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Across the Border: Nepal’s Struggle with Human Trafficking
Every year thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked from Nepal to India for commercial sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, and bonded labor. Nepal is considered a “source country,” or country of origin, where victims are trafficked both within the country as well as to Asian and Middle Eastern destinations. • Young Nepali girls who have the opportunity to receive an education through the Empowering Women of Nepal organization (EWN) in Pokhara, Nepal (Photo credit: Lauren Renda). •With the help of labor brokers and manpower agencies, many young men and women migrate willingly from Nepal to Malaysia, Israel, South Korea,...More
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Add to NewsvineCan You Hear Us Now? Continuing Challenges Facing Women in Post-War Nepal
We stepped out into complete darkness. A few people reached in their bags for headlamps and flashlights. The night was quiet as we began walking into the village. Slowly a crowd of people accumulated around us as we walked along a narrow dirt road between small huts made from straw and mud. It was a surreal experience being led through this village, peering into peoples’ homes, essentially examining their way of life. We seemed to be well received and those around us open to our presence and happy to have us. The pinnacle moment was when we reached a fire...More
Reclaiming Our Children and Banishing War on Mother’s Day, Every Day
Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak About War & Terror Authored by Susan Galleymore Book Review by Lucine Kasbarian What I’d like to say to mothers this Mother’s Day is, instead of going out for brunch, tell your family, ‘Let’s stay home and learn what the War on Terror is all about. Let’s learn why, for example, someone like Anwar Jawad [in Iraq] would have her whole family slaughtered on the streets by people, our troops, and why our children in the military want to get out of these countries so desperately.’ - Author Susan Galleymore in an interview on Democracy...More
BIRTHING JUSTICE: One System for All - Universal Access to Health Care
Welcome to Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives. The series features twelve alternative social and economic models which expand the possibilities for justice, equity, and strong community. They are based in the US, Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Some are national-level, some global-level. Some are propelled by people’s movements, some forced or adopted into government policy. In first-hand narratives, women describe their role in having created the models and show us their unique perspectives and challenges in the movements. Below is the eighth narrative of Birthing Justice. Julie Castro is a young doctor from France,...More
Book Review: The Journey to Becoming a Midwife
Originally published at IPPF/WHRIn Arms Wide Open, Patricia Harman takes the reader on a fascinating journey of how she became a certified nurse-midwife. An honest and often poetic memoir, we move with Harman through several peace activist communes in rural America to a remote cabin in Minnesota, where she learns about natural birth, and eventually end up in West Virginia, where Harman opened a women's health clinic with her Ob/Gyn husband. Her experiences throughout the book are as educational as they are entertaining.Harman’s interest in midwifery begins while she is living in rural Minnesota, where there are few hospitals that...More
Why Women Hate Women-A Story from Yemen
After Mona Altahawi’s Foreign Policy article was published, critics flooded social media websites with their rebuttals. While the Guardian’s Nesrine Malek stressed important points about the wider context of discrimination, it was the men who were especially angry on Twitter. Anger was specifically directed at her general statement: all men hate women. Well, as Malek says, it is really not that simple. Reality lays bear a complex society where women are systematically abused and deprived of their basic rights. Reading Mona’s article, specifically the part on my country Yemen, I recalled the tragic story of my friend’s cousin. Her suffering...More
Nato Actions in Libya Strongly Condemned
Removing Muammar el-Qaddafi from power is widely considered to have resulted in Libya’s way to creating a democratic country. However, some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) actions against Libyan civilian are receiving strong condemnation form Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the leading US human rights organizations. The just released HRW report (Unacknowledged Deaths: Civilian casualties in NATO’s Air Campaign in Libya) comes shortly after three distinguished jurists chosen by the United Nations Human Rights Council conducted an investigation whose results were released last March. As a result of that investigation, while acknowledging the serious human rights situation previous to...More
BIRTHING JUSTICE: Water Is Where Everything Intersects - Water in the Global Commons
Welcome to Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives. The series features twelve alternative social and economic models which expand the possibilities for justice, equity, and strong community. They are based in the US, Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Some are national-level, some global-level. Some are propelled by people’s movements, some forced or adopted into government policy. In first-hand narratives, women describe their role in having created the models and show us their unique perspectives and challenges in the movements. Below is the seventh narrative of Birthing Justice. • Photo courtesy of Marcela Olivera •In case...More
World’s Militarization is a Path to Self-Destruction
The latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows that taking some data uncertainties, the world military spending in 2011 was essentially unchanged when compared to 2012. This breaks a 13-year run of continuous military spending increases. It could be a cause for celebration, except that it is still a totally objectionable spending of people’s funds. It is difficult to assess if this leveling of military spending represents a long-term change, since although some countries have diminished their spending others have kept it as usual or even increased it. On the other hand, the leveling must just...More
Lorca Would Have Approved of Obama’s Decision on Gay Marriage
You will never know how much I love you Because you sleep and have slept in me. I hide you weeping, pursued By a voice of penetrating steel. Thus wrote Federico Garcia Lorca, the noted Spanish poet, in a poem entitled “The Beloved Sleeps on the Breast of the Poet” one of many poems in a series entitled Sonetos del amor oscuro (Sonnets of dark love). Lorca was a poet and theater director, murdered in 1936 by nationalist soldiers during the Spanish Civil War because of his outspoken liberal views. In that poem, Lorca was probably referring to Juan...More
Alleviating Poverty Among Rural Women Shea Butter Producers
Sitting comfortably on a plastic chair in the shade of a mango tree inside a mud-hut compound in Burkina Faso, I wait quietly and patiently to begin an interview as people and chairs are shuffled about. I scan the compound of a seasoned shea butter producer and see that it is kempt. There are a couple of palm trees, a small garden, and many rooms on a larger than usual plot of land. • The author, Bill Reinecke, interviewing shea butter producer Marie Yoro and her family. • It is apparent that an otherwise poor family has somehow found relative...More
Wrapping Up at the Tribeca Film Festival
On Saturday I traveled downtown to see what was happening at the Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair on Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan. After 9/11, Jane Rosenthal, Robert DeNiro and Craig Hatkoff thought they might shore up lower Manhattan’s businesses and community by initiating a yearly film event to draw people back downtown. At that time, most of the screening venues were in lower Manhattan. Local residents were given discount tickets to the film events and a Tribeca Film Festival Family Day was organized to become part of the celebration. I first attended the Family Day Festivities in 2003. My...More
Netanyahu Government vs. High Court of Justice
The recent Israel High Court of Justice decision ordering the demolition of illegally-built structures in the Ulpana neighborhood will have wide ranging consequences on the status of settlements in Israel. Although hotly contested by the Netanyahu government, the Court’s ruling does justice to the legal owners of Palestinian land. On May 4, the state had appealed to the High Court, asking it to reconsider its ruling for Jewish settlers to evacuate the Ulpana neighborhood, which is part of the West Bank settlement of Beit El. In their ruling, Supreme Court President Ahser Grunis, together with Justice Uzi Fogelman and Justice...More
BIRTHING JUSTICE: We Have Everything We Need Already: Community Control of Education
Welcome to Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives. The series features twelve alternative social and economic models which expand the possibilities for justice, equity, and strong community. They are based in the US, Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Some are national-level, some global-level. Some are propelled by people’s movements, some forced or adopted into government policy. In first-hand narratives, women describe their role in having created the models and show us their unique perspectives and challenges in the movements. Below is the sixth narrative of Birthing Justice. Shilpa Jain has served as a full-time “learning...More
From a Small Village in Pakistan to San Diego in America! - Sughar for International Brand Award
Sughar has a big goal, A goal to create a society where women are not killed for Honor but are honored and given equal status....To reach this goal we at Sughar have been struggling from years to find the right track, the right strategy and that right moment to directly connect with the tribal traditions which we were intending to change! Eventually we realized that we weren’t changing all of the traditions as it wasn’t the traditions that were our enemies, it was the knowledge to choose which tradition is positive and which is negative that keeps the customs like...More
BIRTHING JUSTICE: Our Hope is in Our Struggle – Reclaiming Land and Life in Honduras
By Beverly Bell and Lauren Elliott April 30, 2012 Welcome to Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives. The series features twelve alternative social and economic models which expand the possibilities for justice, equity, and strong community. They are based in the US, Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Some are national-level, some global-level. Some are propelled by people’s movements, some forced or adopted into government policy. In first-hand narratives, women describe their role in having created the models and show us their unique perspectives and challenges in the movements. Below is the fifth narrative of Birthing...More
Netanyahu’s Dangerous Game
“I don’t believe in either the prime minister or the defense minister. I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings,” said Yuval Diskin, former Israeli intelligence chief in a meeting with residents of the city of Kfar Sava. He was talking about Israel’s policy towards Iran. And he added, “Believe me, I have observed them from up close…They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off.” Predictably, his strong criticism provoked a strong rebuke from Israel’s leading officials. Foreign Minister...More
The San Francisco International Film Festival
This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival is in full swing! The festival started on April 19 and continues through May 3. I’ve only attended one event – Buster Keaton Shorts with a live musical accompaniment by Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs – and it was so much fun! I love it when current musicians perform original soundtracks while a classic silent film is playing at the historic Castro Theatre. I plan to attend a number of new films over the next five days. Here are my picks: Sunday 4/29: - Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel at 6:45 p.m....More
“Now, now. Don’t get hysterical, dear.” Hysteria. Directed by Tanya Wexler
Sometimes you want to watch a film that’s also a movie. You want an opportunity to go into the darkened theater with popcorn and escape into a world of fantasy, and maybe even laugh. Film festivals are usually not big on laughs or escape. Award winning films are serious, reflecting societal ills and angst. This is all to the good. We need authentic, gritty films that speak to the unspeakable and a venue to deliver them to audiences. This year’s Tribeca Film Festival selections deliver the punch. I am very glad I am here but after nine rounds, this blogger...More
Coming Together for Environmental Restoration in Haiti
Interview by Beverly Bell and Alexis Erkert April 24, 2012 Crossposted from Other Worlds In honor of Earth Day, we run an interview with Yves-André Wainright, who discusses ways that poor governance and the role of foreign donors have contributed to the country’s environmental catastrophe. He also lays out a blueprint for what could turn the situation around, effectively mobilizing both government and the population to begin restoring the environment. Yves-André Wainright served twice as Haiti’s Minister of Environment. Trained as an agronomist, Yves-André’s work has focused on environmental management, especially management of natural resources and waste.My approach towards management...More
Brazil’s Road To Truth And Justice
The creation in Brazil of a Truth Commission to investigate crimes committed from 1946 to 1988 opens the possibility of learning what happened to hundreds of forcibly “disappeared” persons during the country’s recent past. The findings of the commission, which are to be released two years from now, will allow their families not only to know the fate of their loved ones but also to bring closure to their lives. Even though the commission’s mandate is to investigate crimes committed by military regimes during their ruling from 1964 to 1985, it also includes an investigation of the crimes perpetrated before...More
Tribeca Film Festival - Nishua Pahuja’s The World Before Her
This is my third day watching films at The Tribeca Film Festival, and I know by the week’s end I will have only scratched the surface of the 90 or so films that are showing here. So far, so good. Almost everything I have seen has been worthwhile. This year there are fewer films on the schedule, and the films appear to be more selectively chosen. Still making film choices is hard because everyone including IndieWIRE has a different top ten, and you can make yourself crazy trying to insure you are viewing everything there is to see. I have...More
ELLES A film by Malgoska Szumowska
While The WIP often carries stories about poor women forced into prostitution by their financial circumstances, the film Elles details a contrasting situation of young college women using prostitution to finance their studies. Elles, directed by Malgoska Szumowska, stars the lovely and talented Juliet Binoche as Anne. As a sophisticated French housewife and mother of two, Anne juggles her journalistic career with her days of picking up after two sons, arranging and cooking a dinner for her husband’s boss, visiting her dad in a hospital and engaging in other self sacrificing duties. We get that Anne is stressed and stretched....More
BIRTHING JUSTICE: The Link to Humanity - Gift Economies
Welcome to Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives. The series features twelve alternative social and economic models which expand the possibilities for justice, equity, and strong community. They are based in the US, Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Some are national-level, some global-level. Some are propelled by people’s movements, some forced or adopted into government policy. In first-hand narratives, women describe their role in having created the models and show us their unique perspectives and challenges in the movements. Below is the fourth narrative of Birthing Justice. Coumba Toure | Bamako, Mali All of Coumba...More
Increasing Condemnation to U.S. Embargo on Cuba
At the Summit of the Americas, Latin American governments’ have roundly condemned the U.S. embargo on Cuba. This happens only days after Pope Benedict added his voice criticizing the embargo. Speaking at his departure from Havana airport Benedict said that Cuba could build “a society of broad vision, renewed and reconciled,” but indicated also that it was more difficult “when restrictive economic measures, imposed from outside the country, unfairly burden its people.” Despite universal criticism, however, the U.S. government has persisted in a policy that has brought it only derision, not only in Latin America but throughout the world. The...More
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