Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.

As we head into 2012, many of us will be resolving to lose those few extra pounds, save more money, or spend a few more hours with our families and friends. But there are also some resolutions we can make to make our lives a little greener. Each of us, especially in the United States, can make a commitment to reducing our environmental impacts.

• Here are 12 simple steps that you can take be more green in the new year. (Photo credit: Julie Carney, Gardens for Health International) •

The United Nations has designated 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. Broadening access to sustainable energy is essential to solving many of the world’s challenges, including food production, security, and poverty.

Hunger, poverty, and climate change are issues that we can all help address. Here are 12 simple steps to go green in 2012:

(1) Recycle Recycling programs exist in cities and towns across the United States, helping to save energy and protect the environment. In 2009, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to require all homes and businesses to use recycling and composting collection programs. As a result, more than 75 percent of all material collected is being recycled, diverting 1.6 million tons from the landfills annually—double the weight of the Golden Gate Bridge. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for each pound of aluminum recovered, Americans save the energy resources necessary to generate roughly 7.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity—enough to power a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years! What you can do:

• Put a separate container next to your trash can or printer, making it easier to recycle your bottles, cans, and paper.

(2) Turn off the lights On the last Saturday in March—March 31 in 2012—hundreds of people, businesses, and governments around the world turn off their lights for an hour as part of Earth Hour, a movement to address climate change. What you can do:

• Earth Hour happens only once a year, but you can make an impact every day by turning off lights during bright daylight, or whenever you will be away for an extended period of time.

(3) Make the switch In 2007, Australia became the first country to “ban the bulb,” drastically reducing domestic usage of incandescent light bulbs. By late 2010, incandescent bulbs had been totally phased out, and, according to the country’s environment minister, this simple move has made a big difference, cutting an estimated 4 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. China also recently pledged to replace the 1 billion incandescent bulbs used in its government offices with more energy efficient models within five years. What you can do:

• A bill in Congress to eliminate incandescent in the United States failed in 2011, but you can still make the switch at home. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use only 20–30 percent of the energy required by incandescents to create the same amount of light, and LEDs use only 10 percent, helping reduce both electric bills and carbon emissions.

(4) Turn on the tap The bottled water industry sold 8.8 billion gallons of water in 2010, generating nearly $11 billion in profits. Yet plastic water bottles create huge environmental problems. The energy required to produce and transport these bottles could fuel an estimated 1.5 million cars for a year, yet approximately 75 percent of water bottles are not recycled—they end up in landfills, litter roadsides, and pollute waterways and oceans. And while public tap water is subject to strict safety regulations, the bottled water industry is not required to report testing results for its products. According to a study, 10 of the most popular brands of bottled water contain a wide range of pollutants, including pharmaceuticals, fertilizer residue, and arsenic. What you can do:

• Fill up your glasses and reusable water bottles with water from the sink. The United States has more than 160,000 public water systems, and by eliminating bottled water you can help to keep nearly 1 million tons of bottles out of the landfill, as well as save money on water costs.

(5) Turn down the heat The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that consumers can save up to 15 percent on heating and cooling bills just by adjusting their thermostats. Turning down the heat by 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit for eight hours can result in savings of 5–15 percent on your home heating bill. What you can do:

• Turn down your thermostat when you leave for work, or use a programmable thermostat to control your heating settings.

(6) Support food recovery programs Each year, roughly a third of all food produced for human consumption—approximately 1.3 billion tons—gets lost or wasted, including 34 million tons in the United States, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Grocery stores, bakeries, and other food providers throw away tons of food daily that is perfectly edible but is cosmetically imperfect or has passed its expiration date. In response, food recovery programs run by homeless shelters or food banks collect this food and use it to provide meals for the hungry, helping to divert food away from landfills and into the bellies of people who need it most. What you can do:

• Encourage your local restaurants and grocery stores to partner with food rescue organizations, like City Harvest in New York City or Second Harvest Heartland in Minnesota.
• Go through your cabinets and shelves and donate any non-perishable canned and dried foods that you won’t be using to your nearest food bank or shelter.

(7) Buy local “Small Business Saturday,” falling between “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” was established in 2010 as a way to support small businesses during the busiest shopping time of the year. Author and consumer advocate Michael Shuman argues that local small businesses are more sustainable because they are often more accountable for their actions, have smaller environmental footprints, and innovate to meet local conditions—providing models for others to learn from. What you can do:

• Instead of relying exclusively on large supermarkets, consider farmers markets and local farms for your produce, eggs, dairy, and meat. Food from these sources is usually fresher and more flavorful, and your money will be going directly to these food producers.

(8) Get out and ride We all know that carpooling and using public transportation helps cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as our gas bills. Now, cities across the country are investing in new mobility options that provide exercise and offer an alternative to being cramped in subways or buses. Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C. have major bike sharing programs that allow people to rent bikes for short-term use. Similar programs exist in other cities, and more are planned for places from Miami, Florida, to Madison, Wisconsin. What you can do:

• If available, use your city’s bike share program to run short errands or commute to work. Memberships are generally inexpensive (only75 for the year in Washington, D.C.), and by eliminating transportation costs, as well as a gym membership, you can save quite a bit of money!
• Even if without bike share programs, many cities and towns are incorporating bike lanes and trails, making it easier and safer to use your bike for transportation and recreation.

(9) Share a car Car sharing programs spread from Europe to the United States nearly 13 years ago and are increasingly popular, with U.S. membership jumping 117 percent between 2007 and 2009. According to the University of California Transportation Center, each shared car replaces 15 personally owned vehicles, and roughly 80 percent of more than 6,000 car-sharing households surveyed across North America got rid of their cars after joining a sharing service. In 2009, car-sharing was credited with reducing U.S. carbon emissions by more than 482,000 tons. Innovative programs such as Chicago’s I-GO are even introducing solar-powered cars to their fleets, making the impact of these programs even more eco-friendly. What you can do:

• Join a car share program! As of July 2011, there were 26 such programs in the U.S., with more than 560,000 people sharing over 10,000 vehicles. Even if you don’t want to get rid of your own car, using a shared car when traveling in a city can greatly reduce the challenges of finding parking (car share programs have their own designated spots), as well as your environmental impact as you run errands or commute to work.

(10) Plant a garden Whether you live in a studio loft or a suburban McMansion, growing your own vegetables is a simple way to bring fresh and nutritious food literally to your doorstep. Researchers at the FAO and the United Nations Development Programme estimate that 200 million city dwellers around the world are already growing and selling their own food, feeding some 800 million of their neighbors. Growing a garden doesn’t have to take up a lot of space, and in light of high food prices and recent food safety scares, even a small plot can make a big impact on your diet and wallet. What you can do:

• Plant some lettuce in a window box. Lettuce seeds are cheap and easy to find, and when planted in full sun, one window box can provide enough to make several salads worth throughout a season.

(11) Compost And what better way to fertilize your garden than using your own composted organic waste. You will not only reduce costs by buying less fertilizer, but you will also help to cut down on food and other organic waste. What you can do:

• If you are unsure about the right ways to compost, websites such as HowToCompost.org and organizations such as the U.S. Composting Council, provide easy steps to reuse your organic waste.

(12) Reduce your meat consumption Livestock production accounts for about 18 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for about 23 percent of all global water used in agriculture. Yet global meat production has experienced a 20 percent growth rate since 2000 to meet the per capita increase of meat consumption of about 42 kilograms. What you can do:

• You don’t have to become a vegetarian or vegan, but by simply cutting down on the amount of meat you consume can go a long way. Consider substituting one meal day with a vegetarian option. And if you are unable to think of how to substitute your meat-heavy diet, websites such as Meatless Monday and Eating Well offer numerous vegetarian recipes that are healthy for you and the environment.

The most successful and lasting New Year’s resolutions are those that are practiced regularly and have an important goal. Watching the ball drop in Times Square happens only once a year, but for more and more people across the world, the impacts of hunger, poverty, and climate change are felt every day. Thankfully, simple practices, such as recycling or riding a bike, can have great impact. As we prepare to ring in the new year, let’s all resolve to make 2012 a healthier, happier, and greener year for all.

Danielle Nierenberg is an expert on livestock and sustainability, and currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 - Innovations that Nourish the Planet for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank.

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In the silence of our collective hearts, women all over the world are listening and responding to a summons, to connect to our passion, to shape our communities in ways that honor our connection to the Earth and to each other.

This retreat is a call for women to gather and become a circle with a “leader in every chair.” More importantly it offers a time to pause, to reflect, to listen deeply, and connect with yourself and others in a deeper way.

You will share your story at the end of our time together… a story to take home, to live fully, for becoming the leader that you are, for being a fully authentic self.

Date: Saturday, January 7, 2012.
Address: 71 Forest St. Milton Ma 02186. Time: 8:30 am-5:00 pm
Fee: $150. Includes breakfast & lunch
Dress code: Comfortable
Bring: A journal & favorite art materials
Preregistration required with full payment. Space is limited.

For more information contact Birute Regine at biruteregine@comcast.net
To reserve your space, mail checks to 411 Broadway Cambridge 02138

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As critical Republican elections are approaching, so are increasing shrill statements by Republican contenders over the Middle East situation. Republican candidates are so forcefully trying to show their support for Israel –without even mentioning the Palestinian people and their rights-- that leading Jewish peace activists and academicians have felt the need to give their opinion about the candidates and their position regarding Israel and the conflict with the Palestinians.

Uri Avnery, one of Israel’s leading peace activists and a former member of the Knesset, comments on Newt Gingrich’s assertion that the Palestinians are an “invented” people. Avnery explains that at some point after the founding of the State of Israel, Golda Meir famously said, “There is not such thing as the Palestinian people!” To which Avnery replied in the Knesset, “Mrs. Prime Minister, perhaps you are right. Perhaps there really is no Palestinian people. But if millions of people mistakenly believe that they are a people, and behave like a people, then they are a people.”

In an interview with Haaretz, Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Atlanta’s Emory University, says, “You listen to Newt Gingrich talking about the Palestinians as an ‘invented people’ –it’s out-Aipacking AIPAC, it’s out-Israeling Israel,” she said. And she added, “There is something about it that is so discomforting. It’s not healthy. It’s a distortion.”

When referring to the Republican candidates’ assertions regarding Israel Professor Lipstadt described them as “pandering,” “embarrassing” and “unhealthy.” “There is no nuance, no middle ground, it’s taking any shade of grey and stomping on it --and it’s dangerous, for your support of Israel to become a litmus test,” she said.

Equally egregious is the misuse of historical facts such as the Holocaust (Shoah) for contemporary political purposes. When asked about this Professor Lipstadt replied, “It’s a use and abuse of the Shoah. That doesn’t mean there aren’t political lessons to be learned from the Shoah – from anything - but it’s a use and abuse that I think is dangerous, just plain dangerous. Not only dangerous, because that can be debated, it’s a distortion of what Israel is all about, what Zionism is all about.”

When asked about the use of the Holocaust in describing Israel’s present situation, and if this is a form of Holocaust denial Professor Lipstadt answered, “I wouldn’t call it that. I would call it a form of Holocaust abuse or instrumentalization of the Holocaust. That you take these terrible moments in our history, moments that deserve to be treated truthfully, and exactly, without exaggeration, in which the facts should speak for themselves. And you use it for contemporary purposes, and in so doing, in order to fulfill your political objectives, you mangle history, you trample on it.”

In criticizing President Obama’s policy on the Middle East, Michelle Bachmann, one of the Republican contenders said, “It seems as if lately, our President has forgotten the importance of Israel to America and thinks of our relationship only in terms of what we do for Israel. The President is more concerned about Israel building homes in its own land than the threats that Israel and America face in the region…Our policy has confused engagement with appeasement and has inspired Israel’s enemies.”

Framing the conflict in the region as if Israel were the threatened country by the much weaker and still stateless Palestinians doesn’t allow for a fair and balanced discussion of the conflict. History has amply shown that both sides have rights to an independent state where people live side by side with each other. Only recognizing the rights and the humanity of the other will lead to a solution of the conflict. Failure to recognize the existence of the Palestinian people and ignoring their legitimate aspirations does nothing for peace in the region.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

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“I have a strong character – when something bothers me, I have to say [something].” said Sugeri. “At home I wasn’t able to speak up. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to get out of there on my own.”

Home should be a place where everyone feels safe from harm, where family members feel comfortable communicating freely. But for women like Sugeri, a 31-year-old mother of two living in Santo Domingo, home was where she felt the most in danger.  

“At home I wasn’t able to speak up,” said Surgeri. Married to a machista man who controlled her every move, at home Sugeri’s life was like that of a prisoner. She had no family in the area and was forbidden from making friends. Her husband screened Sugeri’s phone calls, listened to her voice messages, and sabotaged every attempt she made to reach out to people.

“My self-esteem was so low that I didn’t want to keep living,” said Surgeri.  “I cried all the time.” The abuse soon became physical. Sugeri’s husband forced her to have sex with him against her will. Furthermore, he was freely having sex with other women, putting her at risk for sexually transmitted infections and HIV.  

“There are many women who suffer all types of abuse in their home. Some get out, but many live this hell day after day," says Surgeri. "We all deserve respect and dignity.”

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Children in foster care are taking psychotropic drugs at a rate much higher than non-foster children in Medicaid. According to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO,) children in foster care in five US states are taking powerful mind-altering drugs at a rate two to almost five times higher than non-foster children. Overmedicating children with powerful drugs may alter their quality of life and psychological development.

The investigation by the GAO was prompted by a request from both Republican and Democratic United States senators, led by Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), concerned by numerous reports of waste and abuse in treating foster children with psychiatric medications.

Although all children can be affected by overmedication, foster children are particularly vulnerable, since they lack the family and social support that other children usually have.
In addition, they tend to have more serious medical and mental health conditions than children in different situations.

The GAO report analyzed the situation of 609 foster children and 1,100 non-foster children in Oregon, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan and Texas, and found that at least one-third of foster children were prescribed one or more psychiatric drugs. The cost of this policy is staggering: the five states in the study spent $375 million for psychotropic prescriptions for children covered by Medicaid, $200 million of which was spent in Texas alone.

As indicated in the report, although hundreds of children -both foster and non-foster- were given five and in some cases even more medications, there is no evidence that such a medication regime can really benefit the children but can, instead, give rise to serious side effects. In addition, thousands of infants under one year old were given psychotropic drugs which could have serious adverse effects such as metabolic and cardiovascular problems.

Even though the actual percentages of children receiving several psychiatric drugs at the same time were relatively low in the five states analyzed, the chances of this happening among foster children are a cause for concern. In Texas, for example, foster children were 53 times more likely to be given five –and sometimes more- psychiatric medications at the same time than non-foster children.

The GAO report also found that almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants under a year old who were on Medicaid were taking those drugs. In addition, foster children were nine times more likely than non-foster children to be given medications for which there was no FDA-recommended dose for their age, according to an investigation carried out by Rutgers University among 300,000 children in 16 states.

Among the so-called psychotropic drugs are medications such as anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers that act by altering chemical levels in the brain, and as a result provoke altered mood and behavior. Among those medications, antipsychotics are the most prescribed psychiatric medications, particularly among foster children on whom they are used as chemical restraints.

Although psychotropic drugs have proven to be effective in treating a variety of mental disorders and have been approved for use in adults by the Food and Drug Administration, they have not necessarily been approved for use in children of all ages. The report found that thousands of foster and non-foster children were given high doses of medications with potentially serious side effects.

Antipsychotic medications may cause tremors, muscle spasms, restlessness and tardive dyskinesia, a serious condition in which patients have involuntary movements of the tongue, lips, and arms and legs. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, each year five percent of people on antipsychotics will develop tardive dyskinesia.

Elizabeth J. Roberts, a psychiatrist in California wrote, “Using such diagnostics as bipolar disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Asperger’s, doctors are justifying the sedation of difficult kids with powerful psychiatric drugs that may have serious, permanent or even lethal side effects.”

A critical recommendation of the GAO report is that HHS considers endorsing guidance for states on best practices for overseeing the prescription of these drugs to all, but particularly to foster children. Unless stricter procedures are followed, the quality of life and health of thousands of children will continue to be negatively affected.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is an international public health consultant.

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A big perk of my job is that I get to talk a lot about sex and sexuality education to a variety of audiences. When you ask the average person (someone who doesn’t talk about sex all day) what “sex ed” is, they probably think of the classic drawing of a uterus, explanations of where babies come from, and maybe a condom demonstration on a banana. Or worse, they think of the ineffective and unscientific abstinence-only programs that are a legacy of the previous U.S. administration. But what we now know is that, to be effective, sexuality education needs to cover a broad range of topics including equality and human rights, and be presented in a manner that promotes critical thinking.

The sex education curricula that have the most positive effects on young people’s sexual and reproductive health outcomes address gender and power. The outcomes of comprehensive sexuality education include not only contraceptive and condom use but also more equitable attitudes about the relationship between men and women and decreased violence within all intimate relationships.

The reality is that we have a long way to go before all people can realize dreams beyond what is deemed appropriate for their gender. One of the clearest pieces of evidence we have that demonstrates how patriarchal values that allow men to control sexuality persists is the high rates of gender-based violence, including sexual violence and homophobic hate crimes.

In our field, program managers often struggle to provide the much-needed, immediate services for those who have experienced violence, particularly sexual violence. Providing quality psychological, legal, and medical attention, such as emergency contraception and post-exposure prophylaxis for STIs and HIV, can be a challenge in a sexual and reproductive health care setting. These services are essential to meet immediate needs of victims and also to prevent future violent attacks.

But we need to look beyond simply reacting to violence and toward the work of prevention. If all young people had access to comprehensive sexuality education, we would see a reduction in violence and entrenched gender inequality, and young people would have the skills and information needed to form healthy, consensual relationships based on equality and trust.

For more information and guidelines on facilitating comprehensive sexuality education, download the It’s All One Curriculum, a tool kit created by IPPF/WHR and our partners.

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Iderle Brénus Gerbier has worked with many peasant organizations in support of women rights’ and food sovereignty. She is a member of the Haitian National Network for Food Security and Sovereignty (RENHASSA), campaign coordinator for Food Sovereignty in Haiti, advisor of the National Confederation of Peasant Women (KONAFAP), and organizer for the Haitian Social Forum for Food Sovereignty.

In Haiti, peasant women play a special role in the home and in agriculture. We consider peasant women as the poto mitan, central pillar, of economic activities.

• "Haitian women are the poto mitan, or central pillar, of economic activities," says Iderle Brénus Gerbier. Photo: Ben Depp •

The Haitian society is essentially macho, and the Haitian politicians and international interests oppress Haiti’s own children. Farmers become victims again and again and women are always held back. But these women continue to support their country.

Our goal is to achieve respect for the rights of Haitian women. Despite their position as poto mitan, as the main carriers of the national economy, rural Haitian women always suffer in our society. Most of these women have no direct access to agricultural lands and income is strictly controlled by men, despite their role in agriculture.

Many rural residents are forced to give away the children they love because they don’t have the financial capacity to keep their children at home and send them to school. The majority of these children become the slaves of women living in Port-au-Prince and in other cities. If women farmers could earn income from their hard work, they’d be able to keep their children at home.

The majority of the women working in the informal economy in the city come from the countryside. Many rural residents lost their lives because they were at the heart of the earthquake looking for employment in Port-au-Prince, working for pennies at a factory or selling bottled water in the streets. The earthquake increased the responsibilities that were already too heavy for these poor women.

I’ll repeat over and over that these women who lost their lives, their children, their husbands, and other loved ones in Port-au-Prince, lost them mainly because of lack of infrastructure resulting from the neoliberal policies in the country. But they’ll never be discouraged. They’ll always be involved in all kinds of constructive activities and keep supporting their country. After the earthquake, they went to Port-au-Prince searching for their children and ended up offering help to others who were in need. In the cities and in the countryside, these women work without rest.

We need to advance the struggle of women by redefining the concept of feminism in Haiti. To do this we have to reshuffle the cards and reduce the differences between our urban and peasant women. Right now there are two kinds of women: women with a capital W and women with a small w. Even within the women’s struggle, there are a lot of contemptible practices that have yet to be overcome. Most of the urban well-off women look down upon the poor countryside women, calling them tèt mare, wrapped head, because of the kerchiefs rural women often wear on their heads. The rich and educated town women forget that the poor peasant women make up the core of the rural communities that constitute the greatest part of the country. It’s not fair that a small minority have the privilege of monopolizing almost all of the society’s resources and wealth.

Peasant women are always present in all activities to win human rights, respect for life, and food sovereignty. October 15 was declared “Day of the Haitian Peasant Woman,” but unfortunately this day has never been commemorated. We have to recognize and appreciate women farmers for their significant socio-economic worth. We have to give them the compensation they deserve and support their efforts. We need to increase their visibility in efforts to build food sovereignty in the country. Rural women and those struggling with them, here in Haiti or overseas, need to shore up their strength. We must advocate for the rights of women.

Many thanks to Joseph Pierre for translating.

Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Please credit any text or original research you use to Other Worlds.

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Last April, Syria was embracing new wave of Arab awakening. A young Syrian friend shared with me his worries for the future after he completed his education in the European university. December seemed quite distant. He feared being arrested at the airport for working against the regime.

I laughed and told him gently, “You may come sooner to celebrate the regime’s ouster.”

Come second half of December, neither my friend could return to Syria nor did Bashar’s regime collapse under public and international pressure.

Syrian citizens had a bloodbath with none coming to the rescue, albeit crispy soundbites from Turkey as well as the Arab league. Shocked and awe-struck people braved their way to the street at least on each Friday as women and children saw the country being attacked by an army raised, trained and equipped by their hardearned money.

Sanctions are no good against trigger-happy, stubbon dictators. The Arab League and the European Union curbs had no bearing on Bashar Al-Assad’s actions. My fellow Syrians are increasingly suspicious of the world’s conscience.

While my friend awaits an uncertain career ahead, countless come to clog my mind. When would this stop? Will Bashar step down? Would we be killed before seeing a new democratic country? Why would the world keep watching us senselessly? Is Syria blood so cheap?

Its anybody’s guess that post-Assad Syria would be democratic and peaceful or for that matter any better than what we have suffered through many decades. Some suspect that Syria has become a playground of various international and regional players, thus discrediting those laying their lives or sacrificing their time and money.

Six months ago, a writer predicated that the world would wake up when Syria becomes another Prishtina. I did not buy his pessimism but now his bitter prediction seems turning into a reality.

While media tirelessly struggles to dig out news despite a strict information blackout, many foriegn journalists I speak to find the world conscience in slumber, perhaps waiting for the cries of a Kosova-like masscare.

How timid is it to rely on an organisation called Arab League. The spring shouuld have started from there instead of the bloc having the audacity to mange the public awakening. Any given protestor in a Syrian street would tell you that the Arab League is a ghost from the past.

Where do we go from here then? Some will say that the sitauion in Syria is more complicated and different than the other countries of Middle East and North Africa. I believe that the world made Syria look so complicated, owing to its lack of political will.

Why does Syria look so different from the other countries? Is it because of Bashar’s Lebanon, HezboAllah and Iran cards? Well, Mobarak was supported by US and Israel. Besides the west, bin Ali even had Saudi backing. The Arab states rant that Iran is the problem makes the obstacle look stronger than realtiy.

On Friday, the Human Rights Watch demanded of the UN Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) following over killing of over 5,000 people and and countless injured and missing. The report names commanders and officials from the Syrian military and intelligence agencies who allegedly ordered, authorized, or condoned widespread killings, torture, and unlawful arrests during the 2011 anti-government protests.

At the same time, some Syrians protestors bombed one of the army tanks that killed one soldier, thus a Syrian killing another. The situation highlights the dilemma of a common Syria who wants to remain peaceful and protect his famiıly at the same time. When every youth, child, women and business is threatened, instinct of self-defence is automicatlly invoked. Reason and rationality are lost in search for a secure and dignified living.

Regardless of the fact that we oppose foreign intervations, it appears as the only choice. The regime will crumble as soon as its positıons are targeted in Syria. As long as the buffer zone is imposed that seems coming after US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s visit to Turkey on Thrusday, the Assads would start to lose confidence and command.

The Gaddafi story predicts Bashar’s fate. However, its anybody’s guess as to how many Syrians will lay their lives furthermore, and to what extent the regime can go to preserve itself. The moment of truth has arrived for us all, the Syrian people, its tyrant regime and the mighty and the powerful world powers.

Until then, my expatriate friends should knock the doors of their European and Arab hosts instead of ending up in Syrian jails.

Aloosh Devrim is a social media activist whose family struggled against Hafiz Al-Assad's rule and policies.

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TLC launched a popular reality show called All-American Muslim about everyday Americans, who happen to be Muslim, going about their normal daily lives including playing sports, going to school, going to work and paying their taxes.

A controversy was whipped up by the extremist Florida Family Association over the show and Lowe's Home Improvement decided to pull its advertising. The equation in the TV business is, no advertising = no show.

Lowe's speedy capitulation to a small right-wing hate group sets a dangerous precedent and emboldens bigots. Lowe's should have ignored the Right's bigoted pleas and gone about its business.

Instead it caved to a group of bigoted extremists. The company claims it is committed to diversity -- it's time to prove it. To live in peace and harmony, all Americans must value religious liberty and reject hate, and the Radical Right's anti-Muslim hysteria and bigotry.

Please sign the petition to Lowe's Chairman and CEO Robert Niblock, urging the company to reverse course on its decision to pull its advertising from "All-American Muslim" in response to a Religious Right hate group and reinstate its advertising to set a precedence of rejecting bigotry and extremism.

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Displacement and survival are two branches of a same tree. Following the Second World War, many Jewish survivors of forced labor camps, concentration camps and death marches sought to rebuild their lives far from the countries of their birth. Those who found shelter in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps, called She’erit ha-Pletah in Hebrew (meaning 'surviving remnants'), eventually began anew in North and South America, in Western Europe, in what is now Israel. Today in the latter country Palestinians are the victims of forced displacement at an alarming rate.

An international coalition of twenty leading aid agencies and human rights groups - among them Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam International - has issued a statement condemning the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes and has called upon the Middle East Peace Quartet (the U.S., U.K., European Union and Russia) to demand that the Israeli government reverse its settlement policies and freeze all demolitions carried out in violation of international law.

The situation has been deteriorating rapidly, the aid groups indicate. Since the beginning of 2011, more than 500 Palestinian homes, wells, rainwater harvesting cisterns and other basic structures have been destroyed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. According to statistics published by the United Nations, more than one thousand Palestinians have been 'displaced' doubling the numbers for the same period in 2010.

The psychological and physical effects of house demolitions and displacement are dire. Families must face the economic consequences of the loss of property, shelter and employment. More than half of the displaced are children are subjected to poverty and are unable to resume normal schooling.
At the same time, there has been an accelerated expansion of settlements on Palestinian land. Over the past 12 months, plans for approximately 4,000 new settlement housing units in East Jerusalem have been approved, the highest number since 2006.

The approval for new settlement construction was announced just as mediators from the Middle East Peace Quartet began efforts to revive peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Last Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that he was “deeply concerned” about the Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and called on the Israeli government to “freeze all settlement activity.”

At the same time, there has been a significant increase in settler violence against Palestinians. The number of aggressions in 2011 has doubled since 2010 and increased by over 160 percent compared to 2009. Settlers have destroyed some 10,000 Palestinian olive and other trees during this year, trees that were providing a livelihood for hundreds of Palestinian families. Between 2005 and 2010, ninety percent of the complaints against settler violence have been closed by the police without indictment.

In addition, if reported plans for 2012 proceed, up to 2,300 Bedouins living on Jerusalem's periphery will be forcibly and unlawfully relocated, their houses and livelihoods destroyed. One is reminded of the words in a James Fenton poem about WWII,

It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.

It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.

It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.

Unless the Israeli government adopts a more active policy to stop the unlawful demolition of Palestinian homes and contain settler violence, it risks becoming hostage to the settlers’ delirious violence. As Gideon Levy writing in Haaretz has so aptly stated, “It is not only the government, as important as that is, that hangs in the balance, but also the very character of the state.”

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

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I’ve spent Sunday mornings for almost a decade now watching Meet the Press. Even though it is the most popular Sunday morning public affairs program in the nation and millions are watching, for me, it has gone from bad to worse. Regardless, Meet the Press is a highly influential program, often determining the news cycle for the upcoming week and undoubtedly influencing political discourse and public opinion.

• Photograph of Chris Hayes taken from his Facebook fan page. •

Fortunately, a couple of weeks ago I heard about Up w/ Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Up is two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday so in the short time I’ve known about it, I’ve seen a lot of the show. Refreshingly, there have been quite a few women on the program. In fact, last Sunday, female guests out numbered men three to one. (Guests included New York Times Magazine contributor Rebecca Traister, Green for All CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, and former speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Elise Jordan.)

The White House Project, whose awesome tagline is Add women, CHANGE everything, found in a 2005 study called Whose Talking Now that “more that more than half of the Sunday morning news shows did not include a single woman.” While I am not sure if Chris Hayes is aware of the parity he is promoting on his program, I certainly hope he keeps it up.

I highly encourage you to check out Up w/ Chris Hayes this weekend. Plus, an added bonus, Chris Hayes actually quoted Obi-Wan on Sunday when referring to Newt Gingrich’s ego when he said, “These are not the droids you are looking for.”

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During the course of my work supporting the expansion and strengthening of abortion services for young women in Latin America and the Caribbean, I have visited many countries where abortion is permitted in only limited circumstances. One such circumstance is when a woman is the victim of sexual assault. In the case of sexual violence, it is necessary to ensure that women are able to receive the services they are legally entitled to, but are often unable to access.

Despite these challenges, MAs such as PROFAMILIA Colombia have spearheaded efforts to ensure that young women can receive legal abortion services in the case of sexual violence in a dignified and youth-friendly manner. As a champion of sexual and reproductive rights, when abortion was decriminalized for women who have experienced sexual violence in 2006, PROFAMILIA was not content to let the exception stay just on the books. Instead, they did research on sexual violence in Colombia, worked with local musicians to launch a awareness-raising campaign, and began offering services in their clinics. While we applaud PROFAMILIA’s dedication to providing abortion services to the full extent of the law, we need to continue fighting to expand access so that no young women is forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Fortunately this has been the case in Mexico City since 2007, when the Federal District legalized abortion in the first trimester. Last month I visited three clinics in Mexico City that offer legal abortion services to young women. Mexico City is one of the very few places in Latin America where young women can access legal abortion services until 12 weeks, regardless of their reasons for terminating their pregnancy. Due to the liberalization of the law, providers and program staff that work with youth can focus their energies on ensuring that those services are sensitive to the needs of adolescents, accessible, and confidential. Most importantly, they can support a young women’s capacity to make an autonomous decision about her pregnancy based on what she wants to do, not what the legislations says she is permitted to do.

Thanks to this groundbreaking development in Mexico City, all young women are able to decide if they want to continue their pregnancy, whether that pregnancy was a result of rape or not. While we need to implement the sexual violence exceptions to the full extent of the law in those countries that respect this right, we cannot stop there. Young women need safe, legal abortion services for many reasons – not just in situations of violence.

IPPF/WHR is a recognized leader in the international movement to ensure access to sexual and reproductive health care as a human right for all people.

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As the world population passes seven billion, there is much hand wringing among the prosperous of the world about the unchecked growth of hungry folk, especially on far-away shores. How can the world accommodate so many people - nine billion by mid-century? For the most part, this standard Western concern is entirely selfish, reflecting race- and class-based fears. What is more, the fear of overpopulation is largely misplaced (although the fear of climate change and other consequences of unchecked consumption are not). In fact, the end of the population explosion is near.

The numbers are dramatic. After all, we only reached a population of one billion people early in the 19th century and two billion in about 1925. In less than a century since then, population has more than tripled.

Yet in almost every corner of the developing world, the demographic revolution is reducing fertility rates to levels near or below the replacement rate (about 2.1 babies per woman).

In this overall encouraging picture, one especially worrisome exception stands out. In Eastern Africa, fertility has plateaued at high levels, while water resources appear insufficient to sustain high incomes.

Demographic Transition

The great demographic surprise of the last half-century has been the precipitous decline in fertility (births per woman) almost everywhere in the world. Birth rates still are high, because there are so many young women of childbearing age, themselves the product of high fertility rates and improved health standards in recent decades. However, by the time today’s little girls becomes grandmothers, the world population will likely have reached its all-time maximum, which is unlikely to exceed ten billion.

This decline in fertility does not require enlightened, honest leadership or rapid economic growth (though the presence of these factors speeds it up). As Figure 2 shows, the pattern is extremely widespread, arriving earlier in some countries than in others. Between 1960 and 2009, fertility for the world as a whole was cut in half, from almost five children per woman to fewer than two and a half.

The pattern of rapid fertility decline has affected not only well-governed countries such as Korea and Costa Rica, but also countries notorious for corruption. In fact, one of the most rapid declines in fertility has taken place in Bangladesh, a country consistently rated by Transparency International as highly corrupt.

The Left Behind: Today

Unfortunately, the optimistic story of self-correcting population growth is not universally true. One part of the world, in particular, lags dangerously behind: East Africa. I am particularly concerned because I had occasion in October 2011 to visit Kenya for a month, a country my wife and I called home for five years some decades ago. Our son was born there (“a Kenyan citizen by birth and returnable at any time”). The population dilemma of East Africa thus hits close to home in our family, even though we live in the United States.

The Left Behind: Tomorrow

In 1969 when I first arrived in Kenya, its population was fewer than 11 million. Today, the population exceeds 40 million. Together, the seven Eastern African countries represented in Figure 3 have a population of nearly 170 million. Their current fertility rates imply that their populations will more than double in a generation. By mid-century, these seven countries alone are likely to have a population that at least equals that of the United States or Western Europe.

Of course, rapid fertility decline could resume in Eastern Africa as it did in Cambodia and Iran, after internal upheavals. But there are more terrifying possibilities as well.

Ominously, incomes in Kenya have been essentially stagnant. That does not mean that total economic output has stagnated. But the increase in real GDP since 1985 has barely exceeded the increase in population. True, the average level of education is much higher today than when I lived in Kenya, and the country is a world leader in innovative deployment of wireless technology, with cheap telephone and internet services available throughout the country, affecting the lives of the poor as well as the rich.

But with population growth stuck in overdrive, it is clear that the current path of development in Kenya, as in the rest of Eastern Africa is unsustainable. The region has at most two decades, one generation, to reduce fertility to half its current level.

The alternative to a full demographic transition is already on display. Somalia and the Darfur region of Sudan offer the models of the collapse of the social order and property rights when drought and overgrazing on marginal land make it no longer possible to carry the resident population. Most of Kenya and large parts of Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia are semi-arid with unreliable rainfall. Water is the key constraint on potential economic growth. If the population level in these areas rises inexorably, surface water will fail and aquifers will be drained.

And then? Then, Malthus’ specter of war, disease and famine will be realized. Note that what has been held out as global specter – that the population explosion will lead to the often-predicted age of Malthus – will manifest itself only selectively, but notably in Eastern Africa, with disastrous effects for all concerned there.

What To Do?

East Africa is the largest block of countries in which demographic transition has slowed alarmingly. In West Africa, several countries also continue to have high fertility levels. Several counties of the Sahel face water problems similar to East Africa.

But consider this: there were 54 countries with population greater than a million in 2009 that had fertility rates greater than four children per woman. Of these 54, 44 were on trajectories (since 2000) that implied fertility would fall to 2.1 (replacement level) within 50 years, two generations. Of the remaining ten, slow-changing countries, six were in East Africa.

What is going on? If only we knew! No single explanation – slow economic growth, good or bad government, family planning activity, the HIV-AIDS epidemic – makes for a convincing story. For most of the developing world, the population bomb has defused itself through remarkably rapid fertility decline. Why has this process stalled in East Africa? If I were a praying man, I would turn there now.

Bernard Wasow has a PhD in Economics from Stanford University. He taught Economics at University of Nairobi and at New York University.

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While the number of new HIV infections has stabilized in recent years, in many parts of the world, women and girls continue to bear a disproportionate burden of the pandemic. In the Caribbean, for example, women account for more than half of people living with HIV, and young women are twice as likely to be HIV positive as young men.

The connection between sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV is undeniable, as the majority of new infections are sexually transmitted. Biologically, women are more vulnerable to HIV infection during heterosexual sex than men, but that is only one part of the picture. Poverty, gender inequality, and violence are also significant drivers of new infections among women.

Violence is both a cause and consequence of HIV. Violence and the threat of violence dramatically increase the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV by making it difficult or impossible for women to abstain from sex, to get their partners to be faithful, or to demand a sexual partner use a condom. The risk of HIV transmission increases during violent or forced-sex situations, as the abrasions caused through forced penetration can facilitate entry of the virus. Similarly, women living with HIV often face stigma and violence because of their HIV-positive status.

For women, integration of HIV testing and counseling with sexual and reproductive health services is critical because new infections often occur within stable, heterosexual relationships. In Asia, for example, it is estimated that more than 90% of women living with HIV became infected from their husbands or partners while in long-term relationships.

While linking HIV testing and counseling to sexual and reproductive health services—which a substantial number of women already use and trust—seems obvious to some, there has been a damaging lack of coordination among agencies focusing on HIV/AIDS, violence against women, and reproductive health. Stronger harmonization among these agencies is needed to ensure a broader reach of HIV testing and care, particularly for women in long-term relationships who do not believe they are at risk.

For many women, APROFAM’s information session is the first time they learn definitively about how HIV is and is not transmitted, and how to correctly use a condom. Whether they come to APROFAM seeking counseling for violence, prenatal care, or contraception, reaching women with this information is critical.

As one APROFAM educator recounted, “I used to work in a clothing store on a corner where there were a lot of sex workers. Men from rural areas would come through and pay them for sex. Afterwards, the women would tell me that the men refused to use condoms…and I know that these men would go home and have sex with their wives, and that their wives didn’t know what their husbands were doing…but the man will always say it’s the woman’s fault because otherwise it would expose his own infidelity.”

Dealing with such complex dynamics is no easy task, but Alcantara and her colleagues recognize that any credible effort to address HIV/AIDS must also address violence and inequality. Many of our Member Associations are employing this comprehensive approach, but global donors and governments must follow suit and ensure that the realities of women’s lives are reflected in HIV/AIDS programs and funding.

IPPF/WHR is a recognized leader in the international movement to ensure access to sexual and reproductive health care as a human right for all people.

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December 10 is Human Rights Day. On December 12, 2011, Saudi Arabian authorities ordered the execution of a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery. Although the Saudi Interior Ministry didn’t give details of the woman’s crime, the London-based al-Hayat newspaper quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, chief of the religious police, who stated that the woman had tricked people, making them believe that she could cure them of a variety of ailments. It was an outrageous response to a serious crime.

“Despite the fact that I hate violence against women, when it comes to God’s will, I have to carry it out,” said Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, Saudi Arabia’s top executioner, during an interview with the Saudi daily Arab News. And with remarkable calm he added, “It doesn’t matter to me: two, four, ten – as long as I am doing God’s will, it doesn’t matter how many people I execute.”

Beheadings of women in Saudi Arabia didn’t start until the early 1990’s. Before then, they were shot. Up to the end of 2011, forty-nine women have been publicly beheaded, mainly in major cities such as Riyadh, Jeddah and Dahran. Executioners are proud of their job, which is handed down from one generation to the next. In Saudi Arabia, executioners use a traditional Arab scimitar approximately 44 inches long.

Many people consider the government headed by King Abdullah as reformist. After all, he was behind the decision to allow women to vote and in local elections, albeit in 2015. However, the World Economic Forum 2009 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 130th out of 134 countries when considering gender parity issues. That same report ranked several Muslim countries such as Kyrgystan, Gambia and Indonesia significantly higher than Saudi Arabia on issues of women’s equality.

At the U.N. Third Millennium Summit in New York City in 2010, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdulla bin Abdul Aziz defended his country’s human rights conduct, stating that “It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles.” However, his position is difficult to accept if one takes into account that Saudi Arabia has ratified the International Convention against Torture in October 1997, and has created the Human Rights First Society in 2002 and the Association for the Protection and Defense of Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia in 2007.

Beheadings such as the one just carried out in Saudi Arabia don’t happen in that country alone. Similar ones have been carried out in countries such as Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Iran and United Arab Emirates. In no way, however, can it justify the use of a practice that has been severely criticized by several international human rights organizations.

Amnesty International, for example, has criticized Saudi Arabia not only for its execution but also for trials that are considered a mockery and don’t allow victims to properly defend themselves. Saudi Arabia, however, has consistently justified this behavior reminding critics of Saudi Arabia’s tradition and the humanity of its courts.

Beheading people, however, easily falls into what is widely considered as “cruel and unusual punishment,” a phrase that describes unacceptable punishment due to the suffering or humiliation it inflicts on the condemned person. These are the words that were used in the English Bill of Rights in 1689 and that later also appear in Article Five of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and in several other international conventions.

The 345 executions carried out in Saudi Arabia between 2007 and 2010 were all conducted by public and humiliating beheadings. Giving women the right to vote is an important measure. Giving women the right to their life and dignity is a much more significant one.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

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Damaging gossip, harsh stares, aggressive remarks, exile. These are just a few forms of stigma and discrimination regularly faced by people living with HIV. A growing body of evidence has shown that women living with HIV/AIDS often face an increased risk for gender-based violence.

In partnership with the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the Global Network of People Living with HIV, and the International Community of Women Living with HIV, the International Planned Parenthood Federation developed the Stigma Index to document and measure the ways people living with HIV are stigmatized in order to make policies and programs more responsive to the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS. The goal is to use the research to improve social programs and make recommendations for policy change.

This report also revealed that HIV-positive women are frequently victims of physical, sexual, and emotional violence, particularly by their partners. Significant numbers of women shared that, in the previous 12 months, they had been physically abused (42%) or had experienced sexual violence (22%) from their partners. In terms of emotional abuse, almost a third (31%) reported that they had been verbally or physically humiliated by their partner, and 24% had been threatened with physical harm to themselves or someone close to them.

Comparing this evidence to information on the general population revealed a startling finding: more than half of the HIV-positive women (53%) had experienced some kind of physical abuse since the age of 15, a number that is more than twice the rate for the general population in the Dominican Republic. Similar evidence has emerged from Stigma Index studies in other regions.

The issue of gender-based violence experienced by women living with HIV is not seriously considered by global health agencies and donors such as the World Health Organization. However, the facts remain that many women lack decision-making power in their intimate relationships and face limited choices about their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Gender inequality also results in women having fewer opportunities to earn income, which results in their having less control over economic resources and a harder time escaping abusive intimate partners. These inequalities are exacerbated by HIV.

Efforts such as the Stigma Index have increased awareness of the violence experienced by HIV positive women, but much remains to be done to ensure that all people, regardless of their HIV status, have the opportunity to live healthy, just, and violence-free lives.

IPPF/WHR is a recognized leader in the international movement to ensure access to sexual and reproductive health care as a human right for all people.

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“I’m not just a doctor of the body; I am a doctor of the soul.”

Dr. Maria Isabel Corea Ramirez is a kind woman with a large smile, soothing eyes, and a calm demeanor. As the director of PROFAMILIA’s clinic in Tipitapa, Nicaragua, a small township 22 kilometers east of Managua, she oversees several programs that bring essential health services—such as contraception and prenatal care—to thousands of people each year.

But, Dr. Ramirez informs me in the clinic’s lively waiting room, much of her time is also spent addressing a kind of pain that cannot be cured with a pill or a physical exam: gender-based violence.

“We are always advocating for the rights of those at risk,” explains Dr. Ramirez. “We provide the information and services people need. But it’s also about the right—of youth, of women experiencing violence—to live free of violence and make informed decisions about their lives.”

Founded in 1970, PROFAMILIA is the largest nonprofit sexual and reproductive service provider in Nicaragua. Its 17 clinics provided more than 284,000 services in 2010. In the third poorest nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, many of PROFAMILIA’s services are provided at a subsidized cost or for free. In Tipitapa, where many people work grueling hours in the garment industry for less than the country's minimum wage, the need for basic sexual and reproductive health care is acute.

According to Dr. Ramirez, PROFAMILIA clinics are the only interaction many people have with the health system, which is why screening for violence during prenatal checkups and general consultations is critical. This is especially true in Nicaragua, where rates of violence against women are high and there is a culture of silence around the issue: less than half of all women who experience violence seek any kind of assistance.

To counter these barriers, Dr. Ramirez and her colleagues developed a two-fold approach to helping those in need: PROFAMILIA Tipitapa hosts a monthly peer support group for women who have experienced violence, and in order to reach the largest number of people possible and eradicate the silence around domestic violence, it provides comprehensive sexuality education in the local schools. The youth program, Dr. Ramirez explains, not only helps young people speak out against violence and built equitable relationships, but also educates mothers about violence against women and encourages them to seek support.

That is how Angela* escaped a violent relationship. She heard about PROFAMILIA’s support group through her son’s school. Now she looks forward to a different type of future.

“Learning about your rights and [knowing] other women who have experienced the same situation has made me more liberated,” Angela says. “I feel like I have a way to move forward.”

When I ask Dr. Ramirez about the impact she's had in countering violence against women, she takes my hand and walks me over to a large red book that sits near the clinic's reception desk. Inside, each page is neatly covered with newspaper clippings documenting cases of violence against women -- including deaths. To the right of the book, a small notebook and pen gives clients the opportunity to anonymously write their feelings and thoughts about the many women and families that have been affected by violence.

“The pain many women experience is a pain of the soul,” she tells me.

For Dr. Ramirez, a physical examination is only one part of her interaction with patients; she also reads their faces. For example, she watches women when they receive the results of a pregnancy test, to determine whether the news make them happy or upset. Being attuned and sensitive to the emotional needs and troubles of patients, she explains, is critical to ensuring that patients receive the most comprehensive and high quality care.

Dr. Ramirez smiles when she tells me about a young woman—“one of many”—who she met through a referral from the local school. During the initial consultation with the young woman, who stated she was there for a check-up, Dr. Ramirez learned that she needed more than a physical. She learned the young woman had experienced violence and was in need of counseling and support. Today, this young woman is continuing her education.

“She has a new sense of self-esteem, a reason for being,” says Dr. Ramirez. “She knows she is important.”

* not her real name

IPPF/WHR is a recognized leader in the international movement to ensure access to sexual and reproductive health care as a human right for all people.

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When the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), was charged with sexual assaulting a housekeeper in a New York hotel, the entire world was in shock. More often than not perpetrators of violence against women (VAW) go unpunished, so it was hard to believe that a legal case involving one of the most powerful men on the planet was able to take center stage in international media.

Social media played an important role in turning the DSK scandal into global public discourse about sexual assault, the same way the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas sexual harassment case dominated American discussions exactly 20 years ago. But it is important to underscore the central role advocates of the human rights of women have played in breaking centuries of silence and bringing violence against women from the private spaces of women and girls lives to the fore of public consciousness.

Indeed, for the past 30 years, women’s human rights activists and organizations worldwide, like the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, have taken groundbreaking steps to move VAW from the private domain into the public sphere. They have been a driving force in advocating for international and regional legal and political frameworks that obligate and guide countries in the adoption of their own laws, policies, and programs to address violence against women. At the international level this includes the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Vienna Declaration on Human Rights, the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, and the Beijing Platform for Action.

While the vision has always been to effect broad social change, response to violence against women has focused on legal and judicial reform, ending impunity for perpetrators, providing victims with legal aid to access justice, and improving services such as health care and shelters for abused women. It is undeniable that these strategies have improved the social and psychological condition of many women living with violence. It is also true that the justice system, especially in developing countries, continues to fail women. Although many countries have adopted punitive measures to hold perpetrators accountable, only a dismal portion of VAW survivors and victims have access to justice.

The service-focused model has been unable to simultaneously address the fundamental factors that foster VAW and make it socially acceptable across nations, and it has been rapidly outpaced by increasing demand. In order to effectively address VAW, a paradigm shift is needed from a focus on intervention and treatment to a culture of prevention while sustaining the field’s commitment to improving response. A shift must happen from an individual-focused strategy to approaches that can reshape the normative behaviors and attitudes of individuals, relationships, communities, and society at large.

Rooted in and reinforced by power imbalances between men and women, VAW is a human rights violation and a public health issue. VAW can have devastating health consequences, and it kills and disables more women between the ages of 15 and 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

The number of women who live with violence is staggering. The UN Women estimates that one in three women will be raped, beaten, or coerced into marriage by an intimate partner or a family member in her lifetime. With prevalence rates ranging from 20% to 61% in contexts as diverse as Tokyo and rural Peru, VAW is the expression of the subordinate status of women to men and the daily reality of hundreds of millions of women around the world.

There is growing awareness within the international community about the importance of prevention as a strategy in the fight against VAW; however, the lack of rigorous evidence to guide programming remains a challenge. The good news is that there is wide agreement on “good or promising practices” that have been successful in a variety of places around the world where the political will and the commitment of resources is present. These practices include the implementation of comprehensive approaches that foster collaboration among law enforcement, legal aid, health organizations, educational institutions, economic development organizations, and women’s rights; approaches where individuals and communities participate synergistically; and approaches that target young people, particularly ones that engage men and boys.

Ending VAW has gained global momentum in recent years thanks to advocates of women’s human rights, the publication of a landmark in-depth study on all forms of violence against women by the UN Secretary-General in 2006, the UN's launch of two high-profile global campaigns to end violence against women, and several resolutions, such as the 2008 UN General Assembly Resolution, calling on governments to intensify their efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women. It is time for the development and implementation of adequately-funded action plans that focus on prevention as an essential strategy to end VAW.

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In Latin America, up to a third of women experience gender-based violence, including psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Since 2008, IPPF has been part of a UNFPA regional project, Salud y Justicia Para Mujeres Ante la Violencia Sexual, which has been working to improve access to legal justice and ensure quality health services for victims of sexual violence in Central America.

On November 15-17th, IPPF/WHR met with representatives of the four MAs who participated in this initiative for an end-of-project meeting. For three days we reviewed achievements and challenges, discussed lessons learned, and planned next steps for continued advocacy work. Irma Esperanza Salazar, from Aprofam in Guatemala, described what she hoped to gain from attending: “Since the project is coming to a close, we hope to learn from other MAs about their experiences, the strategies they used, and the alliances they developed. We want to discuss how to better engage decision-makers and effectively conduct political analysis.”

Maintaining a transnational alliance met with several struggles—including the technological limitations of some MAs, fluctuating political situations in each country, different social responses to violence, and varying levels of influence with decision-makers—but participants found ways to work through these challenges. Although the scope and context of violence against women is different for each country, high rates of sexual and intimate partner violence and a commitment to women’s rights are places where every MA was able to find common ground.

Suyapa Pavon, from Ashonplafa in Honduras, said she became involved in working to end gender-based violence because “it is an opportunity to contribute to quality of life conditions for the entire population. Family planning is a fundamental part of our country’s development. So, I believe we have a responsibility to contribute.”

Ligia Altamirano discussed her unique position  to reduce gender-based violence, as an Ob/Gyn at Profamilia in Nicaragua. She said being a women’s health physician in Nicaragua “is not like a family health doctor. Women say things in their gynecological appointments that they do not say in confession. I hear about their relationships, about family violence, intimate partner violence, and sexual violence."

Because Altamirano has such personal conversations with her patients, she is encouraged to work to improve their health needs and help them access support services. "We have access to information that is intimate and profound for women, and it motivates us to help stop violence against women,” she says.

During this initiative, IPPF/WHR successfully provided 23 trainings for project partners and service providers to help strengthen their capacity to provide services and advocate  on behalf of victims for improved care. The workshops provided tools to analyze the laws and legal advocacy framework that exists in each country and identify areas where the governments lack laws that would guarantee high quality services for victims of sexual violence. The trainings resulted in advocacy initiatives that increased public awareness about the scope of the sexual violence problem and the need for a coordinated and effective response.

This project has been a crucial first step toward developing cross-country alliances that complement organizations’ and countries’ strengths and resources, expanding sexual and reproductive health services, and engaging media in a conversation about sexual rights. Being a part of this group provided members with an opportunity to brainstorm strategies to engage with decision makers, conduct political analysis, and develop ways to meet unfulfilled needs. After sharing their experiences and creatively building their efforts in a collaborative way, the MAs plan to continue working together to improve women’s sexual and reproductive health and quality of life in Central America.

They want to “create an open environment for women to speak about their experiences and a private space for them to receive health services,” explained Salazar. "It is important for women to know there is an alternative to enduring sexual violence."

Through advocacy efforts and political advances, Salud y Justicia Para Mujeres Ante la Violencia Sexual has contributed to these goals. Although the project has come to a close, the organizations involved will not stop advocating for a world that is free of sexual violence.

Cosette Ramirez, of ADS in El Salvador, confidently proclaimed, “Just because the project ends doesn’t mean the work is done. No, we are continuing. We have to continue this work.”

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Gold, tin, tungsten, and tantalum power many Apple Inc. products including iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks. These minerals are in abundance in Congo where the deadliest war in the world today has been raging for over fifteen years.

Delly is originally from North Kivu in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where conflict has been raging for over fifteen years. He would like an iPhone for the holidays this year - he likes the iPhone4S - but having monitored mining sites in eastern Congo for several years and documented human rights abuses, he has seen firsthand, the rape, violence, and devastation being fueled by the trade in minerals found in Apple’s and other company's products. Apple pays such incredible attention to every detail of its products, except for the parts that fuel war in Congo.

Please sign the petition and join Delly, the Congolese people, Africa, and friends of Africa in asking Apple Inc. and other companies to make conflict-free products that include conflict-free minerals from Congo that help and support Congolese communities and clean minerals trade in Congo, rather than benefit the pockets of armed groups, so we can all buy Apple Inc. and other companies products in good conscience.

Ask Apple Inc. to lead the way by doing its part to stop the fueling of the deadliest conflict since World War II and pave the way to creating a responsible mining sector in Congo, so all companies and consumers can source conflict-free.

Let us give Congo and the Congolese people a chance for a better future. Clean up your supply chain by purchasing minerals from Congo that benefit rather than destroy communities.

Thanks for being an awesome change maker!

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Confronting the international community’s efforts to find a peaceful and durable solution for 3,400 Iranian dissidents including 1,000 women residing in Camp Ashraf, the Government of Iraq increases its pressures and conspiracies against its residents. By such suppressive measures and upon orders of the Iranian regime, Nouri al-Maliki is planning and preparing for a massacre in a larger scale through a fabricated and unlawful deadline for closure of Ashraf by the end of 2011.

Based on information received from Iran, on November 23, 2011, the Iraqi Committee, tasked with suppression of Ashraf, sent a number of mullahs’ regime’s intelligence agents to the military operation headquarters of Diyala province to give consultation to this headquarters for designing operation of attack on Ashraf.

According to another report, the mullahs’ intelligence (MOIS) and the Quds Force have asked Diyala Operation headquarters to have a number of intelligence agents fly over Ashraf by helicopter to identify ‘sensitive locations’ for targeting them in the next attack and also for spreading leaflets over those buildings.

All signs indicate that the Iranian regime and its Iraqi proxies are planning for an unprecedented massacre of defenseless resident particularly women and children. Through stonewalling and obstructing measures, they are preventing the initiation of the UNHCR’s process to reconfirm Ashraf residents’ refugee status in a bid to set aside all barriers in the path of this massacre.

While the Iraqi Prime Minister is going to visit the United States on December 12th, residents of Camp Ashraf are calling upon the U.S. President, Secretary of State and other relevant American officials, along with the UN Security Council and Secretary-General and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq regarding a predictable bloodbath. They are asking them to immediately expedite the beginning of Ashraf residents’ refugee status reconfirmation process and to prevent a new humanitarian catastrophe.

Shahriar Kia is a spokesman for residents of Camp Ashraf and a political analyst educated in the United States, who currently resides in Ashraf, Iraq.

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Our voting rights are under attack by the most aggressive effort our nation has seen in over a century. This year, two-thirds of state legislatures have introduced laws that undermine people’s right to vote. Early voting and Sunday voting are under attack. Photo ID requirements will introduce the first financial and document barriers to voting since the poll tax. Racially-motivated bans on ex-felons will wipe tens of thousands of people off the rolls.

The right to vote is the heart of our democracy. Throughout our history Americans have been murdered for defending this basic human right.This is what Civil Rights is about. We will not let it be taken away from millions today.

Join us on Saturday, December 10th—The United Nations’ Human Rights Day—to proclaim to America and the world: “It’s time to Stand for Freedom. We must protect our right to vote.”

Agenda:

11 am: March from the NYC office of the Koch brothers who are major funders of anti-voting rights measures, at 61st St. & Madison Ave, NYC.

12 noon: Rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, United Nations East 47th Street & 2nd Avenue, NYC

Stand up for yourself! Show the Koch brothers and anyone else backing voter suppression laws that money isn't everything and has it limitations!

Sign the Stand for Freedom Pledge today.

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• Photograph by Flickr user blmurch and used under a creative commons license.•

This raises the following questions: Is a capitalist and neoliberal economic structure really the way to complete word-wide welfare?

This letter has fallen into my hands and I feel compelled to get it out there as per the woman’s intentions. It was not what I expected but it moved me beyond words. It is from a Libyan woman, who describes herself as living in a tortured prison. She is the second wife and her husband’s children from his first wife, beat and threaten her and stop her from leaving her house which is adjacent to the first wife’s. She is five months pregnant but fears the beatings have killed the baby within her. She asked the person who gave me this letter to give her some paper and pen so she could write her life on a few pages as she feared death. This is that letter. I have changed the names and concealed the identities to protect this woman. Please help if you can.

Farah Abushwesha
Libyan-Irish Writer, Filmmaker, Activist for Women’s Rights, Women4Libya, WMCLibya

In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise and peace on our prophet and his followers. I thank God for the person who gave me this paper and pen and always keep us close as loved ones. To any charity or organisation, from child protection to human rights, to the men of the country and to those I have placed my trust in, I am writing to you from the heart of the fearless fighters in the midst of war. My own personal war is different. I live it with my heart, my war is something I now make known – a woman’s war. This is what I know of life, my life, my world. For me it brings fear into my head, my mind and my heart. As a person, I feel alone in this world with my children. We are fighting with our tears and at the mercy of the person responsible for us. By God, I am at the end of my strength and I will continue to write my life as it is up today when I write.

I am Noora, from the mountains. I am the second wife to a man, who has thirteen children by his first marriage. We have four children together and I am now in the fifth month of pregnancy with my fifth child. His elder sons from his first marriage beat me, they insult me in a way which is torturous on a daily basis. Especially when I try to leave our [allocated] house, even to get water from the well. It begins with insults and threats, and ends with public beatings. They say this country has no law, so they can have me thrown out of the house. They hit my children. If my children try to leave the house their siblings attack them. They are all under four. My children have lived their childhood in a prison. I don’t even open the door for fear of what might happen.

There have been unfounded rumours that the child I carry is not my husband’s. This could not be further from the truth. My marriage was one of an alliance of two of the toughest tribes. Were I to speak out about the violence I endure at the hands of my husband and his sons, my family would retaliate with great force. As a result, I don’t go to see them and I remain indoors with my children. My husband no longer visits and he no longer gives us money for clothes or shoes or even food. They have taken away everything, they have broken the water system into our house so I have to travel far to get water combined with this heavy labour and the beatings, I fear I have lost the little soul within my belly. Even divorce is forbidden for me, my family would not take me back as a divorcee, I have nowhere to go. So I stay here in the house, my prison, and I endure the lies, the gossip between me and the first wife’s house.

On the 22nd day of Ramadan, one of the sons hit me so hard on the belly and my back that my body aches. I am five months pregnant and they threw stones at me and ripped my clothes as I went to get water. My children and I have been subjected to this treatment for five years now since my wedding day. They threaten us with iron bars, and to burn us. From the manner in which they threaten and their small-mindness I have no doubt they could carry out their threats. They deny me water, food and freedom. My husband doesn’t provide for us. My children and I sleep without mattresses and apparently we don’t even deserve a drop of water. We live in daily fear of the sons who stand with their weapons. They want to drive me from my home, knowing I have nowhere to go. I’m tired, and I’m tired of life. If this is for me the end, there is little to live for. So I leave for you the reader, this paper and my view of the world.

The Tortured Prisoner

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Madre de Dios, the name of a region in southeastern Peru bordering Brazil and Bolivia, is a very common designation for the Virgin Mary, meaning Mother of God in Spanish. In real life, however, the name exemplifies what intense and unregulated gold exploration and extraction are doing to this up to now privileged area in Peru.

Madre de Dios is a region rich in cotton, coffee, sugarcane, cacao, Brazil nuts and palm oil. However, plentiful gold has attracted tens of thousands of illegal miners whose activities are having a deleterious effect not only on precious species in the environment but also on the health and quality of life of both native and new populations in the region.

Alluvial gold mining in Peru’s Amazon rainforest has rapidly spread in recent years, driven by the high price of gold. Although many jungle mining concessions have been granted by the energy and mines ministry, the informal sector has grown out of control, and it is estimated that almost a quarter of the gold produced in Peru, the world’s sixth largest producer, is illegal. The majority of this illegal gold comes from the Madre de Dios region. Local non-governmental organizations believe that there are up to 30,000 miners in the area.

Gold deposits are mined by both large-scale operators and small-scale miners who use hydraulic mining techniques and heavy machinery to expose potential gold-yielding gravel deposits. Gold is extracted by a sluice box, a piece of gold prospecting equipment that has been in continuous use for over a hundred years. The sluice box is used to separate heavier sediment and mercury is also used for amalgamating the precious metal.

Several studies have shown that small-scale miners are less efficient in their use of mercury than industrial miners. As a result, 2.91 pounds of mercury is released into waterways for every 2.2 pounds of gold produced. It is estimated that more than 40 tons of mercury are absorbed into the rivers of Madre de Dios, poisoning the food chain.

Mercury not only contaminates waterways and becomes a serious threat to human health but is also a dangerous toxin to fish. Fish in the area contain three times more mercury than the safe levels permitted by the World Health Organization. According tot the World Wildlife Fund, “After fossil fuel burning, small-scale gold mining is the world’s second largest source of mercury pollution, contributing around 1/3 of the world’s mercury pollution.”

Mercury contamination is not the only draw-back of small scale mining, however. Another significant problem is the significant amount of deforestation it produces while clearing forests for the construction of roads to open remote areas to transient settlers and land speculators. In addition, deforestation is the result of cutting trees to obtain building material and fuel wood.

The enormity of the damage has been documented in a study by American, French and Peruvian researchers published in the peer-reviewed magazine PLoS ONE. According to the study, Using satellite imagery from NASA, researchers were able to assess the loss of 7,000 hectares (15,200 acres) of forest due to artisanal gold mining in Peru between 2003 and 2009. This is an area larger than Bermuda.

Jennifer Swenson, the lead author of the study, says that such enormous deforestation is “plainly visible from space,” and suggests that Peru should limit the importation of mercury.

In addition to these problems, illegal gold mining has significantly increased the number of 12 to 17 year-old girls and young women drafted by prostitution rings. These young women are brought from all over the country to brothels that have sprung up in mining camps. Many of the women that fall into these prostitution rings eventually disappear, and are never seen again. Miners also bring diseases to local indigenous populations.

While Peruvian authorities have sent almost 1,000 security forces to destroy river dredgers used by illegal gold miners in the Madre de Dios region even more drastic measures are needed, such as stricter vigilance and regulation. At stake is the survival of what has been recognized as one of the most biologically rich areas in the world.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

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