Story of your support to Salehan Bibi

They are not wrong when they say, “Hope is a good thing”. It’s a life saver, a tiny rope to hold on when falling off a cliff and sometimes a salvation from bitter diseases. Hope just like that for Salehan bibi of District Thatta became the reason to live, to continue to struggle for basic needs and important of all wait with a shine of hope in her heart. This here is the story of a Salehan, the woman who lived through a life where problems came with the passing time but who chose to be patient and believe in the betterment of her days.

In Sindh the road to Jati, Thatta district twists and turns with a lot of pits and dunes, a lot of small houses pass by, houses made of wood, thoroughly structured together.

Sometimes dark old palm leaves dangling from the roof with paved front porch where children in dirt packed cheeks and hands play marble. One can always say that life in this coastal area of Pakistan stands still, where nothing moves ahead, nothing goes farther and time halts.

But then again a few things HAVE changed here, now instead of the wooden houses each sides of the road greets the passerby with desperate conditions of flood survivors, living in small tents, sleeping on the open lands and children as usually playing….but in this time in flood water.

Among these tents on the left side of the road towards Jati is the one where Salehan lives with her 23 Family members.

Salehan wife of Anwar Shah is a 62 year old woman belonging to a small village called Allah Dino Mallah, in Tehsil Jati of District Thatta of Sindh Province which is at about 45 kms from where she is now. To anyone Salehan is another flood victim, generalized enough to be among the needy families in Thatta and forgotten after giving a pack of rice. But Salehan when having to sit with has a story to tell.

Her story begins in that small village called Allah Dino Mallah, where Salehan lived with her parents, sister to 3 brothers and 2 sisters, one of which is abnormal who now lives with her. While the others like her brothers married and are now living separately. She too was married and sent off to a new home, a new family where once again poverty and rising inflation caused them with a lot of problems, right when they used to have 3 to 4 cows and goat’s now only one cow was left while others sold out to provide for needs.

“This life here (after flood) doesn’t surprise me at all; my life has always been filled with struggles, sad moments and hardships,” Salehan says.

As a child Salehan had seen her parents fighting severe kind of poverty, which came like the cultural Jahez (dowry) in her life as well, as each day after her marriage her husband walked distances to go to the landlords land to work on small wages, she belonging to a syed (cast-wise strict system) family was supposed to stay in parda (veil) but as times became a challenge and for the survival of her children she chose to step out of her home with her husband in search of daily wage labors.

When marrying off 4 sons can be a reason to celebrate for a few, they had been an initiative to grow the hardships for Salehan, sons already struggling with poverty and lack of jobs and each one of them with 4 to 6 children now had about 23 stomachs to feed. Due to rising poverty three of her sons chose to live go separate ways with their families while one still lives with them with his 7 children.

Soon, old age became another problem when moving her legs to walk about a mile would send her off in pain back to the house, her frail hands couldn’t accept the work of everyday and her son along with his wife took over the responsibility to bring enough money for daily needs.

Life went on for Salehan just like that until she along with the other women in her village heard about the land distribution program of Banazir Bhutto by PDIs FM Radio Initiative for awareness raising.

“I couldn’t believe it at first, we never thought anything like that happened. But since everyone else was applying I too applied for a patch of my own land”, Salehan shares.

Holding her breath until the time of Katchari when the distributed land was announced she had prayed for her own land until it happened. Her hopes and dreams did come true when her name was announced and she was given off eight acres of land. But as Salehan says hardships are a part of her life, another problem jumped forward with the advent of this celebration. A family from a different tribe in her village who were well off enough claimed the land and declared Salehan as an illegal possessor.

The team of Participatory Development Initiatives (PDI) and Oxfam approached her and she was assisted to appeal for filing of a case against the certain person. Different types of media such as press, FM, tv channels, posters, banners were used to campaign against illegal occupation of land by the opposing party and before even the case could be filed Salehan and her husband came to know that the opposing family is surrendering.

But what Salehan didn’t knew was that this surrender was rather a trap where the opposition party decided to keep her quiet and stay out of danger of going to the court and declared that that land would be given to her but kept on using the land for their own benefit and months passed by.

And right when PDI was about to take the matters to the court, Pakistan foods took the villages of Thatta off guard as the Soorjani Band broke forcing half a million people to migrate within the night. Salehan like others departed from her village and faced another round of helplessness, poverty and problems.

“We rushed away from the village renting a truck that cost us 20,000 for all of our family members and a few possessions. My grandchildren were in bad conditions”, she says. “We lived in a small school in Badin where the heat and diseases attacked us all”.

Salehan and her family were soon forced to leave that school after a month, having nowhere in mind and knowing their own home stood in water they had no idea as where to go. And then is when they hired another vehicle to come live on this road side with no food, water, shelter or money.

They have been living here for two months now, Eid-Ul-fitr that’s the biggest celebration of Muslim countries was celebrated in the small school while this Eid that is after two days, Salehan still can't provide for anything for her grandchildren.

The little children when cry and ask her for new cloths and bangles, her heart mourns at the thought about her own childhood when she desperately wanted new things on eid and now her grandchildren too are deprived of it, but she isn’t hopeless.

“We will still fight for our land because winning it back is really important for me, she says, it will help my family not even now but later in their lives and provide for their small dreams”.

Participatory Development Initiatives (PDI) where promised to fight her case in the next months is also going to reward her for her continues hopefulness and for her uplifting thoughts. For the next months PDI is going to provide her family with recovery package of household kits, hygiene kits and monthly rashan for their recovery initiative. But then again PDI won’t forget that all this is not just from their behalf because it’s a gift from the people from around the world…

And we at PDI Thank you for making this possible for us~
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To know more about PDI email us at info@pdi.org.pk or log on to www.pdi.org.pk

To support us in our efforts to help flood survivors of Pakistan please donate online here on Global Giving: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/help-pdi-in-relief-and-recovery-of-1000-families/

As a writer on human rights issues I don’t lack reasons for concern. There are not too many countries nowadays where human rights in some form are not abused, where violence does not strike in one of its multiple forms. Although writing topics are plentiful, this situation is especially upsetting. At such moments, I visit one of the many neighborhoods outside Manhattan, where I live, and where the change of locale can do wonders for my mood.

One of my favorite places is Brighton Beach, a community in Coney Island in the borough of Brooklyn, a subway ride away from Manhattan. In summer, I go to the boardwalk, sit in front of the sea and the salt breeze energizes me. When it gets colder, I then visit one of the plentiful ethnic stores and delight in their variety. When my appetite is in full force I go to one of the many restaurants in the area to savor food unlike what I eat at home every day.

The area is populated mainly by Jewish immigrants that left the former Soviet Union starting in the 1970s and whose influx continues today. Years ago, the area was dubbed “Little Odessa,” since many of its residents came from Odessa, a city in the Ukraine. I remember the welcome surprise of a friend -with whom I was having dinner at one of the local Russian restaurants- when he realized how many patrons came from his parents’ hometown.

More recently, new waves of immigrants have joined the Russians: Chinese, Vietnamese, Armenian, Turkish, Mexican and Pakistanis make of this an even more cosmopolitan neighborhood. During the summer, they come in throngs to enjoy the beach.

Reading the news today has been particularly disheartening: the continuous impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, with no hint of an effective rapprochement between them. And the sustained violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, countries whose sores never heal. Bombs planted in Baghdad in 12 cars and detonated by remote control killed 122 people and hurt 360, throwing Iraqis into further desperation. “No one knows who is who. Nobody knows when something will happen. Bombing after bombing. Killing after killing. It is a mess,” an Iraqi man was quoted with desperation in his voice.

A few days later a bomb in a Pakistani mosque killed 66 people and wounded more than 80. The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber and may have been aimed at village elders who had formed a militia to resist incursions by the Taliban. Life has become a cheap commodity.

I want to forget about these events. I take the subway and after almost an hour I am in another world. I am sitting by the sea in Brighton Beach. Today is a relatively cold day so there are few people around. A young woman comes with her child and sits next to me. The child is sent to play on the sand. By the occasional remarks the woman makes to him I take her to be of Russian origin.

The child is happily playing with a ball. Suddenly he leaves the ball. Seeing a line of giant ants moving along the sand, he takes a couple of them and crushes them with one hand. Putting her knitting aside, his mother beckons him, puts her hand on his shoulder and in heavily accented English quietly but firmly says, “Don’t do that. You don’t hurt nobody - do you hear me? - you don’t hurt nobody.” The child looks at her with a mixture of fear and surprise and slowly drops the dead ants on the sand. The incident taught me, quite unexpectedly, that some of life's earliest and most valuable lessons do seem to get lost along the way. And gave me a reason for hope.

Dr. César Chelala is an award-winning writer on human rights and foreign policy issues.

In honor of World AIDS Day, Showtime Documentary The Other City will premire December 1st at 7:30 PM both Eastern and Pacific in the USA.

The film is directed by Emmy and Peabody-winning filmmaker Susan Koch (“Kicking It”) and produced by entrepreneur and philanthropist Sheila C. Johnson. The co-producer is award-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas.

The Other City, tells the stories of Washington D.C. citizens who have taken matters into their own hands and have not let the lack of government assistance stop them from pursuing effective treatment or from fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS every day.

According to the filmakers, "politics, ideology, corruption and bureaucracy have led the HIV/AIDS epidemic to grow out of control in Washington D.C., the city that is supposed to represent the best ideals of the United States of America."

On Wednesday, in honor of World AIDS Day, join me in watching the premiere of The Other City on Showtime.

Several human rights groups are united in their demand that former president George W. Bush face prosecution following his open admission that he authorized the use of waterboarding, one of the cruelest forms of torture. Former president Bush made his admission during interviews publicizing his book, Decision Points. Bush’s admission of having authorized torture, however serious the claim is, is just one of the reasons for which the former president could be prosecuted.

During an interview with NBC News Bush said, “Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives.” And he added, “My job was to protect America. And I did.” This is not the opinion of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch, three of the most prestigious human rights organizations.

“The Department of Justice has made clear that waterboarding is torture and, as such, a crime under the federal anti-torture statute.18 U.S.C. 2340 (c). The United States has historically prosecuted waterboarding as a crime. In light of the admission by the former President, and the legally correct determination by the Department of Justice that waterboarding is a crime, you should ensure that Mr. Durham’s current investigation into detainee interrogations encompasses the conduct and decisions of former President Bush,” says the ACLU in a letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

According to Human Rights Watch, the U.S. government’s conduct on alleged torture of its detainees sends an “ugly message” to the international community. “It sends the ugly message that there are no legal consequences in the United States for committing the most heinous of international crimes,” said in a statement Joanne Mariner, a counter-terrorism program director at Human Rights Watch.

While the U.S. has so far taken a lenient attitude towards those that committed or ordained human rights abuses such as torture, both Argentina and Peru have shown that it is possible to indict and punish the highest officials in the land.

In Argentina, more than 30 high ranking officials, including several members of Argentina’s military juntas, were prosecuted and sent to prison on long sentences following their indictment for human rights abuses committed while the military were in power. Among those crimes were the torture and enforced “disappearance” of prisoners.

In Peru, in 2009, former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in jail for ordering killings and kidnapping by security forces. Mr. Fujimori was already serving a six-year term after being found guilty in 2007 on separate charges of abuse of power.

“Under international law, the former President’s admission to having authorized acts that amount to torture are enough to trigger the USA’s obligations to investigate his admissions and if substantiated, to prosecute him,” said Claudio Cordone, senior director at Amnesty International. And he added, “His admissions also highlighted once again the absence of accountability for the crimes under international law of torture and enforced disappearance committed by the USA.”

Regarding its request to prosecute former President Bush the ACLU stated, “The ACLU acknowledges the significance of this request, but it bears emphasis that the former President’s acknowledgment that he authorized torture is without parallel in American history. The admission cannot be ignored. In our system, no one is above the law or beyond its reach, not even a former president.”

During his recent visit to Indonesia, President Barak Obama urged the leaders of that country to acknowledge the human rights abuses of the Suharto regime. Among those abuses is the 1991 killing of over 200 East Timorese civilians in Dili, East Timor. The same principles should be applied to the conduct of former president George W. Bush. As stated by the ACLU, “A nation committed to the rule of law cannot simply ignore evidence that its most senior leaders authorized torture.”

César Chelala, MD, PhD, is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

Is global warming a real issue or an issue made out of nothing for lack of issues ?

When people ask me, as they do all the time, “Is there any cause for hope in Haiti?” I answer yes.

It’s more tempting to think that the situation is so hopeless that it can’t any worse, especially right now. Last week, Hurricane Tomas brought three days of heavy storms, causing flash floods which washed away farmers’ homes, animals, and crops throughout the island. The storm also left filthy standing water in towns, promising to spread cholera even more rapidly throughout the country. Cholera has already killed more than 500 people and infected about 7,500, and will surely ravage many more, particularly as the best measures for prevention –using a sanitary toilet and washing one’s hands often – are not possible for most of the 1.5 million living in internally displaced person’s (IDP) camps. (One recent, extensive study of IDP camps found that 40% have no water and 30% have no access to toilets of any kind; a second showed that 44% primarily drink untreated water and 27% have no toilet.)

• Residents of one camp beat pots and pans to protest a pending eviction.  Photo: Ben Depp. •

Despite this grim state of affairs, I like to recall two definitions for ‘crisis’ offered by historian Rebecca Solnit. The Greek origin of the word means “a point of culmination and separation, an instant when change one way or another is impending.” And in written Chinese, ‘crisis’ is a combination of the ideograms for ‘disaster’ and ‘opportunity.’

The natural disaster of January 12 and the social and economic crises it has propelled mark a sharp rupture with Haiti’s past, a fulcrum in an as yet uncertain future. Labor organizer Yannick Etienne told me, “This earthquake was one of the worst things that could have happened, but we have to turn it into something positive. We have to make sure that people are agents of change and right now this is a good opportunity, positive in a political sense. There are so many things that can be done to shake up the traditional way things have always worked here.”

My hope comes from the power of progressive movements in Haiti, which have been active at many periods since the slave uprisings began in 1791 and which are again today, slowly, gathering force. Throughout Haitian history, united action from the grassroots has been the locus of all systemic change benefiting the majority. Just a few advances from modern political history (a period usually demarcated by the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986) are a popularly ratified constitution, universal elections (though their results have already been ruptured twice by coups), and the right to free speech and free assembly (not always protected, but infinitely more so than in past times). Sometimes progress has built slowly. Other moments have seen the camel’s-back phenomenon, in which one act has set off long periods of relative quiescence, such as when the killing by Tontons Macoutes of three youth in November 1985 ignited the spark of fury against the dictatorship; Duvalier survived a scant ten weeks of the resulting social upheaval.

A few examples of recent advances from the post-earthquake work of social change organizations include the following:

- A few environmental groups like Haïti Survie are using this moment not just to address the symptoms of ecological crisis like deforestation, but to challenge the root causes, including lack of income opportunities for the rural population which force them to over-exploit natural resources.

- Women’s organizations, such as Women’s House (Kay Fanm) and Solidarity among Haitian Women (SOFA), are using the visibility created by post-earthquake gender-based violence to draw attention to the ongoing need to reinforce women’s rights;

- Friends of Health, the Haitian branch of Partners in Health, has developed an alliance with the Haitian Ministry of Health to remake the University Hospital, the largest public hospital in the country and a long-standing symbol of the deplorable state of health care available to the poor;

- The networks Society for Social Mobilization and Communication (SAKS) and Haitian Women’s Community Radio Network (REFRAKA) are literally giving voice to earthquake survivors, providing radio transmitters to camps around the country;

- Several IDP camps have, under women’s leadership, created a culture of community support and initiated programs – cultural, skills-building, income-generating, educational, and empowerment - which model what a nurturing society would look like.

A wholly new movement – though rooted in the long tradition of organizing - arose within days after the quake to claim a just reconstruction. The effectiveness of the women’s sector, peasant farmer cooperatives, popular media, human rights groupings, youth and student associations, and other mass organizations is a critical variable in how equitable, rights-based, and democratic their country becomes. The grouping is not yet strong, both because coalitions were already fissured by political divisions when the earthquake hit, and because in the quake they lost members and organizing fundamentals (computers, internet possibilities, cell phones, offices, supplies, archives, etc.). This movement has in its short history already repeatedly stalled and restarted in new configurations. But given the urgency of the crisis, they are gaining steam. And two moves toward reconciliation between former adversaries - amongst peasant organizations and amongst some groups long divided by their positions around former president Aristide – give hope for greater unity and thus greater strength.

A declaration from this movement stated the priorities as “strengthening national production, valuing the riches of the country…; [and] establish[ing] a reconstruction plan where the fundamental problems of the people take first priority. These include housing, environment, food, education, literacy, work, and health for all; a plan to wipe out exploitation, poverty, and social and economic inequality; and a plan to construct a society which is based on social justice.” As usual in Haiti, the means to the solution is collective action, or what the statement calls building “a social force.”

Today the united action is most visible in the form of street demonstrations, which reemerged in August. The demands of the protests span the political gamut, mostly concentrating the right to permanent housing for those in camps. The movement is also engaged in information-sharing, consciousness-raising, and advocacy.

The potential for a real rebellion against the unacceptable status quo is strongest within the camps, where 1.5 million or so people – all of them desperate, many of them angry – have languished for ten months. Small groups of activists have been moving through some camps, trying to raise political awareness there. Though the population’s response is repressed by hunger, illness, and depression, increasing engagement by camp committees indicates the potential for mass mobilization.

Rising self-organizing from within the camps may be a fear among the Haitian and U.S. elite and others. A Wall St. Journal article hinted at the logic for the fear: “Inside the many tent cities… a rudimentary social order is beginning to emerge as committees agitate to secure food, water and supplies in high demand from international aid organizations. ‘We knew we wouldn't receive any assistance unless we formed a committee,’ says Mrs. Beaupin… She presides over an executive committee [which]… handle[s] everything from getting people to sweep outside their tents in the muddied terrain to ensuring that the sick and injured get treatment. ‘There is no government but us,’ says Mrs. Beaupin.”

In the bleak landscape, it may be tempting to think that the Haitian people are losing their shot at the structural transformation alluded to in the disaster/opportunity dyad. But to believe that they have lost the battle discounts the evidence of their history. My own reading is that in politics, as in love, remarkably unpredictable shifts can and often do happen; any number of factors could flip the downward trajectory of the majority’s well-being and power since January 12. The organized grassroots are working to ensure that they do.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

In his recently published memoirs called Decision Points, and in interviews publicizing those memoirs, former President Bush makes it clear his stand on what many consider a basic human rights violation: the use of waterboarding as a torture technique. With characteristic insouciance, Mr. Bush expresses his unqualified support for torture.

Waterboarding is one of the most cruel torture techniques, used in many countries worldwide. The technique has been practiced, among others, by the Spanish Inquisition and by the French paratroopers in Algeria. It has been also used by American soldiers in Vietnam and by the British Army in Northern Ireland.

During waterboarding, the subject is immobilized keeping his back with the head inclined downwards. Water is then poured over the face and then it goes into breathing passages and triggers a reflex causing the subject to experience the sensation of drowning. CIA officers who volunteered to experience the technique have lasted an average of 14 seconds before capitulating.

Although there is some discrepancy on the legality on the use of this technique, there is no discrepancy on its consequences. “Waterboarding or mock drowning, where a prisoner is bound to an inclined board and water is poured over his face, inducing a terrifying fear of drowning clearly can result in immediate and long-term health consequences. As the prisoner gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive, with all the physiologic and psychological responses expected, including an intense stress response, manifested by tachycardia (rapid heart beat) and gasping for breath. There is a real risk of death from actually drowning or suffering a heart attack or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water. Long term effects include panic attacks, depression and PTSD,” declared Dr. Allen Keller, director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, at the Hearing on U.S. Interrogation Policy and Executive Order 13440, to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

There are also questions about the effectiveness of waterboarding as a torture technique. “It is bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture is bad enough,” said former CIA officer Robert Baer. Several other former CIA officers have the same point of view.

Former President George W. Bush and officials in his administration such as former vice-president Dick Cheney and former attorney general John Ashcroft have stated, since leaving office, that they don’t consider waterboarding to be torture. However, Senator John McCain, who has some personal experience on this issue, has stated unequivocally that he considers waterboarding to be torture.

Evan Wallach, who teaches the law of war at Brooklyn Law School and New York Law School wrote in 2007 that a the Tokyo War Crimes Trials after World War II, leading Japanese officers were charged, among many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The critical proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct now called waterboarding.

“I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition for torture,” stated Louise Arbour, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. And she also stated that violators of the UN Convention Against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Former president George W. Bush insists in his book that waterboarding is not torture, but it is just one of a number of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” This point of view is not shared by officials within the British government, who agree with President Barak Obama that water boarding constitutes torture, and has banned the used of such practice.

Former president Bush said that waterboarding is “highly effective” and added that its use provided “large amounts of information.” Although former president Bush has no regrets in having authorized the use of torture, Douglas Johnson, executive director of the Center for Victims of Torture, declared, “This cavalier attitude by the President who authorized torture in violation of US and international law not only damages our nation’s credibility throughout the world, but also discourages global cooperation to combat terrorism.”

César Chelala, MD, PhD, is an award-winning writer on human rights and foreign policy issues.

Corruption begets more corruption, the unscrupulous feasts, and the vulnerable loses the self.

Atrocious opportunists

“The mother came back, got her daughter and checked her daughter and she said, ‘her inside was so’ –she emphasized– ‘opened.’ Then she asked the daughter, ‘what happened to you?’ And the daughter said, ‘while I went to the bathroom there was this man who held me and had sex with me’.”

To say “Beginning of the End,” is not to indulge misplaced nostalgia or sentimentality. That scenario, difficult as it might have been to read, has finally exposed an age-old concealed window into the stark realities of scores of Haitian women and children: Flore, in this particular instance. This 10-year-old girl experienced three sexual assaults in the camp where she lived with her mother.

The horror

Flore’s mom described her daughter’s ordeals through the reporting of Carla Murphy, a journalist covering the rebuilding process in Haiti. Murphy used the pseudo name “Flore” to protect the identity of the child.

The first man who ‘wasted’ her daughter, the mom explained, was a friend who asked her to allow Flore to babysit his child while he went out. She later found out that he repeatedly raped Flore when she watched his baby. The second attack came at the hands of a 22-year-old man, literally. She caught him red-handed, his fingers inside of her daughter. Furious, she had him thrown in jail only to watch him roaming the same camp later. The third episode, naïvely recounted by the child, occurred at night.

The cataclysmic earthquake has not only affected Haitian women disproportionately, but has also created new norms for them. Gender discrimination and structural inequalities have literally reshaped their realities. In many instances, affected women have had to defend themselves, their children, and aging parents against sexual violence. A Human Rights Watch report highlighted a woman whose kidnappers took to an undisclosed location where she was gagged, beaten repeatedly, and gang-raped for two to three days until she finally escaped.

The presence of an effective Haitian government to meet obvious systematic security needs is an illusion and the UN response units are a scarce resource; hence, the rapists, pedophiles, and child traffickers alike have created their own version of the Wild West in the camps, which many have branded “breeding grounds for criminals.”

Abnormal Norms

The dysfunctional judicial system, ineffectiveness of the police force, and an increased tolerance on the part of the victims have all but ensured the elusiveness of the culprits, condoned their sick behaviors, and perpetuated their vicious cyclical tendencies. In June 1999, the police department dismissed 600 police officers –10 percent of the force– on human right violations, including sexual violence. Further characterization by Pierre Denize, Haiti’s Chief of Police then, unearthed the roots of the problem. “Haitian police force was the product of a society whose historical development was such that it did not recognize nor have any experience of an institutional human rights policy,” he expressed to the United Nations’ Commission of Human Rights. In addition, The Lancet published a chilling mortality study of Haiti where it exposed –in no small measures– the rapes of a staggering 35,000 women between March 2004 and December 2006 in the capital alone during the instability that followed the ousting of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Meanwhile, government officials have continually downplayed the presence of a systemic problem; hence, the barely noticeable –underreported– empirical evidence has not done any justice to the victims. Nevertheless, it is nearly impossible to dismiss the sharp increase of rape cases since Jan. 12 this year as random or sporadic acts. According to its July 19 preliminary report, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) has informally tracked 230 rape cases in only 15 of the 1,300 camps. Moreover, a survey conducted in March 2010 by the University of Michigan revealed that 3 percent of women and girls living in displacement camps have been sexually assaulted half of whom, minors.

Long Road Ahead

It has become abundantly clear that the atrocities against women and children in Haiti are a byproduct of systemic failures and increased vulnerabilities of the displacement camps. As one coalition of Haitian civil society groups noted, “The extent of the disaster is certainly linked to the character of the colonial and Neo‐colonial State our country has inherited, and the imposition of neo‐liberal policies over the last three decades.”

Beyond its necessary legislative and judicial infrastructure, Haiti needs a mechanism for inclusive participation and interactive engagement of all stakeholders. That is, men, women, and children – rich or poor– have to be an integral part of ongoing discussions and strategic planning. Transitioning from a status-quo –which for far too long– has been insensitive to their ordeals, is a daunting task.

Clearly, such an intergenerational initiative would necessitate gradual implementation for Haitians. Eventually, the increased knowledge would help remap the psychographics of the cultural consciousness. Ideological changes are complex and require elaborate skills and a great deal of time to materialize, as UNICEF’s 2010 report indicates. Moving too fast could alienate the victims and/or provoke more aggression. Some women could even be reluctant to move away from the inhumane treatments that they have learned to recognize as a safe place.

Broader Perspective

Several NGO have rightfully called for Haiti’s leaders to prioritize their responses to remedy current atrocities. However, Haiti’s emergent political and social culture presents a rare opportunity to discover her sustainable roots and incite, in the context of evolutionary ideology, a psychological revolution in the malleable cognition of her youths.

Failure to design and implement an effective strategy with the participation of all Haitians would be inadequate and would exacerbate structural human rights infringements that pre‐date the earthquake. The devastating result would leave the most vulnerable members of Haitian society: women, children, and the poor in an even more fragile state.

Rapadoo,

During the last few years, Palestinian olive trees -- a universal symbol of life and peace-- have been systematically destroyed by Israeli settlers. “It has reached a crescendo. What might look like ad hoc violence is actually a tool the settlers are using to push back Palestinian farmers from their own land,” stated a spokeswoman for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization monitoring incidents in the West Bank.

The tree and its oil have a special significance throughout the Middle East. It is an essential aspect of Palestinian culture, heritage and identity, and has been mentioned in the Bible, the Qur’an, and the Torah. Many families depend on the olive trees for their livelihood.

Olive oil is a key product of the Palestinian national economy, and olive production is the main product in terms of total agricultural production, making up 25% of the total agricultural production in the West Bank. Palestinians plant around 10,000 new olive trees in the West Bank every year. Most of the new plants are from the oil-producing variety. Olive oil is the second major export item in Palestine.

For the last forty years, over a million of olive trees and hundreds of thousands of fruit trees have been destroyed in Palestinian lands. The Israel Defense Forces have been accused of uprooting olive trees to facilitate the building of settlements, expand roads and build infrastructure. The uprooting of centuries-old olive trees has caused tremendous losses to farmers and their families. At the same time, restrictions to harvesting have come through curfews, security closures and attacks by settlers.

The uprooting of olive trees by the Israel Defense Forces and by settlers are done to protect the settlers, since they are supposedly used to protect gunmen or stone throwers. “The tree removals are for the safety of settlers…No one should tell me that an olive tree is more important than a human life,” declared IDF army commander, Colonel Eitan Abrahams.

As a result of the attacks on farmers by the IDF and by settlers, the farmers “can’t get to their lands and work them. The settlers chase the farmers, shoot in the air, threaten their lives, confiscate their ID cards and damage the crops,” declared B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization.

Yesh Din has declared that not even one of 69 complaints filed during the past four years on damage to Palestinians trees in the West Bank has resulted n an indictment. The toll includes thousands of trees from several areas from Susya in the southern Hebron Hills to Salem in northern Samaria.

Rabbis for Human Rights has declared that, in recent weeks, the olives from about 600 trees near the settlement of Havat Gilad were stolen before their Palestinian owners could harvest them.

In a review he wrote on this issue, Atyaf Alwazir, a young Muslim American, stated that the uprooting of trees from Palestinian lands violates the Paris Protocols, The Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Covenant on Economics, Social and Cultural Rights. According to Sonja Karkar, founder of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia, uprooting olive trees is contrary to the Halakha (the collective body of Jewish religious law) principle whose origin is found in the Torah, “Even if you are at war with a city….you must not destroy its trees.”

What do settlers actually want? To destroy Palestinians’ livelihood with impunity? To create a barren land, unfit for trees and people? Perhaps they should be reminded of the A.E. Housman verses,

Give me a land of boughs in leaf,

A land of trees that stand;

Where trees are fallen there is grief;

I love no leafless land.

César Chelala is an award-winning writer on human rights and foreign policy issues.

Reconstructing Haiti is not about buildings, projects, or money. It’s about power, about who gets to control what the future Haiti looks like. Redistributing power, and creating a new society based on different theories and practices of it, are perhaps more important in the aftermath of the January 11 earthquake than ever.

This priority is not particular to Haitian women. But they are most often the ones propelling it, and they and their children have the most to gain from it because of the special burdens that poverty and insecurity place on them. For the majority of women, their work to transform power is focused on including the excluded: the peasants, the residents of internally displaced people’s camps and shantytowns, all those who have little voice or participation in national political and economic decisions and who rarely benefit from those decisions.

• Phalane Gilles says women leaders need to be "transfomative feminists" who can change "the economic foundation and the foundation of social relations." Photo: Beverly Bell. •

What could a new power paradigm that serves women look like? And how might a government emerging from the November 28 elections use its leadership to advance that paradigm? We asked Haitian women their thoughts on women, power, and the elections.

Elisabeth Senatus is a journalist and member of the coordinating committee of the Petite Rivière Shelter Center internally displaced people’s camp in Léogâne. She describes her work as “service to humanity.”

Some man made a declaration recently that he hopes a woman doesn’t win power, because if she does, all women are going to have power.

But me, I hope it’s a woman exactly for that reason, and because of the recent experience we’ve had with government. I don’t ignore the fact that there are men who have beautiful dreams and who have capacity, but still I hope we get a woman as president. The entire world over, men want to govern without women and prevent women from advancing. They want women to stay in the home as mothers and indentured servants.

All that women would do in terms of decentralization, development, education, health… a woman could do everything a man could do but with more attention to the needs of all society.

We need equity in education, at least as many girls in secondary and college levels. We need education - traditional, sexual, professional, family - which is at the base of social and economic power. We can address prostitution by letting girls have a chance at education. We want decentralization [from Port-au-Prince], with adequate work opportunities and government services and offices everywhere. We want to create opportunities for creativity.

If women take power, we’ll have a lot to do to educate everyone about women’s rights and responsibilities and gender equity.

But a woman doesn’t need to be president to have power. If a woman is strong and is educated and has the capacity to make decisions, that’s already power.

Claudette Werleigh is a long-time advocate for democracy, peace, and women’s empowerment. She has served as prime minister, minister of social affairs, and minister of foreign affairs. She is currently secretary general of Pax Christi International, and resides in Brussels.

Haitian women participate in politics. We’ve already had a female president, we’ve had a female prime minister, cabinet ministers, secretaries of state, and parliamentarians. But an important consideration is the final goal. Will a politician seek to ensure that the market vendors on the roadside, the charcoal merchant, and the peasant woman living in the hills can participate in decisions that determine their country’s politics? Will she choose to spend public funds for education and housing? She is biologically the holder of life, but will she have policies in favor of life?

When we talk about women in politics, we should clearly define the type of women we’re referring to. Until all women in Haiti, not only the elite class, have access to the decision-making process, we can’t say that they really participate in the country’s politics.

Women’s involvement shouldn’t just be a matter of their presence, but of their ability to offer an alternative course or to introduce something that’s lacking. The whole world is organized so you have political parties, you have a president, you have specific ways for people to play their role in politics. We have to find other ways that women can participate. We have to find ways to bring the qualities that women have in other fields into political life, to make things work better.

Magalie Bretou is a member of the Regional Coordination of the South-west (KROS), a coalition of small-farmer organizations. She sits on the executive committee of the National Coordination of Peasant Women (KONAFAP), as well as the executive committee of the Coalition of Organizations for the Municipality of Belle-Anse (KODAP), which brings together women’s youth, and peasant groups. She also serves on the coordinating committee of KODAP’s women’s division.

In the municipality of Belle-Anse, we’ve made choices for two candidates for the national Chamber of Deputies [the lower house] from within our women’s and peasants’ organizations. We chose our candidates together, and we’re all going to vote for them. We decided to do this because we needed someone with accountability.

Both our candidates are men. No woman wanted to put herself forward in the elections. Maybe in the future that will happen, but we’d have to sit together as women and decide that.

We don’t know yet what candidate we’ll support for president. Whoever it is, we’ll all go vote for that person so that we don’t undermine each others’ vote.

It could be good for us if we had a woman president, but it would depend on who it was. She could be someone with a fancy skirt from Port-au-Prince who doesn’t even see us, who just says “This is how it’s going to happen,” and “That’s how it’s going to happen.” People in Port-au- Prince usually look to their own people in the capital; they don’t see us outside. Power will always be to their advantage. We don’t see ourselves reflected in them, as women or as peasants. They don’t represent an opening for us.

We don’t yet have a way for rural women to integrate into politics and into new forms of power.
What we need is leaders who come from the grassroots, who we can choose, train, and send up. Not just for some women, but for all women.

Lucienne Darger was rendered homeless by the earthquake. She is now a member of the women-run leadership committee of a displaced person’s camp on Camp Nationale Route de Frères.

The elections won’t resolve women’s problems. But to my mind, they have to happen anyway.

A lot of people say they won’t vote as long as they’re living under a tarp, but if I can get a new electoral card [she lost her last when her home was crushed], I’m going to vote.

We’ve had so many men in office, we took beatings for them, but they never did anything for us. When we’re here in these tents, not even able to breathe, I ask myself, “Is there no government in this country? What are they saying or doing for these women who are under these tents?”

If I had the chance to vote for a woman like me, I would. Even if she couldn’t resolve my problems, I might get more access that way. Maybe she’d have more compassion for women who are suffering under tents.

But even then, I suspect that when we’re done voting, she’d forget we’re there. All the new leaders: once they’ve gotten what they want from us, they won’t care any more that we’re living in camps. As soon as they are elected to the office they want, they’ll just forget us.

Phalane Gilles has been studying social work in the State University for the past five years. She is now finishing her dissertation on prostitutes who were former street children. A mother of two, Phalane doesn’t have to take on outside work because her husband is “very understanding” and supports the family while she studies. She considers her domestic work, however, as a regular job.

For me, the election that the government, politicians, media, keeps talking about: they make it seem like a sign of stability. But there are too many hidden hands in this. At the core, in this political moment, it’s just another opportunity for those who always control everything to hold on to their power. Whoever’s elected, I believe they’ll continue to be instruments of the imperialists and capitalists, people who want the country to stay how it is -or if it changes, to change in the interests of a few people while the majority stays in the same misery they’re in.

What little I know about the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti [the surrogate government, half of whose members are foreign] tells me that the head of state doesn’t have the space to really make a difference in Haiti. The president of the country is a marionette. He proves that by his positions toward those people who are supposedly coming to help Haiti. He gives in, he gives in. He seems like he’s working for the interests of the country, but in fact he’s working for those who only see in Haiti the possibility to increase their power and their wealth. We know there are contracts going to multinational corporations who have their own profits in mind. So whether it’s the administration that’s there now or another that takes power, the interests of the foreigners and of those who have nothing to do with the well-being of Haiti will predominate.

We’ve seen political changes in terms of women: more women in the parliament, even if it’s only a few; more women active in parties; more women who are agents of change in the political system. But most of these women –most, if not all- position themselves within what they call feminism which, to me, is not true feminism. Why? Feminism which don’t consider first and foremost the social reality of the country that both women and men are living in, to me that’s not transformative. Transformative feminists don’t just deal with women, they question what’s at the core of all problems.

The soul of women’s problems rests within society. Women’s problems aren’t contained within women; they’re living within a larger society. As long as the economic foundation and the foundation of social relations don’t change, nothing else will. As long as a few control the finances of the country, the vast majority will suffer.

A true transformation of power to change political life in this country: it has to sit in a revolutionary movement. Some people don’t like the word ‘revolutionary’, they find it shocking because it implies changing a lot of things, and those changes are not in the interest of a lot of people. But if you don’t want to enter directly into the problem, whether you call yourself a feminist or not, we’ll always stay the same.

Iliane Prospère resides in an internally displaced people’s camp in Martissant. She is an unemployed, single mother of three.

To resolve the real problems of women, give us employment. Now if I need work, even if I had three diplomas, I would still have to sleep with the boss to get the job. If all women got work, women’s lives would start to change because they play the role of both women and men. Men are absent from the responsibilities of the household. Women are the pillar.

For more perspectives on women and elections in Haiti, see “Haiti: Why Vote for A Woman?” and “Haiti, Women, and the Elections: Following Africa’s Lead”.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

The incredible rescue of the Chilean miners trapped in a collapsed mine has reminded us of the reality that dangerous mining is the only way to extract many natural resources. The history of mining around the world is a subject filled with extreme wealth, complex human stories, and tragedy. The new film Butte, America chronicles the incredible history of of Butte, Montana which was once known as the "Richest Hill on Earth," but eventually the prosperity faded and the legacy of mining laid waste to the environment.

Tonight Emmy-nominated Producer/Director Pamela Roberts and Co-Producer/Co-Writer Edwin Dobb will be in San Francisco at a special screening of Butte, America at the Victoria Theatre (2961 16th Street). The screening begins at 8 p.m. and tickets are $15 ($10 for students). There is also a pre-screening reception with music by the Gas Men. Tickets to the reception and film are $25 ($20 for students).

This is the story about a young girl from the small village of Jhongal in Upper Sindh. She among the thousands from her village who was baldy effected by the floods in Pakistan, and hence having lost everything to water she and her family now live in a flood camp in Shikarpur, until life decides for them what they ought to do. Now as she shares her life with me and I feel like there couldn't have been a better way to look at the life of flood survivors in camps through her own eyes.

Sohni is a short series of blog posts which would bring forward the life of this girl to every reader and would be the window to what disasters struck the flood survivors after the major disaster of "floods in Pakistan".

Adjusting to a new world~

Sober looking men in gray suits were the ones who ordered our family to live inside this “camp”. “They are the army”, Sajid my six year old brother whispered in my ear rather proudly. “They are going to take care of us”. And we were taken care of. We were made to leave the Masjid-Mosque to go to a Boys school in Shikarpur. Even though I had never imagined a school to be as big as this, but I was seeing it finally, with clear open eyes. Big as a bungalow rich people live in, with so many rooms, stairs and toilets with water taps in them and doors that lock! And more importantly it has a big open-agan- ground without any dust, as its cemented.

In fact all that was happening to us wasn’t anything that any of us has imagined. Four days of living in Masjid camp, the clean marble floored holy place of Allah, which was different from the Masjid in Jhongal where even girls came to read from their Siparas-Holy Quran- this was rather filled with men and boys. Huge crowds gathered when it was the time for Namaz. And those were the times when Amma with her angry-mother eyes search through the tiny room for me and my sisters, “Chori-Girl”- she would say, “don’t go out until its really necessary”, and we would sit quietly huddled in a corner waiting for the men to finish their namaz. I envied Sajid for being able to stroll around the whole place as if he owned it and came up every two hours to shriek on top of his lungs about what new he found about this beautiful place.

School Camp was what I liked at the first sight, although I never expected so many people had their homes flooded as large number of families already made home of the place. I saw some girls washing clothes in small buckets and a few making rotis-round patties of bread- while children in every shape and size ran frantically about the ground chasing each other, laughing, not knowing and certainly not caring.

That morning of the fifth day after the floods destroyed our home, village and my dreams, with my potli- cloth basket- on top of my head, Amma holding my two little sisters and the two elders walking closely with her, Abba, who along with all others including Sajid on his shoulders entered this new world. My phuphis-Fathers sisters- and Chachi-Uncles wife- have become weak in the past days, they had been constantly crying about their houses and their belongings back in our village while Amma was the one to console them and ask them to eat. Amma was in charge once again, she had strolled off quickly scanning the area for possible spaces we could use and it turned out that 2 rooms were completely isolated but only had the school desks, black board and chalk in them. Women would use one of the rooms as it was decided and second one would be for men, including Tahir (my fiance) I was glad. We spread rilis-blankets- and put our stuff in a corner. Tiredly and sore I glanced around my new surroundings, I could see various girls glancing inside the room from the open windowsill, the shouts of children outside dissolved with this environment now and the fan above made a gut-gut-gut to join in the rhythm and I had my first slumbers in this new home.

I was feeling really damp, hot and scratchy…I opened my eyes, the fan wasn’t moving anymore, flies buzzed close to my ears as if to annoy me and I saw Amma sitting near me fanning Sajid who was still asleep. It was mid afternoon yet; my sisters sat in a corner of the room murmuring to each other while phuphis and chachi slept on the floor without any rili underneath them. They found them hot in this warmth of the building.

What is going on? was the first question in my mind, the heat was unbearable now and I was sweating so much that my dress clung on me damply making me feel uneasy and frustrated. Stomping my feet I walked out of the room, halted near the door when I saw two girls almost my age with dupatas-head scarves- clutched in their mouths and eyes trying not to glance at me, shyly walked past me. I later found out that they had their room close to ours.

The floor of the hallway was wet, someone had just spilt water which mixed with dust falling on the cemented ground made it slippery, I started walking slowly dragging my feet without any chapel-shoes. Just close to the corner two huge machines stood near the wall, it had taps attached to it and a glass hung with a wire to its end. “Drinking water”! I thought gleefully and I stepped closer. Water was cold and refreshing, feeling really happy I drank two full glasses of water and suddenly felt the urge to go to the toilet. But how? And where? I rushed back to the room and saw Nasima (my second elder sister) still talking to my other sisters and shouted to come with me quickly as I had to go to the toilet. The search began soon and we found three small rooms, with wooden doors that had to be locked from the inside. I instantly had a feeling that I would be locked inside as soon I close the door and decided not to go, Naima demonstrated a closing of the door without being locked and asked me to experiment it but I still left it half open while used the toilet and two sisters stood on guard.

Things started to become familiar for us finally, The wet floor wasn’t a problem, Sleep time wasn’t decided, anyone could sleep anytime, no one feared from being locked in the toilets, although I still was afraid as I felt that I would be killed in the worse smell, would be locked, or suffocate to death, so kept the door open and asked my sister to guard me. We had soon found out that this was a two-story building, a huge number of families lived on the top level rooms, I wished we could too; it must have been so much fun to be above the ground! I sneaked up there sometimes when Amma Abba weren’t looking and strolled past the packed rooms where even three to four families lived together in one room, their newly washed cloths hung near the ceiling on a rope, and some had been able to bring a lot of their pots and pans which scattered around the place. Once I almost fell on my face hinged in one of the pots and a very thin girl holding her dupatta to her neck came running and took it away, I wasn’t going to steal it I was about to say, but she vanished in the crowd.

One day while strolling along these rooms and using a stick as a musical instrument to slide up on the window jars of the walls I came across a pace of boys and rushed back to our room downstairs, they made faces and laughed behind me and I almost lost my balance down the stairs.

Amma and my sisters also seemed to have found people to talk to and they were always speaking to someone down the hall, Sometimes I would find them crying and talking about their homes and villages and it would heartbrokenly remind me of the neem tree….the cow dung patties....star filled sky…there was nothing like my village Jhongal here, only babies were something I found similar. Cute little crying babies. I would run around across to the other side of this camp school to carry Majid, a 1 year old infant, or Sajjad, Yousif and Sidra. One day I noticed bumps on Majids head and after my asking, his mother merely said that it’s due to the heat. She is right we have three times electricity failures in Shikarpur and the close suffocating condition of people living together along with the dirty walls of the school room made it really hot, I started noticing the bumps on other little children as well and some burst with skin peeling off them. The mothers of these children used talcum powders on them to dry, they say it was good if the skin was peeling off, that means the bumps were going.

Mother had stomachache one day; she kept changing sides lying down without any rili underneath her but still bolted with pain. It’s from the food, Chachis and Phuphis declared, but what about the food? I thought, I loved this food! I had never eaten anything spicy and delicious like this. I especially waited for the two times of meals that were provided. I knew Sajid and Naimat( my youngest sister) felt the same way too. But I had to believe my phuphis soon, almost all of us had these stomach pains, and we found out that many others had too. We tried to skip a few meals and prayed for something else to be provided to us to eat. Once in a while a rich looking man wearing black jacket trying to look kind, along with 4 other people who had huge boxes on top of their heads came to visit. They gave away milk in boxes! In the past days Amma like other women showed us angry eyes to suggest we don’t go near these men, but these days we rushed to have those milk boxes and drink to console our burning stomachs, Amma and my Sisters hid their boxes away to make tea.

One day Baba along with my uncles decided to visit our village, I waited all day for them to come back but they arrived next day, tired and sad. “Sohni” Abba called sadness visible in his voice and I hurried to give him water in a bowl that we had brought. He took it from my hands tiredly and started taking big gulps…I felt so sorry for him right then. Abba used to be the source of fright for all of us and there were times when we sat still unable to breath when he was around the house now he was in a condition where we could feel sorry for him, this thought made me even more sad and sorry. “The whole village is under water” he told Amma, heartbrokenly while brushing his beard with his fingers, Amma could only give a moan to that, while sitting along the wall watching her fingers. She had given up hopes already to be in our home before eid (Muslim festival for celebrating after 30 days of Ramadan).

Many people visited the camp daily, sometimes it was hard to even keep track and we could only see huge number of people coming and going out of the school. Whenever people with boxes arrived, we knew it was something to be distributed and hurried to get our share, girls kicked and shouted to make way, once I got a shove in my ribs and felt a wave of pain journey though my body. No one was polite when it was something to eat. Once trucks stood near the school, filled with stuff, baskets, blankets, water coolers, plastic rugs and even more. Everyone ran towards the huge gate to the trucks and as usual they were stopped by many men dressed in Pants and shirts who were doing their best trying to keep the crowds calm. In this mob I saw a few women draped in black burqas-veils-Crazy I thought, we are dying of heat and they are walking around wearing their burqas. They too were fighting their way to the trucks, but later I saw them take these goodies with them and walk out of the gate.

Taking a bath was the worst in this camp, first we had to fill a bucket of water, pull it inside the tiny bathroom, close the huge door and bath in small chunks of water until suffocate from the heat. The headmasters who had made it their duty to walk around the school were always angry about everything, don’t use all the water! They would shout and mom would nod to us to make sure we understood, don’t peel off the paints! They growled and I didn’t understand when we did it, don’t make stains on the walls, what is this stain of black smoke?! Black smoke! he repeated shouting like a maniac until Amma and Chachis stood like helpless fools near the door unable to say anything as they were the ones making tea by burning wood.

But then again it wasn’t only them, more them 20 more stains were to make this headmaster angry and I could laugh at his red face but was afraid to do so because what if he decides to kick us out of this school?! Village is still full of water as Abba had said.

Where would we go?!
______________________________
The first two episodes of Sohni's story are under:

http://pdipakistan.blogspot.com/

Gender violence, manifested essentially as violence against women, is one of the most significant epidemics in the Arab countries today. This kind of violence occurs in practically all countries in the region and affects families of all backgrounds, religions and social spheres. It affects not only families but societies as a whole.

Worldwide, violence is as common a cause of death and disability as cancer among women of reproductive age. It is also a greater cause of ill health than traffic accidents and malaria put together. Public health experts increasingly consider violence against women a public health issue, one requiring a public health approach.

Various cultural, economic and social factors, including shame and fear of retaliation from their partners, contribute to women’s reluctance to denounce these acts. The lack of effective judicial response to their accusations contributes to their discouragement.

The experience of violence makes women more susceptible to a variety of health problems such as depression, suicide, and alcohol and drug abuse. Sexual violence increases women’s risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including VIH/AIDS (through forced sexual relations or because of the difficulty in persuading men to use condoms). It may also lead to various gynecological problems.

The World Organization Against Torture has expressed its concern regarding the high levels of violence against women worldwide. Although provisions related to domestic violence are included in several national policies and laws, there are difficulties in implementing them. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “nearly half of women who die due to homicide are killed by their current or former husbands or boyfriends.”

Studies carried out in the Arab world show that 70 percent of violence occurs in big cities, and that in almost 80 percent of cases those responsible are the heads of families, such as fathers or eldest brothers. Both fathers and eldest brothers, in most cases, assert their right to punish their wives and children in any way they see appropriate.

In recent years, there has been some progress regarding this issue. Tunisia, for example, continues to raise the bar for Arab women’s rights in the 21st century. In 1993, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who succeeded Habib Bourguiba as president of the country, improved the Code of Personal Status to give more rights to women. Article 207 in the penal code reducing the penalties for honor crimes was also abolished.

In Lebanon, there are no statistics about domestic violence, a subject that still remains a taboo in Lebanese society. In 2009, however, a photographer and women’s rights activist, Dalia Khamissy has produced, with nine other women, an exhibition of photographs, “Behind the Doors: Through the Eyes of Women Survivors of Violence,” which has served to highlight the problem in the country.

In 2009, the second Arab Regional Conference for Family Protection took place in Jordan. It was held under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania, chairperson of the National Council for Family Affairs (NCFA). The conference formulated a unified strategy for safeguarding families from domestic violence, with the attendance of family experts and sociologists from the Arab world,.

In Morocco, the Union of Women’s Action (UAF) has organized forums to raise public awareness of violence against women, and to lobby local groups to protect victimized women. At the same time, counseling centers have been set up to allow women to talk about their problem and to receive help. In Egypt, where the phenomenon is pervasive in society, Beit Hawa (The House of Eve) has been founded as the first comprehensive women’s shelter in Egypt and the Arab world.

But more work has to be done if this epidemic of violence is going to be controlled. Government and community leaders should spearhead an effort to create a culture of openness and support to eliminate the stigma associated with this situation.

The problem of domestic violence will be eliminated through both education and the widespread use of mass media. Through education, by instilling in the younger generations the concept of equality between men and women and the need for mutual respect to have an harmonious relationship between them. And by the use of mass media, to insist that it is a cowardly act for men to abuse women taking advantage that they are physically stronger, as suggests Carlos Duguech, a peace activist from Argentina.

Furthermore, it is necessary not only to enact but also to enforce legislation that criminalizes all forms of violence against women, including marital rape. Laws should be followed up with plans for specific national action.

The 2009 report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) stated that women’s lack of social participation “is primarily attributable to the existence of discriminatory laws, failure to implement the non-discriminatory legislation that does exist and a lack of awareness by women of their rights in such matters.”

There cannot be true development in the Arab world without women’s progress and the recognition of their rights. As the last Human Development Report stated, “The rise of Arab women is in fact a prerequisite for an Arab renaissance and causally linked to the fate of the Arab world and its achievement of human development.”

César Chelala, MD, PhD, is an international public health consultant and the author of the Pan American Health Organization publication Violence in the Americas.

In Kenya, for the over 5,000 people living in rural communities on or near its shore, Lake Victoria—the largest body of freshwater in Africa—is a life line. It is the main source of water for bathing, drinking, and cooking in the area and its fish populations provide both protein and income to families. “But the shores of Lake Victoria are choking,” says Shana Greene, founder and director of Village Volunteers, a Seattle-based organization that partners with rural communities around the world to create environmentally sustainable solutions for hunger and poverty.

• Village Volunteers is helping local communities to fight back and turn a potentially devastating situation into a financial boon. (Photo credit: Village Volunteers)•

As a result, Village Volunteers is helping local communities to fight back and turn a potentially devastating situation into a financial boon.

“Water hyacinth is actually a really great raw material for so many things,” says Shana. “We are helping communities in Kenya harvest it and use it to create tools to use in the home and to sell. We are using it to make fuel briquettes for cook fires and turning it into a very effective fertilizer.” Village Volunteers is also helping local entrepreneurs produce chairs, baskets, and other pieces of furniture that can be made by weaving together the tough stems and leaves of the hyacinths, as well as biodegradable sanitary napkins.

“The hyacinth invasion is an overwhelming problem,” says Shana, “but it is becoming a business. And by using only locally available materials and labor—oxen help to harvest the hyacinth, for example—the end result is largely self-sustaining.” And while the villages on the shore of the lake can’t eliminate the hyacinth all together, they are clearing it away from the immediate shores, helping to improve the quality of their immediate water supply, as well as habitats for the fish populations they depend on.

“We are helping farmers to not only improve their incomes and livelihoods, but also to make, at least a small difference on their local surroundings. They are turning a devastating situation into a life improving situation.”

To read more about innovations that improve water quality and livelihoods, see: Water Out of Thin Air, Access to Water Improves Life for Women and Children, Reducing Wastewater Contamination Starts with a Conversation, ECHOing a Need for Innovations and Using Dirt to Make Water Clean.

by Molly Theobald

Farmers in the Uluguru Mountains in Tanzania are fighting a losing battle against increasingly degraded land. Repeated plantings are quickly depleting the nutrients in the soil, leaving it nearly barren and vulnerable to erosion. Meanwhile, downstream, the water is dark with sediment, unfit for drinking and expensive to treat. “Downstream, people are complaining about the quality of water,” says Lopa Dosteus, program manager for CARE International’s Equitable Payment for Watershed Management (EPWM) program. “And upstream, the farmers are struggling to grow enough food while their soil washes away.”

• CARE encourages farmers to plant trees as crops to help sequester carbon in the soil and restore nutrients. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)•

EPWM encourages, and works closely with, smallholder farmers to use various farming techniques that help to restore—and hold in place—the soil. “We encourage these farmers—who are all farming on small pieces of land—to build terraces to limit soil runoff and erosion,” says Lopa. “We also encourage them to plant trees as crops and to plant trees in the areas of their land that are otherwise going unused—this helps sequester carbon in the soil and restores much needed nutrients.” EPWM also provides supplies and support, such as seeds and crop maintenance training, and encourages farmers to leave sections of their land alone to long year-long, or even two-year long, periods in order to give the soil a chance to regenerate on its own.

Once the harvest is improved, EPWM works to make sure that farmers have a place to sell the surplus. Most farmers in the region do not have relationships with sellers at local markets. Instead, farmers take their produce to market dealers who purchase the rice, maize, beans, groundnuts, tomatoes, cabbages, and bananas at the lowest rate possible in order to turn around and sell them to local businesses at marked up prices. “We support farmers throughout the process to go out and identify the market for themselves,” says Lopa. “They collect information and meet with interested businesses. Then they don’t need the dealers anymore.”

While transportation of crops to the market is a problem, especially during the rainy season when mountain roads almost entirely inaccessible even by foot, Lopa says that the farmers participating in the project, motivated by their improved harvest and increased incomes, are working together to fight for government assistance and improved infrastructure. “Farmers are seeing that this is increasing their production and their incomes and its motivating them,” says Lopa. “They are happy that the area is being well conserved and they are feeling like they have access to more things. We are helping them shout together and be heard by the government so that their already improved access to the market can be improved even more.”

“Farmers are seeing that they can do this on the small level,” continues Lopa. “And it’s making them think and act bigger. Now they are improving things all on their own.”

To read more about innovations that increase harvests, mitigate environmental degradation, create access to markets and improve livelihoods, see: Aid Groups, Farmers Collaborate to Re-Green Sahel,“Re-greening” the Sahel Through Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, Improving Farmer Livelihoods and Wildlife Conservation, Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods, Helping Conserve Wildlife–and Agriculture–in Mozambique, Bringing Inputs to Farmers, New Frontier Farmers and Processor Group: Reviving Farmland and Improving Livelihoods, and It’s All About the Process.

“Why does suddenness brings urgency and importance? Isn’t human sympathy sustainable when it comes to natural disasters”? Asks a flood survivor in Thatta district as relief fades away along with the days that pass. Now when the flood survivors are going to see the REAL disaster government agencies, civil society, media and other concerned agencies feel like their part of the job is already finished? Is it true that another wave of deaths or another disaster is needed in order to stir aid once again?

Three months have passed now when the grand flood disaster struck Pakistan, effecting about 20 million of population in the country. The time when a chaos spread over the normal human setup in the affected areas and led to spread that same chaos among the government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, media and international departments working in the country. Organizations showered upon their relief support for the flood victims but now when some time passed away and the waters are finally receding and people are moving back to their lives, there seems to be an existence of utter fulfillment with the same agencies once ready to help. They now think their job is done but this in truth is the time when the REAL disaster is going to strike, when millions of helpless people stand alone to gain back the lifestyle they lost to unwarned waves.

We at PDI Pakistan operate in the very districts where floods almost took away everything along with the hopes of people living there. Our relief efforts are now turning to recovery and in the very moments we are witnessing huge number of families coming back to their villages, but life certainly isn’t the same…

I could almost feel my heart throb out of my chest as I glanced around the surroundings where I once proudly stood and declared as my home. My house, my small patch of land and everything that I owned vanished with this disaster….I might as well not have come back if this piece of land where I lived wasn’t so dear to me….because there is nothing left….nothing at all…
~Sidique, head of the family recently migrated back to their village

There are days when we wait for a flour sack to be provided just so we could feed our eight kids, says the mother of small children from a camp in Tando Jam, making something to eat along the raw bread is out of question. No one comes to our help, and now I and my husband go out of the camp till night to search for people sympathetic enough to feed us and we hardly find help.

Passing through the highways that links the main districts along the Indus river, it’s a scene where most of us would want to stop and think again if our perception towards relief support are accurate enough? Because out there are people lonely, helpless and without any support to start again what they lost. A family like the thousands who ran away when floods struck is unable to go back to their village as they don’t have money to provide for their transport as they share:

Our children watch longingly to the vehicles that pass along this road, some cry constantly to be back to our homes and our dear lands but we are helpless. We are stuck where nor can we get something to eat, neither can we own the place we live. We are lost….

But the question yet to be asked is simply who is accountable? Because if aid comes when people actually see what’s going on with the flood survivors then Media seems to have stopped and found other “interesting” issues and things to highlight, or if aid comes when interested parties want to provide support and there are authorities available to deliver that aid then NGOs are back to their own agendas. Or if aid comes when government is willing to invest, then in regards to Pakistani government we might as well not have any comments, providing the right support for the flood survivors is out of the question in that case.

The final questions stands out to you all, are YOU as an individual ready to accept that support only means to provide immediate relief? Or you are willing to extend your help till people gain back control on their lives when they return back to homes. You are our final hope to seek sustainable assistance for flood survivors, please donate your support today for the flood survivors on this link or share this article with your network and become the light of hope for some searching eyes that still wait.....

PDI team

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To know more about PDI Pakistan log on to www.pdi.org.pk or read our blog http://pdipakistan.blogspot.com/