Dear Friend,
World Health Organization (WHO) officials have warned that some countries are not taking the coronavirus crisis seriously enough, as outbreaks surged across Europe and in the U.S. where medical workers sounded warnings over a “disturbing” lack of hospital preparedness. The epidemic has wreaked havoc on international business, tourism, sports events and schools, with almost 300 million students sent home worldwide.
Lawyers Against Atrocities has done a Fact Finding Report on Dehi Riots focusing on Khureji Crackdown
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Coronavirus: Countries are not grasping reality of threat,
warns WHO chief as 300 million students sent home worldwide
by Countercurrents Collective
World Health Organization (WHO) officials have warned that some countries are not taking the coronavirus crisis seriously enough, as outbreaks surged across Europe and in the U.S. where medical workers sounded warnings over a “disturbing” lack of hospital preparedness. The epidemic has wreaked havoc on international business, tourism, sports events and schools, with almost 300 million students sent home worldwide.
World Health Organization (WHO) officials have warned that some countries are not taking the coronavirus crisis seriously enough, as outbreaks surged across Europe and in the U.S. where medical workers sounded warnings over a “disturbing” lack of hospital preparedness.
The epidemic has wreaked havoc on international business, tourism, sports events and schools, with almost 300 million students sent home worldwide.
Religions around the world have also been affected: The Vatican said Pope Francis may have to change his schedule, Bethlehem was placed under lockdown.
Saudi Arabia emptied Islam’s holiest site in Mecca to sterilize it. The kingdom has suspended the year-round Islamic “umrah” pilgrimage, an unprecedented move that raises fresh uncertainty over the annual hajj.
Iraq has cancelled Friday prayers in Karbala, the Shia holy city, over health fears.
Global markets tumbled again over concerns about the impact on the economy and as countries took more drastic steps to prevent contagion of a disease that has killed more than 3,300 people and infected nearly 100,000 in about 85 nations.
Cases soared in Italy, France, Greece and Iran, while a cruise ship was held off the coast of California to test passengers showing symptoms of the disease – echoing a harrowing episode in Japan several weeks ago that saw hundreds infected on a luxury liner.
Political commitment: Lacking
The WHO warned Thursday that a “long list” of countries was not showing “the level of political commitment” needed to “match the level of the threat we all face.”
The WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters: “This epidemic is a threat for every country, rich and poor.”
Tedros called on the heads of government in every country to take charge of the response and “coordinate all sectors,” rather than leaving it to health ministries. What is needed, he said, is “aggressive preparedness.”
“This is not a drill. This is not the time for giving up. This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling out all the stops,” he said in Geneva. “Countries have been planning for scenarios like this for decades. Now is the time to act on those plans.”
Trump chastised
His comments came as U.S. President Donald Trump was chastised for attempting to play down the threat of the virus by telling Fox News he had “a hunch” the 2 to 3 per cent mortality rate associated with the virus was “a false number” while incorrectly calling the disease a flu.
But President Donald Trump has downplayed the risk, saying the WHO’s conclusion of a 3.4 percent mortality rate was “false.”
The president has previously claimed the virus had been “weaponised” by political opponents due to its damaging effects on US economic growth.
“A lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They will get better very rapidly. They do not even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor,” he said. “You never hear about those people. So you cannot put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and – or virus. So you just can’t do that.”
U.S.: Disturbing results
In California, a state of emergency has been declared.
Mike Pence, the U.S. vice president, warned that the U.S. did not currently have enough testing kits to meet demand.
The largest nursing union in the U.S. said a survey of thousands of nurses at hospitals showed “truly disturbing” results. “They show that a large percentage of our nation’s hospitals are unprepared to safely handle COVID-19,” said Jane Thomason, a hygiene specialist with the union.
Nurses are working without necessary personal protective equipment and lack education and training for handling the disease, said National Nurses United director Bonnie Castillo.
The U.S. Congress passed an emergency $8.3 billion spending bill to combat the coronavirus Thursday as cases surged in the country’s northwest and deaths reached 12. More than 180 people are infected in the U.S.
The U.S. government said it was going to buy 500 million respirators to stockpile for use by healthcare professionals.
Admiral Brett Giroir, the U.S. assistant secretary of health, estimated the death rate at “somewhere between 0.1 percent and one percent” – closer to the seasonal flu – due to a high number of unreported cases.
A National Guard helicopter dropped test kits on the deck of the Grand Princess cruise ship off the coast of San Francisco to determine if any of the nearly 3,500 guests and crew had contracted the new coronavirus.
Health officials sounded the alarm after two passengers who had been on board during a previous voyage later fell ill, and one of them died.
Cases in China falling
Cases in China have gradually fallen as tens of millions of people remain under strict quarantine to contain the virus.
Fresh infections rose for a second consecutive day on Friday, with 143 new cases, and 30 more deaths.
China’s death toll now stands at 3,042 with over 80,500 infections.
Beijing faces a new concern with the number of cases imported from abroad rising to 36.
China has quarantined entire cities, temporarily shut factories and closed schools indefinitely.
South Korea: Second biggest number
South Korea has the second biggest number of cases outside China, with over 6,000 infections and 42 deaths, prompting the country to extend school breaks by three weeks.
Italy: Biggest number in Europe
Italy, which has the biggest outbreak in Europe, has ordered schools and universities shut until March 15, and on Thursday reported a sharp rise in deaths, bringing the total to 148.
Italy, the worst afflicted region on the continent, announced an almost 800 cases in a 24-hour period. In response the government, which had already temporarily closed all schools, has implemented restrictions on visiting relatives in nursing homes.
Japan: Quarantine on arrival
Japan imposed quarantine on arrivals from South Korea and China, angering Seoul, which summoned the Japanese ambassador to protest the “irrational” move.
France: The number jumps
France also reported a steep jump in cases, bringing its total to 423 with seven deaths, as President Emmanuel Macron warned the country was heading towards an “inevitable” epidemic.
Iran: Travel limit
In Iran, the government began to limit travel between cities in a response similar to that conducted by China during the early stages of the epidemic.
Officials set up checkpoints and urged citizens to consider limiting their use of paper money, the latest in a string of more drastic measures deployed by Tehran, which has included releasing low-level prisoners and the mass closure of schools.
The virus has particularly affected the nation’s ageing legislature. Of the 107 deaths recorded by the state, which has been accused of covering up the severity of the virus within its borders, two have been senior government officials.
On Wednesday, an adviser to the foreign minister died after contracting Covid-19, following on from a senior adviser to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. About eight per cent of Iran’s political class is reported to be infected with the virus.
The nation has become the epicenter of the disease in the Middle East, where the spread has led to stringent measures being applied across the region.
Bethlehem
In Bethlehem in the West Bank, the Church of the Nativity was closed and disinfected for a second time.
UK Switzerland Ireland
The virus has also continued to spread across Europe, with the UK and Switzerland announcing their first deaths linked to it and Ireland announcing seven new cases including one patient with no travel link to an infected area.
Greece
The number of confirmed virus cases in Greece surged after 21 travelers recently returned from a bus trip to Israel and Egypt tested positive for the virus.
Bosnia and S Africa
Bosnia and South Africa confirmed their first cases.
Australia
In Australia, authorities announced the country’s first school closure after a 16-year-old pupil tested positive for coronavirus. The nation has reported 60 cases so far, while two elderly people have died.
300 millions out of school
Almost 300 million students worldwide faced weeks at home with Italy and India the latest to shut schools. Schools have also shut in Iran. In Japan, nearly all schools are closed until early April.
Several countries have implemented extraordinary measures, with UNESCO saying on Wednesday that school closures in more than a dozen countries have affected 290.5 million children.
India later announced it was closing all primary schools in the capital New Delhi until the end of March to prevent the virus from spreading.
While temporary school closures during crises are not new, UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said, “The global scale and speed of the current educational disruption is unparalleled and, if prolonged, could threaten the right to education”.
India-EU summit postponed
The orders came as an India-EU summit scheduled for March 13 has also been postponed.
Airline industry
The airline industry could lose up to $113 billion (101 billion euros) in revenue this year due to the impact of the new coronavirus, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned, as governments issue travel restrictions or ban visitors from virus hotspots.
Israel this week barred entry to almost all non-resident arrivals from five European nations, prompting Lufthansa to cancel all its flights to the country on Thursday.
Fear grips global economy
The outbreak’s rapid spread has prompted fears of a global economic downturn and rumbled global stock markets, with Europe’s major exchanges sinking again Thursday.
The IMF said earlier it was making $50 billion in aid available for low-income and emerging-market countries to fight the epidemic, which it sees as a “serious threat” that it said would slow global growth to below last year’s 2.9 percent.
“At a time of uncertainty… it is better to do more than to do not enough,” IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said.
Italy on Thursday unveiled a 7.5-billion-euro ($8.4-billion) economic rescue plan to deal with the impact of the virus, and in the United States, lawmakers reached a deal to provide more than $8 billion to fight the outbreak.
Stock markets in Asia: Lower
Fears about the economic fallout caused stock markets in Asia to open lower on Friday, with Tokyo losing more than 3.0 percent by the break.
No kissing
New measures in Italy, where 50,000 are under quarantine in several northern towns include a month-long nationwide ban on fan attendance at sports events, and advising people to avoid greetings like kissing on the cheek or shaking hands.
Death rate higher than previously thought, says WHO
The coronavirus has killed 3.4% of patients globally, according to the WHO. This is higher than previous estimates, which predicted around 2%.
Experts have been quick to say the new figure is likely an “overestimate,” with milder cases that do not require treatment potentially going unreported. Some said a 1% death rate seems more “reasonable”.
Incidences appear to be plateauing in China, making some optimistic the outbreak may have “peaked” in its epicenter.
While the figures may sound alarming, four out of five cases are thought to be mild, while more than 50,000 patients have “recovered.”
Of the countries with confirmed cases, 21 have just one patient, while 122 nations are yet to report any.
Speaking at a media briefing on Tuesday, WHO’s director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “Globally, about 3.4% of reported Covid-19 cases have died.”
Calculating the death rate in the midst of a new outbreak is far from straightforward.
Death rates are generally defined as the percentage of fatalities among the number of cases.
This is different from the death toll, which gives the number of fatalities.
On 29 January, the WHO cited a likely death rate of 2%.
Just a few days later, the Chinese National Health Commission reported it appeared to be 2.1%, based on 425 deaths among 20,438 confirmed cases.
On 20 February, a WHO-China joint statement put the death rate at 3.8% based on 2,114 deaths among 55,924 cases.
With Covid-19 virtually unheard of at the beginning of the year, its death rate was initially estimated according to hospital data.
Patients who require hospital treatment are severe by definition.
Milder cases – who may experience fever, cough and breathlessness – could have gone unreported.
“We do not report all the cases,” said Professor John Edmunds from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“In fact, we only usually report a small proportion of them.
“If there are many more cases in reality, then the case-fatality ratio will be lower.
“Estimating what fraction of the cases might be reported is very tricky.
“This long-winded explanation goes to show how difficult it is to get an estimate of the death rate.”
Dr Toni Ho – from the University of Glasgow – agreed, adding some countries have “limited testing” when it comes to diagnosing mild or asymptomatic patients.
“This [3.4%] is likely an overestimate as a number of countries have had limited testing,” he said.
“Hence few of the mild cases have been picked up and [the cases] we are observing is the tip of the iceberg.
“Furthermore, determining mortality using confirmed deaths over total cases does not account for the fact that outcome is still unknown for many confirmed cases, as they are still hospitalized.
“Lastly, since subclinical [an infection not severe enough to cause “observable” symptoms] and asymptomatic infections have been reported, [the] true case-fatality ratio cannot be estimated until population surveys can be undertaken to estimate the proportion of individuals that were infected but did not manifest symptoms.”
“Population surveys” refers to testing the public for an antibody protein produced by the immune system in response to the infection.
Taking into account those with mild or no symptoms, Dr Christl Donnelly – from Imperial College London – estimated a 1% fatality rate appears more likely.
“In an unfolding epidemic it can be misleading to look at the naïve estimate of deaths so far divided by cases so far,” she said.
“The infection-fatality ratio is the proportion of infections (including those with no symptoms or mild symptoms) that die of the disease.
“Our estimate for this is 1%.”
Dr Tom Wingfield, from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, also pointed out that the definition of a Covid-19 case is not always clear-cut.
This was shown when China changed its definition to “definitely infected” if a patient presented with symptoms, alongside a CT scan showing a chest infection.
Beforehand, patients were confirmed via a nucleic acid test. Nucleic acids are substances in living cells, making up the “NA” of DNA.
As a result, cases appeared to spike overnight in mid-February, despite one expert stressing it was “solely an administrative issue.”
Death rates can also change over the course of an outbreak.
This may be due to mutations within the virus making it more or less “potent,” as well as humans potentially developing immunity or becoming less exposed to the infection due to quarantines and other interventions.
A lack of awareness at the start of the outbreak may also have meant patients only sought treatment when their symptoms became severe.
Death rates may reduce as patients start “self-identifying” their symptoms earlier on.
“The best estimates of case-fatality rates would have to occur once an epidemic was over,” said Dr Wingfield.
“Estimating in real time during the epidemic is fraught with difficulties.”
Dr Paul Hunter of the University of East Anglia agreed, adding: “In my view, 1%-to-2% is a reasonable estimate.”
This is not the first time Covid-19’s suspected case-fatality rate has sparked a debate, with experts questioning how many could become infected and the number that will go on to die.
The Earth Sign: Greeting Each Other in the Age of the Coronavirus
by Ugo Bardi
https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/the-earth-sign-greeting-each-other-in-the-age-of-the-coronavirus
In these rapidly changing times, we need to change our behavior in many ways
Is There Hope?
by Dougald Hine
If there is any hope worth having, in a time when we are rightly haunted by the thought of an ‘uninhabitable Earth’, then I don’t believe it lies in the triumph of reason, nor in the recovery of an imagined past. If I have any clue where it lies, I’d say it’s in the difficult work of learning to feel and think together again; to come down off the high and lonely horses that some of us were taught to ride, to recognise how much has been missing from our maps, how much has gone unseen in our worldviews.
The ABF House stands on a corner, halfway up Sveavägen, in the centre of Stockholm. Across the street is the party headquarters of the Social Democrats. Two doors along, the Grand cinema where Olof Palme spent the evening in February 1986 that would end with his assassination. The last of the three great Social Democratic prime ministers whose rule stretched almost uninterrupted across half a century, the mystery of Palme’s murder still lingers in the shadows of Swedish politics; the suggestion that it was connected to larger geopolitical struggles has never been ruled out. Whatever else it represents, his death has come to mark a watershed: beyond that point, the draining of confidence from the grand project of modern Sweden became unstoppable.
A blue-tiled box of a building, six storeys high, home of the Workers Learning Association, the ABF House stands as a relic of that lost confidence – yet on a late November night in 2017, its rooms are busy with classes and meetings and talks. There’s a queue outside the first floor lecture theatre for which I’m headed. The organisers are on the point of turning people away, when word comes through that the main hall is free and so we file along back corridors and into its raked seats.
On the stage in front of us, two prominent professors meet to debate the question: ‘Is there hope?’ I can’t help think how strange this would have sounded to the generation who built an institution like the one in which we are gathered.
We’re here for a clash that has spilt out of the comment pages of the Swedish press, a local echo of the alarm sent up by David Wallace-Wells with his original New York magazine version of ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’. On one side, there’s an anthropologist whose books on technology and capitalism have won an international audience. His opponent is better known on his home ground, an environmental historian who has written a series of books that introduce Swedish readers to ideas already circulating internationally; his latest is on the Anthropocene. A regular contributor to newspapers and TV programmes, he knows how to work an audience and is not above debating society tricks; he’ll caricature the other guy’s position, then make out this was an innocent misunderstanding. In short, he is not my kind of academic, yet it’s something this guy says tonight that will stick with me: a contrast he offers between two worldviews.
There is a division out there today, he says, between ‘those who believe in science, reason, technology and progress’, and ‘those who see a future undermined by fear and threat’. The first group, subscribers to what he calls Worldview A, are the ones who are engaging with the issues of the Anthropocene, while the others, the Worldview B-ers – ‘Well,’ he shakes his head, ‘these are the ones who don’t even believe that climate change is happening!’
The point he meant to make is clear enough: if there is to be hope, the first group must prevail. It’s a version of a story you hear a lot these days, since the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump. Yet in the pantomime simplicity of the way he tells it, I catch something else, an unexpected echo of an old argument that began as a bold generalisation about the history of English poetry.
- * *
In 1921, T. S. Eliot was working as a clerk in the Colonial & Foreign Department at Lloyds Bank. His first major poem, ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’, had been published in 1915; a twelve-poem pamphlet followed two years later. Now in his early thirties, he was an established presence within the world of the little magazines, a poet whose originality excited his peers, and a critic writing for larger audiences in places like the Times Literary Supplement. Still, confident as he was in his own judgement, he could hardly have expected a theory thrown out as a series of sweeping asides within a review essay to start a debate that would run for decades and shape the thinking of a generation. That was to be the fate of Eliot’s remarks on ‘the dissociation of sensibility’.
‘Something … happened to the mind of England’, Eliot wrote, ‘from which we have never recovered’. It happened around the middle of the 17th century: a threshold was crossed, on this side of which a new distance opened up between thinking and feeling. In the Metaphysical poetry of John Donne and Andrew Marvell, those two activities were still inextricably linked; since their generation, Eliot claimed, poets ‘thought and felt by fits, unbalanced’, no longer able to do both things at once.
As a claim about the development of English poetry, this would be disputed, and in later years, Eliot himself would revise his position: ‘All we can say is, that something like this did happen; that … it is a consequence of the same causes which brought about the Civil War; that we must seek the causes in Europe, not in England alone…’ To Craig Raine (Eliot’s successor as poetry editor at Faber), this amounted to ‘a Tour de France of backpedalling’, yet the revision is also a broadening of the argument. Indeed, it’s doubtful whether the influence of Eliot’s theory ever really rested on his diagnosis of the stylistic differences between Donne and Milton, so much as on the memorable formulation he offered for a larger historical idea. Over the following decades, on the left as well as the right, thinkers from F. R. Leavis to E. P. Thompson sought to articulate their sense that a great loss had accompanied the obvious technological and economic gains made on the journey to the modern societies in which they found themselves. If their attempts to account for this loss sometimes fell short or led into dangerous culs-de-sac, if such lines of thinking were routinely dismissed as nostalgic fantasies about a golden age, I am not convinced that those easy rebuttals really settle the matter.
Yet it is not my purpose just now to resuscitate Eliot’s historical claim about the 17th century. Rather, I am struck by the curious way in which it maps onto the frame that we were offered that night in Stockholm.
- * *
Look again at the terms in which they are set out, those two worldviews, the keywords used for each side of the divide: you have the people of science, reason, technology and progress set against the people of fear and threat. This is not a clash of ideologies, it is a map of a dissociated society.
Start with the partisans of science and reason, things which – almost by definition – stand apart from matters of feeling. A neurobiologist may introduce us to the chemical substrate of our emotional experience, but illuminating as such explanations are, no one acts as if her own life can be reduced to this layer of material causality. To make sense of the felt experience of being human, we tend to draw on other ways of talking and other kinds of knowledge. We may agree that there are purposes for which it is useful and appropriate to treat the world as though it could be held at arm’s length, we may be glad of some of the fruits of this studied detachment, but we do not imagine that this is how the world is lived.
Now, notice how the sober set of nouns which define the first worldview are queered by the choice of verb: these people are not simply (or perhaps at all) the practitioners of science and reason and technology, they are the ones who believe in these things, who have elevated them to the status of objects of faith. I have nothing against faith, it is a delicate and precious thing, and like any such thing, you should be careful where you put it. To put faith in reason sounds to me like one of those loops in the code that causes a computer program to start spewing out numerical garbage.
Turn to the others, the Worldview B team, the ones who feel the fear and sense the threat – and I want to say, is this not an appropriate response to the situation in which we find ourselves? Is this not how you feel when you read an article by David Wallace-Wells? You might then want to move through the fear, to find courage, but you don’t get there by mocking the fearful.
If there’s some truth in the simple schema according to which those who are fearful of the future are also ‘the ones who don’t believe that climate change is happening’, then this paradox deserves more than scorn. The poisoned seeds of climate denial were planted quite consciously by people who were well paid for their trouble on behalf of industries possessed by a demonic drive for self-perpetuation and expansion. They may never face the trials which they deserve. Yet these seeds grew in soil fertilised by the overspill of a wider culture. As we account for the conditions under which such alienation from and resentment towards science could take root, some share of the responsibility belongs to those who bundled up the practice of science, the faculty of reason and the promise of technology into a belief system. Their grand story of progress long since ceased to make sense of the experience of many people’s lives; their faith-based worldview contributed to the conditions in which denial could thrive.
With all its well-meant calls to optimism and its othering of fear, this Worldview A ends up approaching the clinical condition of dissociation, identified by psychologists: a pathological detachment from physical and emotional experience.
- * *
Something happened on the way to modernity: a severance between heart and head, a loss from which we have yet to recover, which can’t just be written off against the gains that were also made along that journey.
T. S. Eliot was neither the first nor the last to attempt to tell a story along these lines. As the century went on, other voices began to be heard, at last: people carrying parts of the story that could barely be seen, let alone understood, from the vantage points of white men known to us by their initials. Women, people of colour, indigenous people, rural people told stories of the brutal enactment of the severance on which the modern world was built, the new forms of slavery and exploitation that it brought into being; stories written on the bodies of whoever was other. Beyond the seminar room talk of postmodernism, the calling into question of modernity was taken up – as Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash declared – by those who find themselves on the receiving end of processes of ‘modernization’.
That map of the two worldviews which set me thinking of Eliot risks to reduce the situation to a stand-off between two groups of old white men: the A-team in their university chairs, turning out paeans to reason and progress for their publishers; the B-team with their MAGA hats, barbarians at the campus gates.
As one more white man who isn’t getting any younger, I want to put my faith somewhere else. If there is any hope worth having, in a time when we are rightly haunted by the thought of an ‘uninhabitable Earth’, then I don’t believe it lies in the triumph of reason, nor in the recovery of an imagined past. If I have any clue where it lies, I’d say it’s in the difficult work of learning to feel and think together again; to come down off the high and lonely horses that some of us were taught to ride, to recognise how much has been missing from our maps, how much has gone unseen in our worldviews.
Originally published by Bella Caledonia
Turkey’s sultan retreats from Idlib adventure
by Farooque Chowdhury
The sultan of Turkey has come to his realization: “Operation Spring Shield”, the sultan’s adventure in the Idlib, Syria, is harmful. Within days of embarking on the adventure – intrusion in the territory of Syria – he has made a “glorious” retreat. His March
5 Moscow meeting, “uneasy, but productive talks”, has prompted the realization.
Katie Hill’s tell-all book: “She Will Rise”
by Zeenat Khan
She does not really owe anyone any explanation, giving an apology was sufficient. But she has chosen to do so as she feels obligated to serve the public interest. Whether Katie Hill is promoting her new life to bring redemption to herself or to help other women in achieving their goals remains to be seen.Hill made it clear in one of her interviews that she “wants women to take away from her book is that they can own their mistakes and get back up, no matter how difficult their experience
Universal access to sexual and reproductive health services is a human rights imperative
by Shobha Shukla
The Asia Pacific region is home to
more than half of the global population and many low-income countries. While the region is witnessing rapid economic growth, gender inequalities persist and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services are far from being available to all. In the lead up to this year’s International Women’s Day and the forthcoming 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSHR10) in Cambodia, CNS Managing Editor Shobha Shukla spoke with Tomoko Fukuda, Regional Director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) for east, southeast Asia and Oceania region, on advancing gender equality and universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights in this region.
The Asia Pacific region is home to more than half of the global population and many low-income countries. While the region is witnessing rapid economic growth, gender inequalities persist and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services are far from being available to all. In the lead up to this year’s International Women’s Day and the forthcoming 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSHR10) in Cambodia, CNS Managing Editor Shobha Shukla spoke with Tomoko Fukuda, Regional Director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) for east, southeast Asia and Oceania region, on advancing gender equality and universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights in this region.
Here are some excerpts from the interview:
Why is universal and rights-based access to sexual and reproductive health information and services, key to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs)?
Tomoko Fukuda: Gender equality, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), both are vital to achieving the SDGs by 2030. In fact, SRHR is an important component of SDGs-especially SDG-3 and SDG-5. Likewise, the Nairobi statement of ICPD25 also commits to achieve universal access to SRHR information and services by 2030. Therefore it is essential that SRHR becomes the fundamental driver to achieve the SDGs. Women form more than 50% of the population. So unless women have access to quality healthcare and their human rights are protected, we cannot achieve any of the SDGs.
Where are we in the Asia Pacific region on SRHR, in terms of the 2020 realities and the 2030 SDG targets?
Tomoko Fukuda: The region has made great progress in terms of maternal and new born health, and awareness around contraceptives, family planning and HIV/AIDS, but there still are many areas that need more attention, especially in terms of providing the full spectrum of quality SRHR services to all, preventing unsafe abortions and accessing safe abortion services. Also, the right to control one’s own body and discussions around sexuality and diversity in sexual orientations and gender identities have not been looked into in relation to what we have achieved in terms of maternal and child health care and family planning services.
Many countries in this region have developed economically, but economic growth has not resulted in gender equality and improvement in SRHR services. Then again, we have populations like migrant workers, internally displaced persons, undocumented citizens or even unmarried single parents who are being left behind. In Japan we recently had an issue where unmarried single mothers could not receive the same benefits as those who were married, divorced or widowed. These inequalities are there which we still have to tackle.
What are some of the top priority SRHR issues in the Asia Pacific region?
Unplanned pregnancies: One of the biggest issues to tackle is unplanned and unintended pregnancies, especially in young people. This has resulted in what we call baby dumping in countries like Malaysia and Japan where unwanted infants are born to adolescent school-going girls and then thrown away. We have to ensure that girls and women have access to contraceptives and they are able to make informed choices about their bodily autonomy. There is need for comprehensive sexuality education for young people so that they get correct information on reproductive health early on, and are able to access services that will prevent them from having unintended pregnancies.
Gender and social inequity: It persists even in the rich nations of the region, like Japan. It is not just about inequities between urban and rural areas, or between the rich and the poor, but also inequitable access to SRHR services. Rich people may still have no knowledge about SRHR or they may belong to very traditional communities where they are not able to come out openly with regards to their sexual identity and their sexual and reproductive health needs. On other hand, people living in slums or unauthorised settlements in urban areas may not have access to government health services that are there for other communities.
Child rape: It is appalling to see that incidences of childhood rape cases are increasing in some of the region’s countries. We have to raise more awareness on this issue and also collect data. People often try to hide such incidents and when we try to hide them, there is no way to tackle them openly. Very often governments also do not want to raise this issue. If we have stories and data to support it, that will make our cause even stronger. Perhaps the APCRSHR10 (10th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights) platform can give us an opportunity to develop an initiative, similar to the #MeToo movement, and use social media to become the voice of these innocent and voiceless child victims.
Humanitarian /natural crises: Natural disasters and post conflict situations impact sexual and reproductive health services, and women are the worst sufferers. And yet more often than not they are neglected. Many member associations of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) are now working with governments, especially in countries like Myanmar, Philippines, Indonesia, and Pacific islands, so that in times of humanitarian crises they are part of the local networking and a part of the conversation to ensure that sexual and reproductive health services are accessible.
Vulnerable communities: We also have to look into the SRH needs of people with diverse sexual orientation and gender identities; people with disabilities-both physical and psychological and also the ageing populations, as many countries of the region, like South Korea, Japan, China, Thailand and Vietnam are ageing very fast.
What are the challenges in advancing SRHR in the region?
Tomoko Fukuda: People (including donors) assume that once countries develop economically, SRHR issues will also be solved. But this is not true of most countries of the region, including Japan. Donor interest has shifted from the region on the false assumption that since these countries have developed economically, SRHR issues too have been taken care of. This is a challenge for us. We have to raise our voices to say that SRHR is still very much an issue in various forms in all the countries of this region and that we need continued donor commitment to tackle it.
Then again, it is a challenge to ensure that governments really move towards delivering the promises made by them. A survey done by IPPF reveals that governments of 25 countries in east and south-east Asia and Oceania region, have committed to achieve SRHR partially: 12 countries have committed to comprehensive sexuality education, 5 have committed for gender equality, 14 have committed to sexual and gender based violence, and 12 have committed to universal health coverage. Also, some of the promises are either unclear or they are too aspirational in terms of promised deliverables. Pushing governments to make commitments that are clear on their outcomes and more tied to deliverables is a daunting task.
Different countries have different problems. In countries like Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, one of the key issues now is of migrant workers. Many of these migrant workers are not registered or documented. Hence they may not have full access to healthcare in terms of universal health care policies or insurances that are available for the citizens of that country. Sometimes high cost of health services and/or language can be a barrier. Working with migrant workers on SRHR is an emerging issue that still needs to be tackled here.
In the Pacific Islands, the sheer difficulty of reaching people living in far away and hard to reach islands, makes accessibility to sexual and reproductive health services a difficult task. There is lack of human resources too.
What is the way forward?
Tomoko Fukuda: A lot of the problems that plague the region relate to the diverse cultures, social norms and age-old traditions. The key point is for women to come together, form community based groups, local groups and also to make a coalition at the national level and ensure that women’s voices are raised and are delivered to the governments. We also need to work more with women’s gender rights groups and feminist groups and not only with the health sector.
All discussions around population and development should focus on women and sexual and reproductive health and rights. We have to work more with our politicians and parliamentarians and ensure that they approach these issues in a rights based manner.
All of this requires a multi-stakeholder approach. International organizations, local/regional NGOs and media-all stakeholders should come together to create a mechanism for monitoring progress and a platform where we can raise our voices collectively to push governments towards contributing to this. This must go hand in hand with our push for universal health coverage.
What is your message for International Women’s Day (#IWD2020)?
Tomoko Fukuda: I really like the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day:”An equal world is an enabled world.” It says a lot about empowering women to be able to have correct information and take action on whatever choices they make. If a woman is not enabled to make choices about her own body how can she be able to become equal in this world? It is no easy task to make women to be able to make choices and be able to be equal in an unequal world. We cannot put all the women in one basket. They come from different cultures, different social norms and different family situations and enabling them is not as easy as just one word. We need to be sensitively aware of the difficulties that prevent women from making and exercising their choices, so that interventions can be tailored appropriately according to their needs.
Shobha Shukla – CNS (Citizen News Service)
(Shobha Shukla is Managing Editor of CNS (Citizen News Service) and has extensively written on health and gender justice. Follow her on Twitter @shobha1shukla or visit www.citizen-news.org)
- Shared under Creative Commons (CC)
Dehi Riots: Khureji Crackdown Fact Finding Report
by Lawyers Against Atrocities
An overwhelming sense of fear and despondency pervades Khureji Khas. Random arrests and raids and movement of police
in strength through the streets and gullies of the locality have made people afraid to walk around, go about their daily routines and even open shops and businesses. Many people have even fled Khureji or have sent their children to stay with relatives outside New Delhi.
Profile of a predator
by Sally Dugman
I have tried to provide a warning to others about their staying away from psychopaths. Of course, it is impossible in some circumstances, such as my sister and my knowing four of them while growing up. (Imagine a brother trying to have sex with you since you were thirteen years old. Imagine him continuing this behavior when you are old,)
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