being kettled. Disabled people are being kettled."

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