by Manar Ammar
-Egypt-

• Egyptian Women. Photograph by Joseph Mayton and courtesy of Bikyamasr.com. •

“I don’t have full normal movement in my arm, even after three and half years since the fight,” says Marwa. “I still don’t speak to my family, with the exception of my mother, and till this day he never apologized.”

Marwa, an educated middleclass woman, decided to press charges against her brother. Her decision lost her the family’s compassion and made her an outcaste. She had to drop the charges and move out of the family home.

by Nusrat Ara
-Indian-administered Kashmir-

Shazia Akhtar and her family have been preparing for months for her wedding. The family has saved for years for the big day. With marriages in Kashmir getting more expensive, the burden seems to be getting bigger and bigger, especially for parents of a daughter.

The gold jewellery and other household gifts given to the bride and gifts to the family members and relatives of the groom form the major part of the expenses. Other bridal gifts, the trousseau, and the grand feast on the wedding day are also major expenses.

by Katie Palmer
-Canada-

In recent years, there has been a slight yet noticeable shift among many Western young adult travelers. Once adventurously backpacking across Northern Europe and other parts of the world, they now combine cheap travel to the Global South with short-term volunteer endeavors. Whether one is performing low-skill unpaid work at an elephant sanctuary in northern Thailand for a couple of days, or providing high skill pro-bono legal aid at a law clinic in Nairobi, Kenya, today’s Generation Y is scheduling time to make a difference while on vacation abroad.

by Wojoud Mejalli
-Yemen-

I met with the Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman in Oslo during the Nobel Peace Ceremony on December 10, 2011. After the ceremony, a few minutes were stolen away from other concerns to have a cup of coffee and learn the latest, both personally and politically, from my old Yemeni friend. She shared with me her perspective on recent political changes in our country, the rising youth movement in Yemen, and the relations between the East and West, especially after the Arab Spring.

by Rachel Muthoni
-Kenya-

When they hear cries of their fellow countrymen hit by acute food shortage, Kenyan peasant farmers in more productive areas have no money to donate. While they may feel the need and the wish to feed other hungry Kenyans, these farmers cannot reach out with financial help.

More than 3.6 million Kenyans are in urgent need of food assistance. Within Rift Valley, which has a population of about 10 million people, millions languish in hunger, depending only on relief food. Yet other Kenyans in the Valley are struggling to find ways to dispose of produce following a bumper harvest.

by Jenny Shapiro
-USA-

During my three years at International Planned Parenthood Federation, Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR), I have been fortunate—and humbled—to work with incredible colleagues whose dedication to securing sexual and reproductive health and rights for all is unsurpassed.

As Project Design Coordinator, I know my work is vitally important, particularly at a time when several large global health donors have withdrawn from Latin America and the Caribbean. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has “graduated” the majority of countries in our region, despite the inequalities that persist, as has the UK Department for International Development, USAID’s counterpart in the United Kingdom. The Netherlands, one of the region’s significant donors, is currently phasing out its final project in Colombia, and the Danish government will be pulling out of Nicaragua, a country it has supported for many years.

by Neeta Lal
-India-

In an innovative bid to fight gender discrimination, Satara district in India’s western state of Maharashtra recently witnessed a minor revolution. Over 285 Indian girls named Nakhushi, ‘unwanted’ in Hindi, by their disenchanted parents were rechristened in a state-organized ceremony.

Trussed up in their Sunday best, the girls were all smiles amidst the pop of camera bulbs. "My friends will be calling me with my new name now. And that makes me very happy. My earlier name made me feel worthless," 15-year-old Nakhushi, now renamed Muskaan or ‘a smile’, says into the TV camera.

by Leanne A. Grossman
-USA-

The noxious smell of rotten eggs regularly blows over the rural village of Berezovka, Kazakhstan. The fumes come directly from the Karachaganak Oil and Gas Condensate Field only five kilometers away, which emits toxic hydrogen sulfide during oil and gas extraction and refining.

by Michelle Tolson
-Mongolia-

One night while relaxing at home after a long day of horseback riding, I heard a loud banging on a door downstairs. It was a man adamant to be let in. He was probably drunk. This type of thing had happened before. I thought nothing of it, but then I heard a woman scream. I also heard the man yell and throw things. I wanted to help, but I was too frightened. I did not know what to do.

I wanted to call the police, but I did not know the number. Besides, I was new to the country and did not speak the language. Would they even understand me? What was my address anyway? There were other people in the building who were quiet during the episode. Why did they not do anything? I heard the man leave and the woman crying below.

by Kate Hughes
-UK-

Ten years ago, Afghan women were promised a bright future. After decades of civil war, and repressive Taliban rule, they entered a new era in which they were once again able to work, send their daughters to school, and even stand for parliament. But now these hard-won gains are under threat, and women fear that they will be abandoned as international military forces prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014.

by Rachel Muthoni
-Kenya-

In a bid to retain culture and due to the greed of men who profit by marrying off their daughters, some communities in Kenya still practice Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Section 14 of The Children’s Act of 2001 in Kenya protects children against harmful cultural practices under which FGM falls. Though this law has been in place for a decade, the practice is still rampant, especially among pastoral communities where even a girl may demand FGM since she has been brought up believing it to be part of her initiation to maturity.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

Before 9/11 Shannen Rossmiller was a judge, wife, and mother of three living in Montana. That fateful September day became the impetus for her to become a counter-intelligence expert focused on infiltrating jihadists’ networks. Rossmiller’s memoir The Unexpected Patriot, written with Sue Carswell and published by Palgrave Macmillan, details this journey.

by Rita Banerji
-India-

In January, a Toronto police constable told a group of students at a school safety forum that to prevent being sexually assaulted they should “avoid dressing like sluts.” This victim-blaming message sparked a global grassroots protest movement called ‘SlutWalks.’ –Ed.

India wrote off the SlutWalk organized in Delhi as a terribly insignificant event. According to a police report, there were about 700 attendees in all, including 400 police personnel and 200 media people. That means the actual number of participants was probably not more than a 100 – a ridiculously miniscule number in a country with a population of a billion plus.

by Moira Birss
-USA/Colombia-

The first thing I notice after disembarking from the canoe that carries me across the Curvaradó River are palm oil trees. Their rows of short, stout trunks topped by long green fronds, stretch as far as the eye can see. I am visiting the Curvaradó River basin in Northwest Colombia where afro-Colombian farming communities have been violently displaced and their land usurped by palm oil companies destined to profit from the trees that will one day become cosmetics and snack foods.

by Lesley D. Biswas
-India-

A version of the following article was originally published on October 1, 2010. Despite staggering rates of illness and disease from poor sanitation, mobile phones carry higher status than toilets amongst the poor in India.- Ed.

Among the first things you notice when you come to India is the repelling sight of people defecating in the open. Be it a rural village or the teeming city slums, you see people lined up besides railway tracks, fields, and rivers answering nature’s call.

by Lesley D. Biswas
-India-

On March 24, 2011 India woke up to a chilling headline that read: “Man held for raping his minor daughter.” The victim, a 13-year-old girl from North Delhi allegedly had been raped several times over a period of two years by her own father before she mustered the courage to tell her sister-in-law about the abuse that had him arrested.

by Sarah Irving
-Australia-

For a piece of cloth, the burqa arouses an extraordinary amount of emotion. In France women wearing it have been criminalised, and politicians throughout the Western world seem keen to capitalise on it as an emblem of ‘otherness’. This sheet of dark fabric unites some right-wing patriarchal men and some left-wing feminist women in opposition, whether because it is interpreted as a symbol of women’s oppression or as a tool of terrorists. But, for those who choose to wear the burqa or the niqab, it can confer "a sense of value, control, and security."

by Liz McGinn
-UK-

Every year the BBC runs a huge televised fundraising event called Comic Relief. Its aim is to raise as much money as possible for worthwhile causes in the UK and Africa. The fundraising, undertaken by both ordinary people and celebrities, culminates in an evening television extravaganza featuring stories of both the fundraisers and the charities the event supports. This year’s event raised a staggering £17 million ($27 million USD).

by Rachel Muthoni
- Kenya -

If only Kenyan society would choose to understand their kin and friends who are HIV-positive, deaths resulting from this virus could be reduced significantly. But the stigma associated with being infected or affected by HIV hinders such acceptance and understanding, and makes many reject their friends and relatives when they are diagnosed.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

In today’s technologically connected world, there are few places completely absent from the 24 hours a day 7 days a week international news cycle. One of those places is Burma, now known as Myanmar. For more than 47 years the Southeast Asian nation has been isolated from the rest of the world with few foreigners or journalists reporting from the ground. The brutal military dictatorship has ruled with an iron fist, fighting a bloody civil war against the country’s ethnic minorities. Aside from singular and infrequent news reports the world receives little information about the innumerable human rights atrocities committed by Burma’s military dictatorship.

Where in the world are the best and worst places to be a mother? Watch this Link TV/Save the Children documentary – The Mothers Index – and learn about how you can get involved in supporting mothers and children around the world.

by Nola Solomon
-USA-

“Jambo! Karibu! Karibu!*” shout the villagers of Chyulu Hills as they shake our hands each day. Their enthusiasm is infectious, like the diseases that ravage them. Women wrapped in traditional sarong dresses cook the meal we will all share at the end of the day - sweet potatoes, spit-roasted antelope, corn, and papaya. They chatter animatedly as they shear the corn and set the spit, alternating between their tribal dialect and Swahili.

by Aloosh Devrim
-Syria-

Farewells are generally emotional but not as great as we experienced this evening. It had not been a social visit with family friends. The family of four, including two handsome boys, had escaped the military witch-hunt of protestors in the Syrian city of Mouddamiyyeh, one of the besieged towns on the outskirts of Damascus.

by Holly Kearl
-USA-

What does a woman in Bangalore, India, standing on a busy street corner, waiting for a bus have in common with a teenage girl in Queens, New York, dressed in her school uniform, waiting for the subway? Or with a woman in her 20s in Drammen, Norway, wearing a winter coat, walking home alone from a friend’s house after dark?

For three years, women like them, hailing from 30 countries, have shared their street harassment stories on my blog, Stop Street Harassment. They detail the sexually explicit comments, sexist remarks, following, groping, vulgar gestures, whistling, and public masturbation men impose on them on the streets, on public transportations, and in stores - simply because they are female and in public.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
-Germany-

“Offshore drilling and nuclear power plants,” I wrote on my Facebook status. “Too much faith in technology or disregard for future generations?” This was the day after the first hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant where the back-up cooling systems were crippled by the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan last month. As more explosions followed, news trickled in, and confirmed that the world was facing another serious nuclear crisis - twenty-five years after Chernobyl.

by Moira Birss
-USA/Colombia-

In the middle of one of the most fertile regions in Colombia, amidst a five-decade armed conflict, a small peasant community manages to serve as a model of civilian resistance against violence and displacement. But as I saw when I returned in February to the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, located in the northwestern province of Antioquia, their sustainable agriculture projects not only defend against violence but also create life.

by Sarah Irving
-Australia-

“It wasn’t our dream to come and eat at the white man’s table, to work for the white man as a slave,” says Reverend Dr Djiniyini Gondarra, a Yolngu elder. Dr Gondarra is one of the indigenous voices heard in Our Generation, an important new film documenting the impact of the ‘Northern Territory Emergency Response.’ Since 2007 this government initiative has decimated the human rights of the Yolngu and other indigenous Australian peoples, collectively known to most of the world as Aboriginal peoples.

by Leymah Gbowee with contributions by Thelma Ekiyor
-Ghana-

On March 3, 2011, hundreds of women gathered to protest peacefully in Cote d’Ivoire to end the political stalemate and the worsening security situation. The Ivorian women took to the streets of Abidjan to put pressure on their leaders to end the stalemate and allow peace to prevail. Seven unarmed women protestors were killed in the process by forces loyal to former president Laurent Koudou Gbagbo.

by Reem Abbas
-Sudan-

Sudanese contributor Reem Abbas reflects on the popular uprisings in several of the places she has called home. –Ed

My father came back from the supermarket armed with bags full of pasta, rice, flour, and canned products. He rushed there after hearing about protests in Benghazi. This was in mid-February, and the world was not yet aware of the events unfolding in Libya. My mother’s health was deteriorating and we were hoping for an immediate medical evacuation to the UK.

by Katie Palmer
-Philippines-

Nicki* was eight when her mother sold her to a local pimp in Southern Luzon, Philippines. She was forced to have sex daily with different pedophiles in a seedy brothel. Every night she danced on a stage where men would call her down, take her to a room, and sexually abuse her. This went on for a number of years until the Philippine Government’s Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) rescued her. Nicki stayed in the DSWD’s shelter for girl survivors of sexual exploitation for about two years.

by Manar Ammar
-Egypt-

The sexual assault on CBS news correspondent Lara Logan at the hands of 200 Egyptian men in Tahrir Square the night former president Hosni Mubarak resigned came as no surprise to any woman who has been to or lived in the country. Logan, who was in the heart of Tahrir Square in the midst of the frenzy of celebration, was sexually assaulted and beaten for almost 30 minutes. A group of women and 20 soldiers took notice of what was going on and rescued the reporter. She was immediately flown back to the USA, where she was hospitalized.

Logan’s brutal attack has brought sexual violence against women in Egypt to the spotlight, calling attention to an old and rooted problem that has tormented the country for years.

by Liz McGinn
-UK-

Northern Ireland is still recovering from its troubled history. Like many countries worldwide it has had to come to terms with being a segregated society, where religion divided, rather than united, communities. The signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 gave Northern Ireland a vision of a shared future where government was at a local level and where Protestants and Catholics could live harmoniously together without fear of sectarianism or violence.

by Gulayim Myrzaeva
-Russia-

A wedding in Kyrgyzstan is a huge celebration. For most girls it is an event they await from their birth. Parents spend a great amount of money preparing the dowry and the feast. However, there is one moment that can ruin not only the outcome of the event and the fate of the bride, but also tarnish the family honor - the display of the first night bed sheet.

by Afsaana Rashid
-Indian-administered Kashmir-

Multiple forms of domestic violence compel Sayeeda Chisti, mother of four and a resident of the village of Kona Gabra, to abandon her native place and seek ‘refuge’ in the city. Tossed between post and pillar, the middle-aged woman struggles to find a shelter above her head.

by Aloosh Devrim
-Syria-

When I saw the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt I felt happy. I knew that soon the domino effect would spread change throughout the Arab world.

Before the popular upheaval, like many in the West, I never expected a pro-democracy movement here in Syria. I used to subscribe to the older generation’s view that Facebook and Twitter cannot change the world. But I am witnessing reality to the contrary.

by Manar Ammar
-Egypt-

On Friday, February 11, 2011 President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt stepped down, ceding power to the Egyptian military. Vice President Omar Suleiman made the announcement via state television. - Ed.

The news from Egypt arrived: People are revolting against Mubarak. They are marching in the thousands, chanting their demands. The fear that had its tight fist around our necks has been broken. And in revolting, we won back part of our freedom: the freedom to say no.

by Sarah Irving
- Australia -

The past few weeks have brought confusion and uncertainty for many of the estimated 40-50,000 West Bank Palestinians who work in illegal Israeli settlements. Are they breaking the law by not giving up their jobs? And if they are, will they actually be punished for it?

In spring 2010, Palestinian Authority (PA) economic minister Hassan Abu Libdeh announced penalties of up to five years in jail or a $14,000 fine for anyone found working in settlements after the start of 2011. The ban was one of a range of economic boycott measures announced by the PA.

by Faten Hijazi
-USA-

Growing up in California, my American identity has been constantly challenged. Strangers tell me to “go home” and call me oppressed, backwards, or uneducated. I have been spat upon, yelled at, and chased off the road. Why? Because I look different. I am a practicing American Muslim woman who chooses to wear a headscarf.

by Suad Hamada
-Bahrain-

Savatri used a condom for the first time in her life when she was forced into prostitution a few months ago. Fortunately, the 34-year-old Indian woman was instructed by the managers of the brothel to insist that her clients wear a condom - the only preventive method against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV, in use by sex workers in Bahrain.

Sex workers’ last hope for proper medical care was lost at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna last July when Bahrain officially declined to provide licenses to sex workers as a measure to reduce HIV/AIDS cases. Although sex work remains one of the risk factors in increasing HIV/AIDS rates, Bahrain rejected the proposal without hesitation out of fear of clashes with our conservative society, Dr. Somaya Al Jowder, head of the National AIDS Program, tells me.

by Leanne A. Grossman
-USA-

The Sumgayit Refugee Camp was nothing like I expected. Rather than mud-colored tents blowing in the wind, I encountered two half-painted cement structures surrounding a grey dirt courtyard. While it seemed a world away from Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, we had left Baku only 30 minutes earlier. A woman wearing a cobalt blue outfit is bending over a bathtub that serves as her washtub minus the running water. Her family laundry will soon be added to the clotheslines that wave overhead. Time has called Sumgayit “the most polluted city in the world” due to oil and chemical industrial exploitation of the Caspian Sea basin.

I came to Sumgayit Refugee Camp as a representative of a global philanthropy organization and was joined by Azerbaijani colleagues who arranged our camp tour. My goal was to see firsthand the conditions in which refugees lived and to speak directly with camp residents about their lives.

by Merle Exit
-USA-

2010 was season 11 for Andra Douglas, owner of the New York Sharks, the longest operating and most successful all-female football team in the U.S. Douglas’ pioneering spirit and far-reaching vision ensured that it was a historic year for women’s sports worldwide.

by Alia Turki Al-Rabeo
-Syria-

Every morning I start my day with the sight of our block’s cutest child Nour rushing to catch a bus to school. This nine-year-old wakes up at dawn as his school is an hour’s drive from home.

Nour speaks Arabic better than I do and in a Syrian accent. He loves Syrian food and sings Syrian national songs. Yet he cannot enroll in any government school. Sawsan, his mother, must renew his residency every year because according to the Syrian Nationality Law she cannot pass on her nationality to her husband or child. Nour inherited this discrimination because Sawsan chose an Iranian to be her husband and his father.

by Moira Birss
-USA-

“Ciudad Juárez won’t be a big deal. You spent two years in Colombia!” my friend reassures me.

“Yeah,” I reply with nervous knots in my stomach, “but isn’t Juárez one of the most dangerous cities in the world?”

The violence wracking Mexico, largely fueled by the country’s drug war, is magnified in the border town of Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. So even though I spent two years as a human rights accompanier in Colombia visiting some of the country’s most dangerous regions, the concentration and apparent randomness of the violence in Juárez left me apprehensive about my upcoming trip.

Just days before my departure the last weekend in October, four maquila factory workers were killed and fifteen more injured when gunmen shot up three company buses carrying the workers home. The following weekend, 20 more were killed. Since 2008, the murder rate has surpassed 6,500 in a city of about 1.5 million.

But despite my nervousness, I was determined to go. I planned to attend the Foro Internaciónal Contra La Militarización y la Violencia – the International Forum Against Militarization and Violence – on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an organization I had worked for in Colombia. As U.S. government officials suggest the application of a U.S.-Colombia-style policy in Mexico, those of us who have worked in Colombia and strongly criticize the human rights implications of that policy are seeking to get involved in the Mexico discussion.

by Meghan Lewis
-Cambodia-

An ancient Khmer proverb says, “A man is gold; a woman is a white piece of cloth.” Gold can get dirty or be dropped in the mud, but it can be polished and become as shiny as new; if white cloth is dropped in the mud, it will be forever stained, soiled, and ruined. This is a sad reflection of how Cambodian society traditionally views female sexuality. The silencing and shaming of female sexuality means that women often lack their sexual rights and autonomy.

by Stephanie Koehler
-USA-

How many rapes will it take to bring to our consciousness the devastating consequences inflicted on both rape survivors and society? How many more rapes do we need to hear about to make this plague our own personal problem? The 2009 National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, reported approximately 79 percent of sexually assaulted women were attacked by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, friend, or date. Strangers committed only 21 percent of the assaults counted in this survey.

According to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, one out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. The same is true for about three percent of American men. Approximately 15 percent of sexual assault and rape victims in the U.S. are under age 12. These horrifying numbers only reflect a fraction of factual rapes as most go unreported. And in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the vast numbers of women affected by sexual assault defies accurate reporting.

by Tonopah Greenlee
-Singapore-

After college I moved to Sub-Saharan Africa for a year. During that time I learned a myriad of useful skills. I learned to kill a chicken and prepare a traditional meal. I mastered dancing like a “true African.” I could barter my way through any market. And I learned how to urinate in the open. In fact, I became so good at urinating in public I have since taken this skill with me to every major city I have visited that lacks adequate public restrooms or does not maintain the ones they have. I can say with the utmost confidence, I can pee like one of the boys.

But I never mastered, nor attempted, openly defecating. In truth, it was not something I spent much time thinking about until a few months ago when I came to work for the World Toilet Organization in Singapore. In many ways this is backwards. I lived in one of the poorest regions of the world where open defecation is a fact of everyday life, and never thought about it, only to move to one of the richest countries in the world where sanitation is at 100 percent, and I think about it every day.

by Huma Yusuf
-Pakistan-

A few days after this summer’s flooding in Pakistan had gained momentum the phone calls began. The waters from the inundated valleys of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were now rushing towards the fertile plains of the Punjab. Foreign correspondents of several international news outlets based in Islamabad wanted to know how the flooding would impact counterterrorism efforts in the region. Would extremist organizations use the floods as an opportunity to infiltrate Pakistan’s rural areas? Would their religious rhetoric help give meaning to the calamity, thereby spurring recruitment among the rural poor?

I fumbled through answers to these questions, all the while transfixed by the disaster movie images on my television screen, and the soaring statistics about the number of people affected. In many exchanges with journalists, both domestic and foreign, I debated the risk posed by extremist groups who might try to exploit feelings of frustration and helplessness that would abound in flood-affected communities. But those discussions were half-hearted and distracted—I was more preoccupied by the humanitarian toll of the flooding than its impact on counterterrorism strategy.

by Zubeida Mustafa
-Pakistan-

Zuhra is four and she has recently learned her Sindhi alphabet – 52 letters in all. She wants the world to know about her achievement. When I met Zuhra at the Indus Resource Centre’s (IRC) tent city for the flood affected in Dadu - a small town in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh - she tugged at my sleeve and insisted I listen to her recitation.

Data collected from IRC tent cities in Khairpur, Dadu, and Sehwan in Sindh provides an idea of how women fared the ravaging floods in July through September. Of the 8,089 people housed in these camps, 49 percent were females and 47 percent were children, indicating the prevalence of large family sizes and its implications for women.

by Suad Hamada
-Bahrain-

Polygamy is both legal and socially accepted in Bahrain and the rest of the Islamic world. Religious leaders defend the right of men to have up to four wives if they ensure equality among them. Yet, despite this, cases are reported of men deserting their first wives for a new one. Although polygamy is not widespread in Bahrain - according to official statistics only 4% of the male population here are polygamists - the open option for men is a major concern of Bahraini women who are mistreated by husbands who threaten to marry other women and have the power to do so by law.

Zakiya never thought her teen sweetheart would become a polygamist. “I married him before graduating from high school against my parents’ wishes,” the forty-plus wife recalls.

by Reem Abbas
-Sudan-

I remember going to the most amazing engagement party in 2000. The young lady in question was the niece of my mother’s best friend. Their lovely house, her dress, and the food were all impressive, but not as much as the musician they hired.

He was an up-and-coming male pop singer with a feminine spirit and he specialized in what we call in Sudan aghani al-banat or girl’s songs. Aghani al-banat are popular songs written and performed by women. Before he became popular, it was unacceptable for men to sing aghani al-banat, but he took a huge risk and became very famous as a result.

The musician, commonly referred to as Gadora, was a dark-skinned, overweight young man. Years later, in 2006 to be exact, my aunt delivered the bad news. It was at my cousin’s tenth birthday and I was eating marzipan-loaded cake when she told me about his death.

by Lesley D. Biswas
-India-

Among the first things you notice when you come to India is the repelling sight of people defecating in the open. Be it a rural village or the teeming city slums, you see people lined up besides railway tracks, fields, and rivers answering nature’s call.

Out of the estimated 2.6 billion people globally who have no access to proper sanitation, 638 million belong to India. According to the UN, more than 55 percent of Indians practice open defecation. Even where local municipalities have constructed public toilets, the UN has questioned the utility of these services, terming them unhygienic and unusable and lacking in running water, drainage, and electricity.

by Heidi K. Zirtzlaff
-USA-

On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that US President Barack Obama remains committed to his strategy in Afghanistan and that no major changes will be announced in his upcoming December review. A senior administration official reported that "any adjustments to the current strategy would be akin to 'moving the rabbit ears around a little bit to get better reception.'"

During a summer course at the Naval Postgraduate School I began to understand the significance of the current strategy’s civilian component. By spring 2010, the US civilian presence outside Kabul had quadrupled to over 350 personnel and the overall number of US civilians in Afghanistan had tripled to 992. Civilians are deployed both in the capital and in the provinces to provide their broad range of expertise in cooperation with existing military efforts. The success of this civilian surge is crucial to the success of the ultimate goal of sustainable peace.

by Meghan Lewis
-Cambodia-

“Feelings, oh feelings, please accept this. I have not wronged - even in law. We wish to have a place in this world and to love one another freely.” -Noy Sitha, 58, Women’s Network for Unity

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people exist in all countries yet in many places they remain largely invisible and subject to discrimination and human rights violations. In more than 80 countries homosexuality is punishable by law and in several of those countries the punishment for same-sex love may be death. Even in “progressive” countries like England or the United States, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people are still fighting for equal rights including the right to employment, to marry, and to have a family.

• Pride Poster designed by Amy Sanford for RoCK. •

by Brittany Shoot
- Denmark -

Every woman I know has, at one time or another, been followed, leered at, or catcalled. For most of my life, I have been fair game - at the grocery store, walking down the street, on the subway. If sexual harassment is illegal in the workplace and domestic violence is illegal in the home, why does going to the mall suddenly make me a target?

While circumstances may vary by region and culture, street harassment affects women's ability to exist in public all around the world. Several groups - including JAGORI’s Safe Delhi in India, Bangalore's Blank Noise Project, the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights, and the London Anti-Street Harassment Campaign – combat the problem locally and raise awareness that street harassment does not happen in a vacuum.

A few years ago, Holly Kearl wrote her Master’s thesis about street harassment. Conducting independent research, she realized very little had been published about gender-based harassment in public space and concluded that legal remedies might provide relief for women bombarded with lewd comments and unsolicited suggestive glances. Kearl founded the Stop Street Harassment website and blog. By the middle of 2009, she had conducted several independent studies with hundreds of women and had enough material for a book.

One of the greatest challenges to empowering women as agents of change is the gender-based violence women face worldwide. In some countries, gender-based violence impacts as many as 70 percent of women. According to the United Nations, “one out of three women throughout the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.”

Gender-based violence occurs in many forms and can be physical, sexual, or cultural. It is in the home in the form of domestic violence. It is rampant in conflict situations where women are violated and exploited as weapons of war. In the sex trade, women are bought, sold, and abused as cheap, expendable goods. And in some cultures, women are mutilated, forced into child marriages, and denied access to basic rights such as healthcare and education.

On Thursday, August 5 The WIP community had the unique opportunity to participate in a live internet chat with CARE, a leading humanitarian non-governmental organization (NGO) that is working to pass the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA) - a landmark piece of bi-partisan U.S. legislation.

John Kerry (D-MA), a lead sponsor of the Senate bill, recently commented, “[I-VAWA] builds on the [Obama] Administration’s focus on women as peace-makers, change-agents, and a crucial investment in the future.”

by Sarah Irving
-UK-

The monsoon floods in Pakistan have killed thousands and affected an estimated twenty million people across several provinces. According to development organizations working in the country, the humanitarian crisis is yet another blow for Pakistan's rural women. With increasing effects of climate change, the longer-term situation can only get worse.

According to the Pakistani government, a fifth of the country has been affected by the flooding due to monsoon rains. The initial death toll of around 1,600 was comparatively low for an international disaster. But on August 3, a week after the monsoon flooding began in earnest, the World Health Organization called the situation “the worst floods on record.” On August 19, the WHO reported that 200 clinics and hospitals had been destroyed and warned that forty years' worth of health developments in Pakistan had been lost. By August 20, twenty million people had felt the impacts of the floods, and millions had lost homes, crops, livestock, and other property.

by Michelle Chen
-USA-

It's been weeks since I left Haiti, but the fractured images of the ruined city replay themselves like a battered flipbook.

• Mango sellers in Haiti. Photograph by Hands On volunteer Nathan Gray. •

by Katie Palmer
-Canada-

In 2009, the Toronto Star published a series of investigative reports on the widespread abuse and exploitation of Filipina live-in caregivers. The newspaper repeatedly pegged migrant women as victims: victims of ungodly employers; victims of provincial labor law inequalities; and, perhaps most importantly, victims of oppressive Canadian immigration policy, specifically the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP).

The Live-In Caregiver Program is a visa-entry program that recruits women to enter Canada as live-in caregivers, maids, and nannies for affluent Canadian families. Canadian families hire foreign-born women to care for their children, do their laundry, and prepare their meals. At the same time, foreign-born women from economically impoverished countries, such as the Philippines, have a chance—after living in the employers’ houses for a minimum of 24 months within a 36-month period— to acquire highly coveted Canadian citizenship.

The Live-In Caregiver Program is a far cry from a win-win situation. Activists, journalists and scholars have shown time and time again how the Live-In Caregiver Program reproduces inequalities along the intersecting axes of gender, race, and class.

by Janelle Weiner
-USA-

One of my favorite mothering “manuals” is a book called “So That’s What They’re For: Breastfeeding Basics.” I was raised in a culture that prefers to see a baby with a bottle over a baby at the breast, where women who breastfeed in public are sometimes labeled “lactivists,” and where the boob is rated R for sexual content rather than E for every baby. So when I was pregnant with my first child, this book, with its semi-corny title, introduced me to an area of my body that was biologically mine but whose function was shrouded in mystery – or, under a blanket.

I decided to breastfeed my baby because my mother breastfed my two sisters and me. But without the 275 pages of information and encouragement in “So That’s What They’re For,” and the help of the midwives at the “Baby Friendly” Cambridge Birth Center, where my first son was born, initiating and sticking with nursing would have been a lot more difficult. Over 20,000 hospitals worldwide have earned a “Baby Friendly” designation because of their supportive breastfeeding policies. Only 94 of them are in the U.S.A.

by Alice Speri
-Haiti-

Eleven-year-old Carmen Suze quarreled with a classmate and ended up in jail. Barely audible, she explains that her friend had lifted her skirt and had been the first to throw a rock. The plastic butterfly hairclips holding her braids together make her look even younger. Suze says that she did not realize how badly she had hit her back. Her father had offered the girl’s parents some money to take her to a hospital, but they did not. Her classmate died eight days later.

Suze is the youngest of 58 minors currently incarcerated in Port-au-Prince’s penitentiaries - held next to adult inmates, with no trial, and in degrading conditions.

by Pushpa Iyer
-USA-

Dr. Pushpa Iyer was in Sierra Leone leading a two-week course for fourteen Monterey Institute of International Studies and Middlebury College students. In this series of articles and student blogs, Dr. Iyer and her students reflect on the challenges to building peace in this war-ravaged country. -Ed.

Two bandaged stubs where his hands should be. While I contemplate how to greet him without a handshake, he gives me a bear hug. Completely taken aback and ashamed at my lack of response, I finally give him a smile as he welcomes me to sit down next to him. I am meeting with Ngwaja, a Sierra Leonean whose limbs were chopped off by the rebels in the country’s decade long war - a war that was undoubtedly one of the most brutal and violent in recent history.

by Lien De Coster
-Netherlands-

Entering the courtyard I immediately find it difficult to breathe. There is an energy loaded with such strong emotions it seems impossible not to be affected. The courtyard is packed with people, mostly women dressed in black. I am glad to see one of my colleagues; and with some effort, I go and sit next to her.

This is not just another November afternoon in Guatemala City. Today we are not just covering another story. We are visiting Sobrevivientes, an organization that supports family and friends of femicide victims. Or, to put it bluntly, those whose mothers, daughters, or friends were murdered simply because they were women. I wrote my thesis on this subject, but today is the first time I actually see people testify about femicide. I could not be more shocked.

by Maureen Nandini Mitra
-India/USA-

Arthur Yee wants a son.

“It’s important. As the oldest son in my family, it’s my duty to continue the bloodline,” says the Los Angeles based media professional whose wife, Kimme Setzo, is three months pregnant. Though he’d love to have a girl too, not having a son would diminish his status in his extended family, he says.

Yee comes from a traditional Chinese family that immigrated to the USA in the 1970’s. Like most first generation immigrants, his parents still cling to the cultural values of their original homeland where social norms favor sons. Hence parental pressure on Yee and Setzo to produce a boy is great. Setzo, though personally neutral about the gender of her forthcoming child, also hopes her first-born will be a boy, “just so that the pressure will be off.”

by Maureen Nandini Mitra
India/USA

In March this year, a court in the northern Indian state of Haryana sentenced five family members to death for killing a young couple who married within the same sub-caste. It is the first time an Indian court has awarded such a harsh penalty in an honor killing case. But, even as women’s rights activists are hailing the decision as a landmark judgment, honor killings continue unabated and defiant khap panchayats - village councils that order such killings – are calling for an amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act to fit their beliefs regarding sub-caste and inter-caste marriages.

by Mridu Khullar Relph
-India-

Banav Bibi is not a Bangladeshi. She wants everyone to know this. She shouted it to the policeman who accused her son of being an illegal immigrant, arrested him, and beat him up. She said it to the rich madamji in one of the homes from which she picks up trash, when she was accused of stealing and not allowed to enter. And she told the jamadarni, the neighborhood head of the waste collectors, who hired goons to run her out of the area.

If they want proof, they can look at her identity card. "Bangladesh is an entirely different country," she says. "They have a different way of talking. We are from Calcutta, which is in India."

by Paula Humphrey
-USA-

The Obama administration has worked furiously in the past year to leverage new strategies against two primary threats: the illicit production of nuclear weapons, and their potential use by terrorists or “rogue” states. Arriving this week at the Eighth Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the U.S. boasts a historical year of significant changes in the terrorism and nuclear realm. However, also important and less discussed, are the minor policy shifts that may indicate a broader change in U.S. diplomacy overall. One of the more remarkable of these is the decision to reframe the definition of the war on terrorism.

• The bilateral meeting room during the Nuclear Security Summit. The Nuclear Security Summit logo in the background is what prompted Fox News Channel to note a resemblance to the crescent moon appearing on many Muslim Countries’ flags. Photograph courtesy of the U.S. State Department. •

by Mandy Van Deven
- India -

Asma. Rukhsana. Zakia. Duaa. Fereshteh. Somayeh. Heshu. Samera. Amneh, Zahra. Semse.

As an investigative journalist, Rana Husseini had no intention of shifting careers to become a human rights activist until she was given an assignment in 1994 to cover the intentional death of Kifaya, a sixteen-year-old girl in Amman who had been poisoned by her older brother after being raped and forcibly married. The town’s ambivalent response to Kifaya’s murder shook Husseini to the core, and so with the backing of her editors at The Jordan Times, she began to investigate such deaths in order to expose the unconscionable crimes to what she believed was a willfully ignorant public. Ignoring threats of violence that followed each of her published stories, Rana Husseini became the voice of the dead.

by Neeta Lal
- India -

The alleged rape of a nine-year-old Russian girl in January by two Indian men in Goa has ricocheted far beyond India’s resort state. Famous for its sun, sand and surf, since the assault this beach haven has been besieged by public protests. Following close on the heels of the mysterious 2008 rape and murder of British teenager Scarlett Keeling, the incident has sent the media into a frenzy. Local TV channels flashed interviews with the little girl and her mother climaxing in ominous headlines like “No Bikinis On Goa Beaches.”

by Priyanka Bhardwaj
- India -

Last year’s World Economic Forum study on gender parity gave India a dismal ranking: 114th out of 134 nations. Only 77% of women are literate and just 23% are employed. UNICEF’s 2009 State of the World’s Children report found that not only do 40% of the world’s child marriages occur in India, but of its total contraception, 75% is done through sterilization with India’s women bearing the brunt of the procedure in 95% of cases.

Of equally troubling concern, official statistics point to rape as the fastest growing crime in India, even when compared to murder, robbery and kidnapping. Despite assurances from law enforcement, the federal Home Ministry's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) states that every 30 minutes an Indian woman is raped. Since 1971 when rape cases were first recorded officially, the NCRB has registered a 678% increase in the crime.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

Fadhila is only allowed to go to the toilet after asking permission from her husband, she also puts up with his frequent demands for sex - even when she’s menstruating – but neither is a valid enough reason to be granted divorce by Bahrain’s Shariah Court. So Fadhila’s only option is to seek Khula, or divorce without reason, from the judge. She may be granted her freedom, but there is always a price. Women who are awarded Khula are required to either financially compensate their husbands or give away their marriage settlements, including custody rights to their children. “There is no way out,” 23-year-old Fadhila tells me. “I have to end this marriage that took five years of my life, even [if it means] paying double the dowry.”

Fadhila’s case against her teen sweetheart was dismissed in court because according to the judge, meeting the sexual demands of her husband is a religious obligation. The judge also wasn’t convinced of his controlling nature. Her husband testified his jealousy kept him from giving Fadhila more freedom. His brothers, he explained, live with them at the family house and he just isn’t comfortable letting Fadhila use the toilet when they are around.

by Nusrat Ara
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

After the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted to a major mistake in its 2007 report, which asserted the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, skeptics and opponents alike went on the offensive, using the admission as proof that climate change is a fabrication. Though the 2035 deadline may no longer be valid, global warming is surely having an effect on the ground and activists are now faced with an even tougher challenge.

Climate change has affected nearly every country in the world, irrespective of the role it has played in polluting the environment. Lying in the lap of the great Himalayas, Kashmir is one such place, and we are already feeling its impact.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor & Founder, The WIP

This past weekend I was invited to keynote the Global Women’s Conference at CSU Fullerton. It was a great opportunity for me to reflect on the journey that we’ve been on here at The WIP and a chance to share the incredible hope that I feel.

For the first time in my life, I see a clear pathway to a future that is sustainable, safe, and free from oppression. Today I feel convinced, down to a cellular level, that the solutions and answers to every issue our global society faces – from the grave injustices committed against women and children to the severe effects of climate change and poverty – can be found in the global women’s movement – a movement that is growing, transformative, and one that I predict will take the world by force this decade.

by Aditi Bhaduri
- India -

With her large flashing eyes rimmed with kohl and flowing hair, she is the quintessential dancer. Despite her chain-smoking, she is the picture of health and surprisingly agile. But then again, she has been breaking down traditional stereotypes for years as an acclaimed dancer in a country where dancing is frowned upon. Moreover, she has distinguished herself by performing "Hindu" dances in a country whose arch-rival is “Hindu India”.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

In the USA, Memorial Day is to honor America's war dead. In recognition of Memorial Day, The WIP is re-featuring Melissa Hahn's February article on veteran suicides. These very brave men and women should not be forgotten. -Ed.

“The one thing you can never ask yourself is ‘why’, because with suicide there is never an answer.” Though my 83 year-old grandmother’s advice rings true, the question haunts me nonetheless: why did my cousin Kevin, a 26-year old Marine Lance Corporal, take his own life after returning from his second tour in Iraq?

• U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to the Arizona National Guardwork security on a street in Sharana, Afghanistan. Photograph by Staff Sgt. Dallas Edwards, flickr user The U.S. Army used under Creative Commons licenses. •

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Rebel was the theme of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The message was everywhere: On screen before every film; on the front cover of the film schedule, which read “This Is Your Guide to Cinematic Rebellion”; and in the originality and creativity of almost every film selected by Sundance Institute President and Founder Robert Redford and Festival Director John Cooper for this year’s festival. Rebellion meant great films, particularly documentaries.

In addition to established competitive categories (U.S. Documentary, U.S. Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and Shorts) and non-competitive categories (Premieres, Spotlight, New Frontier, and Park City at Midnight), there was a new category for low-budget independent films appropriately titled Next. In every category, there were films whose themes seem particularly relevant for our time – films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recession and resulting unemployment, political revolutions, the search for environmental alternatives, and the incredible resilience of people when faced with extreme adversity.

by Wazhmah Osman
- Afghanistan -

While reports of systemic corruption and fraud are just beginning to surface in the international press as Western governments are becoming aware of it, this is old news to local Afghans. They know that every interaction with the government - even applying for an Afghan identity card or trying to access documents at the national archives and libraries as I have - requires navigating a dense labyrinth of bureaucracy which fosters nothing but bribery and corruption.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

For me and my colleagues, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s new book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is exhilarating. Already in its 17th printing, Half the Sky pulls no punches in detailing the major abuses women suffer worldwide. Through personal stories, told by the women living them, sex trafficking, forced prostitution, honor killings, mass rape, and maternal mortality become shockingly real. Critics believe Half the Sky will ignite the global women’s movement as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did the environmental movement in the 1960s. So do I. This remarkable book moves the conversation from women’s issues to human rights; shows change is possible one woman at a time; and, most importantly, inspires hope.

by Sarah McGowan
Features & Photo Editor, The WIP

I was called a prostitute, I was called a thief…I was called all sorts of names, but none of the newspapers came to call me defender of children’s rights. Very ironic in a country when 10 girls are being raped per day. – Betty Makoni

For this final post of 2009, The WIP editors would like to share a podcast from our December 3rd event, co-hosted with Amnesty International’s Ginetta Sagan Fund. This very special screening of the powerful new film Tapestries of Hope was followed by a conversation with Zimbabwean human rights activist Betty Makoni and Tapestries filmmaker Michealene Cristini Risley.

by Brittany Shoot
- Denmark -

Copenhagen is an odd mix of frustrating inertia and vigilant protest as week two of the COP15 UN climate conference at the city’s Bella Center continues in tandem with Klimaforum09, the people’s summit, and the Climate Bottom meetings — the second set of alternative meetings in the hippie outpost of Christiania. The reports out of the Bella Center are consistently underwhelming as G77 countries and smaller island nations have felt ignored. Many were also insulted by documents leaked from Danish authorities earlier this week stating intentions by a powerful bloc including the UK, United States, and Denmark to lock out any agenda from the Global South. Recently, the Obama adminstration drew ire for making dismissive statements about the importance of the Kyoto Protocol, its relevance to the current discussions, and the United States’ intention to work cooperatively with other countries in an effort to retain Western power. This, in combination with rising hostilities, has further aggravated an already tense mood in the city.

by Abigail Wendle
- USA -

According to the Zimbabwe Rape Survivors Association, during last year’s highly contested presidential election an estimated 2,000 women and girls were the targets of politically-motivated sexual violence in Zimbabwe. State-sanctioned groups under President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU PF, beat and raped women for participating in the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and though men were also beaten, women were specifically targeted because they were easier to physically dominate. The violence, which occurred before international election observers arrived in Zimbabwe, was used to intimidate voters opposed to Mugabe’s re-election. According to Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliament, voter turn-out for the 2008 run-off was subsequently “very, very low.”

by Miaad A. Hassan
- USA -

For a long time she resisted, but four years ago Amal started to wear the hijab - her bright and shining youth draped in black. She is a 25-year-old Iraqi woman, and she is sad. Amal remembers when her life was freer, happier, and easier, when she didn’t need to cover her hair whenever she sought to step outdoors.

Amal was once my neighbor in Iraq. My childhood friend is depressed, but she is not the only one since most of her sisters - the women of Iraq - have been forced to wear the hijab and more. Cajoled, shamed and threatened, the women of Iraq have been draped in black. Iraqi men have seen to that.

by Delphine Zulu
- Zambia -

One of the key challenges facing Zambian female journalists is sexual harassment. “There are very few female Zambian journalists who have not experienced sexual harassment at the hands of male counterparts, [but] few [cases] have been reported,” says Pauline Banda, former Gender Editor at Zambia Daily Mail - one of the country’s biggest papers. She says the resulting frustration forces many female journalists to remain in lower positions or abandon the industry altogether.

by Brittany Shoot
- Denmark -

Copenhagen has been buzzing with activity the last two months. After the Olympics committee met here in October with a slough of American cameos from Oprah and the Obamas, the city quickly switched gears to prepare for the upcoming climate conference. Despite its importance, for much of the rest of the world, the upcoming meeting of world leaders is barely a blip on the radar. Only when major media outlets like CNN and The Guardian pull in does the rest of the world realize what the UNFCCC Copenhagen meetings in December could mean.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP

California’s Women’s Conference, one of our nation’s largest annual forums for women, took place in the port city of Long Beach October 26th and 27th. Hosted by Governor Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver, this year’s conference included an impressive lineup of women and men brought together to empower and inspire an audience of more than 25,000 women to be “Architects of Change.”

by Deborah K. Cruze, JD MA
- USA -

Kareem lays silently, hooked up to a ventilator and numerous other machines in the Intensive Care Unit. His family surrounds him, anxiously discussing what the next step should be. Yesterday he was an active, athletic father of four who owned his own business. Now the doctors are saying that the 57-year-old victim of a near-fatal car accident is unable to breathe on his own and that his brain shows severe neurological impairment. It is unlikely that he will ever wake up.

by Kimberly N. Chase
- USA –

Walking through any one of America’s big cities, the wind may brush a candy bar wrapper across the street and giant bags of trash might choke the sidewalk. Some people think nothing of it while others try not to notice the garbage in their midst. But for Annie Leonard, society's waste is "the most interesting thing in the world.”

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Recently, I had an insightful conversation with Linda Tarr-Whelan, author of Women Lead the Way: Your Guide to Stepping Up to Leadership and Changing the World. As the founder of this online publication it is such a pleasure when I can connect in person with writers in contrast to the virtual world where we usually communicate. This personal interaction always provides a greater depth and context to our work at The WIP, so it’s only natural that my conversation with Linda also brought refined clarity on the impact of women’s leadership and its implications for media.

by Patricia T. Morris, Ph.D.
- USA -

“After the abuse I suffered during the genocide in 1994, I was 16 years old, hopeless and traumatized,” says Marie Chantal Nimugire of Kigali, Rwanda. “I asked God, ‘Why was I left?’ And because God rescued my life, I had a choice: to become a survivor, not a killer or a victim. My choice was not to wait for a man to rescue me, but to accept responsibility for myself and other women.”

According to the United Nations at least one in three women and girls around the world is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime and some four million women and girls are trafficked annually into forced marriage, prostitution, or slavery. At least 60 million girls who would otherwise be alive are missing, mostly in Asia, as a result of sex-selective abortions, infanticide, or neglect. According to the World Health Organization, between 10-52% of women report having been assaulted by an intimate partner. The UNFPA estimates that 130 million girls and women around the world have undergone female genital cutting (FGC) and at least 2 million girls every year - nearly 6,000 per day - are at risk of undergoing FGC. Despite increased public awareness and two recent UN Security Council Resolutions (1820 and 1888), rape is increasingly used as a weapon of war in armed conflicts. The UN reports that during the Rwanda genocide between 200,000 and 500,000 women were raped, and in Bosnia during the conflict there between 20,000 and 50,000 women were raped.

by Lesley D. Biswas
- India -

When Mili held her newborn baby girl in her arms she wept, not with joy but with a deep sense of pain and disgust. The child reminded her of the intense physical pain and emotional humiliation her body and soul had been subjected to by her husband. Petite Mili had just delivered her first child when her husband demanded to have another.

“I was not prepared to have a second child and when he told me that he wanted to have a baby to prove to his friends who had challenged him that he would not be a father again, I was terrified. Despite pleading and reasoning he forced me and made me pregnant,” she says tearfully. Although Mili holds this against her husband, it has never crossed her mind to legally penalize him for his crime. “What he did was wrong, but sending him to jail for it would be a bigger sin,” she reasons.

by Janelle Weiner
- USA -

In the Galapagos germs hitchhike with eager travelers, threatening the survival of native species. Camera flashes, voices, and human touch have cracked ancient Egyptian pyramid walls. The very breath of people viewing the Lascaux cave paintings in France has been blamed for causing humidity to rise and fungus to spread.

Fragile ecosystems and ancient archaeological wonders are the most obvious and unintended victims of tourism. But with the United Nations World Travel Organization expecting the number of international travelers to reach 1.6 billion by 2020, urban tourist destinations around the globe are also under threat.

by Stine Eckert
- USA -

When the Malaysian government expelled Bangladeshi migrant workers from the country in 1998 because it needed jobs for its own people, 32-year old Sheikh Rumana was one of them – after having worked under deplorable conditions in a garment factory for seven years. While female migrant workers are most vulnerable to exploitation, for Bangladeshi men, working abroad is a path to riches and a way out of the low wages offered at home.

by Patricia DeGennaro
- USA -

After being embroiled in years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans have now heard of Islam’s holiest month, Ramadan, which began on August 22nd this year. (Note: Ramadan is based on the position of the moon and may differ depending on time zone, so some mark the first day as the 21st. The holiday ends on September 19/20 on Eid Al-Fitr, or the Festive of Fast-Breaking). During this month, Muslims around the world observe a month of prayer and fasting. Like the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur or the Christian Easter, Ramadan stresses empathy and compassion and encourages reflection of the self, an understanding of how one has behaved in the past and how one can atone and become a better person for the future.

by Handan T. Satiroglu
- Europe/USA -

Spaniards enjoy one of the world’s longest lives: A girl born today can expect a lifespan of 84 years, a boy 78 years. In 2000 the World Health Organization used a variety of indicators to rank the world’s healthiest countries; Spain topped the rankings at 7th place, well ahead of the United States at 37. Aside from year-round sunshine, fresh-pressed olive oil, a veritable rainbow of fresh produce, and tight-knit family structures, the healthcare system also plays a crucial role in the country’s stellar health record.

by Mahi Ramakrishnan
- Malaysia -

Eight years ago I followed the Muslim religious authorities, dubbed the morality police, on a raid in Malaysia's federal capital, Kuala Lumpur for an article I was writing on the religious body and its function. We walked silently around Titiwangsa Park until the officers spotted a Malay couple sitting together. They quickly crouched behind a tree, watched the couple canoodle and then jumped on them, literally.

by Mandy Van Deven
- India -

Taking the lives of 75,000 women each year, cervical cancer is the leading cause of death for women in India. This number accounts for a third of all cancers that affect women in India and a fifth of the total cervical cancer related deaths worldwide. With 132,000 new reported cases in India annually, this disease is having catastrophic effects on the developing world.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

Hell is what most Arabs think of when the word “transsexual” comes into any conversation since many mistake it with homosexuality, which is a sin in Islam. Most transsexuals prefer to remain anonymous since in some Arab countries they could face jail sentences for dressing or acting like the opposite sex. Many, especially men who feel trapped in the body of a woman, keep their problems hidden to avoid being punished or killed by their families. It is far easier for a woman to have a sex change to become a man than visa-versa. A man who becomes a woman is seen to have dishonored the family.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

One of life’s sweet pleasures is to travel. Thanks to the increasing number of low-cost flights, traveling abroad is no longer a luxury reserved for the privileged few. At the same time, however, there is an alarming increase in the demand of personal data from tourists and no clear transatlantic legal framework on personal data exchange. Though third parties such as airlines and airport operators have the right to read this data, we don’t know what happens with it afterwards.

by Mandy Van Deven
- India -

What do former U.S. Senator Larry Craig, women in Victorian England, and transgender activists have in common?

Toilets!

by Binalakshmi Nepram-Mentschel
- India -

In July I spoke before the United Nations General Assembly in honor of the tens of thousands of people who have lost their lives to gun violence in my part of the world. The very fact that I spoke before such an influential decision-making body is testimony to how I, and millions of others worldwide, have survived violence caused by unregulated arms trade and have chosen a life dedicated to the cause of peace.

by Brittany Shoot
- Denmark -

Danes are often dubbed “the happiest people in the world” by the U.S. media, and this may be due in part to Denmark’s advanced state-managed, single-provider healthcare system. Every citizen – as well as every refugee, immigrant of temporary or permanent residence, temporary worker, and international student – has full state healthcare coverage. Everyone carries a sygesikringsbevis – a plastic yellow card imprinted with a personal identification CPR (centralized persons register) number.

by Lesley D. Biswas
- India -

Situated in the coastal regions of West Bengal and parts of Bangladesh, Sundarbans is the largest deltaic mangrove forest in the world and home to the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger. According to a study conducted by the United Nations, a mere 45cm rise in sea level will submerge over 10,000 square kilometers, or nearly all of the forest.

by Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch
- USA -

“We need the NGOs to bring firewood in lorries [trucks]. If they do not, we have to keep going. We have heard and seen rape with our eyes here outside the camp. In one day, three people were raped. On another day, two were raped...One 10-year-old girl was raped twice. There is no response from the government. We invited the governor to come and sit in a meeting with us, but [he] refused.” — a refugee in Iridimi Camp, Chad

by Shreyasi Singh
- India -

Divorce seems to have acquired a new label – Made in India! Data shows the country, known to be tradition-bound, conservative, and family-centric, is in the throes of a divorce spiral, with the number of cases increasing exponentially over the last decade.

by Mridu Khullar
- India / USA -

In December 2008, Binghamton, New York, became one of just six cities in the United States to enact laws protecting against weight discrimination. The others are San Francisco and Santa Cruz (California), Urbana (Illinois), Madison (Wisconsin), and Washington D.C. The only state in the country to have such a law is Michigan.

Sondra Solovay, an attorney based in Berkeley, California, says fat people are often victims of discrimination and abuse in employment, social settings, places of public accommodation, and among their peers. She belongs to a growing community of people who describe themselves as "fat activists" who routinely fight the bias against heavier people and push for anti-discrimination laws. In a nod to the gay reclamation of the word “queer,” they're also reclaiming the word "fat." Says Marilyn Wann, a San Francisco-based activist, "If we claim it with pride, nobody can use it against us."

by Pushpa Iyer
- USA -

At the entrance to the eerily preserved torture rooms in Tuol Sleng (the genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia), there is a sign bearing the face of a distinctly Cambodian man who is laughing. Marked in red on his face is a cross, informing visitors that laughter is prohibited.

Our local host, from the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, tells us that some Cambodians laugh when they are confronted with something uncomfortable, as a way to deflect their uneasiness in not wanting to display their innermost feelings. ‘Deeply-offended’ foreigners made an official complaint when they encountered laughing Cambodians in this starkly preserved museum. As a result, Cambodians, or at least some of them, are now deprived of dealing with pain and trauma in their own way.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

Getting a divorce and custody of one’s children is very difficult in Bahrain, even in cases where a husband sexually attacks his wife. The issue was exposed to the public last year, when an Arab woman married to a Bahraini was granted a divorce by the courts after she lost part of her breast during a violent sexual encounter with her spouse. A medical report submitted during the case citing the need for corrective surgery was valid enough evidence for the judge to call off the marriage. Though such cases are rarely highlighted in the media here, the plight of this woman made top headlines in many regional newspapers.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

For almost two years, I have been reviewing documentary films for The WIP. I have spent countless hours in dark movie theaters so moved by what is on screen that I promise myself that I will completely change my very existence, especially when the film is environmentally themed. I do make changes, real changes. Yet, at times I feel that I am failing as a burgeoning environmentalist.

by Mandy Van Deven
- India -

Couched in a story from Indian mythology, Deepa Mehta’s newest feature film, Heaven on Earth, blurs the line between reality and fantasy to provide a nuanced and authentic look at the struggles of a young Punjabi woman who has immigrated to Canada from her homeland for what turns out to be an abusive marriage. Never one to shy away from heavy and complex issues, Mehta’s film addresses arranged marriage, Indian family dynamics and expectations, domestic violence, and love.

by Brittany Shoot
- Denmark -

Some people no doubt find it exciting to adjust to a new society or a new city. My time in Copenhagen – nearly nine months so far – has not been completely negative, but even as time passes and I meet more people, I don’t feel particularly at home or settled in my new country. I haven’t found a place to belong since I arrived.

by Alice Alech
- France -

When the Tour de France started in 1903 as a stunt to promote a sports newspaper,
no one realized then that this bicycle race would turn out to be the biggest annual sporting event in the world. Today, another cycle race is taking place in France; major cities are hastening to adopt a collective bike scheme, a mode of transport which is proving to be affordable, workable and most importantly, produces zero C02 emissions. Cycling is beginning to play a major role in sustainable transport in France.

by Nancy St. Clair
- USA -

“Going green is not going to transform our planet unless everyone can embrace the movement on their own terms and scale… If we don’t embrace reducing and reusing, the green movement cannot make a real impact. Recycling alone isn’t enough to save us.” - Jessica Mosby

Long ago, when I was young, I regarded the sight of discarded roofing, lumber and cars rotting in fields as junk. Now I see these materials in an entirely different light and ask myself: Can we afford to throw things away?

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
- Malawi -

The very survival of women and children in Africa may depend on the newly-launched Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA). According to latest estimates by the African Union (AU), over the next ten years there will be 2.5 million maternal deaths, another 2.5 million child deaths and 49 million maternal disabilities in Africa alone if urgent actions are not taken.

Around the world, a woman dies every minute from pregnancy-related causes. Globally, there are more than 500,000 maternal deaths per year, the majority of which are in Africa where in many places the maternal mortality rate (MMR) is as high as 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births. And these death threats are only increasing: one in every 16 African women faces the lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy and delivery-related complications, particularly those from marginalized communities and those living in poverty.

by Nancy Sleeth
- USA -

In the next twenty-four hours I’ll be interviewed on three national radio shows. I’m feeling a bit nervous. Okay, terrified. But that’s what these interviews are about—walking out in faith, despite the terror. Doing what you are called to do, even if you look loony to the rest of the world.

My book, Go Green, Save Green, just launched. It’s filled with four hundred pages of stories about how my family has saved money while caring for the planet.

Sharing our faith and environmental journeys with the world feels a bit like walking into the store naked. On videotape. Broadcast internationally.

It all began with two simple questions.

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

The male vice-principal of a woman's college in Gwalior, India physically assaults fellow female faculty members and students by grabbing them and throwing them against walls. Kalpana Saxena, 37, publishes accounts of women affected by his behavior and he is immediately transferred, ensuring that he will never work in a woman's college again.

A six-year-old girl playing in an empty field is raped by a local dhobi (Hindi for a person who launders clothes for a living), and eventually dies as a result of her injuries. Sandhya Kaushik, 26, chances upon her story and finds that months later, the rapist still walks free. She writes about the details of the case and the girl's family is able to renew their fight for justice, this time with the media on their side.

by Emily Rose Herzlin
- USA -

I’ve never been able to remember my parents’ ages. I wrote my dad a birthday poem one year that began:

Dear Dad, don’t be blue,
Just because you’re 53 or maybe 52.

He taped it to his fridge next to my crayon scrawled sketches of Pocahontas. My father is having another birthday this year. So is my mother.

Everyone in my family except for me has had cancer. Even as I say this I worry that I am tempting the fates. Father: skin cancer. Sister: non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Mother: breast cancer. I wonder when it will be my turn, and what kind it will be, and what part of my life I will have to put on hold when it happens.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

The WIP launched in 2007 on International Women’s Day, a commemorative day that marks the centuries-old struggle women have faced to participate in society on equal footing with men. The WIP was created to balance the under-representation of women in media and as a platform for women writers to share their stories in a global forum. I am thrilled to announce that The WIP is hosting a special Community Chat to discuss women in media with Carol Jenkins and Patricia DeGennaro.

by Emma Sleeth
- India / USA -

Summer has begun here in southern India, which means that most days are in the high 90s or low 100s. It’s bad enough for my friend Val and the staff here at the Dean Foundation—all healthy and living in homes that have fans—but I can’t begin to imagine what it is like for our terminally ill patients. Our bedridden neighbors lie in their homes, day after day, developing puss-filled sores where their hot, damp skin makes contact with the dirt floors and ragged beds they are lying on. We visit them in their homes and dress their bedsores, cutting away tracts of dead skin and sluff the size—and depth—of a pack or two of playing cards and covering the wounds with anti-bacterial solutions, but many sores never improve because of the heat and slow pace at which old bodies heal.

by Nora W. Coffey
- USA -

What do you call it when someone deceptively lures another into danger?

And if the deception involves telling a woman she’ll be “better than ever” to lure her into being drugged and strapped down before cutting out her sex organs, what would you call that?

Maybe female genital mutilation comes to mind, but the impact of the sanctioned violence against women I’m talking about is much more pervasive and far-reaching. And this crime is not only not criminal, some of the largest, most revered medical associations in the country support it, train others to do it, and their members profit from it. The crime I refer to is hysterectomy (surgical removal of the uterus) performed without providing the information required for informed consent.

by Charukesi Ramadurai
- India -

India is now the land of The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women. Who would have thought?

by Nusrat Ara
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

“Keep Guns Outside, Please.” The brightly-colored sign on the gates of She Hope Disability Centre is a reminder of Kashmir’s ongoing conflict.

Sami Wani, the young manager, smiles when asked about the instruction. "We have a military camp nearby. They would often drop by for friendly visits, obviously with arms and ammunition. The patients, especially children and women, would get scared"

Did he get the desired result? “They stopped coming,” he laughs.

by Marin
- USA -

As I rode my scooter to an epic line of folks who had clearly been waiting for several hours to buy discount theater tickets, I was approached by a gentleman who led me to the front of the line so that I could purchase tickets immediately. I was once again struck by what I now know as “gimp-privilege,” or simply, “GP”. After all, I was the only person who was truly prepared for such a line - I had come with my own comfortable seating!

by Mary Grimley Mason
- USA -

When do the children of a mother with a disability discover that the outside world sees her as different or odd? Nair says her daughters hadn’t noticed her disability until her youngest, at eight, saw a boy with crutches and began to ask questions. Her daughter’s curiosity made Nair realize it was time to talk to both girls about her disability and help them relate to other people’s reactions to her.

by Rosemary Okello
- Kenya -

In the face of escalating of sexual violence in Kenya, women with disabilities are more vulnerable than ever. A recent study by the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya (FIDA-K) - a women’s rights advocacy organization that works for gender equality through legal aid - reveals that disabled women are up to three times more likely to be victims of physical and sexual abuse than their non-disabled counterparts.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

Adhari was at one time a legendary site that attracted many tourists to the tiny desert island of Bahrain. Named for a beautiful girl whose tears flowed endlessly because she could not marry her love, the myth of the once-great spring represents ancient Bahrainis’ spiritual connection to the land.

Besides their devotion to God, our ancestors loved nature and cared for the environment, worshipping water as a symbol of their existence. Old Bahrainis worshiped Enki, the God of Freshwater for their sustainable water supply. As a sign of their devotion, they built three temples on the site of the Um Al Sojoor spring in a village called Barbar around 3000 BC.

But modern-day Bahrainis can no longer rely on Enki, and may have even forgotten Adhari’s myth - her tears dried up decades ago, along with other wells and springs, leaving Bahrainis largely dependent on desalinated water that is mixed with high-salinity groundwater. The demise of the Adhari spring is a sad reflection of Bahrain’s unchecked development – it is now little more than a swimming pool in the middle of an amusement park.

by Pushpa Iyer
- USA -

It was close to 8pm on a Saturday two months ago. I was walking down a big, busy street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with a colleague, returning to our hotel after having dinner. As we passed a poor section of the city, I felt a slight movement behind me. When I turned my head, someone put their hands around my neck, strangling and almost choking me. In those few moments, the only thought in my head was: someone’s trying to kill me! Seconds later when I screamed, I felt a tug at the gold chain around my neck as my assailant let go. I was being robbed! The realization was a relief, and more so when I found my chain in the collar of my shirt - broken but still there.

by Zubeida Mustafa
- Pakistan -

In Pakistan, people with disabilities are generally missing from public places such as shopping malls, restaurants and even universities. But it’s not that the country doesn’t have its share of the disabled; on the contrary, their numbers are estimated to be 16 million. So why are they invisible?

by Alexandra McCabe
- USA -

I should know what an abuser looks like. After all, I was working for then Senator Joseph Biden, who sponsored the Violence Against Women Act. But domestic violence is an equal opportunity offender. It was something I read about and discussed with colleagues, never knowing I would one day walk into a marriage filled with abuse and pain.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

Charles Kapuscak and his wife Sharon moved to the Phoenix metropolitan area from Pennsylvania over thirty years ago. They installed low-flow toilets, a low-water-usage washing machine, and they under-water their plants. Unlike many transplants to the “Valley of the Sun,” they also embraced desert landscaping – meaning no grassy yard, the symbol of the American dream.

by Lesley D. Biswas
- India -

Commuting along the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass that runs parallel to the Indian city of Kolkata, the huge expanse of the East Kolkata Wetlands is a daily sight for city dwellers, and yet most of us are unaware of the important role this natural habitat plays in our lives. Despite acknowledging the escalation in Kolkata’s urban development, hardly anyone seems to notice how the congestion of the city’s skyline is leading to a loss of habitat for many living in its shadow.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

After seeing the new documentary Flow, my 2009 New Year’s resolution is to stop buying bottled water. Over $100 billion is spent annually on bottled water, but it would cost only $30 billion to provide clean drinking water to the entire world. Unlike tap water, bottled water is not regulated for cleanliness. And don’t even get me started on the mountains of plastic bottles created by the bottled water industry.

For 84 terrifying and informative minutes, filmmaker Irena Salina makes a very persuasive case for stopping the commoditization of water and ensuring that everyone has access to clean drinking water. Salina interviews an array of researchers and activists who all describe the frightening international situation: dirty water kills more people than wars, the world is quickly running out of clean water, and water has become a valuable commodity for multinational corporations to exploit for profit. Flow is currently available on DVD.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

It is one of the greatest joys of my life to see the dream of The WIP coming true this year - a dream for real news stories as they affect real people; a dream for news that is unencumbered by the agendas of advertising and the corporate world; a dream for a platform where everyday people from all walks of life, in all corners of the world, can come together in conversation about the issues as we see them, through our own eyes and our own unique perspectives and experiences.

It is, however, breathtaking and frightening to look back on the stories we published in 2008. Wars raged on with very little respite. Natural disasters ravaged innocent victims from Burma to the Caribbean. The world participated in and protested one of the most anticipated Olympics in recent history. The USA elected its first African American President. Food is inaccessible for many around the world, and a global financial crisis is upon us like nothing we have witnessed since The Great Depression. And all this barely scratches the surface.

As we prepare to close a year’s worth of coverage, The WIP’s editors will be taking a week off to rest, spend time with our families and friends, and reflect on this incredible year. Our hope is to start the New Year fresh so we can do an even better job delivering quality news from the unique perspectives of women in 2009.

by Lesley D. Biswas
- India -

According to a 2006 National Crime Records Bureau report, 18 women become victims of crime every hour in India. The number of women raped every day has risen to 53 – a nearly 700 percent increase since 1971. India ranked fifth out of 84 countries studied by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in 2006, with 19,000 reported rapes per year. Even though this is far behind the United States, which stands at the top of the ladder with 95,000 reported rapes each year, we ought to treat every single case of rape as inhuman and saddening.

Some women’s groups in India say that fewer than 2 percent of women who have been sexually assaulted in India actually come forward to report the crime, largely because this could undermine a woman’s chances at marriage. These groups also assert that the conservative attitudes of Indian families and the public harassment the victim is put through during questioning in court to prove that she was raped often leads to further social ostracism. Many Indian women would rather suffer in silence than appeal for justice and see the culprit convicted.

by Saskia van Alphen
- Argentina -

The terrain of the Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (the ESMA or Navy Mechanics School) has been open to the public for a year now. Once one of the biggest detention and torture centers during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (March 1976 to December 1983), it is now being transformed into the Space for Memory and the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. The initiative is jointly sponsored by the national government and the city government of Buenos Aires. The management of the Space for Memory also includes representatives from 14 social organizations, such as the Mothers of the Disappeared, HIJOS (Children), various human right organizations and ex-prisoners of the ESMA, who have an important counseling roll.

By keeping the buildings as they are, the center’s planners are giving them the status of commemorative monuments, and opening a museum that will document the dictatorship, the years preceding the coup and the consequences of the military regime. Other buildings will house a library and archive, as well as provide offices for human rights and other organizations concerned with those years of repression.

by Rupa Chinai
- India -

During the course of the past decade, women diagnosed as HIV/AIDS patients in Mumbai have been trying to say something important that deserves close attention. These widows, whose husbands died from AIDS, claim their experience is quite contrary to Western science, which insists that HIV is a “death sentence.”

by Mridu Khullar
- India / USA -

With her signature short hair, perky voice, and aggressive journalistic style, Barkha Dutt, 36, ushered in a new age of journalism in India. Compassionate yet firm, her war reporting from Kargil made her a household name and a role model for young journalists around the country.

But in the days after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed at least 171 and injured over 200, Ms. Dutt has faced criticism from thousands of Indian viewers for her work during the almost 60 hours that Mumbai was under attack.

by Jasmin So-Armada
- Canada -

Walk into a convenience store, coffee shop or supermarket in Calgary and chances are you’ll be waited on by a temporary foreign worker (TFW). Though they come from many countries, they share one story: relocation for the chance to earn decent wages, and in some cases, the hope to reside permanently in Canada. “There is a wide variety of TFWs that come to Alberta - from skilled laborers like welders and carpenters, to pipe fitters to semi skilled trades like cleaners. These are men and women from all parts of the globe,” says Avnish Mehta, Program Coordinator of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society’s (CCIS) Temporary Foreign Worker Integration Advisory Office.

by Rupa Chinai
- India -

Monday, December 1st marked World AIDS Day. As experts continue to search for a cure, we are honored to present Rupa's informative 3-part series on AIDS in India, a compelling look at the gaps in the system and possible solutions for the future. - Ed.

In the course of my work as Special Health Correspondent for a leading English language newspaper based in Mumbai, HIV/AIDS patients from across the country often came to my office to share their story. Those were the years when the hysteria around this disease was reaching its most fevered pitch. Mass HIV testing within the general population was being encouraged or enforced. The patients however reported that their experiences did not conform to the tutoring of the AIDS lobby.

Mushtaq’s (name changed) experience is consistent with that of many who I met. While seeking a work permit for the Gulf, he tested HIV-positive during a mandatory test. Although subsequent tests conducted by a reputed private hospital laboratory showed a negative result, the Gulf Board rejected the “HIV-positive” candidate. Sadly, stigma from the flip-flop testing still sticks to him wherever he goes.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Though the USA has typically been a leader in women's rights, the policies of the Bush Administration have taken us backwards in terms of women's issues, especially policies regarding the health and rights of women globally. Currently, the USA the only country in the world that does not financially contribute to UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) for reasons that are political and not financial. With Barack Obama as President-elect, we have reason to be hopeful that U.S. funding to UNFPA will be restored. There are many challenges facing the USA, but we must ensure that restoring American leadership on women's issues is included and prioritized in the foreign policy of the new Administration.

On Monday, December 8th from 10am-12pm PST we were joined by Anika Rahman, the President of Americans for UNFPA, for a live online chat. As head of the official support organization for the United Nations women's health agency, Anika's role is to increase American engagement in the promotion of the health and rights of women globally. For more than twelve years Anika has monitored and analyzed United States and international policies that affect the reproductive health and rights of women.

by Blaire Dessent
- France -

For the 2008 Dak’Art Biennial, an international art exhibition held in Dakar, Senegal, a group of artists and thinkers associated with the Action Lab project of the Brooklyn-based freeDimensional (fD), collaborated on the production and distribution of Gorée Gazette. A one-time, free newspaper, the Gazette includes personal narratives, drawings and statistics related to the crisis of economic migration - specifically ocean crossings from Africa to Europe and the United States.

by Rupa Chinai
- India -

On August 5, 2008 a young “HIV-positive” couple in Mumbai - Babu Ishwar Thevar, 39, his wife Amothi, 33 - committed suicide after killing their three children, sons Venkatesh and Mani, ages 10 and 8, and daughter Mahalaxmi, 6. They had just discovered that their youngest child too “was infected by the deadly virus.”

The stigma of AIDS has taken many lives long before the disease itself claimed them, but the extent of such suicides, and the reasons behind them, have rarely come to public knowledge. AIDS has a critical link to the immune system and the factors that influence it. Society’s limited understanding of this disease is causing innocent people to pay a terrible price.

by Nancy Van Ness
- USA -

Their hats adorned with artificial flowers identify them at many of the protests in which I participate. The Grannies also show up on New York City's Union Square to sing their signature anti-war lyrics to well known tunes.

I hold in mind a vivid image of some of them who were arrested for trying to stop military recruitment, onstage in Philadelphia, outside Constitution Hall the Saturday after the 2006 elections. Behind them stood young Iraq Veterans Against the War - two of the bravest groups of patriots in the United States, standing together, opposing US aggression.

by Priti Sehgal
- India -

The United States was once a dreamland for many of us Indians. The US label – whether American-brand apparel, a pleasure trip to the US, a higher education degree from anywhere in America, a short training program, a job or the ultimate dream of a family member settling down there – used to be enough to elevate one's social status in India. Given the current financial crunch in the US, the American dream is dying for many Indians.

by Natalie Hart
- Chile -

“Impunity for human rights crimes is not just a matter of the past, but also something that continues today.” - Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary General

On the tenth anniversary of former military dictator General Pinochet’s arrest in London, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan led a delegation to Chile to investigate the country’s current human rights situation. Far from a finding nation that has firmly closed the door on its dark past, Khan reports unratified human rights conventions, unresolved cases of regime era disappearance and torture, and an indigenous community subjected to marginalization and discrimination – a country that has failed to put the ghosts of its past to rest.

by Melissa Costa
- USA / Brazil -

They pruned his moments
They impeded his destiny
His boyish smile was hidden many times
But hopes are renewing, like a new dawn each day
And he shall take care of the sprout
In order to give life flowers and fruit.
- Milton Nascimento, A Student’s Heart

I cannot remember how many times I slammed the door as a response to my anger and frustration during my teenage years. I was searching for the answer to the universal question: Who am I? During my adolescence, many of my friends faced the same problems. Some of them took the wrong path; unfortunately, I haven’t heard from them since.

by Zakeer Fehmida
- India -

Not long ago, a young man named Srinivas and his friends had just planted saplings along one of Chennai's busy thoroughfares and stood wondering how they could ensure the plants' survival amidst the sidewalk bustle. A nearby bicycle shop owner offered discarded bicycle tubes and suggested converting them into plant barriers. The tubes were piled together and the saplings got a new lease on life. Their efforts were part of their work with Diya, a social welfare organization that Srinivas and a group of his fellow IT professionals formed in response to their desire to help provide a platform for citizens to come forward and participate in resolving issues of public interest. Srinivas is one of Diya’s co-founders and says of his organization’s objectives, “We keep looking for ways to step out and make a genuine difference to our society, whether that means a slum development initiative, or a tree planting drive, or lending a helping hand to a blind school.”

by Kimberly N. Chase
- USA -

It's not everyday that thousands of like-minded people from diverse fields come together to discuss ecological topics from biomimicry to eco-tourism, but the 2008 Bioneers conference, held October 17-19 in San Rafael, California (just north of San Francisco), provided such an opportunity. In its 19th year, Bioneers allows environmental organizers, journalists, indigenous leaders, and eco-entrepreneurs to meet and share ideas about how to create a more sustainable society.

by Natalie Hart
- Chile -

From the Qur’an standing on the sideboard, to the ornate Palestinian mosaic boxes decorating the room, to the anguished expressions of heavily made up Arabic soap stars filling the television screen, one could be forgiven for thinking that they were somewhere in the Middle East. We were, in fact, in La Calera – a dusty industrial town in Chile’s Quillota province, 118km from the capital Santiago – in the home of a Palestinian refugee.

by Cheery Zahau
- Burma / India -

Burma has become well known to the world, not with good reason but for its worsening human rights violations perpetrated by the military junta ruling the country. According to Amnesty International, the regime now has more than 1,300 political prisoners, 175 of whom are women according to the Burmese Women Union Report. Last summer, the women of Burma showed their courage by resisting the junta’s many injustices during the Saffron Revolution. The regime responded violently to the protesting unarmed women citizens, nuns and monks.

by Afsaana Rashid
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

October 27, 2008 - Kashmiri separatists and the Pakistani government commemorate "Black Day" the anniversary of the Indian army's forcible entrance into Kashmir 61 years ago. - Ed.

When asked what he likes to do on the festival of Eid-ul-fitr (the celebration ending the month of Ramadan), Ishfaq Ahmad hangs his head. After a brief pause, with his eyes still focused on the floor, Ishfaq recalls nostalgically a time when he lived with his parents in Hangnikote, Kupwara, in the border district. But at the age of four, he and his younger brother lost both of their parents within a period of six months. As there was no one to look after them, the boys moved in with a distant relative, where they lived until Ishfaq was noticed by a volunteer one morning as he sat shivering in the cold.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

“Arab and Gulf Banks will be completely safe from the global financial crisis.” That is what many Arab officials are announcing these days, but ordinary people are not reassured and fail to understand how the Arab World, with its average economies, can possibly be insulated from such catastrophe. They expect that the global financial crisis will eventually add new worries to their daily hardships.

Thirty-five year old Bahraini Ali Hassan doesn’t know much about economics but he understands that the world’s financial markets are not stable and is concerned that the instability will affect him and his family. “I don’t have a large savings but the idea of the banks losing their financial credibility or going bankrupt makes me insecure.”

by Rosie Kuhn, Ph.D.
- USA -

My husband Todd and I traveled to Colorado recently to facilitate the 2nd Annual Colorado Wonderful Women’s Retreat in Estes Park. But first we went down to Colorado Springs for an overnight visit with my daughter Elissa. We loved the city’s small town feeling. Tucked into the side of the mountains the city is cozy; pockets of neighborhoods, each with their own unique qualities, and the small scale of the downtown area, full of interesting shops, engaged us to be curious about what might be right around the corner.

While having our tea at a local coffee shop, Todd perused the newspaper. What he found almost stopped his heart. In the State of Colorado, Proposition 48 is up for vote, which in essence defines legal personhood at fertilization and gives rights to a zygote, or premature fetus, that supercede those of the woman who happens to be carrying it. If this proposition goes through, a woman in Colorado will be committing murder if she aborts a pregnancy. Not only that, if there is any kind of unusual occurrence in the pregnancy, the woman legally can’t do anything to save her own life until an emergency presents itself. By law, the pregnancy must take its own natural course.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

“There are two types of bayonet fighters, the quick and the dead. Which type are you?” This is what a boot camp drill sergeant yells at new recruits, who then reply in unison – “the quick!” During any war, a soldier’s survival depends on this “kill or be killed” mentality. But killing the enemy, even for soldiers who deeply believe in the cause, is not easy. Some soldiers decide they must put down their weapons – even if that means being court-marshaled and imprisoned.

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
- Malawi -

Twenty-seven year-old Lima Wochi from Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, looks dejected. She ventured into prostitution at the tender age of 12. She says she is tired of sex work and is looking for a way out of it.

Prostitution is deemed unacceptable in Malawi but the sex trade continues to thrive. Large numbers of women, especially young ones, are seen loitering around street corners, near hotels, bars and other entertainment places.

by Priti Sehgal
- India -

Across India, the tale of baby Manhji has made headlines and gripped the nation’s attention. Born to a Japanese father and surrogate Indian mother, the two month old is caught in legal limbo. In a way, she has three mothers but none who will raise her, and she cannot return to Japan with her father due to complications of Indian law.

The saga began when Japanese citizens Dr. Ikufumi and Yuki Yamada were unable to conceive a child of their own. They obtained an egg from an anonymous donor and then travelled to India to locate a surrogate mother. In November 2007, the fertilized embryo was implanted into Pritiben of Ahmedabad, and the Yamadas began the nine month wait for their child.

The couple’s dream of completing their happy family was dashed when Ikufumi and Yuki divorced just one month before Manjhi’s birth. Apparently wanting a complete separation from her old life, Yuki took the additional step of disowning the newborn.

by Imelda V. Abaño
- Philippines -

Back in September 2005, the now infamous Danish cartoon of the prophet Muhammad became a worldwide controversy. It was reprinted in newspapers in several countries and led to widespread Muslim protests and violence.

Now the book, The Jewel of Medina, a semi-fictional novel written by American journalist Sherry Jones about the youngest wife of Muhammad, has also led to a firestorm of controversy for its portrayal of the prophet. Many say it could incite similar acts of violence from radical Muslims.

The initial response to the advance edition of Jones’ book was explosive. It was dropped by her publisher Random House because of the anticipated backlash from the Muslim community even though it had paid her a US$100,000 advance. It was also pulled from bookshops in Serbia last August after pressure from Islamic groups.

by Parul Sharma
- Sweden -

As it is, love can either be a blessing or a poison, depending on various aspects. But when love is felt for someone of the same sex, in some cultures, that love becomes a living hell - or simply a love created by a lesser God. Yes, a lesser God - not as strong and creative as the God we are used to. This lesser God created love but forgot to do the ample marketing needed to share the selling points of this particular love, such as poetry, music and literature.

Love knows no boundaries, but maybe our minds do. Otherwise why would I have asked my friend, Are you sure this is love and not just a greater friendship?

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

No, this is not a parody of the 1990 Johnny Depp film Edward Scissorhands. This is Pearl Fryar’s life – and the engaging subject of the new documentary, A Man Named Pearl. For 78 minutes directors/producers Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson lovingly capture Fryar’s spirit and artistry as a self-taught topiary artist who has overcome a lifetime of bigotry to become internationally respected. The film is currently in theatres and will be released on DVD in December.

In 1976 Fryar and his wife Metra moved to Bishopville, South Carolina. As the son of a North Carolina sharecropper, Fryar was no stranger to racism; when the Fryars attempted to buy a home in a predominantly white neighborhood, they were told they weren’t welcome because “Black people don’t keep up their yards.”

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
- Malawi -

No political meeting happens in Malawi without song and dance. Clad in colorful political party regalia, women and girls are the traditional singers and dancers for the country’s political parties. They sing adoring songs of praise for the political leaders they support and mock those who represent political interests different from their own. The majority of Malawi’s politicians are men.

As the country’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections draw closer, the women of Malawi want to move away from being mere singers and dancers; 425 women have mobilized to contest for the country’s 193 parliamentary positions in next May’s elections.

An aspiring MP Margret Nyakondowe says she is contesting because she understands the challenges facing people, especially women and children, better than any man.

"I am a mother and I know the needs of mothers in this country. I would like to see an end to those challenges and I will advocate for them in Parliament," says Nyakondowe.

by Afsaana Rashid
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

As the world observed the International Day of the Disappeared last month on August 30th, Asima Mohi-ud-Din attended a silent protest rally organized by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). For the last three months, protests over the transfer of 800 kanals of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) have prevented the APDP from holding their monthly protests. Desperate to share her story with the world, this eighteen-year-old resident of the Baramulla district in Indian-administered Kashmir penned her grievances in an open letter.

"The sorrow that cannot be overcome has to be tolerated,” she begins. "This is a true story of a family that lived happily until an evil spirit caught it.”

Asima was only three years old, but the incidences of that evening are burned into her memory forever. On June 22, 1993 at 11:30 p.m., her household was awakened by a sudden knock at the door. As her grandmother approached the door with a flashlight, a band of unidentified armed men broke in.

by Shenali Waduge
- Sri Lanka -

“While nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, nothing is more difficult than to understand him” - Mikhailovich Dostovsky

The tiny island nation of Sri Lanka has been plagued by terrorism for the past 25 years. Citing irreparable differences with the majority ethnic group, the armed militant group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelaam (LTTE) is demanding 35% of the country’s landmass and over 75% of its surrounding sea for a separate Tamil state. Constituting only 6.5% of the country’s population, over half of the country’s Tamils currently live amongst the majority Sinhalese.

It was the LTTE that reshaped conventional warfare by introducing suicide bombers – in particular, the female suicide cadre. The LTTE arguably still remains the global leader in suicide terrorism, carrying out two-thirds of the world’s suicide attacks. The real “men of steel” for the LTTE have been its female suicide bombers, who account for 40% of its suicide activities. It’s difficult to understand how a woman would choose to become a human bomb.

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

5:49 pm: The local Western Railway train pulls up at the Churchgate station in Mumbai. People on various platforms rush from one corner to the other, preoccupied with getting to their next destination on time. I'm possibly the only person who's taken a moment to stand and look around at the swarm of fleeting bodies around me. I board the train.

by Blaire Dessent
- France -

When the family of Ramon Avalos, a blind and mentally disabled man in his 50s, received a check from Center for Creative Growth for a few hundred dollars from the sales of his artwork, they sent the check back thinking it was a mistake. Founded in the mid-1970s in Oakland, California, The Center for Creative Growth (CCG) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing those with mental, physical and emotional disabilities a place to make artwork. Avalos had been working at the Center for years and was known for his colored pencil on paper abstracts.

by Julie Chowdhury
- Sweden -

Every morning when you wake up and perform what you may perceive as insignificant chores, you might not realize that for 2.6 billion people around the world, your morning shower or just one flush of the toilet is the essence of luxury. The United Nations has declared that every human being is entitled to 20 liters of safe water every day. In Europe, we have the privilege of using 200 liters per day, while in the US, the average person uses up to 400. The average person in the developing world tries to manage on less than 10 liters of contaminated water to do all their daily chores.

by Afsaana Rashid
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

At a time when it is very difficult to find people willing to extend the hand of human kindness to those practicing a different religion, Muslims living in the Kashmir valley have set a great example by assisting Hindus on their pilgrimage.

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

According to the National Coalition of Health Care in America, in 2007, total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9 percent—twice the rate of inflation. Healthcare spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense. And although 47 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on healthcare than other industrialized nations.

It is no wonder then that scores of American citizens are heading off to foreign shores for their healthcare needs.

by Shenali Waduge
- Sri Lanka -

At only a year old, would a child know that she was in front of a cake attempting to blow out something called a candle? When my daughter turned one she was pretty clueless - about the little Barbie that stood in front of her as much as the beaming faces egging her on. Her toothless grin in photos from that day show a little girl, full of glee and quite oblivious to all the challenges that we adults endure on a daily basis in Sri Lanka.

by Lijia Zhang
- China

Sundown left a trail of blood-red clouds in the western sky, yet evening offered no respite from the burning heat. With the plum rain season at an end Nanjing renewed its reputation as one of China’s four furnace cities, the temperature soaring over 40 degrees, or so we all believed – the government reported only 38 or 39. Yes, even the temperature was dictated by the authorities. Once it officially exceeded 37 degrees one working hour would be cut from the day. If it topped 40, all could go home.

The loudspeakers spitting propaganda and stirring tales of model workers were all the more unbearable in such heat. But I was riding away from them.

by Afsaana Rashid
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

Kashmir’s ongoing armed conflict over the past two decades has had physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral consequences for everyone living in the valley. Although no official figures exist, everyone agrees there has been an increase in the number of both physically challenged and mentally ill in Kashmir over the last 20 years.

by Dr. Rita Thapa
- Nepal -

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, wedged between China and India. With a total surface area of 147 square kilometers, the country is home to some 27 million Nepalis from more than a hundred diverse caste and ethnic identities. 86% of the Nepali people live in rural areas, with poor transport and communication facilities, and few health services. Public-private partnerships, which have steadily gained ground in Nepal, have highlighted one of the most important but neglected public health needs: safe pregnancy and childbirth.

The country has come a long way since 1951, when it launched its first modernization drive. It has since transformed from a socially orthodox Hindu kingdom to a secular federal democratic republic, with women comprising 33% of its national assembly. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, which waged a decade-long insurgency in 1996, recently won elections, and a mandate to govern the country.

Having been a girl in pre-1951 Nepal, and having not been allowed to obtain formal schooling till I was 10 years old, I find these changes a bit dizzying, but recognize the huge gains for a country held back by centuries of feudalism, poverty, illiteracy, and discrimination, as well as a decade-long guerrilla war.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

On August 20th, 2008, Polish and American officials signed a missile defense agreement long pursued by Washington and strongly decried by Moscow.

American officials argue that the deal to locate ten ground-based ballistic missile interceptors in Poland is a necessary step to protect the US and Europe from attacks by “rogue states” such as Iran and North Korea. Still awaiting ratification by the Polish Sejm, the deal allows the United States to build and maintain a military base on Polish territory. The installation is part of a broader global network of radar stations and anti-missile missiles (interceptors), including a radar station planned in the Czech Republic.

Outraged at what they see as America’s attempt to establish a permanent foothold in the region under the guise of the War on Terror, Moscow has responded quickly and without mincing words. According to the BBC, Russia’s foreign ministry stated that they "will be forced to react, and not only through diplomatic demarches."

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

Couples in India are finally figuring out that hours of horoscope-matching sessions followed by measures to correct planetary positions make not a good marriage. Urban educated twenty-somethings of today are ditching the priest's grass mat and heading to the counselor's leather couch.

Pre-marital counseling, a concept that has so far been alien to Indians, is making an entry into the psyche of the young middle-class. Counseling of any sort has traditionally been seen as a "western idea," and something that is not part of the Indian culture. Formal and professional pre-marital counseling is looked upon even more skeptically by a generation of parents who met each other no more than once or twice before their own arranged marriages.

by Lijia Zhang
- China -

Since the reform and opening up, a handful of young people have begun to worship capitalism,” preached political instructor Wang Aimin, the ideologue-in-chief of our unit, spittle flying over his notes and out into the audience. His cold eyes blinked in- voluntarily, lending a sinister look that belied his given name, Aimin – Love the People.

“Unable to distinguish between fragrant flowers and poisonous weeds, these young people pick up capitalist trash like the ‘trumpet trousers’ and rotten music,” Wang spat. “We must resolutely defend the ‘four cardinal principles’ of socialism!”“

by Alice Alech
- France -

Working as a breast screen radiographer or x-ray technologist can be rewarding and challenging at times but I know that detecting even a small breast cancer can make a difference in a woman’s life. That’s what makes it all worthwhile.

by Joyce J. Wangui
- Kenya -

Young Kamau carries a heavy bucket of water on his head. Clad in tattered clothes that barely conceal his ill-nourished body, the young boy is aware that the cameras are focused not on the water he is carrying, but at the sores on his feet. Kamau can barely walk as most of his toes have been eaten up by jiggers. What is left of the flesh is a mere fragile skin covered with pus and dead cells. The boy is conscious of our shock as we realize that the whole village of Kiangage is infested with the deadly bug.

by Beena Sarwar
- Pakistan -

President Pervez Musharraf's resignation from office on August 18th under intense pressure has raised questions, particularly in the West, about the future of Pakistan's "war on terror". The following article takes a historic and political look at the background and possible future of this war. - Ed.

When the British colonizers left India in August 1947, they granted India independence, dividing it along religious lines which saw Hindus and Muslims as two different nations. Pakistan, conceived as a nation-state for Indian Muslims, consisted of the Muslim-majority provinces or states, including two states with nearly equal Hindu and Muslim populations - Punjab and Bengal on India’s eastern border, situated a thousand miles away from the other four Pakistani provinces. Two other Muslim-majority states ended up in India’s control: Kashmir to the northwest (which Pakistan also laid claim to), and Hyderabad in central India.

The two-nation theory bypassed the reality of the multinational, multi-faith and multilingual communities that make up India and Pakistan. Attempting to develop a homogenous national identity (largely to counter India), successive Pakistani governments tended to focus on Islam as the unifying factor. They also continued the authoritarian and colonist policies of the British, resulting in religious, ethnic or linguistic groups feeling excluded and discriminated against. For most of its existence, Pakistan has been governed by military rulers who have prioritized weapons and military training over education and social welfare, resulting in a sense of injustice and deprivation, and divisions along religious, sectarian, class and ethnic lines.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

The stunning Caucasus soar nobly over their valleys, sheltering quilt squares of villages below. Sadly, this bucolic landscape harbors ancient animosities and modern hostilities in its crags; a simmering violence which this month threatened to escalate into full-scale war.

On August 7th, Russian peacekeeping troops responded to a Georgian military action in the latter’s breakaway province of South Ossetia. Before a French-brokered cease-fire could be reached five days later, 1,500 people had died, with 100,000 more displaced. Only hours after the agreement’s announcement, fresh allegations re-emerged from both sides, dampening international hopes for peace.

With South Ossetia seizing the opportunity for self-determination, Georgia battling to escape its geographic reality, and Russia striving to regain its influence in the “near-abroad,” each refuses to back down without a fight.

by Lijia Zhang
- China -

CLICK, CLACK, CLICK, CLACK ... When the percussive tap sounded from the corridor outside I was instantly alert. Soon, the source arrived in the doorway and walked into the workshop.

“Masters, have you all eaten?” Little Zhi, a colleague who tested electric gauges in another room along the corridor offered the common greeting in China – one which required no answer. A giant by local standards at 1.86 metres tall, his eyes were long and thin; the sparse moustache on his young face as out of place as legs painted on a snake. He settled cross-legged in a chair, one foot in the air showing off his shining leather shoes with half-moon metal plates on the soles – the source of the tapping. They were considered attractive – not everyone could afford leather footwear. As the only son of the most senior deputy director of the factory, and, perhaps more importantly, the newly found nephew of a man living in Taiwan, Zhi could afford certain luxuries.

by Kulsoom Nizamuddin
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

- In a continuing cycle of conflict, fresh violence broke out this week in Kashmir, heightening tensions and confining everyone to their homes as a blanket curfew was put into effect in Srinagar. - Ed.

• A shikarawalla waits for customers on Dal Lake. Photograph by Ajay Tallman. •

Rafeeq is not the only one whose business has been hit badly due to tourism decline. Once a hot destination for tourists, Kashmir’s tourism industry has suffered a major set back since the outset of violence and armed struggle against Indian occupation in 1989.

by Zubeida Mustafa
- Pakistan -

Pakistan has been hit by severe food price inflation – the worst in its 61-year history. The prices of many basic food items have more than doubled in the last year and poor families are now spending two thirds to three quarters of their monthly income on their meals alone.

• As food prices rise in Pakistan, some are turning to home gardens to put food on the table. Photograph courtesy of OPP-RTI. •

Although Pakistan’s economy has been in crisis for some time now, the real crunch has come with the rise in food and oil prices. Traditionally, the food intake of most people has been inadequate in the country and as a result malnutrition is rampant. According to Human Development in South Asia 2007, a report by the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Center, 23 per cent of Pakistan’s people were undernourished in 2003 while 19 per cent of the country’s children were stunted, underweight or in severe health crisis in 2005. Doctors believe that in the last couple of years malnutrition has increased.

by Halima Abdallah Kisule
- Uganda -

Scores of Ugandans continue to bleach their skin despite a government ban on the sale of several lotions, creams, gels and soaps which are largely used to whiten, even and tone the skin.

• In extreme cases of skin bleaching, the skin can become multi-colored and marred with inflammation or scarring. Photograph courtesy of Halimah Abdallah Kisule. •

Medically, skin whitening (or bleaching) products are used for treating pigmentation disorders like freckles, pregnancy marks, blotchy uneven skin tone, patches of brown to gray skin and age spots. Skin pigmentation occurs because the body either produces too much or too little melanin, the pigment responsible for creating the color of our eyes, skin and hair. It also provides crucial protection against the sun’s rays by absorbing ultra-violet light. Doctors say that those with darker skin are less susceptible to sunburn and the overall effects of sun damage.

by Imelda V. Abaño
- The Philippines -

For decades, the Philippines, one of the poorest countries in Asia, has provided skilled medical professionals primarily to wealthy places such as the United States, Europe and the Middle East. But as more and more health workers leave the country for greener pastures abroad, public health experts say the country's health care system is on the brink of collapse.

Long hours, backbreaking schedules, poor conditions and little pay pushed 37-year-old Mary Ann Visaya to leave her job at a public hospital in an impoverished town in Cagayan Valley for higher salary abroad. For the past four years, Visaya has been working as a staff nurse, administering to roughly 30 or 40 patients a day. She has seen poor people lined up at the hospital and heard patients complain of the long wait to get treatment. But like many of her colleagues, she jumps at the opportunity to leave the country and work abroad.

"Most of the time your heart breaks seeing poor people lined up to seek treatment. But I have learned to persevere [through] more hours of work especially during critical staff shortage," Visaya explains. "But I also have to think of the welfare of my parents because with my present salary of $170, it is not enough to sustain our expenses.”

by Shola Dada
- Nigeria -

A healthy functional home is obtained only through a very precious currency called time. As a woman in Nigeria, I can’t help feeling: how fair is this system? I nurse great ambitions just as passionately as any man, and I’m just as mentally equipped to pursue and achieve them, and with that I still have the singular mandate to ‘build my home?’ What am I supposed to be, superwoman?

Maybe single woman.

by Lijia Zhang
- China -

The end of 1980 saw the dawn of reform but also roaring unemployment. To address the problem, the government introduced a temporary policy, allowing young people to take over their parents’ positions. My mother, aged only 43, having pickled machine parts in acid most of her working life, decided to take advantage and retire, worried I might never land such a good job. Chenguang Machinery Manufacture in Nanjing, with its army of 10,000 workers, was among the largest and most prestigious enterprises in China, churning out civilian as well as military supplies, including the country’s “fist product” – missiles.

From free nurseries to cremation, with countless bowls of rice in between, the life of a state employee provided cradle-to-grave security. Workers were hailed as “big brothers”, “the masters of the nation”.

by Afsaana Rashid
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

Officials at the Kashmir Department of Agriculture are putting in serious effort to preserve a male Ginkgo biloba tree, a species that has almost vanished from South Asia.

The Ginkgo, South Asia’s oldest tree, is located in Lal Mandi’s Kitchen Garden of the Agriculture Department. The species is believed to be 270 million years old, as old as the dinosaurs, while the tree itself is more than 200 years old and is eight feet. The life span of Ginkgo biloba can be as long as 3000–4000 years or even more.

• Lal Mandi's Gingko struggles for survival; a section of its bark fell off after poor pruning. Photograph by Afsaana Rashid. •

As the park is located in a low lying area, rain and snow accumulate into a pool of water. Fida says that the Ginkgo grows best in acidic soil, while stagnant water changes the pH value of soil from acidic to alkaline, resulting in slower growth.

Since the stagnant water in the park has retarded the tree’s growth, a two-feet-high mound of earth was formed around the tree. Dense suckers have sprouted on the raised mound, and experts hope to plant them next year under suitable climate conditions.

An official pleading anonymity says that some of the branches have been chopped poorly, leaving the stump vulnerable to diseases and pests. "You can find holes in the tree; it is because the branches have been chopped wrongly. Branches must be axed completely."

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Barack Obama cast a spell on Germany. Even weeks before his visit to Berlin on July 24th, he dominated the headlines and was the talk of the capital city. Then, after much anticipation, the 47-year-old US senator delivered an idyllic speech, conquering the hearts of most Germans.

• Berliners flocked to the Brandenburg gate to hear Barack Obama's only European speech. Photograph by Vera von Kreutzbruck. •

“He is an incredibly fascinating person,” journalist Peter Intelman, 47, told me at the rally. “I just spoke with a young woman and she said: when he says ‘yes, we can,’ I believe him. He radiates credibility and this is what is so fascinating about him. But I don’t know if he will be able to fulfill his promises.”

Another Obama enthusiast, Fanny, a 22-year-old French law student told me: “Most of the European countries are Democrats so we have more affinities with Obama than with McCain. Besides, I think he can change things. I’m sure that it will be better with him than how it was with Bush.”

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

• Tibetan writers are using literature and new languages, Chinese and English, to share information about Tibet's struggle for freedom with a wider audience.
Photograph by Sirensongs. •

Their language of choice—Tibetan, English, and surprisingly, now even Mandarin.

“Although the exile Tibetan community [in India] has been very effective in providing a high level of cultural production in religious areas, it is inside Tibet that Tibetan intellectuals and artists have been able to make achievements in secular culture, such as poetry, literature, music, painting, and some forms of scholarship, despite the difficulties they face,” says Dr. Robert Barnett, Director of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University and author of Lhasa: Streets with Memories.

The writings of these poets and essayists have transformed over the past decade from musings about an exotic culture and history, to more real issues of human rights, political policies, and memoirs of people loved and lost. The Tibetan writers of today, regardless of their genre, seem to write with an agenda: to spread the word about the declining situation of the Tibetan freedom movement to readers both inside and out of China.

by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
- USA -

Dear Senator Obama,

We write to congratulate you on the tremendous achievements of your campaign for the presidency of the United States.

Your candidacy has inspired a wave of political enthusiasm like nothing seen in this country for decades. In your speeches, you have sketched out a vision of a better future--in which the United States sheds its warlike stance around the globe and focuses on diplomacy abroad and greater equality and freedom for its citizens at home--that has thrilled voters across the political spectrum. Hundreds of thousands of young people have entered the political process for the first time, African-American voters have rallied behind you, and many of those alienated from politics-as-usual have been re-engaged.

You stand today at the head of a movement that believes deeply in the change you have claimed as the mantle of your campaign. The millions who attend your rallies, donate to your campaign and visit your website are a powerful testament to this new movement's energy and passion.

by Halimah Abdallah Kisule
- Uganda -

Ms Akullo Flavia, a retail shop owner in a Kampala suburb, stands puzzled in the local market not knowing what to buy for supper. Her initial plan to buy fresh fish is ruined - there is no fish for sale at the stalls. A local hajati, or fish dealer, is disappointed too. She explains that the moon’s recent brightness is helping the big fish to see the net and escape. The little fish that get trapped in the nets are all sold on the beaches at much higher prices to the waiting refrigerator trucks of fish processing companies who export to countries like China and several parts of Europe. Officials from the fisheries department say that even these companies are facing a deficit and only exporting a third of their capacity due to declining fish populations in the lakes and rivers.

by Remi Adeoye
- Nigeria -

There is stiff opposition to the proposed Niger Delta Summit slated to be held in Abuja, Nigeria. The Delta’s most prominent militant group, known as The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), called it a “circus,” and "a face saving measure” by the slow-moving Yar'Adua administration to show that it has a plan to solve the area’s problems. The line of battle has been drawn between the federal government and the militants, with tensions increasing after the deployment of more soldiers and two naval warships to the oil-rich Delta, which militants described as a “callous, wicked attempt to wipe the Ijaw nation from the face of the earth.”

• The environmental devastation from installations like this one in Ikot Ada Udo has left nearly everyone living off the land without a livelihood. Photograph by Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR. •

To the indigenous Egi women of Ijaw, it is crucial that more come out of the Abuja summit than political posturing. As the women say, “We are farmers, fisherwomen and hunters. With all the flaming and pumping oil into our swamp areas, the oil companies have denied us every living thing. Today, we have no hope, while they are making billions of naira with our gifts from God. They don’t care or hear our cry; they only throw tear gas on us, beat us, and drive us out of our land.”

by Jennie S. Bev
- USA / Indonesia -

I live in Northern California, considered one of the wealthiest regions in the United States, where the global intellectual hub of Silicon Valley neighbors the panoramic San Francisco Bay area and where luminaries like Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the “Google Guys”), writer Amy Tan, and comedian Robin Williams call home. Here, millionaires oftentimes still go to work and live in cramped houses due to skyrocketing housing prices. A decent dim sum meal costs at least $20 USD per person and a modest one-bedroom apartment rental costs about $1,500 USD per month. A dollar can probably buy you one can of soda in a deli, but not in a movie theater, where it might be four times as much.

• A man adds extra cuts to the lumps of meat ready for distribution to the less fortunate in the nearby community. 250g of red meat is a luxury for the poor in Jakarta. Photograph by Danumurthi Mahendra •

What a contrast. What a divided world we live in.

by Beena Sarwar
- Pakistan -

It was painful to think of Rehmat Shah Afridi on death row, haggard and ill.

I had worked with him at the English language daily paper he launched from Lahore in 1989, The Frontier Post, originally started from Peshawar, capital of his native North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in the mid-1980s. He was not highly educated but he had a liberal, progressive vision of independent media and had brought one of the country’s finest journalists, Aziz Siddiqui, on board as the editor.

• Rehmat Shah Afridi celebrates his release from prison with his sons. Photograph by Rahat Dar, The News on Sunday. •

Aziz Siddiqui had by then joined the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) as co-director along with his close friend and fellow journalist I.A. Rehman who was Director of HRCP. The organization was among those that protested Afridi’s arrest in 1999 on what most journalists believe to be trumped up charges of drug trafficking. After a district court on June 27, 2001 condemned Afridi to death by hanging, he spent the next three years on death row. There was sporadic news of him once he was convicted. One of his lawyers told me that he was terribly ill at one point and had lost much weight. The Lahore High Court on June 3, 2004 commuted his death sentence on the grounds that trafficking in hashish is not a capital crime. Still, he remained in Lahore’s notorious Kot Lakhpat Jail for nearly a decade, with courts periodically turning down his bail applications, pleas to move him to a prison in Peshawar closer to his family and appeals for proper medical care. He was finally released on bail in May this year.

by Nadia Gouy
- Morocco -

The results of the September 2007 elections were no landmark victory for female representation in the Moroccan legislature – apart from the 30 female lawmakers elected through a 2002-instituted quota system, only four women were able to squeak into the lower house. Yet, for a country that is determined to lead the Arab pack in gender equality, the executive is a good counterbalance. And the new government counts five female ministers along with two undersecretaries, accounting for 19.2 percent of the total ministerial posts – a percentage that earns Morocco the 39th rank, second to no other Arab country, in the 2008 Women in Politics Report jointly prepared by the United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

• Anti-corruption crusader, Yasmina Badou has met with resistance by what many have referred to as her “inflexibility and refusal to negotiate” in her attempt to improve Morocco's health care system. Photograph by Houda Andaloussi. •

Just like any Moroccan, I took a deep interest in Yasmina’s proclaimed crusade for reforming the health sector. Born to a family that could pay the doctor’s bill in a city that has the lion’s share of clinics and hospitals, I was under the delusion that high maternal and infant mortality rates were ancient history. Yet, pursuing a Master’s in international development showed me the bitter reality. An ever-ailing health sector, all the more blighted by the flagrant inequalities between the up-to-date private clinics and hospitals and their dilapidated public counterparts, is a good enough reason for Morocco to rank 126th out of 177 countries according to the UNDP-commissioned Human Development Report 2007-08 – this time behind most Arab countries. Among the disquieting facts and figures: the number of physicians per 100,000 people stands at 51 with an extremely disproportionate concentration in the urban areas; among the poorest 20 percent, only 30 percent of births are attended by skilled health personnel compared to 95 percent among the richest 20 percent; the infant mortality rate stands at 62 per 1,000 live births against 24 for the richest 20 percent; and the mortality rate for five years and under stands at 74 per 1,000 infants compared to 26.

by Diane Solomon
- USA -

Like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. before them, when Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez organized California’s exploited and marginalized farm workers into the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) in the 1960s they built a nonviolent movement that empowered poor and disenfranchised people to help themselves.

• Dolores Huerta, circa 1968. Photograph courtesy of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. •

During her career with the UFW, Huerta organized field strikes, directed boycotts, and negotiated and administered agreements. Huerta also was one of the first to speak out against pesticides that harm farm workers, consumers, and the environment. Five years ago she left the UFW and started the Dolores Huerta Foundation to teach community organizing. She still works as an advocate for farmworkers, whose pay and working conditions have worsened in recent years.

I spoke with Huerta at Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose, California.

by Afsaana Rashid
– Indian-administered Kashmir -

While the world has progressed by leaps and bounds in technological advancement, the Kashmir valley remains rooted in cultural tradition. The state of Kashmir abounds in ancient literature, language, religion, arts, crafts, dance, and music. Its culture is steeped in story telling, philosophy and folklore, even when it comes to medicine. In the Kashmir valley there are hundreds of families who turn to faith healers for solutions to their problems, especially those with psychiatric issues. Researchers Dr. Mushtaq Ahmad Margoob, a leading psychiatrist of the valley, and Huda Mushtaq, point to the decades long conflict in Kashmir for the phenomenal increase in the region’s psychological problems.

“My family, including my children, treated me like a lunatic a few years back when I could not cope up with certain problems. Consequently, I tried many doctors, including psychiatrists, but nothing worked,” says Hajra, a woman in her mid-forties.

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

In Haiti people eat cakes baked with mud for lack of flour. In Bangladesh, Indonesia and across Africa, riots are spreading among the hungry. And in the world’s richest country, the United States, the breadlines are growing.

• Photograph by Bruce Gilbert, courtesy of The Earth Institute. •

by Zubeida Mustafa
- Pakistan -

Anil is now a young man of 19, studying for his high school examinations at Bahria College. He is also working a summer job with a cell phone company to earn a few extra rupees for his family.

• Shabina (standing at left) and her first group of students at the original Garage School site. •

by Emily Rose Herzlin
- USA -

On July 1st, the top post on the ID Project’s Blog proclaimed: No More Plastic Bags Y’all! We are going Back to the Sack!

Where’s your plastic bag stash? Everyone has one. It’s a kitchen cabinet or a drawer stuffed to the gills. It’s a corner of the hallway closet. Better yet, it’s a plastic bag filled with plastic bags. One New York City meditation center, The Interdependence Project (ID Project), has taken on the environmental issue of plastic bags as part of their ongoing effort to connect their meditation practice to their everyday lives. July 1st marked the start of their Low Impact Consumption Month and “Back to the Sack” initiative to eradicate plastic bag usage in New York City.

by Maria H. Lewytzkyj
- USA -

I keep a blog on MySpace devoted to coverage of the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. By giving life to this blog, my initial goal was to bring together a network of people from civil society who would become involved and stay informed. Early on, I posted an op-ed about China's role in Darfur and how the world was more interested in technological advances than the worsening human conditions in Darfur. A few of my friends on MySpace showed interest. One turned it into a podcast, and another started to correspond with me regularly. Soon we were adding people to our blogs who were genuinely interested in what was happening in Darfur, and though they felt completely helpless, they still wanted to stay informed. My experience in keeping this blog demonstrates the advantage bloggers have over the mainstream media - free press. Bloggers have the freedom to include perspectives and ideas that are often not included in mainstream coverage. This article is a jumping-off point for me to begin sharing my blog with readers of The WIP by cross-posting my Darfur coverage on The WIP's TALK blog.

by Susan Enuogbope Majekodunmi
- USA -

As a child growing up in Nigeria, I was familiar with military coups. I would wake up in the morning and on TV a new President in military uniform would state that there had been a coup and he was now our new leader. He would order everyone to stay home until the situation stabilized. Later that night, on the 9pm news, he would reappear to tell us how he was the person to rescue the country from the clutches of the one he seized power from. However, time would show our new leader repeating exactly what he accused his predecessor of doing, many times to an even higher degree. As time passed, it would also become obvious that our new president had no intention of leaving office, ever.

• Despite widespread criticism, Robert Mugabe attended the global food summit in Rome in early June. Photograph by Malcom M. •

In Nigeria, military dictator Sani Abacha, who seized power from his fellow military predecessor, annulled the June 12th, 1993 democratic election of Chief Moshood Abiola, a civilian businessman who, by all accounts, won the election. Abacha refused to give up power and Abiola fled abroad for his safety. However, he was lured back to supposedly take what was rightfully his, only to be swiftly charged with treason and killed while in Abacha's custody. Since I lived close to Abiola's residence at the time, I witnessed the chaos and violence his death caused as many people took to the streets to protest.

by Riane Eisler
- USA -

There’s an invisible elephant in today’s political debates: a major issue that’s getting no attention. Sure, there’s some recognition that behind many attacks on Hillary Clinton lie virulent traditions of sexism. But so devalued is anything stereotypically associated with women that crucial matters that directly impact our lives and our families aren’t even mentioned.

• Women's issues take a backseat in American politics. Photograph by Rebecca DeLisle. •

This relegation of “women’s issues” to a secondary place is obviously terrible for half of America (actually the majority, since women are 52 percent). But it’s also terrible for the political and family health of our entire nation.

Let’s start with politics. For both the mullahs in Iran and the rightist-fundamentalist alliance in the United States, “getting women back into their traditional place” in a “traditional family” has been a top priority. There’s a basic reason for this. Rigidly male-dominated societies are also authoritarian and violent. Along with the imposition of a brutal dictatorship by the Nazis, their mantra was returning women to their "traditional" roles in a male-dominated family. Nor is it coincidental that the 9-11 terrorists came from cultures where women are terrorized into submission. Or that regressive fundamentalists in the United States (who also believe in top-down rule and “holy wars”) first organized as a powerful political block around a “women’s issue”: the defeat during the 1970s of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

by Imelda V. Abaño
- Philippines -

Hunger is the most crucial manifestation of poverty. In many parts of the world, the soaring prices of food, fuel and other basic goods have triggered social unrest and a growing sense of urgency.

• In Haiti, an estimated 46% of all children under five are severely or moderately stunted in growth due to malnutrition. Photograph by Imelda V. Abaño. •

Witnessing the realities of the devastating consequences of poverty and rising food prices up close reminded me of my first visit to Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries.

In June, I went to Haiti with five other journalists for an experience unlike any of my previous trips abroad. The abject poverty and despair I witnessed there is far more extreme than in my own country. Never before have I seen such deprivation than that which I saw in Haiti; the human suffering is all too real and heart-rending.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, is plagued by violence, hunger, unrelenting extreme poverty, disease, high unemployment rates, low life expectancy and crumbling health and educational systems.

by Parul Sharma
- Sweden -

“The truth, however, is that the male is the enjoyer and female a thing to be enjoyed…” - Manu Smiriti

Social and psychological discrimination appeared in an Indian courtroom on April 3rd, 2005, when minutes before sentencing was due, a convicted rapist offered his victim a marriage proposal. The man, who said he was offering to marry the woman because the stigma of rape in India meant no one else would, was convicted of raping and seriously injuring a 22-year-old nurse in September 2003 at the hospital where they both worked. The survivor was asked in court whether she would accept the proposal from her attacker, who had hoped it might lower his sentence. The judge postponed sentencing until the next day, when the rape victim told the court she had rejected his petition.

So many questions come to any sane person’s mind, most importantly: did the court, as a “law-making” institution, even consider the dangers such a precedent would pose to women?

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

Just before Christmas, we locked up our apartment in Krakow and walked across the Rynek towards the train station. Crossing the main square in the early morning drizzle, overburdened by our luggage and breathless from our brisk pace, I was about to turn the corner onto ulica Floriańska when something pulled at my reins. For a moment, I looked back at Kościół Mariacki (St. Mary’s Cathedral), and found myself frozen in place, unable to continue. Sparkling in the silence, it captivated me as if I was seeing its red brick and uneven turrets for the last time.

by Katharine Daniels & Sarah McGowan
- USA -

Sunday’s news that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from the Zimbabwean runoff race spurred international media coverage and outrage on a crisis that has been raging for years. According to the opposition’s Movement for Democratic Change, "some 86 of its supporters have been killed and 200,000 forced from their homes by militias loyal to the ruling Zanu-PF party."

• An image from last year's violent police crackdown on Zimbabwean activists. Photograph courtesy of The Zimbabwean. •

WIP Contributors Constance Manika and Lelety Mabasa, along with Sharon Njobo, Grace Kwinjeh and Sandra Nyaira, have published article after article over the past year, outlining the methodical behavior of a political despot who is both cunning and ruthless, and who will stop at nothing to preserve his power.

In our second week of publication, Sharon Njobo (living in exile in Canada) wrote about women in her country taking the lead to protest against Mugabe's economic policies. In this early article we first learned of Zimbabwe's skyrocketing inflation rates (currently at 355,000 percent), and the rising price of basic foodstuffs - putting cooking oil, cornmeal, bread, and milk beyond the reach of many families in a country that was once considered the 'food basket' of Africa. The deteriorating Zimbabwean economy has now earned the country the dubious distinction of having the lowest life expectancy in the world for women. At just 34 years, a woman's life span (37 years for a man) is now half of what it was only 18 years ago.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

Most of them came by sea through tough journeys, seeking better lives. They loved their new homelands both before and after the oil era that brought wealth beyond anyone’s expectations. Many of them fought for independence and development in their new countries. But what did they get in return?

They didn’t get awards or national recognition, instead they were just marked with an unbearable word for the rest of their lives: Bidoon or stateless. Even their children and grandchildren, who have never known another homeland, are counted as stateless. Most of the young men who came to the Gulf states in the 1920s and 1930s are long dead and buried under the soil of countries that never accepted them as citizens.

by Sara Terry
- USA -

It all goes back, I think, to the day I was standing in a mass grave, hating the fact that I was there, balanced precariously on a mound of bones, camera reluctantly in hand. I’d been asked to make a photo of a partly-preserved pair of hands, the remains of a teenage boy who along with thousands of other Bosnian Muslim men and boys had been murdered by Bosnian Serb forces seven years earlier during the Srebrenica massacre.

• Forensic anthropologists Ewa Klonowski (right) and Piotr Drukier examine the partially preserved hands of a teenage boy, found in a mass grave of victims of the 1995 massacre of some 7,000 to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of Serb forces who overran the U.N. "safe haven" of Srebrenica. The grave, which contained more than 150 intact bodies and some 350 partial remains, was one of the largest mass graves uncovered in Bosnia since the end of the war. Photograph © Sara Terry. •

by Kimberly N. Chase
- USA -

After hearing the family history of her adventurous great-grandmother, a free African American woman who lived in New Orleans during the Civil War, community activist Pam Dashiell knew she wanted to live in the legendary southern city.

• Community activist Pam Dashiell doesn't flinch in the face of New Orleans' challenges. Photograph courtesy of Kimberly Chase. •

Three generations later, Dashiell brought her family history full circle. Since moving from Massachusetts, she has come to call New Orleans home, and is now a well-known organizer; Dashiell's work in the Holy Cross neighborhood in the city's Lower Ninth Ward took on added urgency after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Trying to bring the area back to life, she now helps evacuated families decide whether they can make the move back to their city and rebuild their homes.

by S. Jean
- Gaza City -

Boom! I can feel a rumble under my feet and hear the windows clatter lightly in our two-bedroom apartment. My husband and I live on the third floor of an apartment building in Rimal, regarded as a safe neighborhood in Gaza City. The Gaza Strip is tiny, only 140 square miles, and we can easily hear explosions, even those a couple towns away.

• This building is part of a government complex that the Israeli Air Force bombed using an F-16. Ten children from nearby homes were wounded in this attack, launched in the middle of the night in the Tel Al Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City. •

You name it… it's all a normal part of our lives here in Gaza. And little stops us, and everyone else, from going about our day-to-day activities. After all, it's only 7:30 in the morning and we are getting ready to go to work. We don't even check the TV for news about the blast.

by Yu Sun
- China -

The earthquake that struck Sichuan recently has shown China’s capacity to mobilize resources, cope with emergency situations and handle crisis. China conducted its own prompt media coverage and provided unprecedented access to foreign media on the quake-hit area. China has demonstrated its preparedness and ability to hold the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games.

The So-Called Boycott Won’t Affect the Olympic Games

• Olympic torchbearers were met with widespread protest around the world. Photograph by Steve Punter. •

The Olympic flame does not belong to China, but to the whole world and carries a message of global peace. Disrupting the Olympic torch relay is not only contrary to the Olympic spirit, but endangers the personal safety of torchbearers and violates the rights of those who welcomed its arrival.

A few countries’ leaders have pondered not attending the opening ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing. I’m amazed to read this kind of the news.

What is China going to lose from this possible boycott? After all, tens of thousands of athletes from different countries will still compete in Beijing, and that's what matters.

by Glory Mushinge
- UK -

In much of the world, life for an eight year old is considered just started, but in Colombia, girls that age are dying, fighting in the military.

“As soon as they said they were going to kill us, we grabbed a change of clothes and anything else we could carry and took off running. We got in a boat and didn’t look back. We left our animals, crops, land and home behind… they came looking for us, to kill us and we weren’t there. Now we really need help because they tell us there are no resources.”

• A Colombian schoolgirl particpates in a peace march. Photograph by CAFOD/Annie Bungeroth. •

Recently, members of the Catholic Church in Colombia visited the UK to seek help for the country’s conflict, something they refer to as a ‘forgotten crisis’ because the international community has ignored Colombia’s issues.

Archbishop Reuben Salazar and Monsignor Héctor Fabio Henao, President and Director of the Social Department of the Catholic CARITAS Colombia, said during their visit that they travelled to England and Wales to raise awareness of the problems in Colombia and to bolster support for the church’s vital peace-building work.

by Jozefina Cutura
- USA -

With Hillary Clinton’s recent campaign for the presidency in the United States at its end and women leaders taking charge in countries from Chile to Liberia, women’s advances in politics are making headlines. But in countries around the world, especially those recovering from conflict like Bosnia and Herzegovina, women are making strides in the business arena too.

• Women entrepreneurs in Bosnia are helping rebuild the country's economy. Photograph courtesy of MI BOSPO. •

“In Skelani I saw a kiosk that was in a fairly good shape, so I decided to invest in opening it,” she says in an interview. Skelani is in a remote region of Bosnia that is poorly accessible by roads and has seen a large number of people emigrate elsewhere since the war. Despite the town’s remoteness and its shrinking population, Ružica remained undeterred. Initially, as people continued to move away, her profits were low. But she persevered and today Ružica’s convenience store has an excellent reputation in the community, steadily attracting customers from across the region. She employs four female workers and has created a stable source of income for her family.

by Elena Ilina
- USA -

There are five nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZ) in the world, comprised of more than 100 countries. Significant tools for disarmament and nonproliferation, such zones assist in strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and contribute to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. They also promote trust, cooperation and security in the region establishing such a zone.

• As more countries in the Middle East express interest in developing nuclear capability, NWFZs have never been more important. Photograph by Omid Tavallai. •

Key disarmament experts participated in our project, including UN Secretary General High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Ambassador Sergio Duarte, Permanent Representative of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the United Nations, Ambassador Maged A. Abdelaziz, and former diplomat Richard Butler, who served as UNSCOM Chairman. Our class spent the entire semester negotiating the treaty, studying the positions of relevant countries and gathering after class in the school cafeteria to conduct secret meetings to figure out each other’s positions. Our work was guided by the general rules of international forums, with two elected chairmen and representatives of various agencies observing our negotiations. At the last meeting of the semester, we were unable to conclude the treaty – our national positions and interests could not be reconciled.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

American slave trading is a human rights atrocity forever associated with the Confederacy of the Southern United States. Northerners are stereotypically portrayed as benevolent abolitionists fighting the South’s slave labor plantations. But history is rarely that cut and dried.

by Cheery Zahau
- Burma / India -

In the devastating aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, international scrutiny highlights the military junta that rules Burma, a Southeast Asian country that shares borders with China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Laos. Adding greatly to the number of victims claimed by the storm, the Burmese government prevented aid from entering the country until pressured by the international community. Burma’s notorious military regime seems to enjoy watching its people suffer, turning deaf ears to victims in need, denying entrance of international aid groups and failing to properly prepare the region, despite prior warning from regional weather centers.

• The author interviews a woman who was raped by Burmese soldiers. •

With a population of over 50 million people, Burma is comprised of eight major ethnic nationalities: Burman, Shan, Karen, Karenni, Mon, Chin, Kachin and Arakan. Burma’s ethnic groups demand equality, autonomy and self-determination, but are systematically denied their rights by the junta. Instead, they are met with human rights violations: forced labor, forced relocation, religious persecution, arbitrary arrest and detention, destruction of thousands of ethnic villages, the driving out of hundreds of thousands of ethnic civilians to neighboring countries, and the forced internal displacement of an estimated one million people.

by Lelety Mabasa
- Zimbabwe -

Always faithful in shocking the world, Zimbabwe has scored yet another first, and as usual, for all the wrong reasons.

• Basket case: A fruit seller in Harare hunts for change. •

"The latest innovation seeks to bring convenience to our farmers who, starting this year's marketing season, are receiving competitive prices for their produce," said acting RBZ Governor Charity Dhliwayo last week.

The RBZ also launched a new Z$500 million bank note for the general public.

What baffled most people, however, was that bearers can use Agro Cheques to purchase goods in supermarkets, just like we do with ordinary notes.

"Either the people at the central bank are now confused or they were too embarrassed to say we are launching such high denominated notes for the public," speculates Noleen Moyo, an employee with a Zimbabwean bank. "To them, that would mean admitting failure in running the economy."

by Bia Assevero
- USA / France -

Justine Henin was on top of the tennis world. Literally.

The 25 year old Belgian was number one in the Women’s Tennis Association rankings and despite her less than stellar form of late, she was still a serious contender for the French Open which began this week. It’s a tournament close to Henin’s heart as she’s won it four times. She is, in fact, the three time defending champion.

• Justine Henin at the 2007 US Open. Photograph by Ian Gampon. •

But Henin has and will continue to fiercely deny those speculations; at the press conference where she announced her departure, she admitted that she’d been considering retirement for nearly a year. There’s a strong probability that the troubles in her personal life (Henin divorced from her husband in 2007) haven’t helped, but Henin’s retirement is actually a sign of a different trend.

by Carrie R. Sparrevohn
- USA -

In 2005 I traveled to Uganda, East Africa, for the first time. I met Margaret Nangobi on that trip, in Mwanyangiri, a tiny village about an hour’s drive from the capitol. What transpired between us broke my privileged self in pieces and I became the receiver one hundred fold of what I was to give.

• Margaret and her granddaughter Loi with their kitchen and home in the background. •

For every mother that dies in the US of pregnancy, Uganda loses 50. Around the world, each minute, we lose one mother as a direct result of her pregnancy. Improving women’s access to experienced care providers, antibiotics and medication to prevent or stop hemorrhaging would prevent over half of these deaths.

As I prepared to spend November 2005 in Uganda, a wonderful friend and mentor, Jan McNabb, began to tell her friends what I was planning to do. People began handing her money for the needy in Uganda. As a result, the Sally Clinic Project of With Woman was born.

by Binalakshmi Nepram Mentschel
- India -

Our world is hovering at the edge of an abyss, driven there by man’s unreason. One crisis is cresting on top of another… The sinister developments in the advance towards the brink of disaster all interact, worsened by the calamitous threat - namely the arms race and militarization. These essentially ethical problems of wars, weapons, and tools of violence have existed since time immemorial, but in the present era they have been deeply aggravated and will continue to be aggravated if a halt is not called for. – Nobel Peace Laureate Alva Myrdal

May 24th is celebrated globally as International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament. This article was written in honor of the many women who have campaigned tirelessly for global peace.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

“The land that I grew to love, hates my babies.” This is sadly what many Bahraini women of stateless children think to themselves every single day of their lives.

Like outcasts, they feel helplessly pulled between a country they call home and their children who should be recognized as citizens but aren’t, only because they decided to marry foreigners.

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
- Malawi -

Sixty-three year old Gladys Kasito, in Malawi’s capital city, Lilongwe, only has one wish – to die peacefully, preferably in her sleep. Kasito says she feels trapped and threatened in her own country. Her community, including her own family, has disowned her. She says everyone is baying for her blood. Kasito has been labeled a witch.

Her face is heavily scarred, she walks with a limp, and has no front teeth. Kasito is recovering from the wounds she sustained when her neighbors demolished her house early one February morning and beat her up. A few passers-by rescued her and took her to hospital.

“All I want is to die, but peacefully. I no longer want to go through the mental and physical ordeal that I was subjected to. They call me a witch just because I am old and no longer pretty,” worries Kasito.

by Anna Clark
- USA -

Who talks about prisoners these days? Certainly not the US presidential candidates or most others up for election in 2008, unless it’s in tangential “get tough on crime” rhetoric. In the media, quality coverage such as Jeff Gerritt’s Pulitzer-nominated series on medical care in Michigan prisons, which appeared last year in The Detroit Free Press, is overshadowed by courtroom dramas and legal thrillers. MSNBC has built something of a franchise in its “To Catch a Predator” series, which lures people to a Dateline set, humiliates them by reading their chat room transcripts with someone they thought was underage, and then calls on a police crew to rather unnecessarily tackle them in an arrest sequence right out of a summer blockbuster.

Authentic communication from and about prisoners exists, but it’s relegated to a niche market outside of most print and online news sources, of influential political blogs, of the catalogues of big publishers, and of the speeches of election year candidates. Presumably, its minimal share of attention is justified because decision makers think their audiences don’t care much about prisons and the people in them.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Last year Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an audience at Columbia University, “In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country.” His characteristically outrageous comment was met with laughter and boos; discrimination is no laughing matter in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death.

But after seeing the documentary film Be Like Others Ahmadinejad’s statement may be technically true. The 76 minute documentary by Iranian-American filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian, whose previous film Love Iranian-American Style documented her Iranian family’s involvement in her love life, profiles Iran’s leading gender reassignment doctor Dr. Bahram Mehrjalali (also spelled as Dr. Bahram Mir Jalai) and his patients.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

Around the time little girls become preoccupied with their own reflections, I remember scanning the various jars of creams and tonics on my mother’s make-up table. I couldn’t yet read so well, but I noticed on the labels that the word AGE was always belittled by a hyphen and another word that “combated,” “defied” or “anti’d” it in some way. Once I started playing with make-up samples in drugstores, I’d see row upon row of these labels: anti-wrinkle; anti-aging; age-defying. Before I reached puberty, I had learned that aging was something to protest.

by Marianne Taflinger
- USA -

In Sweden, a doctor delivers Sari, and her family celebrates what will be the beginning of a long life, probably 83 years or more. She’ll attend at least 17 years of school and if she chooses to have children, they’ll be born when she wants them to be born, thanks to convenient and cheap contraceptives. If she has a baby, she’ll take off 15 weeks of work and still earn 80% of her salary. Sari is virtually guaranteed to make it to age 5 without any health complications and enroll in secondary school. Swedish society provides great health care and education that eases both mothers’ and girls’ lives.

By contrast, Adame will live a far more perilous life. Having been born in Niger, she has a high probability of dying before age 5. Like two thirds of all children born in Niger, no “skilled birth attendant” was present at her delivery. It’s likely that Adame will attend only 3 grades in school, and that she will die by age 45, living a life half as long than if she had been born in Sweden. Adame’s mother is practically guaranteed to lose at least one child and has a nine out of ten probability that she will lose 2 children in her lifetime. Due to the lack of contraception, Adame will likely have more siblings than her family can afford. And there’s a strong chance that Adame will suffer from malnutrition and lack a sufficient supply of water.

by Bia Assevero
- USA / France -

Ruud Gullit knows his soccer.

He’s Dutch for one thing, and the Dutch have produced some of the most spectacular talents that the modern era of the game has ever seen. From Van Basten to Bergkamp, from Rijkaard to Gullit himself, the Dutch have redefined the game more than once.

by Nancy Van Ness
- USA -

I knew it was bad, but I didn't know just how bad. Colonel Ann Wright, retired US Army, grabbed the audience’s attention at a panel called Women in the Military, hosted last month by Women Center Stage in New York City, when she said that one in three women in the military is sexually abused by her male colleagues. Ann wants to see huge signs displaying this statistic in every recruiting office, to let young women know what to expect if they sign up.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

What makes The Linguists so entertaining are the stars’ contagious love of linguistics; between them they speak over 25 languages and have devoted their professional lives to traveling around the world – on screen they venture to Siberia, India, and Bolivia – documenting obscure languages on the verge of extinction. Their work is exciting because Harrison and Anderson are up against the clock: currently there over 7,000 languages spoken around the world, but one is disappearing every two weeks.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Revealing the ending of a film is downright mean, but it’s obvious that Oscar-nominated director Morgan Spurlock does not find Osama Bin Laden in his latest documentary film Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?. Spurlock’s claim to fame is having exclusively eaten McDonald's for 30 days in his hit 2004 documentary Super Size Me, so I didn’t initially want to run to the theater when I heard he had made a documentary featuring him trekking around the Middle East on a fruitless search for Osama Bin Laden – despite the clever promotional milk carton with Bin Laden’s missing person photo on it that I received at the Sundance Film Festival. (Quite frankly, at that moment I was more interested in the chocolate inside the milk carton.)

But after seeing the documentary, I have to admit that I enjoyed it, simplistic though it may be. The appeal of the film, which is an inevitable hit now that it’s screening at theaters everywhere, is Spurlock’s style: he’s more of a goofy explorer on a madcap adventure than an award-winning foreign correspondent. Within the first few minutes, the film has a musical number with Osama Bin Laden and his followers dancing to MC Hammer’s early 1990’s hit “U Can’t Touch This.”

by Pushpa Iyer
- USA -

Two weeks ago, late in the evening, Soma Bakshi, an educated, middle class young woman in Kolkata was set on fire by her husband and in-laws. This “incident” was preceded by a severe beating given to her by her husband and her mother-in-law. The only witness in this case was her two and half year old son, who recounted the beatings his mother received that night from his father and grandmother to the police. The boy still recalls his mother’s tortured cries. Soma, severely burnt, was kept gasping for life in the house without any attempt to seek medical assistance. Her parents, who arrived at the home some hours later after receiving news of an “accident,” rushed her to the hospital, where she died after a week of agony.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

While children around the world are taught that God loves all people, even the most pious of nations repress homosexuals; marginalize and abuse women; neglect the rights of children and wage war on fellow human beings often because of their different beliefs, races and ethnicities.

As I write this, devout Jews and Muslims—encouraged by their religious leaders and imbalanced politics—continue to kill each other in The Middle East. American politicians who identify themselves as Christian and insert “God bless America” in every speech pass legislation that slashes funds to educate America’s children while pumping money into a war that kills children in Iraq. Chinese police, some of whom may very well be Buddhists, continue daily to club Tibetan monks and nuns protesting abuses of human rights.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Andrzej Wajda was 13 years old when World War II broke out. Together with his mother he lived most of his life in the vain hope that his father might have survived the war: his father’s name had never appeared on any official list of Polish soldiers killed in combat. The truth, discovered years later, was that Captain Wajda had been shot cold-bloodedly by the Soviet secret police in a prison in the western Soviet Union. Andrzej and around 22,000 other people had waited for their loved ones in vain.

by Michelle Chen
- USA -

Tanya McLeod’s marriage was hurting, but her husband thought he could make it up to her when he brought her a cute dog as a “peace offering.” The family stayed together and the dog grew up alongside her children—until the day her husband decided to destroy the animal with his bare hands.

At that point, McLeod says, “I knew that he was capable of killing me.”

by Ellen Snortland
- USA -

Midnight. Intensely urban downtown neighborhood in Los Angeles where the alleys reek of urine and garbage. Dark Craftsman house in the Carpenter-Gothic style. My home. I cross the threshold and meet an interrupted burglar who raises his knife, ready to plunge it into my throat or heart. My scream is so intense he drops his knife, grabs his ears and runs like hell. “Thank you, mister,” I neglect to yell, because I was yet to know the impact this event would have on the balance of my life.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

My sister doesn’t have any children. Neither does my female cousin, nor my sister-in-law. A close female friend of mine from college wants kids but her relationship woes and her career haven’t allowed for an ideal child-rearing situation. Here in Germany, I’m a statistical rarity, as a university-educated woman with three children. Exercising the right to intellectually choose motherhood, or not, has marked my generation of women.

I recently Googled “reasons not to have kids” and got 26,700 hits. Many of the results linked to Corinne Maier’s bestseller from last summer, No Kid: 40 Reasons for Not Having Children. (Maier, by the way, is a mother of two.) Then there is childfreebychoice.com, which declares the resources of its website are “designed to be a haven for those who prefer to be childfree throughout their lives.” There are also countless parenting and women’s blogs where 30 – 40 something aged women (and men) explain their reasons against procreating.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

“Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. . .
Stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

• Renée and Jacques on their wedding day in Port-au-Prince, 1965. •

In practice, a woman’s place is no longer just in the home. She is often holding down the fort both at work and in the kitchen: juggling meetings while discretely pumping breast milk or fixing a quick dinner before working late into the night on her laptop in bed. Time is also squeezed in for listening to her husband’s trials and tribulations while to-do lists run through the back of her mind. The term “good wife” has been replaced with being a “good partner,” but the job description is similar.

Partnership is perhaps the hardest task to befall modern women. While many aspects of motherhood are instinctual, evolving with a life partner is a long, often arduous learning process. To live together—actively and harmoniously as two equal individuals—is a challenge that proved harrowing even for women like Barbara and Renée who survived dictatorship, war, poverty and fleeing their homes.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

They leave holding only their children's small hands in their own. A crumpled photo of a relative might find its place among their few possessions. Most often it is nothing more than a prospect—of safety, peace, or a new chance at life—that accompanies millions of people who flee their homes.

• Kenyan women flee the post-election violence with their belongings on their backs. Photo courtesy of the Humanitarian Coalition. •

Two women we have now come to know by name, Barbara and Renée, were lucky. Barbara didn't squeeze herself into the back of a VW Bug to get across the East German border. Renée did not cling for her life on a shabby boat in shark infested waters to get to America. They did, however, leave their homes and their families for a chance at a better life, a decision, which is never free from risk or worry.

Renée left Haiti with her husband in 1966 so that he could finish his medical studies in Canada. Uncertain of what lay ahead, they left behind their infant daughter and paid off a Haitian official to let them out of the country. Although a newly married couple, they sat separately on the plane to avoid suspicion by Canadian officials that they might be planning to stay. Their efforts would prove futile.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

Before we had our own children, my husband and I began sponsoring a child in Senegal named Absa, a pretty little girl with clever eyes.

• Absa in Senegal. Photo courtesy of World Vision Germany. •

It has been seven years and our children know the pictures of Absa, standing behind a large wooden bowl and holding onto a tall wooden mortar.

Recently, we received a check-list with a blank space next to school attendance. My eyes rested on the latest picture of Absa, now almost a woman, and I wondered what would become of her?

I called the aid organization and asked why Absa was no longer in school. The woman on the other end of the telephone line sighed.

by Natasha Dokovska
- Macedonia -

“I have seven children, I don't work, neither does my wife. For many years I thought about selling my kidney so I could give my children a better life, but just recently I found someone to buy it,” says 40 year old Ekrem. He explains that it was not a difficult choice because the 1,000 Euro ($1,465 USD) he got as compensation for the lost kidney will enable him to mend some holes in his home, pay electricity bills, and get enough firewood to last for the rest of the winter.

“Fortunately this was not a cold winter so we managed to keep warm with what we've got, otherwise we would have frozen to death,” says Ekrem.

Ekrem is one of the many Macedonian citizens who see selling their organs as a chance to save themselves from poverty. He does not consider the consequences. According to a Macedonian organization that works with people with kidney diseases, for Ekrem and about a hundred other Roma citizens in the country, it is the only way to offer a modest life for their children.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

As a child, my parents told me almost every day to be grateful for the food on my plate. When I occasionally grimaced at the offerings, my father would say, “No problem, we can put you on a plane tomorrow. There are plenty of kids in my hometown who would love to trade places with you.” I took my father only half seriously, but was still too young to be completely sure. It wasn’t until I saw true poverty for myself, that I understood just how quickly another little girl would have taken my place at our table; delighted to sit behind a mound of food that I was too spoiled and finicky to finish.

I was seven years old when I first went to Haiti, and I will never forget the other children my age who smiled at me in wonder, their bare feet scurrying across the hard pavement. To see their bones poking through their skin made my own bones ache. Every time they smiled at me, despite me having everything they didn’t, a piece of my naïveté drifted away.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

January 30th marks the 75th "anniversary" of Hitler's rise to power. Today, appropriately, we begin a nine-part series by Rose-Anne Clermont conceived as "Parallel Histories from Different Worlds." The series begins with the early experiences of two of the women closest to Clermont whose lives were tranformed under brutal dictatorships more than 50 years ago.

In the next part of this series, the two women Clermont interviewed, Barbara and Renée, talk about the challenge of growing up in poverty, with scarce food and resources. - Ed.

• Barbara and her brother, Michael in 1937 in Germany. •

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

How does a society best deal with its immigrant minorities? This is a question which has become increasingly urgent as more people than ever leave their home countries due to conflict, climate change and globalization. But as they aspire for a brighter future in new lands, these “new” citizens risk being discriminated against, marginalized and even isolated.

The French riots in 2005 and late last year served as a brutal wake-up call and reminder about what can happen if a society lets its immigrant communities drift in the periphery without integration. But while some countries have tried to deal with racism and ethnic discrimination such as Britain, which suffered race riots in the 1980s, some of the initiatives did not always have the intended effect – as in the case of multiculturalism.

Speaking at his offices in the majestic Littauer building at Harvard University, Amartya Sen, Indian economist, philosopher and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics tackles the topic in a rare interview.

by Tess Raposas
- Philippines -

Maria was 16 when she first came to visit the Philippines from California and decided to remain here. Witty and talented, she became a popular movie icon. Then barely in her twenties, she plunged into an early marriage with an upcoming politician from the north. Nineteen years later, her body was found slumped on the stairwell of the 13th floor where she had fallen from the 23rd floor of the condominium unit where she was staying. She was only 38. Why?

Maria was also a mother of six whose life became an archetype of marital wretchedness. Even if she had wanted out of her marriage, it would have been impossible for her to opt for divorce: the Philippines is one of only two countries in the world where divorce is not allowed. (The other country is Malta, another Catholic stronghold, like the Philippines.)

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

Harold Bloom, Yale literature professor and cultural critic, is one of America’s most prominent and provocative intellectuals. Unabashedly, he has always spoken up for what he calls “the fight for truth and beauty” making a lot of foes in the process, but also some friends. As one of the first critical voices against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, Bloom landed in the hot seat with the satire “MacBush” in 2004. Lately, he sparked worldwide outrage by calling Harry Potter “garbage”. Speaking at his home in New Haven where he is recovering from a recent health scare, a pale and weak Bloom seems to have symbolically embodied what he calls the “poor state of the nation”.

“I am 77 years old and I have never seen this country in such a bad state. It is madness. What we are seeing is the fall of the Roman Empire, only now it is the fall of America, the glory of our Empire. This war is what Parthya was to Rome.

by Imelda V. Abaño
- Philippines -

At the December UN conference in Bali, Indonesia, experts and concerned people alike discussed how poor women in developing countries bear the brunt of climate change in a wide range of ways. They have to walk to fetch water or wood for fuel and carry it back to the household. They have to work longer hours in the fields to till the soil, which has hardened due to severe drought, and yet they receive fewer benefits because of low wages and low crop production. And despite their efforts, they have little decision making power because in these areas, women are considered merely as housewives. In India, as one example, women have very little bargaining power when marketing their crops. When children or spouses fall ill from diseases, it is women who care for them. It is women who will do without or with less when food is scarce.

"Life has been hard, since heavy rains always wash away many of our crops and cause flooding in our village," said Mariana Dau from a farming village in Sumatra, Indonesia who talked about how climate change has affected their family’s life and also their financial security.

by Katharine Daniels and Patricia Vásquez
- USA -

Headlines around the world are reporting the news of the shocking yet seemingly inevitable assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi this morning. In Al Jazeera’s report “Daughter of Tragedy,” Kamran Rehmat describes what happened as “An inescapable aspect of the near-Greek tragedy governing the Bhutto family.” He comments that “What ever else the mind-numbing killing of Benazir Bhutto in Thursday’s suicide attack will mean for Pakistan’s future, there is little doubt that politics in this south Asian country will never be the same again.”

Benazir Bhutto was killed just a few miles from the scene of her father's execution 28 years earlier. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former prime minister and the founder of the party that Benazir led, was executed by hanging on charges of conspiracy by the then-military regime. That event motivated Benazir to devote her life to politics.

by Tess Raposas
- Philippines -

In coastal communities all over the Philippines, it is ironic that seawater is abundant everywhere but effectively, there’s not a drop of clean water to drink. But the problem exists throughout the country, and in fact, across the world. Residents must travel miles away to collect fresh water, which must be also be consumed sparingly because in the absence or shortage of this basic commodity. Children suffer the most. Not only are children usually assigned to be the handy collectors of water for many households, but they are also the most susceptible when it comes to water-borne diseases.

• Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink for many of the world's most improverished people.
Photograph by Debashis Basu. •

Lack of clean water and adequate sanitation facilities are realities that poor people in almost every corner of the world have to contend with every single day of their lives. They end up paying a very steep price for the lack of something so basic to well-being.

by Eva Sohlman
Sweden

SANA'A, Yemen – For a Yemeni woman the most common route to a jail cell is love or prostitution. Another is to be raped. “The most common reason why a Yemeni woman is in prison is relationships with men,” says Najiba Naji, director of the state prison in Yemen’s capital Sana'a.

• Unlike some 30 years ago, women in Yemen today cover most of themselves from head to toe. Photograph by Eva Sohlman. •

Yemen, known by the Romans as "Arabia Felix" (Happy Arabia) in the days when it flourished from the incense trade, is strategically placed at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula where the Red Sea meets the Indian Ocean. Today it is one of the world's poorest countries, on the periphery of world politics, and more known by the epitaph, “The land of the three Ks – Kidnappings, Kalashnikovs and Khat”. Ironically, this marginalization has meant that the country has ended up at the center of world events once again.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

Five long years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq the chatter coming from the White House reads like déjà vu. Despite the calls from world leaders and weapons experts to “stop and think,” the White House appears stubborn and determined to rush into another ill-conceived, poorly executed, and unsupported pre-emptive strike. In 2003 there were very few women’s perspectives in the debate that ultimately led to the war. The foreign policy experts, the politicians, and the journalists on television and in print during the critical period before the invasion were overwhelmingly male. The lack of women’s voices parallel a lack of perspective. That lack of perspective is similarly noticeable today as the White House drums up support for another war.

• Global demands to pursue diplomacy with Iran over nuclear development fall on the deaf ears of the Bush administration. Photograph by
Nic Persinger. •

by Tess Raposas
Philippines

• Thousands flock to Obando Bulacan for its annual fertility festival. Photograph
by Darwin Go. •

The town of Obando, just 16 kilometers northwest of the capital, Manila, sits on flat, low-lying coastal plains bordering Manila Bay to the west. Fishing is the major means of livelihood, along with raising ducks, other poultry and hogs. There is also garment and jewelry making and some food processing. 14% of the population live in rural barangays (Tagalog for barrios, otherwise known as districts or wards, the smallest local government unit). The rest of the households make up the urban population. The average monthly income is slightly below what the Department of Social Welfare and Development has established as the minimum for a family of six.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
Germany

• Hamburg boasts pint-sized anti-Nazi graffiti.
Photograph by Photocapy. •

The Nazis offered incentives to German women to procreate and introduced the “Lebensborn” program (fount of life in German) to create a master race of blond, blue-eyed children. Mothers with three or more children under 10 years old received “honorary cards” allowing them to jump shopping queues and get discounts on their rent. Cheap state loans were offered for parents, and there was the “Mother’s Cross” medal: bronze for four children, silver for six and gold for eight.

by Victoria Stirling
Canada

"It's not the fact that one day I will die," Joan said, ” The problem I have is wondering just how it’s going to happen!"

• The author in her early nursing days. Photograph courtesy of Victoria Stirling. •

I’m aware that this is a highly sensitive subject for a lot of people, but it’s one I feel needs to be talked about openly. It's often been said that taxes and death are two inevitable facts of life; this reality applies equally to every one of us, no matter where we reside. Well, our taxes change, but dying remains the same singular experience it has always been. Each of us has to face that final end of life; no one else can do it for us.

From the late seventies up to the end of the nineties I worked as a staff nurse in an acute care hospital. My primary clinical experience was working on a respiratory, cardio-vascular unit. Sadly during that time I was witness to many patients' demise. Some patients went peacefully to sleep, while others endured rigorous resuscitative measures before finally expiring. A number of them suffered much pain, and often prayed or pleaded for release.

by Viktorija Plavcak
Slovenia

Slovenia, a new member of the European Union since September 2007, is a state where the rights of individuals are trampled on every day and nobody cares. Some may feign concern in public, but in the solitude of their homes they spit on those who don't fit in. They curse them and their children, calling them thieves, crooks and killers. Even worse, they threaten them with violence and want the government to evict them from any safe haven they might find in the country.

• Ljubljana, capital city of Slovenia. Photograph by Rosino. •

When the Gypsies came to town

When I was little, it was a holiday in our village when Gypsies came to town. Their air of mystery made our imaginations soar. We adored it when they came on horseback, with all sorts of haberdashery and kitsch. When they set up a carousel, we kids rode round and round for hours, making us very late getting home from school. Winter or summer, they wore only light clothes. They made a lot of noise. Old gypsy women offered to tell our fortunes or begged for money, food or clothes, and my parents never refused. They didn't always come in groups; sometimes individual travelers came to mend all sorts of things from umbrellas, to pots and pans, or they sharpened knives and scissors.

by Imelda V. Abano
Philippines

When I visited a dumpsite last week to do a story about scavengers, I saw a group of children sifting through mountains of trash and asked: "What do you do when you're hungry?" They stared and laughed at me before replying: "When we're hungry, we just tighten our belts."

• In the Philippines, many of
the country's poor scavenge
from dumps to survive.
Photo by Imelda V. Abaño. •

Elena is just 35 years old, but she looks much older. She has five children. She sorts with her bare hands through the putrid waste, looking for anything of value - plastics, some glass, aluminum, bits of cardboard or metal - and stuffs her finds into a sack. Elena rises at 4am; 13 hours later, she will have filled several sacks, each weighing around 40 kilos, with recycled detritus. After 13 hours of work, she tosses her sacks up onto her back and hauls them to the middlemen. They will buy everything she and her children have managed to salvage in a day – and for that effort, she collects a measly $18 USD. Then she goes home to a nearby slum to prepare the family meal.

by Patricia Vásquez
Managing Editor, The WIP
USA

Think about it. The headlines scream it out. Lives of unspeakable pain and loss. And usually it is women, the caretakers of children and a vulnerable population by themselves, bear the vast brunt of the suffering. But even worse is that a pattern of growing violence, more and more barbaric, is being directed at women at a level never seen before in the annals of human history.

Genocide. Ethnic Cleansing. War. Terrorism. Torture. Human rights abuses. Repressive military governments. Repressive religious fundamentalist governments. Rape as a tool of war. Child soldiers. AIDS. Ebola. Global warming. Epic drought. Famine.

by Neeta Lal
- India -

Kaveri Nambiar, 25, a Brahmin woman from Chennai in southern India, married a farmer’s son in Punjab, up north, a few months ago. But rather than glowing with the happiness of newly married bliss, the young bride is undergoing treatment for depression! The reason? Major socio-cultural disorientation on all fronts: from her inter-caste marriage to the stress of being uprooted and replanted in a culture almost as foreign to her as if she were living in another country: she has had to adjust to the different language and customs of her new home, it’s no wonder that Kaveri sought help. “Mom, please let me come back home,” is her constant request to her hapless mother over phone.

• As men outweigh women in India, many grooms seek brides from other regions and castes. Photograph by Curtis Palmer. •

by Jessica Mosby
USA

In an admirable effort to contribute to the dialogue on what to do to save the planet, Leonardo DiCaprio has recently released a documentary film, The 11th Hour, which he produced and narrates. However, if you are already feeling overwhelmed by the world’s problems and suffering, you probably shouldn’t see it. It might push you over the proverbial edge as surely as if you were a polar bear slipping unexpectedly off a melting glacier!

• Image courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures •

One problem is The 11th Hour’s narrative structure, or lack thereof: it is painfully short on the pizzazz needed to take environmentalism from the grassroots of individual action to an international movement. Instead, one expert pops up briefly on the screen (name, title, and credentials are dutifully noted) to lecture for a few minutes while seated in front of a black wall, then the film cuts to the next expert, and then the next. Occasionally the monotony of “expert” footage is broken up by cutting to montages of very basic news reels set to a musical score; at other times, digitally drawn diagrams appear, imposed next to an expert’s head to illustrate their points.

by Imelda V. Abaño
Philippines

• Women like this 70-year old landfill dweller in Baguio City must find water wherever they can.
Photograph by Imelda V. Abaño. •

In many developing countries, it’s a woman's job to collect water for cooking, cleaning, drinking and sanitation. Women and girls walk an average six kilometers each day to fetch water. They carry around 20 kilograms - roughly the weight of a piece of travel luggage - on their heads.

"We walk long distances every day, sometimes slipping on rocks in the process, but we go on. The water isn't good. It’s brackish. We don't have clean water but we have no choice," says Dela Cruz as she carries two water pails on her way back home.

by Jessica Mosby
USA

• Image courtesy of IFC •

The documentary film, The Devil Came on Horseback, which is currently playing across the United States, spends 85 minutes answering that very question. The film is pure humanitarian propaganda: a call-to-action to stop the killing and displacement of innocent people.