BURNING ISSUE
The Political Declaration adopted by the UN
General Assembly during the High-Level Meeting
on AIDS proved to be much weaker than its
earlier drafts. The document reaffirms
commitments made by governments in 2001 and
acknowledges that, although some progress have
been made, many targets have not yet been met.
It expresses deep concern over the feminization
of the pandemic and recognizes gender
inequalities and all forms of violence against
women as factors increasing their vulnerability
to HIV/AIDS. Commitments were made to ensure
that women can exercise their right to have
control over their sexuality and to the goal of
achieving universal access to reproductive
health by 2015. The document also recognizes
that over half of the new infections are among
children and young people under the age of 25.
The States and Governments pledged the effective
response and comprehensive approach to the
pandemic which should reinforce treatment, care,
support and evidence-based prevention, including
responsible sexual behavior, youth friendly
services and condom use. They also committed to
intensify efforts towards the development of
affordable HIV/AIDS-related medicines, products
and technologies, including vaccines, female
control methods and microbicides.
However, the international civil society
organizations expressed their disappointment
because of the lack of certain important
provisions. Youth Coalition in their statement
stressed that “the absence of specific language
such as comprehensive sexuality education,
empowerment of girls, discriminated populations,
sexual and reproductive rights and marital rape
as one of the forms of sexual violence, leaves
the declaration weak and ambiguous.” Human
Rights Caucus stated that “the political
declaration undermines the realization of human
rights and is detrimental to an effective
response to pandemic”.
Although the States commit to intensify efforts
to ensure wide range of prevention programs,
they weaken this declaration by the reservation
that these programs should take account of
“local circumstances, ethics and cultural
values”. This includes inter alia the US
requirement from organizations receiving federal
funds for combating AIDS to oppose prostitution,
which in practice is a form of a ban on
prevention programs for sex workers. In the
press release the international civil society
stressed also that the UN Member States rejected
acknowledgement that some of today’s fastest
growing HIV epidemics are happening among
injecting and other drug users, sex workers and
men that have sex with men. Avoiding listing
vulnerable groups may lead to serious
consequences resulting in less resources and
energy for project addressing the needs of these
vulnerable groups.
During one of the Civil Society panels, parallel
to government negotiations, ASTRA representative
Wanda Nowicka had an opportunity to present the
network’s perspective. The Panel on Ending the
increased feminization of AIDS was convened by
the UNFPA and chaired by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid,
the Executive Director of UNFPA. The Panel
recommended to take immediate action to prevent
spread of the virus and further feminization of
pandemic.
REGIONAL UPDATES
Azerbaijan: Gender
equality promotion bill. Commissions
on Human Rights and Law Policy & Statehood
Affairs of Milli Majlis, the Azerbaijan
Parliament, are working on gender equality
promotion bill which aims at guaranteeing men
and women equal rights in political, economic,
social, cultural and other fields of public life
as well as at eliminating all forms of
discrimination on gender basis. The bill
addresses the issues of equal pay and
compensations for suffering from discrimination
on gender grounds.
WUNRN
More: http://www.demaz.org/cgi-bin/e-cms/vis/vis.pl?s=001&p=0055&n=001499&g
Hungary: Contraceptive
sterilization. Constitutional Court
of Hungary repealed the restrictions on
sterilization at the request of a person wanting
to use this form of contraception. The Court
found the law granting requests only to women
over 35 or those who had given birth to at least
three children discriminatory. If the law is not
changed, contraceptive sterilization procedure
on request will be available to any woman over
18 after the three month waiting period. The
decision of the Court aroused the protest of
professional board of Hungarian Gynecologists
and the opposition Fidesz-KNDP alliance declared
that it will submit a bill granting
contraceptive sterilization only to women in
poor health.
PUSH
Lithuania: Human rights
protection. Human rights situation in
Lithuania is bad, indicated experts, 16 May, 06.
According to Human Rights Monitoring Institute,
there is no Human Rights Policy in Lithuania,
social rights were not adequately protected in
2005, and European Social Charter has not been
implemented, especially in the area of women’s
and maternal rights. Therefore the birth rate
decreased by 12% in a decade.
* * *
Lithuania:
Governmental Drug Control Agency and the head of
Health Committee of Lithuanian Parliament
officially asked the Family Planning and Sexual
Health Association to stop spreading information
on emergency contraception and medical abortion
indicating that the information constitutes an
advertisement of the drugs available on
prescription or those illegal in Lithuania (RU
486) and therefore is harmful to the population.
Actually, the information does not provide the
names of the drugs. It only informs women about
their sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Nevertheless, anti-choice organizations and
persons press the Association not to provide the
health information.
Family Planning and Sexual Health
Association of Lithuania,
more information: lithfpa@takas.lt
Poland: Protests
against newly appointed minister of education.
For almost a month young people have been
organizing protests against the appointment of
Roman Giertych for the minister of education.
Giertych is the leader of ultra-conservative
catholic League of Polish Families (LPR) well
known for its xenophobia, homophobia and
anti-Semitism. He is also a son of Maciej
Giertych, a co-organizer of the controversial,
anti-abortion exhibition
„Life and Children in
Europe” which was removed from EU
Parliament in November. LPR strongly opposes
abortion rights, access to contraception and sex
education. Minister Giertych has already made
the final decision of
including catechism classes on the list of
school subjects with secondary school final
examination status. The ministry of
education headed by him has also declared that
it will not support the organizations which
“deprave” young people. The decision was made
after the new ministerial authorities had
discovered that the association “Campaign
against Homophobia” received the EU Youth
Project funds for the project “Do we need
gender?” last year.
* * *
Poland: Parade for gay
and lesbian rights: The
vice-president of League of Polish Families and
the member of Polish Parliament, Wojciech
Wierzejski, announced in the interview for the
daily “Zycie Warszawy” that the Warsaw equality
parade for gay and lesbian rights should be
banned and “the deviants” who will participate
in it in spite of the ban should be “bashed up”.
The same should happen to German politicians
supporting the event since “they are not serious
politicians but just gays”. Wierzejski concluded
that once beaten, the foreigners will never come
back again as “gay in fact means coward”.
Hot news:
·
Claudia Roth, the leader of the
German Green Party, submitted to the
prosecutor’s office in Berlin notification of
the crime of incitement to violence committed by
Wojciech Wierzejski.
·
The local authorities of several
Polish towns introduced an unconstitutional ban
on showing the movie Da Vinci Code in the
cinemas.
Federation for Women and Family Planning
Russia: HIV/AIDS
Regional Conference. The first
Eastern European and Central Asian AIDS
Conference was held in the middle of May in
Moscow. The meeting was attended by hundreds of
experts, officials and advocates from the
region. The goal of the conference was to
strengthen a large-scale response to HIV/AIDS in
the region through high level political
commitment, capacity building as well as
creating partnership with civil society and
people living with HIV/AIDS. The AIDS situation
across the region, including the spread of the
epidemic among women, continues to worsen. In
2005 AIDS killed over 50,000 people in the
region, which was almost twice as much as in
2003. By the end of 2005 only about 13% of the
people in need of treatment were receiving it.
In the keynote speech the head of UNAIDS, dr.
Peter Piot, stressed that for the effective
response to epidemic four factors are needed:
strong leadership commitment beginning from the
most senior levels of politics and government;
universal access for all HIV services, spanning
HIV prevention, treatment, care and support;
money and the ability to make the money work.
http://www.eecaac2006.org/eng ;
http://www.unaids.org/en
Russia: Committee on
HIV/AIDS.
According to dr. Genady Onishchenko, Head of
Federal Service of Russia, the Russian
government is
planning to create a coordination committee to
address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The Russian
government announced that this year it will
allocate $173 million for HIV/AIDS program which
is more than a 30-fold increase over last year’s
allocation. Next year the amount is to be
further increased by more that $100 million.
Last month President Vladimir Putin called for
raising HIV/AIDS awareness in the country. There
were also other calls from officials and
politicians for campaigns to promote condom use,
needle exchange programs and training
specialists in sex education for school
children.
Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report
(Kaiser
Daily HIV/AIDS Report,
4/25).
More
www.GlobalHealthReporting.org
Russia: Financial
incentives to reverse demographic trends.
President Vladimir Putin called the
Parliament to enact programs of financial
incentives for women in order to increase the
birth rate which has been low in Russia for
about 20 years. The country’s population
decreases by 700,000 each year, but experts
point out that women’s fertility itself cannot
reverse the trend. Analysts at the World Bank
and the United Nations state that high number of
deaths caused by poor health of Russian people
and fatal injuries among men is another
important reason for the decline. Also the
recent infections with tuberculosis and HIV can
in the near future significantly influence the
death rate if comprehensive health programs are
not adopted. Although many women may welcome the
plans of introducing financial incentives, not
all people believe that this is the way to
increase the birth rate. Financial problems are
only partly the reason for people to decide on a
low number of children. According to some
experts it can be also explained by inadequate
infrastructure: schools, hospitals,
transportation, etc.
PUSH, New York Times
Romania: Government for
informing HIV positive children.
The Romanian government is encouraging parents
of children infected as toddlers with HIV virus
through blood transfusions to inform their
children about their health status. In Romania
more than 20% of about 6000 HIV positive
children are unaware of the fact that they have
been infected.
Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS report (17 May)
Central and Eastern
Europe: Gender equality in EU member states from
CEE. In April the UNIFEM Regional
Office for Central and Eastern Europe convened a
meeting attended by representatives of national
gender equality institutional mechanisms and
non-governmental organizations from new EU
member states, candidate countries and those
striving for membership. The meeting aimed at
assessing the situation of gender equality in
new Member States two years after joining the
European Union. Among common concerns identified
by the participants was the backlash which can
be observed in some states after they received
the EU member status as well as the rise of
conservative, nationalist or religious forces
undermining gains of feminist and women’s
organizations. The demoting of gender equality
mechanisms in Poland is a stark example of that.
The participants expressed their concern that EU
directives focus only gender equality on labour
market issues and neglect other areas
fundamental for achieving gender equality. They
recommended, among others, that EU gender
equality commitment should be reflected in
resource allocations and funding mechanisms
should be reexamined to ensure support for
gender equality work inside and outside EU as
well as providing support for smaller NGOs now
lacking capacity for such matching funds
requirements. The group also recommends that EU
supported the governmental mechanisms that work
but advocate for change if they do not work.
http://www.neww.org.pl/en.php/news/news/1.html?&nw=2427&re=2
GLOBAL UPDATES
Argentina: Abortion law
changes considered.
Argentina is in a process of revising its penal
code. In the new code the article addressing
abortion states that the woman is not punishable
when the abortion is carried out “with her
consent and within three months of conception,
provided the circumstances made it excusable.”
At present abortion in Argentina is legal only
in the case of rape and when the woman’s life is
in danger. The humanity of the fetus “from the
moment of conception” is recognized in the
Argentinean constitution.
Worldbytes news
Colombia: Abortion –
landmark decision by Constitutional Court.
The Constitutional Court of Colombia ruled, in a
decision 5 to 3, that abortion should be legal
in some circumstances: when a pregnancy
threatens a woman’s life or health, the
pregnancy is a result of rape, or the fetus has
malformation incompatible with life outside
womb. Until now Colombia was one of three
countries in Latin America (together with Chile
and El Salvador) with a complete ban on
abortion. Recent support for the
decriminalization of abortion was spurred by the
case of a 34-year-old mother of four dying of
ovarian cancer. She was denied an abortion after
the cancer had been diagnosed in the third week
of pregnancy and thus deprived of chemotherapy
and radiation.
http://www.womenslinkworldwide.org
Spain: Rights of
transsexuals.
The Spanish Minister for Justice informed the
congress that he will push forward the new
Sexual Identity Law allowing transsexuals to
legally change their name and sex on their
identity documents before or without having
surgery.
Spanish Federation of Family Planning
United States: Teen
abstinence pledges do not work.
According to the report released by Harvard
University 52% of teenagers who pledged to
remain abstinent until marriage had sex within a
year of signing the pledge. The National
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health surveyed
14,000 adolescents ages 12 to 18 in 1995, then
again in 1996 and 2001. 73% of young people who
reported signing the pledge but later had sex
denied making the pledge when interviewed again.
Nearly one-third of the respondents who during
the first interview said that they had sex,
during the next survey said that they had never
had sexual intercourse before. The findings of
the study question the reliability of the
abstinence programs. The US government is
spending $170 million a year to promote
virginity until marriage in public schools.
Kaiser Daily, PUSH
United Nations: UNAIDS
Report.
According to new data revealed in the UNAIDS
2006 Report on the Global Aids Epidemic there is
an important progress in country AIDS response,
including increase in funding and access to
treatment and decrease in HIV prevalence among
young people in some countries during the last
five years. The epidemic seems to be slowing
down on a global scale. However, in certain
regions and countries new infections are
continuing to increase, especially in Eastern
Europe and Central Asia. Worldwide an estimated
38.6 million people are living with HIV. In 2005
about 4.1 million people became newly infected
and approximately 2.8 million people died of
AIDS. The report also showed that children and
young people are increasingly affected by the
epidemic and the efforts to protect them are not
keeping pace with the epidemic impact.
www.unaids.org
United Nations: Members to
Human Rights Council elected.
On May 9 the General Assembly of the United
Nations elected 47 members of the newly
established UN Human Rights Council. The
regions: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the
Caribbean, Western Europe and Other States
obtained or exceeded the required 96-vote
majority needed to fill their allocated number
of members. Eastern Europe States won only three
sits in first round (Russian Federation, Poland,
Czech Republic) and the three next (Ukraine,
Azerbaijan, Romania) were elected in the second
ballot.
UN News
United Nations: Two LGBT
organizations denied observer status.
LSVD, the German LGBT federation and
ILGA-Europe’s applications to obtain observer
status at the United Nations were rejected last
week at the UN Economic and Social Council
Committee on Non-governmental organizations. The
proposal of Iran to deny observer status was
supported by 9 members of the Committee with 7
votes against, 2 abstentions and 1 not present.
In general, statements before the vote and
explanations of position , the representatives
of Germany, France, Chile, Romania, India and
Peru expressed concern that there seems to be a
discriminatory trend. In January this year the
applications of two gay and lesbian
organizations were also rejected without a fair
hearing.
www.ilga.org
World Health Organization:
Dr LEE Jong-wook, WHO Director-General, died
suddenly on the morning of 22 May 2006 an hour
before he was to address World Health Assembly.
The WHO chose Dr Anders Nonstrom, an assistant
director, as interim director general. During
the emergency session the representatives from
member states of World Health Organization asked
the agency’s leaders to speed up the election of
the new director. The rules do not specify the
steps to be taken in case of the death of the
leader.
WHO, PUSH
Science: Male fertility.
The IVF experts revealed the evidence proving
that male fertility declines with age. The study
from fertility clinics across France showed that
women under 30 were 25% less likely to get
pregnant if their partners were over 40 than if
they were of similar age. The probability of
conceiving was even less for women of the age
35-37 whose partners were over. This means that
the reproductive age should no longer be
considered as the problem of the women but as
that of couples.
The Guardian
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ON
THE AGENDA
Developing World Bioethics
– call for papers.
Developing World Bioethics
special issue HIV/AIDS, Pregnancy and
Reproductive Autonomy: Rights and Duties
invites submission on all aspects on this
special topic from bioethical and/or legal/human
rights perspective. Submissions should
ultimately seek to illuminate the parameters of
reproductive autonomy at the intersection
between HIV/AIDS and pregnancy. The deadline for
submission is 1 July 2007. More
information on the issue of particular interest
and other guidelines for submission available
at:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/DWB_CfP.pdf
Reproductive Health
Matters – call for papers.
Reproductive Health Matters
15(29) May 2007 invites submission about
strategies for taking on the opposition to
sexual and reproductive health and rights. The
deadline for submission is 1 September 2006.
More information on the guidelines of submission
at:
www.rhmjournal.org.uk
EU at the UNGASS – the
response to ASTRA letter to the Presidency of EU.
In April ASTRA issued a letter to Austrian
Presidency calling on EU, among other issues, to
strengthen further commitments
during the UNGASS review to effective HIV/AIDS
prevention strongly interlinked with SRHR
policies and programs. In the response to the
letter the EU Presidency assured ASTRA that EU
is well aware of the important issues raised in
the letter and the need to link S&RH with
HIV/AIDS services as well as of the need to
increasingly involve S&RH organizations in the
prevention and treatment process.
More at: http://www.astra.org.pl
UN General Assembly High
Level Meeting on AIDS.
The UN high
level meeting on AIDS took place in New York on
May 31-June 2. The meeting was attended by the
leaders of over 140 UN Member States, including
a dozen Heads of State and Government. The 2006
Declaration agrees that 20-23 billion US dollars
is needed for AIDS response by 2010. It calls
for the development of improved drugs,
diagnostics and prevention technologies and
reaffirms that the World Trade Organization’s
Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) does not
prevent countries from protecting public health
through the production of generic drugs. The
full text of the draft Declaration is available
at:
http://www.un.org/ga/aidsmeeting2006
UPCOMING EVENTS
Youth for Youth – Combat
HIV/AIDS:
The 2nd regional meeting aimed at
developing regional youth projects combating
HIV/AIDS will take place on June 24-28 2006 in
Croatia.
XVI International AIDS
Conference:
XVI International AIDS Conference will take
place in Toronto, Canada on August 13-18. The
conference will be an opportunity for
scientists, governments, community members and
leaders from around the world to advance a
collective response to the epidemic. More
information available at:
http://www.aids2006.org
LINKS
·
Gender Informational
Network of South Caucus:
http://www.ginsc.net/members/mission_en.php
·
Empowering Girls to beat
HIV/AIDS
http://www.girlsrights.org/factsheets/Empower%20Girls%20web%20version.pdf
– fact sheet issued by Working Group on Girls -
a special NGO website dedicated to the truth
that all girls everywhere have the right to
develop to their full potential:
http://www.girlsrights.org/whatsnew.php
·
Data on HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria by
countries are provided at:
http://www.globalhealthreporting.org
PUBLICATIONS
UNAIDS 2006 Report on
the Global AIDS Epidemic
released by in advance of the UN General
Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS. Key
findings of the report refer to funding, HIV
prevention, reducing vulnerability,
treatment and leadership. The full report is
available at:
http://www.unaids.org/en/HIV_data/2006GlobalReport/default.asp
State of the World’s Mothers 2006. Saving
the lives of Mothers and Newborns
- report published by Save the Children
takes a closer look at the link between the
health and survival of mothers and babies,
narrowing in on simple, affordable solutions
that can help save 3 million of the 4
million newborns who die every year. Full
text of the report available at:
http://www.savethechildren.org/publications/SOWM_2006_final.pdf
A Youth Activist's
Guide to Sexual and Reproductive Rights
published by The Youth Coalition.
The Guide provides an overview of the sexual
and reproductive rights that are protected
by international and regional human rights
treaties and other agreements, shows how
these rights apply to adolescents and young
people, and discusses ways that young people
can advocate for their sexual and
reproductive health and rights within their
countries, regions, and globally.
The guide is available at: http://www.youthcoalition.org
Reproductive Health
and Human Rights: Integrating Medicine,
Ethics and Law,
by Rebecca J. Cook, Bernard M. Dickens and
Mahmoud F. Fathalla (Oxford University
Press, 2003, 554pp.) is now available in
French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese
translations, and forthcoming in Arabic.
The book is designed to equip health care
providers and administrators to integrate
ethical, legal, and human rights principles
in protection and promotion of reproductive
health, and to inform lawyers and women's
health advocates about aspects of medicine
and health care systems that affect
reproduction.
More information available at:
http://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty/cook/ReproductiveHealth.html
A handbook for
advocacy in the African human rights system:
Advancing reproductive and sexual health.
Second edition
published by IPAS. The updated
version of this handbook was created to
familiarize advocates with the regional
human rights system and its treaty body, The
African Commission on Human and Peoples'
Rights, designed to promote and protect
sexual and reproductive health. The
publication available at:
http://www.ipas.org/english/publications/international_health_policies.asp
Woman-centered
abortion care: Reference manual
published by IPAS now available in French.
The manual is designed to be used by
participants during individualized and
group-based courses and also as a reference
manual to help participants refresh and
strengthen their skills. Composed of 13
modules, it brings a new perspective to
abortion-care training and service delivery.
Features include: a woman's rights approach
to abortion care; unique considerations for
special populations, including adolescents
and survivors of sexual violence; guidance
for use of both manual vacuum aspiration and
medical-abortion technologies; and
recommendations for monitoring services and
making linkages to communities. Hard copies
can be ordered at:
ipas_publications@ipas.org
Female Genital
Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical
exploration.
The publication issued by UNICEF analyses
available statistics on female genital
mutilation/cutting, with the aim of
improving understanding of related issues in
the wider context of gender equality and
social change. The study centres on women
aged 15-49 and their daughters, presenting
estimates and examining differentials in
prevalence, and highlighting patterns within
the data that can strategically inform
programmatic efforts. The publication is
available at:
http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_29994.html
Public
Choices, Private Decisions: Sexual and
Reproductive Health and the Millennium
Development Goals.
The report published by the
UN Millennium Project, an independent
advisory body commissioned by the UN
Secretary-General to propose the best
strategies for meeting the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs).
Report and background papers are available
at:
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/srh_main.htm
Human
resources for sexual and reproductive health
care; Reproductive Health Matters,
vol. 14 (27), May 2006. Among other topics
the issue contains the Ethical guidelines on
conscientious objections of FIGO Committee
for Ethical Aspects of Human Reproduction
and Women’s Health.
www.rhmjournal.org.uk
Abortion in women’s
lives
– report published by Guttmacher Institute
concerns the situation of women in US.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/05/04/AiWL.pdf
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