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Tag: Population

  • Pronatalism on the Rise to Counter Growing Push for Gender Equality

    Pronatalism on the Rise to Counter Growing Push for Gender Equality

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    • Opinion by Nandita Bajaj (st paul, minnesota, usa)
    • Inter Press Service

    ST PAUL, Minnesota, USA, Oct 04 (IPS) – There’s an insidious new tactic emerging for selling right-wing ideology to wider audiences, evident in last month’s Budapest Demographic Summit for “family-friendly thinkers and decision-makers,” the upcoming pro-birth Natal conference in Austin, Texas, and the recent film “Birthgap.”

    They all peddle pronatalism, a set of norms and policies that exhorts and often coerces women to have more children to raise fertility rates, often coupled with alarmism over alleged “population collapse.”

    Pronatalism is on the rise to counter the growing push for gender equality, contraceptive access, and women’s educational and economic empowerment. It is connected to totalitarian policies dictating reproductive choices, the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, the religious anti-abortion movement, tech elite futurism.

    Elon Musk, for example, is an avowed pronatalist who donated $10 million to population collapse “research” and liked the idea of denying voting rights to childless people. He wanted to attend the Budapest summit, but couldn’t make it so he met last week in Texas with Hungary’s President Novák instead to draw attention to the “demographic crisis.”

    Lately, pronatalists are trying to pull a more appealing game face. The Budapest Summit says it wants to support the “psychological health and security of families,” so they can “plan for a secure future.” The Natal conference claims it “has no political or ideological goal other than a world in which our children can have grandchildren.”

    The “Birthgap” film purports to help cure an epidemic of “unplanned childlessness” and proposes “re-engineer our societies to reduce many more people would go on to have…children just like parents naturally do.” It conducts tearful interviews with regretful women who lament that their natural drive to have children was thwarted by society, and now it’s too late.

    Who could object to standing up for families’ health and security, and for the right of people who want children to have them? Yet behind this innocuous-seeming family-friendly rhetoric lurk unsavory connections to right-wing propaganda, manipulation, and straight-up lies.

    The Budapest summit touts Hungary’s achievement of the “highest rates of marriage and childbearing in Europe, while divorce and abortion rates are falling,” a nice way of saying that its right-wing populist leader Viktor Orbán adopted and implemented the Great Replacement ideology, which motivated mass-shooters in the U.S., as state policy. “We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children,” he said. “In our minds, immigration means surrender.”

    The Natal conference has demonstrable links to far-right eugenicists and racists. “Birthgap” filmmaker Stephen Shaw is feted by right-wing talk show hosts like Jordan Peterson, Neil Oliver, and Chris Williamson, and presented as a “renowned demographer” despite having no credentials in demography. Shaw and Peterson both gave keynotes at the Budapest summit.

    But ad hominem objections to the people behind the conferences and the film aside, the assertions they make are discreditable and counterfactual. Decrying imminent “population collapse” while the global population grows by 80 million each year and is projected to hit 10.4 billion in the 2080s is absurd.

    To make depopulation seem like a threat, “Birthgap” resorts to lying about data on the reasons for declining birth rates. It cites a 2010 study (which it calls a “meta-analysis”) by Prof. Renska Keizer which the film says indicates that just 10% of women chose not to have children and 10% can’t have them for medical reasons, which “leaves a whopping 80% of women without children childless by circumstance” as opposed to by choice.

    But that’s not at all what Keizer’s research says. The 2010 study Birthgap cites is not a meta-analysis, not quantitative, and does not indicate 80% of childless women didn’t choose to be so. In fact a 2011 study by Keizer et al. analyzed a 2006 dataset surveying women in the Netherlands who were childless at age 45, and found that 55% of them were childless voluntarily, while 45% were childless due to medical or other reasons.

    Other studies found similar results: 56% of those without children were voluntarily childless according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 72% according to the CDC National Survey of Family Growth, and 74% according to a 2022 Michigan State University study. Researchers working on my organization’s fact-checking project Birthgap Facts found no credible data supporting the film’s claim that 80% of childless women were “childless by circumstance” as opposed to by choice.

    What the data does show is that women exercising their right to choose if and when to have children results in delaying childbirth, smaller families, and a decline in teen pregnancy. Those outcomes are beneficial and should be celebrated, not stigmatized.

    According to the United Nations, at least 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18 every year, and more than 650 million women alive today were married as children. Around 257 million women globally face unintended pregnancies due to lack of access to contraception, abortion care, and counseling.

    At current levels of consumption, today’s population of eight billion is driving resource depletion, soil erosion, water shortages, species extinctions, and climate catastrophe. Over a billion children are already at “extremely high risk” from climate change.

    High fertility rates and population growth undermine climate resilience and complicate efforts to end poverty and hunger and ensure basic services and infrastructure.

    These are the real threats to the future, not some imagined conspiracy to stigmatize reproductive choices and hold fertility rates down. They make Shaw’s proposal of “social engineering” to reverse the imaginary threat of depopulation all the more reprehensible.

    By distorting and lying about childlessness, he’s trying to manipulate young people and their governments into prioritizing procreation over education and career. This purports to avoid a dystopian future, yet it would actually usher one in.

    Rather than manufacturing a crisis whose remedy entails “social engineering” to roll back progress on human rights and women’s control over their own lives, we should focus on the real crisis fueled by pronatalist pressures from family, religion, and governments that force millions into motherhood against their wishes, often by means of coercion and sexual violence.

    The rhetoric of the Budapest summit, Natal, “Birthgap” and their ilk claiming they’re simply trying to help families and alleviate the heartbreak of “unplanned childlessness” is insidious, and we should recognize and call it out for what it is: another arrow in the pronatalist quiver, another weapon wielded against hard-fought gains in gender equality and reproductive autonomy.

    Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of the NGO Population Balance and an adjunct lecturer at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University. Her research and advocacy work focuses on the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice.

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  • Peru Faces Challenge of Climate Change-Driven Internal Migration

    Peru Faces Challenge of Climate Change-Driven Internal Migration

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    • by Mariela Jara (lima)
    • Inter Press Service

    LIMA, Sep 28 (IPS) – Nearly 700,000 people have migrated internally in Peru due to the effects of climate change. This mass displacement is a clear problem in this South American country, one of the most vulnerable to the global climate crisis due to its biodiversity, geography and 28 different types of climates.

    “We recognize migration due to climate change as a very tangible issue that needs to be addressed,” Pablo Peña, a geographer who is coordinator of the Emergency and Humanitarian Assistance Unit of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Peru, told IPS.

    In an interview with IPS at the UN agency’s headquarters in Lima, Peña reported that according to the international Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, the number of people displaced within Peru’s borders by disasters between 2008 and 2022 is estimated at 659,000, most of them floods related to climate disturbances.

    In this Andean country of 33 million inhabitants, there is a lack of specific and centralized data to determine the characteristics of migration caused by environmental and climate change factors.

    Peña said that through a specific project, the IOM has collaborated with the Peruvian government in drafting an action plan aimed at preventing and addressing climate-related forced migration, on the basis of which a pilot project will begin in October to systematize information from different sources on displacement in order to incorporate the environmental and climate component.

    “We aim to be able to define climate migrants and incorporate them into all regulations,” said the expert. The project, which includes gender, rights and intergenerational approaches, is being worked on with the Ministries of the Environment and of Women and Vulnerable Populations.

    He added that this type of migration is multidimensional. “People can say that they left their homes in the Andes highlands because they had nothing to eat due to the loss of their crops, and that could be interpreted, superficially, as forming part of economic migration because they have no means of livelihood. But that cause can be associated with climatic variables,” Peña said.

    In a 2022 report, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) identified Peru as the country with the highest level of food insecurity in South America.

    Pablo Peña, coordinator of the Emergency and Humanitarian Assistance Unit of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Peru, stands in front of the headquarters of this United Nations agency in Lima. He highlights the need to address the situation of internal migration driven by the impacts of climate change. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    Pablo Peña, coordinator of the Emergency and Humanitarian Assistance Unit of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Peru, stands in front of the headquarters of this United Nations agency in Lima. He highlights the need to address the situation of internal migration driven by the impacts of climate change. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    The Central Reserve Bank, in charge of preserving monetary stability and managing international reserves, lowered in its September monthly report Peru’s economic growth projection to 0.9 percent for this year, partly due to the varied impacts of climate change on agriculture and fishing.

    This would affect efforts to reduce the poverty rate, which stands at around 30 percent in the country, where seven out of every 10 workers work in the informal sector, and would drive up migration of the population in search of food and livelihoods.

    “The World Bank estimates that by 2050 there will be more than 10 million climate migrants in Latin America,” said Peña.

    The same multilateral institution, in its June publication Peru Strategic Actions Toward Water Security, points out that people without economic problems are 10 times more resistant than those living in poverty to climatic impacts such as floods and droughts, which are increasing at the national level.

    The country is currently experiencing the Coastal El Niño climate phenomenon, which in March caused floods in northern cities and droughts in the south. The official National Service of Meteorology and Hydrology warned that in January 2024 it could converge with the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) global phenomenon, accentuating its impacts.

    El Niño usually occurs in December, causing the sea temperature to rise and altering the rainfall pattern, which increases in the north of the country and decreases in the south.

    The manager of Natural Resources of the Piura regional government, Juan Aguilar, described the vulnerability to climate change of this northern coastal region of Peru at a September meeting organized by the IOM in Lima. The official explained that the El Niño climate phenomenon has become more intense and frequent due to the effects of climate change, which aggravates its impacts on the population, such as severe flooding this year. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPSThe manager of Natural Resources of the Piura regional government, Juan Aguilar, described the vulnerability to climate change of this northern coastal region of Peru at a September meeting organized by the IOM in Lima. The official explained that the El Niño climate phenomenon has become more intense and frequent due to the effects of climate change, which aggravates its impacts on the population, such as severe flooding this year. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    The manager of Natural Resources of the Piura regional government, Juan Aguilar, described the vulnerability to climate change of this northern coastal region of Peru at a September meeting organized by the IOM in Lima. The official explained that the El Niño climate phenomenon has become more intense and frequent due to the effects of climate change, which aggravates its impacts on the population, such as severe flooding this year. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    Reluctance to migrate to safer areas

    Piura, a northern coastal department with an estimated population of just over two million inhabitants, has been hit by every El Niño episode, including this year’s, which left more than 46,000 homes damaged, even in areas that had been rebuilt.

    Juan Aguilar, manager of Natural Resources of the Piura regional government, maintains that the high vulnerability to ENSO is worsening with climate change and is affecting the population, communication routes and staple crops.

    At an IOM workshop on Sept. 5 in Lima, the official stressed that Piura is caught up in both floods and droughts, in a complex context for the implementation of spending on prevention, adaptation and mitigation.

    Aguilar spoke to IPS about the situation of people who, despite having lost their homes for climatic reasons, choose not to migrate, in what he considers to be a majority trend.

    “People are not willing overall to move to safer areas, even during El Niño 2017 when there were initiatives to relocate them to other places; they prefer to wait for the phenomenon to pass and return to their homes,” he added.

    View of the Rimac River as it passes through the municipality of Lurigancho-Chosica, in the Peruvian province of Lima. In this town, many families are still living in housing in areas at high risk, which is exacerbated during the rainy season that begins in December and has intensified due to climate change and the increased recurrence of the El Niño climate phenomenon. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    View of the Rimac River as it passes through the municipality of Lurigancho-Chosica, in the Peruvian province of Lima. In this town, many families are still living in housing in areas at high risk, which is exacerbated during the rainy season that begins in December and has intensified due to climate change and the increased recurrence of the El Niño climate phenomenon. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    He explained that this attitude is due to the fact that they see the climatic events as recurrent. “They say, I already experienced this in such and such a year, and there is a resignation in the sense of saying that we are in a highly vulnerable area, it is what we have to live with, God and nature have put us in these conditions,” Aguilar said.

    He acknowledged that with regard to this question, public policies have not made much progress. “For example after 2017 a law was passed to identify non-mitigable risk zones, and that has not been enforced despite the fact that it would help us to implement plans to relocate local residents to safer areas,” he added.

    The regional official pointed out that “we do not have an experience in which the State says ‘I have already identified this area, there is so much housing available here for those who want to relocate’ , because the social cost would be so high.”

    “We have not seen this, and the populace has the feeling that if they are going to start somewhere else, the place they abandon will be taken by someone else, and they say: ‘what is the point of me moving, if the others will be left here’,” Aguilar said.

    Paulina Vílchez, 72, has always lived in the Peruvian municipality of Lurigancho-Chosica. Despite the fear every year that the Rimac River might flood and that mudslides could occur in one of the 21 ravines in the area, she has never thought of moving away. "I'm not going to go to an empty plot to start all over again, that's why I've stayed. I leave everything in the hands of God," she said. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    Paulina Vílchez, 72, has always lived in the Peruvian municipality of Lurigancho-Chosica. Despite the fear every year that the Rimac River might flood and that mudslides could occur in one of the 21 ravines in the area, she has never thought of moving away. “I’m not going to go to an empty plot to start all over again, that’s why I’ve stayed. I leave everything in the hands of God,” she said. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    The fear of starting over

    Some 40 km from the Peruvian capital, in Lurigancho-Chosica, one of the 43 municipalities of the province of Lima, the local population is getting nervous about the start of the rainy season in December, which threatens mudslides in some of its 21 ravines. The most notorious due to their catastrophic impact occurred in 1987, 2017, 2018 and March of this year.

    Landslides, known in Peru by the Quechua indigenous term “huaycos”, have been part of the country’s history, due to the combination of the special characteristics of the rugged geography of the Andes highlands and the ENSO phenomenon.

    In an IPS tour of the Chosica area of Pedregal, one of the areas vulnerable to landslides and mudslides due to the rains, there was concern in the municipality about the risks they face, but also a distrust of moving to a safer place to start over.

    “I came here to Pedregal as a child when this was all fields where cotton and sugar cane were planted. I have been here for more than sixty years and we have progressed, we no longer live in shacks,” said 72-year-old Paulina Vílchez, who lives in a nicely painted two-story house built of cement and brick.

    On the first floor she set up a bodega, which she manages herself, where she sells food and other products. She did not marry or have children, but she helped raise two nieces, with whom she still lives in a house that is the fruit of her parents’ and then her own efforts and which represents decades of hard work.

    Vílchez admits that she would like to move to a place where she could be free of the fear that builds up every year. But she said it would have to be a house with the same conditions as the one she has managed to build with so much effort. “I’m not going to go to an empty plot to start all over again, that’s why I’ve stayed. I leave everything in the hands of God,” she told IPS.

    Maribel Zavaleta's home in the Peruvian municipality of Chosica is built of wood, near the Rimac River and just a meter from the train tracks. She arrived there in 1989, relocated after a mud, water and rock slide two years earlier in another part of the town. She constantly worries that another catastrophe will happen again, and says she would relocate if she were guaranteed safer land and materials to build a new house. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    Maribel Zavaleta’s home in the Peruvian municipality of Chosica is built of wood, near the Rimac River and just a meter from the train tracks. She arrived there in 1989, relocated after a mud, water and rock slide two years earlier in another part of the town. She constantly worries that another catastrophe will happen again, and says she would relocate if she were guaranteed safer land and materials to build a new house. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    Very close to the Rimac River and next to the railway tracks that shake her little wooden house each time the train passes by lives Maribel Zavaleta, 50, born in Chosica, and her family of two daughters, a son, and three granddaughters.

    “I came here in 1989 with my mom, she was a survivor of the 1987 huayco, and we lived in tents until we were relocated here. But it’s not safe; in 2017 the river overflowed and the house was completely flooded,” she told IPS.

    Zavaleta started her own family at the age of 21, but is now separated from her husband. Her eldest son lives with his girlfriend on the same property, and her older daughter, who works and helps support the household, has given her three granddaughters. The youngest of her daughters is 13 and attends a local municipal school.

    “I work as a cleaner and what I earn is only enough to cover our basic needs,” she said. She added that if she were relocated again it would have to be to a plot of land with a title deed and materials to build her house, which is now made of wood and has a tin roof, while her plot of land is fenced off with metal sheets.

    “I can’t afford to improve my little house or leave here. I would like the authorities to at least work to prevent the river from overflowing while we are here,” she said, pointing to the rocks left by the 2017 landslide that have not been removed.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Population Increase in Egypt: A Blessing That Has Become a Curse

    Population Increase in Egypt: A Blessing That Has Become a Curse

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    Egypt’s population increase puts pressure on the economy and development efforts. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS
    • by Hisham Allam (cairo)
    • Inter Press Service

    CAIRO, Sep 20 (IPS) – The population of Egypt increased from 104 million in November 2022 to 105 million in June 2023, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). This represents the growth rate for the country, where the poverty rate is 27.3 percent. The population increase means that every 245 days, it increases by one million, or 3 people per minute.

    The population density in Egypt has also increased, from 100.1 people per square kilometer (km2) in 2020 to 104.2 people per km2 in 2023. Cairo is the most populous Governorate in Egypt, with over 10 million residents, followed by Giza, with 9.5 million residents.

    The fertility rate in Egypt has been declining in recent years, from 3.5 births per woman in 2014 to 2.85 births per woman in 2021. However, the annual birth rate is still high, at around 2.2 million.

    If current fertility rates remain stable, Egypt’s population will reach 119 million in 2030 and 165 million in 2050. However, if fertility rates fall to 1.6 children per woman by 2042, the population will reach 117 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050, Dr Najwa Samak, former head of the economics department at Cairo University, told IPS.

    Samak stressed that the rapid population growth in Egypt is a burden on the national economy and a major challenge to the state’s development efforts. She called for concerted efforts from all sectors of society, including civil society organizations, the media, and state agencies, to control the population growth rate.

    She said that the human element is one of the most important factors in production for any country and that population growth can be a blessing if it is used to raise production rates and national income. However, in the case of Egypt, the rate of population growth is outpacing the rate of economic growth, putting a strain on the country’s resources.

    Samak said that family planning is crucial but that the Chinese model of one-child families is not the answer. She said that this model can lead to psychological damage for families and children.

    She said that the most important thing now is to invest in eliminating illiteracy and improving the standard of living for poor families. This will help to raise awareness of the challenges of population growth and make it possible for families to make informed choices about their reproductive health.

    Dr Hussein Abdelaziz, a professor of statistics at Cairo University, said that the Egyptian government aims to reduce the fertility rate from 2.8 to 1.6 children per woman in the coming years. He said that uncontrolled population growth is a major challenge to the state’s development efforts and drains the country’s resources.

    Abdulaziz told IPS that the illiteracy of women is one of the main reasons for the high fertility rate in Egypt. He said that there are some villages in Egypt where the illiteracy rate for girls is up to 50%. He called for the empowerment of women through education to address the problem of population growth.

    Despite the challenges, Abdelaziz finds hope in a number of governorates that have achieved positive indicators of population growth. He cited Port Said and Alexandria, where the fertility rates are 1.8 and 2.1 children per woman, respectively. These rates are equivalent to the reproductive rates in developed countries.

    Abdulaziz said that the Egyptian government is working to reduce the fertility rate by providing family planning services, improving access to education, and raising awareness of the challenges of population growth.

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  • African Womens Reproductive Rights under Threat: Global Pushback Puts Lives at Risk

    African Womens Reproductive Rights under Threat: Global Pushback Puts Lives at Risk

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    • Opinion by Dorothy Akongo – Flata Mwale – Vivian Mugarisi (kampala/lusaka/harare)
    • Inter Press Service

    KAMPALA/LUSAKA/HARARE, Sep 12 (IPS) – Almost 30 years ago in 1994, the world witnessed a historic event as 179 nations convened on African soil, in Cairo, for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

    In an unprecedented moment of collective action, Heads of State adopted a revolutionary Programme of Action and called for women’s reproductive health and rights to take center stage in national and global development efforts.

    This summer, in another first, the Women Deliver Conference had its annual meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. As the largest conference on gender equality in the world with 6,000 in-person delegates and a further 200,000 remote participants, the event was a welcome symbol of Africa’s commitment to the rights of women and girls.

    Despite this, it was frustrating to witness echoes of the global pushback currently plaguing the reproductive justice movement and how decades of progress on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) continue to face assault.

    Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Hungarian President drew controversy for championing her ‘pro-family’ ideals in sharp contrast to the purpose that had united many of the delegates present.

    President Katalin Novák, a key player in the movement opposing women’s and girls’ rights, notably access to safe and legal abortion, has publicly asserted that Hungarian women “should not compete with men” or expect to earn equal pay. She publicly envisioned her teenage daughter being empowered to choose a path of mothering a substantial number of children, “even 10 children if she chooses to”.

    As part of a 40-women delegation from the Women in Global Health network, we experienced the clash firsthand. Three decades since Cairo, and the struggle for women’s and girls’ rights continues, but as African health professionals and agents of change in the systems we deliver, so does our determination to sustain progress on the continent.

    We have much to be proud of. In November 2021, Benin’s Parliament voted to legalize abortion in most circumstances. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the first country in Francophone Africa to do so, expanded access to abortion care, and endorsed guidelines to implement the directives of the African Protocol on the Rights of Women (the Maputo Protocol).

    In July 2022, Sierra Leone took steps to modernize outdated abortion laws following decades of advocacy by the women’s movement and government officials.

    Despite these advances, women and adolescent girls in Africa continue to have some of the world’s highest maternal death and morbidity rates. With low access to modern contraceptive methods and quality, safe and legal abortion, stalling progress means life and death for many women and girls.

    The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the failure of many governments to integrate a gender-responsive approach in national health systems on SRHR. During the emergency response, SRHR services were not always deemed essential and sidelined, resulting in a surge of gender-based violence, unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions.

    Access to modern contraception and reproductive health, fundamental to determining whether and how many children to have, when and with whom, remains inaccessible for many adolescent girls and women. Quality, safe abortion care is a right. Restrictions on abortion do not eliminate abortion; they only eliminate safe abortions, resulting in women’s deaths.

    According to global estimates up to 10 million more girls will be at risk of becoming child brides in the next decade as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Reports also indicate that though all women and girls globally face discrimination in laws, social norms and practices, women and girls in Africa bear the highest share of discrimination in terms of intra-household dynamics and caregiving roles, working environments including harmful practices such as domestic violence and female genital mutilation.

    Women health workers are grossly underrepresented in health leadership and this is a key factor in the current push back on SRHR. Women comprise the majority of the health workforce, given they are 70 percent of the overall workforce globally and 90 percent of frontline staff, yet they occupy just 25 percent of leadership roles.

    For lower- and middle-income regions such as Africa, the percentage of women in leadership is as low as five percent. As the majority of frontline health professionals, women health workers have a deeper understanding of the health needs of their communities including SRHR needs. This power imbalance at decision-making tables excludes their valuable experiences and expertise to shape policies and programs that adequately address the health needs of women and girls.

    Compounding this, 70% of women in Africa are said to be excluded financially, with an estimated gap of $42 billion between men and women. Around six million women work unpaid and underpaid in core health systems roles, effectively subsidizing global health.

    Health and care are essential employment sectors for women and have the potential to unlock gender transformative lessons for the rest of the economy by addressing systemic biases that hinder women’s empowerment. Investing in the health workforce, the majority of whom are women, is a sound investment with potential gains for health systems, social change, and economic growth.

    The role of women health workers delivering SRHR services in health systems cannot be overestimated. Women health workers typically counsel and support women and girls in accessing a range of modern contraceptives and in dealing with high-risk or unwanted pregnancy.

    They brave violence and harassment from anti-rights protestors at quality, safe abortion facilities. They face online abuse and threats when expressing views in favor of SRHR, especially safe abortion.

    As a platform, the Women Deliver Conference provided an opportunity for gender advocates and Civil Society Organizations to amplify efforts towards promoting a gender-responsive agenda among policy players and government leaders. While several countries have ratified human rights declarations over the years, not enough has been done to live up to the promise of making gender equality a reality.

    Women’s movements and their allies are pivotal for mobilizing the necessary political will needed to drive progress on SRHR. As members of Women in Global Health, a movement challenging power and privilege for gender equity in health, we are calling on political and global health leaders to establish the following:

      1. Gender responsive UHC that ensures all people have access to the services they need, when they need them including access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for women and girls.
      2. Gender Equal and diverse leadership in Global Health based on Gender Transformative Leadership. This offers equal opportunities for women to lead in health and contribute to shaping health systems and health policies that are gender responsive. This is critical if we are to achieve health for all.
      3. Gender equity in emergency preparedness and response. We are calling for continuation of essential health services, including SRHR, and the protection of health workers to be central in these political agreements.

    Movements such as ours are pivotal in building allyship between health workers and national leaders in the delivery of SRHR while also safeguarding health outcomes for future generations. Across Africa, reducing health inequities and maternal mortalities is of paramount concern.

    African countries have the opportunity to secure the foundation for just societies and health for all, what we need now is to hold firm against the global pushback on reproductive rights and deliver on the promises made to women and girls.

    This article was authored by Members of the African Women in Global Health network:
    Dorothy Akongo, Research and Advocacy Manager, Busoga Health Forum and Coordinator, Uganda Chapter; Flata Mwale, Global Health Professional and Deputy Country Lead, Zambia Chapter; Vivian Mugarisi, Public Health Communications Specialist, Zimbabwe Chapter.

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  • "No" to Sex Education Fuels Early Pregnancies in Central America

    "No" to Sex Education Fuels Early Pregnancies in Central America

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    Two pregnant girls walk through the center of the capital of El Salvador, a country with one of the highest rates of pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14, and where, as in the rest of Central America, what prevails are conservative views opposed to the teaching of sex education in schools, which is essential to reducing the phenomenon. CREDIT: Francisco Campos / IPS
    • by Edgardo Ayala (san salvador)
    • Inter Press Service

    SAN SALVADOR, Aug 03 (IPS) – Pregnancies among girls and adolescents continue unabated in Central America, where legislation to prevent them, when it exists, is a dead letter, and governments are influenced by conservative sectors opposed to sex education in schools.

    The most recent incident reflecting this situation was the Jul. 29 veto by Honduran President Xiomara Castro of an Integral Law for the Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy, approved by the single-chamber Congress on Mar. 8 and criticized by conservative groups and the country’s political right wing.

    “We don’t know the arguments behind the veto, but we could surmise that the law is still being held up by pressure from these anti-rights groups,” lawyer Erika García, of the Women’s Rights Center, told IPS from Tegucigalpa.

    The influence of lobbying groups

    Conservative sectors, united in “Por nuestros hijos” (“for our children”), a Honduran version of the regional movement “Con mis Hijos no te Metas” (roughly “don’t mess with my children”), have opposed the law because in their view it pushes “gender ideology”, as international conservative populist groups call the current movement for the dissemination of women’s and LGBTI rights.

    In June, the United Nations expressed concern about “disinformation campaigns” surrounding the Honduran law.

    The last of the marches in favor of “family and children” took place in Tegucigalpa, the country’s capital, on Jul. 22.

    These groups “appeal to people’s ignorance, to fear, to religion, with arguments that have nothing to do with reality,” said García. “They say, for example, that people will put skirts on boys and pants on girls.”

    According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), one in four births is to a girl under 19 years of age in Honduras, giving the country the second-highest teenage pregnancy rate in Latin America.

    According to the Honduran Penal Code having sexual relations with minors under 14 years of age is statutory rape, whether or not the girl consented.

    In 2022, 1039 girls under 14 gave birth.

    “The problem is quite serious, and it is aggravated by the lack of public policies to prevent pregnancies among girls and adolescents,” García said.

    In the countries of Central America, which have a combined total of some 50 million inhabitants, ultra-conservative views prevail when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and education.

    In El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua – as well as the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean – abortion is banned under all circumstances, including rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s life.

    In the rest of Central America, abortion is only permitted in certain circumstances.

    The Honduran president vetoed the law under the formula “return to Congress”, so that it can be studied again and eventually ratified if two thirds of the 128 lawmakers approve it.

    Zuleyma Beltrán, 41, talked about becoming pregnant at the age of 15 because there is no proper sex education in El Salvador. A second pregnancy led to a miscarriage that landed her in jail in 1999, where many Salvadoran women who miscarry or have abortions end up due to a draconian anti-abortion law. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
    Zuleyma Beltrán, 41, talked about becoming pregnant at the age of 15 because there is no proper sex education in El Salvador. A second pregnancy led to a miscarriage that landed her in jail in 1999, where many Salvadoran women who miscarry or have abortions end up due to a draconian anti-abortion law. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

    “I didn’t even know what a condom was”

    However, having laws of this nature does not ensure that the phenomenon will be reduced, since legislation is not always enforced.

    Since 2017 El Salvador has had a National Intersectoral Strategy for the Prevention of Pregnancy in Girls and Adolescents, and although the numbers have declined in recent years, they are still high.

    An UNFPA report noted that in this country the pregnancy rate among girls and adolescents dropped by more than 50 percent between 2015 and 2022.

    However, “it is worrisome to see that El Salvador is one of the 50 countries in the world with the highest fertility rates in girls aged 10-14 years,” the UN agency said in its latest report, released in July.

    Among girls aged 10-14, the study noted, the pregnancy rate dropped by 59.6 percent, from 4.7 girls registered for prenatal care per 1000 girls in 2015 to 1.9 in 2022.

    The map of pregnancies in girls and adolescents in El Salvador added that the country “needs to further accelerate the pace of reduction, adopting policies and strategies adapted to the different realities of girls aged 10-14 years and adolescents aged 15-19 years.”

    Such actions must be “evidence-based,” the report stressed.

    The reference appears to be an allusion to the prevalence of conservative attitudes of groups that, in Honduras for example, reject sexual and reproductive education in schools.

    This lack of basic knowledge about sexuality, in a context of structural poverty, led Zuleyma Beltrán to fall pregnant at the age of 15.

    “When I became pregnant I didn’t even know what a condom was, I’m not ashamed to say it,” Beltrán, now 41, told IPS.

    She added: “I suffered a lot because I didn’t know many things, because I lived in ignorance.”

    Two years later, Beltrán became pregnant again but she miscarried, which landed her in jail in August 1999, accused of having an abortion – a plight faced by hundreds of women in El Salvador.

    El Salvador not only bans abortion under any circumstances, even in cases of rape. It also imposes penalties of up to 30 years in prison for women who have undergone abortions, and women who end up in the hospital after suffering a miscarriage are often prosecuted under the law as well.

    “The State should be ashamed of forcing these girls to give birth and not giving them options,” said Anabel Recinos, of the Citizens’ Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion.

    “The State does not provide girls with sex education or sexual and reproductive health, and when pregnancies or obstetric emergencies occur as a result, it is too cruel to them, it only offers them jail,” she added.

    Recinos said that, due to pressure from conservative groups, the State has backed down on the strategy of providing sexual and reproductive information in schools.

    “Now they are more rigorous in not allowing organizations working in that area to go and give talks on comprehensive sex education in schools,” she noted.

    Not even baby formula

    In Guatemala, initiatives by civil society organizations that since 2017 have proposed, among other things, that the State should offer reparations to pregnant girls and adolescents, to alleviate their heavy burden, have made no progress either.

    These proposals included the creation of scholarships, making it possible for girls to continue going to school while their babies were cared for and received formula.

    “But unfortunately we have not been able to take the next step, to get these measures in place,” said Paula Barrios, general coordinator of Women Transforming the World, in a telephone conversation with IPS from the capital, Guatemala City.

    Barrios said that most of the users of the services offered by this organization, such as legal and psychological support, “are girls and adolescents who are pregnant because of sexual violence and are forced to have their babies.”

    She said that in the last five years some 500,000 girls under 14 years of age have become pregnant, and the number is much higher when teenagers up to 19 years of age are included.

    “Today we have half a million girls who we don’t know what they and the children who are the products of rape are eating,” Barrios stressed, adding that as in El Salvador and Honduras, in Guatemala, having sex with a girl under 14 years of age is considered statutory rape.

    “Society sees it as normal that women are born to be mothers, and so it doesn’t matter if a girl gets pregnant at the age of 10 or 12 years, they just think she has done it a little bit earlier,” she said.

    Patriarchy and capitalism

    The experts from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador consulted by IPS said the root of the phenomenon is multi-causal, with facets of patriarchy, especially gender stereotypes and sexual violence.

    “The patriarchy has an interest in stopping women from going out into the public sphere,” said Barrios.

    She said the life of a 10-year-old girl is cut short when she becomes pregnant. She will no longer go to school and will remain in the domestic sphere, “to raise children and stay at home.”

    For her part, Garcia, the lawyer from Honduras, pointed out that there is also an underlying “system of oppression” that is intertwined with patriarchy and colonialism, which is the influence of a hegemonic country or region.

    “We have girls giving birth to cheap labor to feed the (capitalist) system, and there is a greater feminization of poverty, girls giving birth to girls whose future prospects are ruined,” she said.

    In the meantime, to avoid a repeat of her ordeal, Beltrán said she talks to and teaches her nine-year-old daughter about sexuality.

    “In order to keep her from repeating my story, I talk to her about condoms, how a woman has to take care of herself and how she can get pregnant,” she said.

    “I don’t want her to go through what I did,” she said.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Indias Rising Population & its March Towards Worlds Second Largest Economy

    Indias Rising Population & its March Towards Worlds Second Largest Economy

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    • Opinion by Taira Bhargava (washington dc)
    • Inter Press Service

    WASHINGTON DC, Jul 31 (IPS) – This year, India surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation. China is expected to overtake the US as the world’s largest economy by 2035, but its population will likely continue to decline, while India’s will continue to grow.

    India is projected to surpass 1.5 billion people by the end of this decade, reaching 1.7 billion people by 2064. Goldman Sachs analysts recently predicted India will be the world’s second-largest economy by 2075.

    India’s population growth is widely touted as an economic opportunity to be seized, a chance for India to press its advantage as the most populous nation on Earth, with the greatest proportion of working age people.

    For example, there have been recent calls for India to take the helm as a world leader in steel production. Demand for steel is expected to surge as India’s population grows, and more steel production capacity could boost India’s economy.

    But there is more to population growth than just bigger markets and workforces. The same population growth that drives up demand also puts immense pressure on environmental, education, and health infrastructure.

    For example, it will increasingly strain access to clean water, threatening drinking water safety and sanitation for communities. It could also lead to shortages in teachers and schools, and scarcity of medical professionals and health facilities.

    So, as India’s population grows, it’s imperative that we balance its economic development with the well-being of its people. Sabina Dewan, a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Policy Research, says population growth could be a “tremendous productive force for the economy” but economic growth “hinges on providing good quality, productive, and well-remunerated jobs.” As Wilson Center scholar Jennifer Sciubba put it, “We’ve got 1.4 billion people in India, and it’s up to India to decide whether or not that becomes a resource or a burden.”

    How population growth ultimately impacts people depends on how government, civil society, and society as a whole address its challenges and capitalize on its benefits. One key aspect of this is upholding people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

    As India’s population expands, the number of people of child-bearing age will continue to grow, and the stakes of SRHR will get higher. Studies show access to comprehensive SRHR services is key for health and well-being and helps women and girls reach their educational and economic goals. It also enables them to delay and space childbearing, moderating population growth and easing pressure on natural resources and infrastructure.

    Currently, women and girls in India do not have sufficient access to SRHR services. Two million adolescent Indian women have an unmet need for modern contraception. A staggering 78% of abortions among adolescents are unsafe, leading to an elevated risk of complications.

    And as India’s population grows, it also raises the stakes of gender discrimination and achieving gender equity. Without sufficient investment in the health and rights and women and girls, population growth is likely to exacerbate existing gender disparities.

    But when women gain access to more education, economic opportunity, and family planning resources, it leads to greater economic participation and prosperity. Research finds such programs can help lift people out of poverty, improving their standard of living and contributing to a more inclusive economy.

    In order to leverage the demographic dividend from population growth, in addition to manufacturing, transportation, energy, and digital infrastructure, India’s government should invest in its people.

    It should focus on skill development and quality education programs that include women and girls, with emphasis on vocational training and technical education to equip the workforce with the skills the rapidly changing job market demands.

    India’s rapid population growth is neither a blessing nor a curse, neither utopian opportunity nor dystopian destiny. Instead, it’s a blend of challenges and possibilities. The outcome for people depends on the actions we take and the investments we make.

    Conventional investments like ramping up steel production may raise India’s GDP, but won’t by themselves make people happier or healthier, or lead to greater productivity and prosperity in the long run.

    For that we’ll need a comprehensive approach, including policies and investments that prioritize SRHR, gender equity, education, and health. That’s the pathway towards beneficial economic growth, sustainable development, and a more balanced, prosperous future.

    Taira Bhargava is a Stanback Reproductive Health Research fellow at the Population Institute in Washington, DC. Hailing from New Delhi, India, she is a rising junior at Duke University, studying Human Biology and Environmental Science.

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  • Lawmakers’ Vital Roles in Ensuring Dignity for Aging Populations

    Lawmakers’ Vital Roles in Ensuring Dignity for Aging Populations

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    Dr Rintaro Mori, Regional Adviser, Population Ageing and Sustainable Development at UNFPA, told the conference it was crucial to invest to improve social security, health, and well-being. Credit: APDA
    • by Cecilia Russell (bangkok & johannesburg)
    • Inter Press Service

    BANGKOK & JOHANNESBURG, Jul 19 (IPS) – Countries with falling population growth face twin dilemmas: Ensuring their aging population live healthy and fulfilling lives and removing barriers to parenthood.

    This was the focus of a recent workshop in Thailand reviewing the ICPD30 process and preparation for the Summit for the Future slated for next year (2024).

    The workshop was opened by Professor Keizo Takemi, MP Japan and Chair of AFPPD, who contextualized the issue.

    “In the Asia Pacific region, a profound shift awaits us. By 2050, one in four individuals will be about the age of 60, with a majority of them being women. The empowerment and the well-being of these women become essential for their meaningful and independent participation in the socio-economic development.”

    The meeting sought to highlight what is required from lawmakers to ensure a dynamic and balanced aging society where older people will be physically, mentally, and economically self-reliant as possible, with a sustainable healthcare system.

    Dr Rintaro Mori, Regional Adviser, Population Ageing and Sustainable Development at UNFPA, in an interview with IPS, said parliamentarians’ role included “macro level policy planning to prepare for the coming population aging and low fertility including both economic and human rights perspectives.”

    Their role was to lead the governments’ reform policies and systems of the country to adjust for “the emerging population trend, such as pension reform and education sector reforms to accommodate all ages,” and “investing in early and later years to take preventative measures to improve social security, health, and well-being.”

    Mori said this was possible using a life-cycle approach with a strong emphasis on prevention:

    “Prevention is the most cost-effective way to promote healthy and active aging. Life-long investment in social security, health promotion, and psychological well-being (relationship) is the key.”

    Parliamentarians and experts met in Bangkok to discuss the ICPD30 process and preparation for the Summit for the Future 2024. Credit: APDA
    Parliamentarians and experts met in Bangkok to discuss the ICPD30 process and preparation for the Summit for the Future 2024. Credit: APDA

    Boosting fertility was crucial for countries facing declining and aging populations. Dr Victoria Boydell from the University of Essex in the UK said it is vital to remove barriers to parenthood but not through the trend of reducing access to sexual and reproductive health services.

    According to research by UN Women and the International Labour Organization, 1.6 billion hours a day are spent in unpaid care work – representing 9 percent of global GDP, and women carry out at least two and a half times more unpaid household work than men. These factors needed to be considered by lawmakers.

    Boydell said policy responses to boost fertility and remove barriers to parenthood included supporting early childhood development, enrollment in quality childcare from an early age, compensation for the economic cost of children through the allocation of benefits, tax exemptions, and other subsidies.

    Other practices include fostering employment, especially amongst mothers, for example, part-time and flexible working conditions, promoting equal pay, equal sharing of paid and unpaid work, and allocating benefits to low-income families.

    Regarding SRH services, there could be an increase in access to infertility treatment, fertility targets and policies to support the higher number of children, cash or tax exemptions, and access to contraception and abortion. Choice was a key right that needed protection.

    In a case study, Chalermchai Kruangam, an MP from Thailand, said it was expected that a growing number of older people would need institutional long-term care – with considerable costs to the fiscus. It was, therefore, crucial to encourage governments and stakeholders to support modifications of living arrangements for older people and provide access to knowledge and training on new technologies, particularly digitalization and information technology. This would ensure that older people remained independent for longer periods, especially if supported health facilities near their homes.

    Willie Mongin, an MP from Malaysia, said governments needed to formulate and implement necessary measures to ensure that social systems are ready to meet the older adult’s needs, improve their lives and the well-being of their families and communities – so they can live their lives with dignity. With the World Bank, Malaysia was formulating a strategic plan or blueprint to address an aging population’s impact, including economic growth, productivity, social protection, and health care.

    Mori told IPS it was important to note that “older persons are a quite diverse population. Some of the wealthiest persons are among the older population. The health status of older persons is quite different depending upon the individual. Any country should have basic social security infrastructure based on the needs and demands of the population, not solely on the age of a person.”

    He also said governments should take into account the older persons’ diversity in their plans to, for example, encourage them to remain in the workplace beyond traditional retirement ages.

    “The health, skills, and knowledge of older individuals are diverse, and governments should not plan such economic and labor market policies based on the assumption that older persons are homogenous, Mori said. Recently in Japan, trends show that small and frontline jobs seem to be suitable for older persons (Sakamoto 2022).

    Note: The workshop was organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

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  • The Race Question in Americas Population Census

    The Race Question in Americas Population Census

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    Source: U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Opinion by Joseph Chamie (portland, usa)
    • Inter Press Service

    PORTLAND, USA, Jul 17 (IPS) – With preparations for America’s 2030 population census underway and the Census Bureau encouraging additional public input, it’s time to seriously evaluate the continued inclusion of the race question in the U.S. population census.

    Not only is the census race question confusing, an arbitrary classification of unscientific distinctions and conceptually problematic, the continuing collection of race data in the decennial census is divisive, alienating and inconsistent with America’s motto “e pluribus unum”, out of many, one.

    The collection of population race data is a controversial matter. Some countries, agencies and organizations, including the UN Council for Human Rights, contend that the collection and compilation of race data are necessary to ensure equality, address systemic racism and guide appropriate public policy decisions. They believe that governments should collect and make publicly available comprehensive demographic data disaggregated by race.

    Others, however, maintain that the collection of race data is estranging, promotes adverse stereotypes and contributes to the establishment of discretionary social differences. They also fear that the collection and compilation of population race data may be used by government authorities and others to benefit or sanction certain groups. Moreover, they note that despite religious discrimination in the U.S., the decennial population census does not have a question on religious affiliation.

    The large majority of OECD countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Japan, do not collect data on the racial identity of their inhabitants. Only about a fifth of the 38 OECD countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, collect racial data on their respective populations (Figure 1).

    Source: OECD.

    In some countries, such as France, the collection of data on race is considered divisive and accordingly governments avoid considering their citizens in racial categories. Also, in many European countries as well as elsewhere, the collection of race data remains a highly sensitive matter given the recent history of authorities using demographic data to harass, oppress, persecute and even exterminate certain groups of people.

    In the United States, beyond the basic enumeration of its population required by the U.S. Constitution for determining representation in Congress, the questions included in its decennial census is basically a political matter. Topics to be included or excluded in America’s population census are often in response to politics and political lobbying.

    Questions about age and place of residence typically raise few objections. In contrast, the collection of other information, such as religious affiliation, citizenship, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, political affiliation and immigration status, are often contentious and some are not included in the census.

    Since the first U.S. census in 1790, when some data on race as well as categories differentiating between free white people, other free people and enslaved people were collected, the government has changed its definitions of racial categories more than 10 times. Also, in many past censuses, individuals who were both white and another race, no matter how small the percentage, were counted as the nonwhite race, largely on the basis of the one drop rule.

    The U.S. Census Bureau currently collects race data in accordance with the 1997 Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity directed by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Based largely on continent or country of origin, OMB’s minimum five categories for data on race are: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White.

    Beginning in the 1960 census, race was no longer determined by the decisions of census enumerators but relied on the individual’s interpretation to select the appropriate racial category. In addition, the self-reporting of more than one race began with the 2000 census.

    The Census Bureau defines race as a person’s self-identification with one or more social groups. The Bureau repeatedly stresses that the racial categories in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in the country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically or genetically.

    Anyone who has filled out a recent decennial U.S. census questionnaire is faced with the question of race. There are a lot of people who don’t understand how best to answer that question because it doesn’t match the way they understand race.

    With the choice of one or more “racial categories” in the recent 2020 census, an individual could select White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, nearly a dozen Asian or Pacific Island countries as well as the ubiquitous “Some Other Race” category, with national or ethnic origins to be specified in the write-in areas (Figure 2).

    Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

    The U.S. census race question has been met with dissatisfaction and frustration among some groups and individuals. In addition to the limited choices, the census race categories are increasingly failing to reflect how people see themselves, are out of step with the reality of their personal experiences and are often confused with people’s ethnic identity, especially Hispanic.

    In the 2020 census, close to 50 million U.S. residents, or approximately 15 percent of the country’s population, checked a box for “Some Other Race” in the question on race. The proportion of the U.S. population choosing the category “Some Other Race” in 2020 is double the percentage from a decade earlier and triple the percentage from two decades earlier (Figure 3).

    Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

    Among the proposed reforms being considered to the race question for the 2030 census is the inclusion of a new checkbox for “Middle Eastern or North African” (MENA). Under the current standards set by the Office of Management and Budget, Americans with roots in the Middle East or North Africa are considered white.

    Advocates for Arab Americans and other MENA groups have long campaigned for their own checkbox in the race question. Based on their daily life experiences, many people of MENA descent do not identify as white people.

    Besides the addition of a new checkbox to the census racial question, the proposed reform to the race question would change the government’s definition of “White” as it would no longer include people with MENA origins. As a result, the change could decrease the proportion of people who identify as white among the U.S, population, which has become a salient part of American politics, especially among the political right.

    Families across America are becoming more racially diverse. Part of the rise is the result of the growing diversity of the U.S. population due to immigration and increasing intermarriage among America’s racial and ethnic groups.

    Since 2010, the number of people in the U.S. who identify themselves as multiracial has changed substantially. From 9 million people in 2010, the number increased to 33.8 million people in 2020 and now represents about 10 percent of the U.S. population.

    Race in America remains a problematic concept, an arbitrary classification of unscientific distinctions and an incoherent stereotype as well as being difficult to define objectively and unambiguously. Also, since 1960 the U.S. Census Bureau has relied on self-identification by the individual to determine a person’s race.

    In sum, the population census race question is not required to determine Congressional representation and, very importantly, the race question is contributing to the entrenchment of spurious divisions across the country that are unnecessary, confusing and inimical to the inherent principles of the nation. Accordingly, serious consideration should be given to evaluating the inclusion of the race question in America’s 2030 population census.

    Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Wood Smoke Continues to Make Women Sick in El Salvador

    Wood Smoke Continues to Make Women Sick in El Salvador

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    Cecilia Menjivar, a tortilla maker in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, takes a break from cooking corn in a pot that is one meter high and 50 centimeters in diameter, heated by a wood stove. Many women in urban and rural areas run these small businesses, aware of the damage to their health caused by the smoke, but the economic situation forces them to use firewood, which is much cheaper than liquefied gas. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
    • by Edgardo Ayala (san luis la herradura, el salvador)
    • Inter Press Service

    SAN LUIS LA HERRADURA, El Salvador, Jul 04 (IPS) – Using a few dry sticks as fuel, Margarita Ramos of El Salvador lit the fire in her wood stove and set about frying two fish, occasionally fanning the flame, aware that the smoke she inhaled could affect her health.

    “I know that the smoke can damage my lungs, because that’s what I’ve heard on the news, but what can I do?” Ramos told IPS, standing next to her stove in the courtyard of her home in El Zapote, a village of 51 families in the coastal municipality of San Luis La Herradura, in the southern Salvadoran department of La Paz.

    Firewood, the fuel of the poor

    “I cook with firewood out of necessity, because I don’t always have a job or money to buy gas,” added Ramos, 44, referring to liquefied gas, a petroleum derivative used for cooking in 90.6 percent of Salvadoran homes, according to official data.

    This is the situation faced by many women in El Salvador and other parts of the world, especially in the countryside, where dire economic conditions as well as ingrained habits and traditions lead families to cook with firewood, with negative repercussions on their health.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2019 approximately 18 percent of global deaths were due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 23 percent to acute respiratory infections.

    Ambient pollution, including wood smoke, plays a decisive role in respiratory diseases, especially among rural women, who do the cooking in line with the roles of patriarchal culture.

    Back in 2004 the WHO warned that about 1.6 million people were dying annually from charcoal and wood smoke used in cooking stoves in many developing countries.

    In El Salvador, 29,365 cases of acute respiratory infections per 100,000 inhabitants were reported in 2022, well above the 19,000 reported in 2021. Pneumonia reached 365 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the same period, and the case fatality rate stood at 13.6 percent, up from 11.4 percent the previous year.

    Ana Margarita Ramos fries two fish for dinner on a wood stove in El Zapote, a coastal village located in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura, in the Salvadoran department of La Paz. Due to economic difficulties she frequently has to cook with firewood, and she fears that she might get asthma from exposure to the smoke. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
    Ana Margarita Ramos fries two fish for dinner on a wood stove in El Zapote, a coastal village located in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura, in the Salvadoran department of La Paz. Due to economic difficulties she frequently has to cook with firewood, and she fears that she might get asthma from exposure to the smoke. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

    Ramos showed IPS the gas stove she has inside her house, with a cylinder that lasts approximately 40 days.

    But when the gas runs out and she can’t afford to refill the cylinder, she has to cook with her wood stove. In her courtyard she has a table in a makeshift shed, where she keeps the wood and a metal structure that holds her pots and pans.

    Official figures indicate that 5.9 percent of households in this Central American country use firewood for cooking.

    However, in rural areas the proportion rises to 12.9 percent, while 84.4 percent cook with gas and the rest use electricity and other systems.

    Ramos, 44, has no steady job and as a single mother, scrambles to provide for the needs of her two children.

    Twice a week she cleans upscale apartments at a resort near her home, in Los Blancos, a well-known beach on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, also in La Paz. When she does well she cleans two a day, earning 24 dollars.

    Sometimes she also washes other families’ clothes.

    “Right now I have run out of gas, I have to use firewood,” she said. A cylinder of liquefied gas costs between 12 and 14 dollars.

    She generally collects firewood on the banks of the estuary, from the branches of mangrove trees, since hers and other poor families live in a shantytown located between the Pacific Ocean and the Jaltepeque estuary, one of the country’s main wetlands.

    Poverty affects 26.6 percent of the population at the national level in this small Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, according to official figures. But in rural areas the proportion rises to 29.6 percent, and of these, 10.8 percent live in extreme poverty.

    At her house in the coastal village of El Zapote, Ana Margarita Ramos luckily has a yard where she has set up her wood stove, thus reducing her exposure to smoke, in a country like El Salvador where many women suffer from respiratory diseases due to the effects of cooking with firewood. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
    At her house in the coastal village of El Zapote, Ana Margarita Ramos luckily has a yard where she has set up her wood stove, thus reducing her exposure to smoke, in a country like El Salvador where many women suffer from respiratory diseases due to the effects of cooking with firewood. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

    Cutting costs with firewood

    Meanwhile in San Salvador, the country’s capital, Cecilia Menjívar runs her small tortilla-making business partly by using firewood, which she collects from tree branches around the Los Héroes community where she lives.

    She also uses wood left over from construction sites and sometimes buys it as well, at a cost of one dollar for about three “rajas” or axe-cut tree branches.

    Tortillas are round flat bread made from corn dough, which are baked on metal plates generally heated with the flame from liquefied gas.

    But Menjívar does not use gas to cook the 68 kg of corn she uses daily to run her business, as she can’t afford it.

    “That’s why we prefer firewood. We don’t like it, first of all because of the damage to our health, and also because our clothes are impregnated with the smell of smoke and the walls of the house too, they look dirty,” Menjívar, 58, told IPS.

    “We do it to save on the cost, which would be very high, and we wouldn’t make any profit,” she added, while behind her the 68 kg of corn for the day rattled in a boiling pot, black from the wood smoke.

    Tortillas are part of the staple diet of the Salvadoran population. Most households cook their food on gas stoves, but they don’t make their own tortillas, because it is a complex and time-consuming process.

    That is why so many women, like Menjívar, go into the tortilla business to meet the high level of demand, cooking the corn on wood stoves, usually located in the open air in their courtyards.

    But during the May to November rainy season, they cook the corn inside the house, in a back room.

    Because of the amount of corn and the size of the pot, the improvised wood stove made of wood and a metal structure has to be set on the floor.

    The tortilla business has shrunk, she added, due to the increase in the cost of corn, which climbed from 15 dollars per quintal (45 kg) to 32 dollars.

    “With this business we earn enough to buy our food and other basic things, but not for other expenses,” she said.

    One of Ana Margarita Ramos' two sons, in El Zapote, a coastal settlement in southern El Salvador, stands near the firewood that is always on hand in case they can't afford to buy liquefied gas. About 13 percent of rural Salvadoran households cook with firewood, which poses serious health risks. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
    One of Ana Margarita Ramos’ two sons, in El Zapote, a coastal settlement in southern El Salvador, stands near the firewood that is always on hand in case they can’t afford to buy liquefied gas. About 13 percent of rural Salvadoran households cook with firewood, which poses serious health risks. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

    Chronic bronchitis and pneumonia

    Menjívar said that she fell ill with pneumonia in 2022, and she did not rule out that the cause could have been precisely the smoke she has been inhaling for decades, although she pointed out that the doctors who treated her did not inquire about it.

    “Since I was a little girl I have been exposed to smoke, because my mother also used to make tortillas using firewood,” she said. “When she couldn’t find dry branches, my mom would burn anything: old shoes, old clothes or paper.”

    When she got pneumonia, she had to stop working for three months, and she had to leave the business in the hands of her teenage daughter.

    Burning firewood releases toxic gases and polluting particles that end up causing ailments that in medical terminology are grouped together as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonologist Carmen Elena Choto told IPS. These gases include carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.

    “We also see other harmful particles, there may even be hydrocarbons, because they not only burn wood, but also dry cow dung, corncobs, paper, anything to make the fire,” said the expert.

    Damage to the bronchi, or chronic bronchitis, and to the alveoli in the lungs, or pulmonary emphysema, are some of the diseases associated with exposure to smoke, including tobacco smoke, she added.

    “Due to the burning of biomass (firewood and other products), the most frequent disease is chronic bronchitis,” said Choto, and older women are the main victims.

    People with bronchitis have a constant cough “or wheezing or shortness of breath because there is obstruction due to mucus plugs in the airway,” she said.

    Patients, she added, feel tired and suffer from dyspnea or shortness of breath from low oxygen levels, which in severe cases requires hospital care.

    Menjívar began to feel these symptoms after spending years making tortillas.

    “I felt very tired, I suffered from hot flashes, I was short of breath, I felt like I was having a hard time breathing,” she said.

    After she was diagnosed with pneumonia, Menjívar stopped working for three months.

    “That’s why I try to stay farther away from the smoke now,” she said. “But the smoke spreads through the house.”

    For her part, Ramos, in her coastal village, has put her stove in the yard outdoors, to reduce exposure to smoke. She worries that she could suffer from asthma, like her sister.

    A resident of the coastal hamlet of El Salamar, in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura in southern El Salvador, cooks pasta for lasagna on an ecological stove called a "rocket", which is much more efficient in producing heat and emits less smoke. This kind of stove has been used for decades in rural communities in the country, with good results in alleviating the health risks posed by wood stoves. But they have not become widespread, due to a lack of government investment and campaigns to encourage their use. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
    A resident of the coastal hamlet of El Salamar, in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura in southern El Salvador, cooks pasta for lasagna on an ecological stove called a “rocket”, which is much more efficient in producing heat and emits less smoke. This kind of stove has been used for decades in rural communities in the country, with good results in alleviating the health risks posed by wood stoves. But they have not become widespread, due to a lack of government investment and campaigns to encourage their use. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

    Eco-stoves, an alternative

    One possible answer to reduce exposure to smoke, especially in rural areas, is the spread of eco-stoves, which due to their combustion mechanism are more efficient in producing energy and release less smoke.

    These stoves have been around for decades in developing countries, including El Salvador, but they have not yet become widespread enough to make a difference, at least in this country.

    There are socio-cultural aspects that hinder the expansion of the stoves and lead to the continued use of wood-burning stoves, environmentalist Ricardo Navarro, of the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology, a local affiliate of the international organization Friends of the Earth, told IPS.

    For example, he mentioned the practice by small farmers of placing corn or beans on bamboo or wooden platforms on top of wood stoves, so that the smoke prevents insects from eating the food.

    “The problem is that sometimes we approach the issue as an energy or health problem, without considering these socio-cultural aspects,” Navarro said.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Women in Peru’s Poor Urban Areas Combat the Crisis at the Cost of Their Wellbeing

    Women in Peru’s Poor Urban Areas Combat the Crisis at the Cost of Their Wellbeing

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    While cooking on one side of her wooden tin-roofed house, Mercedes Marcahuachi describes her long day’s work to meet the needs of her household and of the soup kitchen where she serves 150 daily rations at the low price of 80 cents of a dollar, in one of the settlements of Ventanilla, a “dormitory town” of Lima, the Peruvian capital. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    • by Mariela Jara (callao, peru)
    • Inter Press Service

    CALLAO, Peru, Jul 03 (IPS) – At five in the morning, when fog covers the streets and the cold pinches hard, Mercedes Marcahuachi is already on her feet ready to go to work in Pachacútec, the most populated area of the municipality of Ventanilla, in the province of Callao, known for being home to Peru’s largest seaport.

    “If I don’t get up that early, I don’t have enough time to get everything done,” the 55-year-old woman tells IPS as she shows us the area of her home where she runs a soup kitchen that she opened in 2020 to help feed her community during the COVID pandemic and that she continues to run due to the stiffening of the country’s economic crisis.

    Emerging as a special low-income housing project in the late 1980s, it was not until 2000 that the population of Pachacútec began to explode when around 7,000 families in extreme poverty who had occupied privately-owned land on the south side of Lima were transferred here by the then government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).

    The impoverished neighborhood is mainly inhabited by people from other parts of the country who have come to the capital seeking opportunities. Covering 531 hectares of sandy land, it is home to some 180,000 people, about half of the more than 390,000 people in the district of Ventanilla, and 15 percent of the population of Callao, estimated at 1.2 million in 2022.

    Marcahuachi arrived here at the age of 22 with the dream of a roof of her own. She had left her family home in Yurimaguas, in the Amazon rainforest region of Loreto, to work and become independent. And she hasn’t stopped working since.

    She now has her own home, made of wood, and every piece of wall, ceiling and floor is the result of her hard work. She has two rooms for herself and her 18-year-old son, a bathroom, a living room and a kitchen.

    “I’m a single mother, I’ve worked hard to achieve what we have. Now I would like to be able to save up so that my son can apply to the police force, he can have a job and with that we will make ends meet,” she says.

    Marcahuachi worked for years as a saleswoman in a clothing store in downtown Lima, adjacent to Callao, and then in Ventanilla until she retired. Three years ago, she created the Emmanuel Soup Kitchen, for which the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion provides her with non-perishable food.

    Pachacútec, a poor settlement in the port municipality of Ventanilla, has 180,000 inhabitants from different regions of the country and districts of Lima, the Peruvian capital. The conditions of poverty and precariousness increase caregiving work, typically associated with women due to gender stereotypes. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    Pachacútec, a poor settlement in the port municipality of Ventanilla, has 180,000 inhabitants from different regions of the country and districts of Lima, the Peruvian capital. The conditions of poverty and precariousness increase caregiving work, typically associated with women due to gender stereotypes. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    The community soup kitchen operates at one end of the courtyard that surrounds her house and offers 150 daily food rations at the subsidized price of three soles (80 cents of a dollar), which she uses to buy vegetables, meat and other products used in the meals.

    Marcahuachi feels good that she can help the poorest families in her community. “I don’t earn a penny from what I do, but I am happy to support my people,” she says.

    Her daily routine includes running her own home as well as ensuring the 150 daily food rations in the Emmanuel settlement where she lives, one of 143 neighborhoods in Pachacútec.

    Various studies, including the World Bank’s “Rising Strong: Peru Poverty and Equity Assessment”, have found that poverty in Peru is mostly urban, contrary to most Latin American countries, a trend that began in 2013 and was accentuated by the pandemic.

    By 2022, although the national economy had rallied, the quality of employment and household income had declined.

    Mercedes Marcahuachi is a resident of Pachacútec, a large area in the province of Callao on Peru's central coast characterized by poverty and inequality. During the pandemic she set up a soup kitchen in her home, to feed the poorest local residents in her neighborhood, which is called Emmanuel. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    Mercedes Marcahuachi is a resident of Pachacútec, a large area in the province of Callao on Peru’s central coast characterized by poverty and inequality. During the pandemic she set up a soup kitchen in her home, to feed the poorest local residents in her neighborhood, which is called Emmanuel. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    In Pachacútec, in the extreme north of Callao, the hardship is felt on a daily basis.

    Only the two main streets are paved, while the countless steep lanes lined with homes are stony or sandy. Cleaning is constant, as dust seeps through the cracks in the wooden walls and corrugated tin-sheet roofs.

    In addition, food and other basic goods stores are far away, so it is necessary to take public transportation there and back, which makes daily life more expensive and complicated.

    But these are unavoidable responsibilities for women, who because of their stereotypical gender roles are in charge of care work: cleaning, washing, grocery shopping, cooking, and caring for children and adults with disabilities or the elderly.

    This is the case of Julia Quispe, who at the age of 72 is responsible for a number of tasks, such as cooking every day for her family, which includes her husband, her daughter who works, and her four grandchildren who go to school.

    Julia Quispe, 72, continues to care for and feed her family, including making the long trip to the market to shop and feed her husband, daughter and grandchildren. She does so at the cost of her own poor health. But this resident of Pachacútec, a poor area near Lima, the Peruvian capital, responds that she has "never worked", when asked. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    Julia Quispe, 72, continues to care for and feed her family, including making the long trip to the market to shop and feed her husband, daughter and grandchildren. She does so at the cost of her own poor health. But this resident of Pachacútec, a poor area near Lima, the Peruvian capital, responds that she has “never worked”, when asked. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    She tells IPS that she has uterine prolapse, that she is not feeling well, but that she has stopped going to the hospital because for one reason or another they don’t actually provide her with the solution she needs.

    Despite her health problems, she does the shopping every day at the market, as well as the cooking and cleaning, and she takes care of her grandchildren and her husband, who because of a fall, suffers from a back injury that makes it difficult for him to move around.

    “When we came here in 2000 there was no water or sewage, life was very difficult,” she says. “My children were young, my women neighbors and I helped each other to get ahead. Now we are doing better luckily, but I can’t use the transportation to get to the market; I can’t afford the ticket, so I save by walking and on the way back I take the bus because I can’t carry everything, it’s too heavy.”

    But when it comes to talking about herself, Quispe says she never worked, that she has only dedicated herself to her home, replicating the view of a large part of society that does not value the role of women in the family: feeding, cleaning the house, raising children and grandchildren, providing a healthy environment, which includes tasks to improve the neighborhood for the entire community.

    Moreover, in conditions of poverty and precariousness, such as those of Pachacútec, these tasks are a strenuous responsibility at the expense of their own well-being.

    The steep streets of Pachacútec are sandy or stony, which means there is constant dust in the homes, and women have to spend more hours cleaning in this densely populated settlement of Ventanilla, a coastal municipality neighboring Lima. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    The steep streets of Pachacútec are sandy or stony, which means there is constant dust in the homes, and women have to spend more hours cleaning in this densely populated settlement of Ventanilla, a coastal municipality neighboring Lima. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    Recognizing women’s care work

    “Poor urban women have come from other regions and have invested much of their time and work in building their own homes, caring for their children and weaving community, a sense of neighborhood. They have less access to education, they earn low wages and have no social coverage or breaks, so they are also time poor,” Rosa Guillén, a sociologist with the non-governmental Gender and Economics Group, tells IPS.

    “For years, they have taken care of their families, their communities, they do productive work, but it is a very slow and difficult process for them to pull out of poverty because of   inequalities associated with their gender,” she says.

    She adds that “even so, they plan their families, they invest the little they earn in educating their children, fixing up their homes, buying sheets and mattresses; they are always thinking about saving up money for the children to study during school vacations.”

    From the focus of the approach of feminist economics, she argues that it is necessary for governments to value the importance of the work involved in caregiving, in taking care of people, families, communities and the environment for the progress of society and to face climate change, investing in education, health, good jobs and real possibilities for retirement.

    "Living here makes you feel like crying but what would that get me, I just have to get over it," Ormecinda Mestanza, a resident of Pachacútec since 2004, tells IPS. She commutes daily to the Peruvian capital of Lima to work and earn a living, in trips that take between two and three hours. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    “Living here makes you feel like crying but what would that get me, I just have to get over it,” Ormecinda Mestanza, a resident of Pachacútec since 2004, tells IPS. She commutes daily to the Peruvian capital of Lima to work and earn a living, in trips that take between two and three hours. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    Ormecinda Mestanza, 57, has lived in Pachacútec for nine years. She bought the land she lives on but does not have the title deed; a constant source of worry, because besides having to work every day just to get by, she has to fit in the time to follow up on the paperwork to keep her property.

    “It makes you want to cry, but I have to get over it, because this little that you see is all I have and therefore is the most precious thing to me,” she tells IPS inside her wooden shack with a corrugated tin roof.

    Everything is clean and tidy, but she knows that this won’t last long because of the amount of dust that will soon cover her floor and her belongings, which she will just have to clean over again.

    She works in Lima, as a cleaner in a home and as a kitchen helper in a restaurant, on alternate days. She gets to her jobs by taking two or three public transportation buses and subway trains, and it takes her two to three hours to get there, depending on the traffic.

    “I get up at five in the morning to get ready and have breakfast and I get to work late and they scold me. ‘Why do you come so far to work?’ they ask me, but it’s because the daily pay in Pachacútec is very low, 30 or 40 soles (10 to 12 dollars a day) and that’s not enough for me,” she says.

    Wood and corrugated tin roofing are the materials used in most of the houses in Pachacútec, an area in the north of the province of Callao, adjacent to the capital of Lima, as is the case of the home of Ormecinda Mestanza, who constantly worries that when it rains her house will be flooded by leaks in her roof. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
    Wood and corrugated tin roofing are the materials used in most of the houses in Pachacútec, an area in the north of the province of Callao, adjacent to the capital of Lima, as is the case of the home of Ormecinda Mestanza, who constantly worries that when it rains her house will be flooded by leaks in her roof. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

    She managed to buy the land with the help of relatives. After working for a family as a domestic for 30 years, her employers moved abroad and she discovered that they had lied to her for decades, claiming to be making the payments towards her retirement pension. “I never thought I would get to this age in these conditions, but I don’t want to bother my son, who has his own worries,” she says.

    According to official figures, in Peru, a country of 33 million inhabitants, 70 percent of people living in poverty were in urban areas in 2022.

    And among the parts of the country with a poverty rate above 40 percent is Callao, a small, densely populated territory that is a province but has a special legal status on the central coast, bordered to the north and east by Lima, of which it forms part of its periphery.

    The municipality of Ventanilla is known as a “dormitory town” because a large part of the population works in Lima or in the provincial capital, also called Callao. Because of the distance to their jobs, residents spend up to five or six hours a day commuting to and from work, so they basically only sleep in their homes on workdays, and very few hours at that.

    Guillén says it is necessary to bring visibility to the workload of women and the fact that it is not valued, especially in poor outlying urban areas like Callao.

    “We need a long-term policy immediately that guarantees equal education for girls and boys, and gives a boost to vocations, without gender distinctions, that are typically associated with women because they are focused on care,” says the expert.

    She adds that if more equality is achieved, democracy and progress will be bolstered. “This way we will be able to take better care of ourselves as families, as society and as nature, which is our big house,” she remarks.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Medical Abortion Expands Women’s Rights in Argentina

    Medical Abortion Expands Women’s Rights in Argentina

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    A demonstration in the city of Córdoba, capital of the province of the same name in central Argentina, in favor of legal, safe and free abortion and women’s rights. The color green has identified the movement in favor of the legalization of abortion, which was passed by Congress in late 2020. CREDIT: Catholics for Choice
    • by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
    • Inter Press Service

    BUENOS AIRES, Jun 23 (IPS) – Viviana Mazur is a doctor at the Santojanni Hospital in Mataderos, a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. She has witnessed the advances in women’s rights in Argentina, where until 2020 abortion was only allowed on two grounds, while it is now available on demand up to 14 weeks of pregnancy.

    “Today what we see at the hospital is that most women come in for a consultation very early; in many cases they do so as soon as their period is late. This makes it possible to resolve almost all abortions with medication, in the woman’s own home, with medical advice and monitoring,” she said.

    Mazur, who is also coordinator of Sexual Health in the Buenos Aires city government, said there are many advantages of medication abortion over the traditional surgical procedures.

    “It’s less traumatic and less risky for the woman and it’s less costly for the public health system,” she told IPS.

    In Argentina, as a result of years of struggle by the women’s rights movement, since January 2021 abortion has been decriminalized. In the last stage of the fight, mass demonstrations by women – and also men – wearing green headscarves, which has become a pro-choice symbol in Latin America, filled the streets.

    Since then, Law 27,610 on Access to Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy allows any woman to have an abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy free of charge and without having to explain the reasons for her decision.

    Until the law came into force, access was severely restricted: a Supreme Court ruling in effect since 2012 authorized what was called Legal Termination of Pregnancy, only in the case of rape or if the pregnancy endangered the woman’s life or health.

    Argentina's Minister of Health Carla Vizzotti (C) holds the green headscarf that is the symbol for the feminist movement that fought for the successful legalization of abortion in Argentina. CREDIT: Ministry of Health
    Argentina’s Minister of Health Carla Vizzotti (C) holds the green headscarf that is the symbol for the feminist movement that fought for the successful legalization of abortion in Argentina. CREDIT: Ministry of Health

    More abortions recorded in 2022

    In 2022, the first full year in which the law allowing abortion on demand was in force, 96,664 abortions were performed in the public health system of this South American country of 46 million inhabitants, according to official data. This marked a significant increase over 2021, when the total was 73,847, partly due to the rise in abortions in the public health system.

    “More than 85 percent of abortions in 2022 were performed with medication,” Valeria Isla, the national director of Sexual and Reproductive Health, told IPS.
    .
    “The good news is that today these are safe practices taking place within the health system. In any case, since until recently most abortions were clandestine, we believe it is too early to draw conclusions with respect to the number. The figures have yet to stabilize,” she added.

    Isla explained that her office provides training to health personnel from all over the country on how to perform abortions and that medications are distributed, as well as equipment for manual vacuum aspiration, which is a less risky medical procedure in a doctor’s office than dilation and curettage, which is performed in an operating room.

    In this sense, since 2022 the incorporation of mifepristone into the Argentine health system, in addition to misoprostol, which has been used for years to perform medical abortions, has been a great step forward.

    The combination of mifepristone and misoprostol, called “combipack”, makes abortions more efficient and less painful for women, and in fact the combination of these two drugs for pregnancy termination is one of the techniques recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2005.

    Last year, the WHO ratified both as essential drugs for providing quality health services and backed their efficacy and safety for abortion.

    Isla explained that since last year the national government has been distributing mifepristone in public hospitals thanks to a donation from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

    Since March of this year, mifepristone has been fully available also for the Argentine private health system, since the governmental National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Technology (Amnat) authorized its sale in pharmacies.

    This has allowed the “combipack” to be used in recent months in the private health system as well, where women now also have easier access to abortion.

    “The incorporation of mifepristone has been very important on a day-to-day basis to make abortion easier for women, because it means less misoprostol is used, side effects are reduced and the whole process can be carried out at home, with prior and subsequent checkups,” Florencia Grazzini, a social worker at a primary care clinic in the municipality of Lanús, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, told IPS.

    Grazzini began providing support to women who needed access to abortion long before the legalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy. She worked for years at the Kimelú counseling center, formed by feminist activists and serving the southern area of Greater Buenos Aires.

    She said that while access to abortion has now been greatly facilitated, for some women termination of pregnancy is still a stigma.

    “Despite the fact that with the law there is no need to gjve a reason for abortions up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, the justification for the decision continues to appear in the record of the consultations,” Grazzini pointed out.

    She added that, “We are working so that people can share how they feel about their situation, but we don’t want them to feel that they need to explain in order to access an abortion.”

    She said the women are told that they do not need to explain why they wish to have an abortion, although psychological assistance is provided to those who request it.

    Abortion, however, sometimes encounters resistance from health professionals themselves. This was reflected in May, when the Ministry of Health updated the Protocol of Care and urged the “elimination of all requirements that are not clinically necessary for the safe practice of abortion.”

    Specifically, it called for the elimination of waiting or reflection periods and the requirement of parental or partner consent.

    A rally at the Ministry of Health in Buenos Aires, where feminist activists showed their green scarves and demonstrated in favor of women's rights. CREDIT: Ministry of Health
    A rally at the Ministry of Health in Buenos Aires, where feminist activists showed their green scarves and demonstrated in favor of women’s rights. CREDIT: Ministry of Health

    The need for support

    More data that shows that the legalization of abortion has not eliminated all the actual barriers is provided by Socorristas en Red (roughly, “Helpers Online Network”), a women’s organization that provides nationwide support for women who need an abortion.

    In 2022, the network received 13,292 calls from women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies.

    Only 10 percent of them had abortions in the public health system and the rest had abortions that they arranged elsewhere. The organization provided them with psychological assistance, information, instructions, WhatsApp messages, phone calls, and virtual and face-to-face company by “socorristas” or helpers. With all this they found greater comfort than in the health system.

    This picture is completed by the visible inequality in access to abortion in different areas of the country.

    Although the number of public hospitals and health centers that perform abortions reached 1793 in 2022 – against less than 1000 in 2021 – in some provinces the supply is very limited. For example, in the northern provinces of Santiago del Estero and Chaco there are only eight and nine health institutions, respectively, that perform abortions.

    “In some places there is resistance from officials and a lack of knowledge among fellow workers about outpatient treatment with medications,” Ana Morillo, a social worker in the province of Córdoba, in the center of the country, told IPS.

    Morillo, who is an activist and member of the Network of Professionals for Choice and the organization Catholics for Choice, said the advocacy work of the women’s rights movement has made Cordoba one of the provinces with the greatest access to abortion, since there are 180 hospitals and health centers that perform the procedure.

    “The greatest inequalities are between cities and rural areas, where it is much more difficult to access an abortion. These are the disparities in the country on which we still have to work the hardest,” she said.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Addressing the Scandal of Invisibility in Asia & the Pacific

    Addressing the Scandal of Invisibility in Asia & the Pacific

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    • Opinion by Tanja Sejersen – Nicola Richards – Victoria Fan (bangkok, thailand)
    • Inter Press Service

    BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 20 (IPS) – Each year, the births of 64 million children under the age of five and deaths of 8.4 million people are invisible to governments in Asia and the Pacific. Most countries in the region are yet to achieve universal civil registration, leaving many people without a legal identity and, as a result, invisible to the State.

    These people often face challenges in accessing basic services, such as education and healthcare, in securing employment and social benefits, and in protecting their human rights. In addition, deficient civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems lead to significant gaps and lags in up-to-date population and health data, crucial for designing and monitoring effective public policies and allocating resources.

    Recognizing its importance, countries reached agreement on the Asia Pacific CRVS Decade in 2014 and set out a vision to achieve universal civil registration in the region by 2024. An applied CRVS research agenda was launched to help meet this this challenge.

    Applied research on CRVS helps to generate and disseminate evidence on what strategies work, and what doesn’t, as well as how governments and partners can improve systems to better deliver on commitments to get everyone in the picture.

    By documenting experiences in communities, countries and regions, the potential benefits of successful interventions and innovations can be replicated and possible shortcomings addressed.

    Given the importance of applied research for improving CRVS, ESCAP organised the first ever Asia-Pacific CRVS Research Forum on 3-4 April 2023. With more than 30 speakers representing 15 countries, 24 research papers and almost 400 registered participants, the forum revealed many interesting facets of CRVS while opening eyes to the multitude of initiatives to ensure better and more inclusive systems across the region.

    Many presentations emphasized how different initiatives are making real-life impacts on individuals and communities. There was a clear emphasis on community engagement, equity and ‘reaching the hardest to reach’, such as integrating gender-equity in CRVS legal reviews, addressing barriers to civil registration for hard-to-reach populations in Pakistan and gender disparities in premature mortality in the Philippines.

    On-the-ground innovations were on display: a first-of-its-kind CRVS survey in Nepal that worked with both service providers and communities to understand barriers and enablers to registration; evidence from Fiji on the clear effectiveness of incentives on birth registration completeness; and the development of customized mortality audit and inquest systems in Thailand and Sri Lanka to improve the quality of cause of death data.

    Much more work is needed to drive CRVS systems forward in the face of increasing challenges, with research playing a key role. In particular, the forum identified a stronger focus on building inclusive and resilient CRVS systems, including in conflict and humanitarian settings where there is both an acute need for civil registration along with increased difficulties in providing services.

    As countries around the world adjust to competing government priorities during times of economic and social challenges, there is a critical need to maintain momentum on strengthening CRVS systems as the basis for realising human rights and ensuring access to basic social services including health and education.

    Further, CRVS systems are essential for generating timely mortality data whose importance for pandemic preparedness and response has been recently emphasized. As demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, research is central to ensure continued innovation and improvement, and to provide opportunities to reflect and learn.

    We hope in the future to develop this work further to embed and develop critical applied research capacity within countries and at the implementation level – to ensure we can really get everyone in the picture.

    Tanja Sejersen is a Statistician; Nicola Richards is Consultant, ESCAP; Victoria Fan is Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development.

    IPS UN Bureau


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    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Healthy Homes – A Right of Rural Families in Peru

    Healthy Homes – A Right of Rural Families in Peru

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    Martina Santa Cruz, a peasant farmer from the village of Sacllo in the southern Peruvian Andes highlands department of Cuzco, is pleased with her remodeled kitchen where a skylight was created to let in sunlight and a chimney has been installed to extract smoke from the stove where she cooks most of the family meals. She is disappointed because a wall was stained black when she recently left something on the fire for too long. But her husband is about to paint it, because they like to keep everything clean and tidy. CREDIT: Janet Nina/IPS
    • by Mariela Jara (cuzco, peru)
    • Inter Press Service

    CUZCO, Peru, Jun 15 (IPS) – Adopting a “healthy housing” approach is improving the living conditions of rural Peruvian women like Martina Santa Cruz, a 34-year-old farmer who lives with her husband and two children in the village of Sacllo, 2,959 meters above sea level in the Andes highlands municipality of Calca.

    “I used to have a wood-burning stove without a chimney, and the smoke filled the house. We coughed a lot and our eyes stung and it bothered us a lot,” she told IPS during a long telephone conversation from her village.

    Santa Cruz, her husband, their 13-year-old daughter and their four-year-old son are among the 100 families who live in Sacllo, part of the Calca district and province, one of the 13 provinces that make up the southern Andes department of Cuzco, whose capital of the same name is known worldwide for the cultural and archaeological heritage of the Inca empire.

    With an estimated population of more than 1,380,000 inhabitants, according to 2022 data from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, four percent of the national population of 33 million, Cuzco faces numerous challenges to fostering human development, especially in rural areas where social inequality is at its height.

    According to official figures from May, 41 percent of Peru’s rural population currently lives in poverty, and in Calca, where 55 percent of families are rural, there are high rates of childhood malnutrition and anemia.

    One way Santa Cruz found to improve her family’s health and carve out new opportunities to boost their income was to get involved in the project for healthy housing.

    In 2019, she took part in a contest organized by the municipality of Calca, which enabled her to start remodeling their house, making it healthier and more comfortable.

    Her husband, Manuel Figueroa, is a civil construction worker in the city of Cuzco, about 50 kilometers away by road. She stays home all day in charge of the household, their children, the chores, and productive activities such as tending the crops in their garden and feeding the animals.

    “When I only cooked on the woodstove, I also had to get an arroba (11.5 kg) of firewood a day to be able to keep the fire lit all day long to cook the corn and beans, and the meals in general,” she said.

    In addition to cooking food, the stove provided them with heat, especially in the wintertime when temperatures usually drop to below zero and have become colder due to climate change.

    In the small village of Sacllo, in the Peruvian municipality of Calca, Martina Santa Cruz poses with her two children, proud of having a healthy home that has improved the family's living conditions. The house has been plastered with clay and has two stoves and a wooden balcony on the second floor where the bedrooms are located. CREDIT: Janet Nina/IPS
    In the small village of Sacllo, in the Peruvian municipality of Calca, Martina Santa Cruz (L) poses with her two children, proud of having a healthy home that has improved the family’s living conditions. The house has been plastered with clay and has two stoves and a wooden balcony on the second floor where the bedrooms are located. CREDIT: Janet Nina/IPS

    Healthy rural homes and communities

    Jhabel Guzmán, an agronomist with extensive experience in healthy housing projects in different areas of Calca province, told IPS that the sustainability of the initiative lies in the fact that it incorporates the aspect of generating income.

    “It is not enough to propose changing or upgrading stoves, improving order in the home or providing hygiene services; rural families need means to combat poverty,” he said.

    Of the projects he has been involved in, the ones that have proven to be sustainable in time are those in which, together with improvements in relation to health, the transformation of the homes contributed to generating income through activities such as gardens, coops and sheds for small livestock, and experiential tourism, expanding the impact to the broader community.

    The case of Santa Cruz and her family is heading in that direction. Their original home was built by her husband in 2013 with the support of a master builder and some neighbors, a total of eight people, who finished it in a month. They used local materials such as stones, earth, adobe and wooden poles.

    But the two-story home was not plastered, which made it colder. In addition, it was not well-designed: the small livestock were in cramped pens, the bedrooms were crowded together on the ground floor, the stove had no chimney and the house was very dark.

    Their participation in the healthy homes initiative marked the start of many changes.

    Peruvian peasant farmer Martina Santa Cruz (R) sits with her mother (2nd-L) and her two children in the brightly lit kitchen-dining room where she cooks with gas. CREDIT: Courtesy of Martina Santa Cruz
    Peruvian peasant farmer Martina Santa Cruz (R) sits with her mother (2nd-L) and her two children in the brightly lit kitchen-dining room where she cooks with gas. CREDIT: Courtesy of Martina Santa Cruz

    “We plastered the house with clay, it turned out smooth and nice, and we painted a sun and a hummingbird (on the wall outside). In the kitchen I installed a wooden cabinet, we made a skylight in the roof and covered it with transparent roofing sheets to let the sunlight in, and we made a chimney for the smoke from the stove and fireplace,” said Santa Cruz.

    “It feels good. There is no smoke anymore, I can keep things tidier, there is more light, the clay makes the house warmer, and my small animals, who live next door, are growing in number,” she said..

    She also created a space for a gas cylinder stove and a dining room that she uses when there are guests and she needs more cooking power than just the woodstove, to prepare the food in less time.

    Due to traditional gender roles, Peruvian women are still responsible for caretaking and housework, which take more time in rural areas due to precarious housing conditions and less access to water, among other factors, reducing their chances for studying, recreation, or community organization activities, for example.

    Building large coops with small covered sheds with divisions for her guinea pigs and chickens made it easier for Santa Cruz to clean and feed them, therefore saving her time, which she aims to use for future gastronomic activities: cooking food for a small restaurant that she plans to build on her property.

    She explained that she has 150 guinea pigs, rodents that are highly prized in the Andes highlands diet, which provide her family with nutritious meat as well as a source of extra income that she uses to buy fruit and other food.

    A typical, unhealthy house in rural Peru where cooking is done using firewood in a closed room without a chimney, which causes smoke to spread throughout the house and damages the health of the families. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
    A typical, unhealthy house in rural Peru where cooking is done using firewood in a closed room without a chimney, which causes smoke to spread throughout the house and damages the health of the families. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

    Improving quality of life

    Agronomist Berta Tito, from the Cuzco-based non-governmental organization Center for the Development of the Ayllu Peoples (Cedep Ayllu, which means community in the Quechua language), highlighted the importance of healthy housing in rural areas, such as Sacllo and others in the province of Calca, in a conversation with IPS.

    She said they prevent lung diseases among family members, particularly women who inhale carbon dioxide by being in direct contact with the woodstove, while reducing pollution and improving mental health, especially of children.

    “Rural families have the right to decent housing that provides them with quality of life and guarantees their health, safety, recreation and the means to feed themselves,” Tito said.

    Berta Tito (C) stands in a greenhouse garden during a work day with peasant farmers from highland areas of Cuzco in Peru’s southern Andes. The agronomist from Cuzco stressed the importance of rural families accessing healthy homes as part of their rights. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
    Berta Tito (C) stands in a greenhouse garden during a work day with peasant farmers from highland areas of Cuzco in Peru’s southern Andes. The agronomist from Cuzco stressed the importance of rural families accessing healthy homes as part of their rights. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

    She said the project requires property planning, in which families commit to a vision of what they want to achieve in the future and in what timeframe. “And viewed holistically, this includes access to renewable energy,” she added.

    In Santa Cruz’s house, the different areas are now well-organized: the ground floor is for cooking and other activities and the four bedrooms, one for each member of the family, are located on the second floor and are all lined with a beautiful wooden veranda.

    At the moment she is frustrated that she left something on the woodstove too long, which stained the nearest wall black. But she and her husband have plans to paint it again soon, because the family enjoys having clean walls.

    In addition to her two cooking areas, with the woodstove and the gas cylinder, she has a garden on the land next to her house, where she grows vegetables like onions, carrots, peas and zucchini, which she uses in their daily diet. And she is pleased because she can be certain of their quality, since the family fertilizes the land with the manure from their guinea pigs and chickens “which eat a completely natural diet.”

    Future plans include fencing the yard and expanding an area to build a small restaurant. “That is my future project, to dedicate myself to gastronomy, cooking dishes based on the livestock I raise. I have the kitchen and the woodstove and oven and I can serve more people. But I will get there little by little,” she said confidently.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Menstrual Health and Hygiene Is Unaffordable for Poor Girls and Women in Latin America

    Menstrual Health and Hygiene Is Unaffordable for Poor Girls and Women in Latin America

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    Young women from the Brazilian state of Bahia attend an informational campaign which also hands out menstrual hygiene products. Poverty and the lack of adequate information on this subject affect millions of girls, adolescents and adult women. CREDIT: Government of Bahia
    • by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
    • Inter Press Service

    CARACAS, May 26 (IPS) – This article is part of IPS coverage of Menstrual Hygiene Day celebrated on May 28.Menstrual hygiene management is elusive for millions of poor women and girls in Latin America, who suffer because their living conditions make it difficult or impossible for them to access resources and services that could make menstruation a simple normal part of life.

    “When my period comes, I miss class for three or four days. My family can’t afford to buy the sanitary napkins that my sister and I need. We use cloths for the blood, although they give me an uncomfortable rash,” says Omaira*, a 15-year-old high school student.

    From her low-income neighborhood of Brisas del Sur, in Ciudad Guayana, 500 kilometers southeast of Caracas, she speaks to IPS by phone: “We can’t buy pills to relieve our pain either. And my period is irregular, it doesn’t come every month, but there are no medical services here for me to go and treat that.”

    In Venezuela, “one in four women does not have menstrual hygiene products and they improvise unhygienic alternatives, such as old clothes, cloths, cardboard or toilet paper to make pads that function as sanitary napkins,” activist Natasha Saturno, with the Solidarity Action NGO, tells IPS.

    “The big problem with these improvised products is that they can cause, at best, discomfort and embarrassment, and at worst, infections that compromise their health,” says Saturno, director of enforceability of rights at the NGO that conducts health assistance and documentation programs and surveys.

    Campaigns that adult and young women have carried out in Mexico and Colombia demanding the right to menstrual health managed to get the authorities to eliminate the value added tax on essential feminine hygiene products. CREDIT: Nora Hinojo/UN Mexico
    Campaigns that adult and young women have carried out in Mexico and Colombia demanding the right to menstrual health managed to get the authorities to eliminate the value added tax on essential feminine hygiene products. CREDIT: Nora Hinojo/UN Mexico

    Universal problem, comprehensive approach

    Is this a local, focalized problem? Not at all: “On any given day, more than 300 million women worldwide are menstruating.  In total, an estimated 500 million lack access to menstrual products and adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene management (MHM),” states a World Bankstudy.

    “Today more than ever we need to bring visibility to the situation of women and girls who do not have access to and education about menstrual hygiene. Communication makes the difference,” said Hugo González, representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Peru.

    UNFPA says there is broad agreement on what girls and women need for good menstrual health, and argues that comprehensive approaches that combine education with infrastructure and with products and efforts to combat stigma are most successful in achieving good menstrual health and hygiene.

    The essential elements are: safe, acceptable, and reliable supplies to manage menstruation; privacy for changing the materials; safe and private washing facilities; and information to make appropriate decisions.

    UNFPA’s theme this year for international Menstrual Hygiene Day, which is celebrated every May 28, is “Making menstruation a normal fact of life by 2030”, the target date for compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the international community at the United Nations.

    United Nations Population Fund workers prepare packages of menstrual hygiene items for women from poor communities in Central America. The cost of some of these products makes them unaffordable for many families. CREDIT: UNFPA
    United Nations Population Fund workers prepare packages of menstrual hygiene items for women from poor communities in Central America. The cost of some of these products makes them unaffordable for many families. CREDIT: UNFPA

    The pink tax

    Nine out of 31 countries in the region consider menstrual hygiene products essential, which makes them exempt from value added tax or reduced VAT, according to the study “Sexist Taxes in Latin America” ??by Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

    After a “Tax-free Menstruation” campaign, in 2018 Colombia became the first country in the Americas to eliminate VAT – 16 percent – on menstrual hygiene products. Its neighbor Venezuela still charges 16 percent VAT, and Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay charge VAT between 18 and 22 percent on such products.

    Colombia was joined by Ecuador, Guyana, Jamaica, Mexico – where street demonstrations were held against charging VAT on menstrual products – Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. Other countries have reduced VAT, such as Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay and Peru, while in Brazil VAT differs between states and averages 7 percent.

    The so-called “pink tax” obviously affects the price of menstrual hygiene products such as disposable and reusable sanitary pads and menstrual cups, which becomes especially burdensome in countries with high inflation and depreciated currencies, such as Argentina and Venezuela.

    According to the average price of the cheapest brands, ten disposable sanitary pads can cost just under a dollar in Mexico, 1.50 dollar in Argentina or Brazil, 1.60 dollar in Colombia, Peru or Venezuela, and almost two dollars in Costa Rica.

    “It’s an important problem,” Saturno points out, “in a country like Venezuela, where the majority of the population lives in poverty and the minimum wage – although it has been increased with some stipends – is still just five dollars a month.”

    Adult women, young women and girls participate in a session to share information and experiences organized by the Colombian association Menstruating Princesses, which emphasizes the importance of education to combat taboos and make menstruation a normal, stress-free experience. CREDIT: Menstruating Princesses
    Adult women, young women and girls participate in a session to share information and experiences organized by the Colombian association Menstruating Princesses, which emphasizes the importance of education to combat taboos and make menstruation a normal, stress-free experience. CREDIT: Menstruating Princesses

    Hostile environment, scarce education

    “If you often can’t buy sanitary pads, that’s the smallest problem. The worst thing is the shame you feel if you go to work and the cloth fails to keep your clothes free of blood, or if you catch an infection,” Nancy *, who at the age of 45 has been an informal sector worker in numerous occupations and trades in Caracas, told IPS.

    The mother of four young people lives in Gramoven, a poor neighborhood in the northwest of the capital. Her two unmarried daughters, ages 18 and 22, have had experiences similar to Nancy’s on their way to school, in the neighborhood, on the bus, and on the subway.

    “The thing is, the period is not seen as something natural, boys and men see it as something dirty, at work they sometimes do not understand that if you are in pain you have to stay at home,” said Nancy. “And when you work for yourself, you have to go out no matter what, because if you don’t go out, no money comes in.”

    Saturno says that “poverty causes women and adolescent girls to miss days of secondary school or work because they do not have the supplies they need when they menstruate.”

    “It becomes a vicious circle, because their academic or work performance is affected, hindering their chances of developing their full potential and earning a better income,” she adds.

    But the problem “goes far beyond materials, it does not end just because someone obtains the products; it includes education and decent working conditions for women,” psychologist Carolina Ramírez, who runs the educational NGO Menstruating Princesses in the Colombian city of Medellín, tells IPS.

    For this reason, “we do not use the term ‘menstrual poverty’ and speak instead of menstrual dignity, vindicating the need for society, schools, workplaces and States to promote education about menstruation and combat illiteracy in that area,” says Ramírez.

    To illustrate, she mentions the widespread rejection of using tampons and cups “because of the old taboo that the vulva shouldn’t be touched, that the vagina shouldn’t be looked at,” in addition to the fact that many areas and communities in Latin American countries not only lack spaces or tools to sterilize products but often do not have clean water.

    A concern raised by both Saturno and Ramírez is the great vulnerability of migrant women in the region – which has received a flood of six million people from Venezuela over the last 10 years, for example – in terms of menstrual and general health, as well as safety.

    Another worrying issue is women in most Latin American prisons, which are unable to provide adequate menstrual hygiene, since they do not have access to disposable products or the possibility to sterilize reusable supplies.

    Throughout the region, “greater efforts are required to break down taboos that violate fundamental rights to health, education, work, and freedom of movement, so that menstruation can be a stress-free human experience,” Ramírez says.

    *Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the interviewees.

    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Population Denialism is Reminiscent of Climate Denialism

    Population Denialism is Reminiscent of Climate Denialism

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    • Opinion by Kirsten Stade (st paul, minnesota, usa)
    • Inter Press Service

    ST PAUL, Minnesota, USA, May 25 (IPS) – A new study estimates that global heating will push billions of people outside the comfortable range of temperature and weather in which we have evolved.

    While coverage of the study notes that rapid emissions cuts could greatly reduce the number of people forced to live amid unprecedented extremes, it fails to mention the obvious: that reducing our population would have the same effect.

    Not long ago, the idea that human population growth drives both human suffering and environmental decline was considered common sense. That changed in the 1990s in the wake of several egregious population control programs, ranging from China’s one-child policy to forced sterilizations in China, India, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.

    Today, the mere mention of population growth in connection with environmental protection or human well-being gets demonized as “neo-Malthusian” or “eugenicist” – notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of efforts to lower fertility, whether to alleviate poverty or to reduce pressure on resources, have been rights-based and voluntary.

    What is most troubling about this mischaracterization is that it deflects attention from the enormous violations of reproductive rights that occur in the name of increasing reproduction.

    Pronatalism — the social pressures, religious doctrine, and government policies designed to induce people to have more children – has long been the most prevalent form of reproductive coercion.

    Impressed upon people by family members, religious leaders, and politicians pursuing racist, nationalist, military, and/or economic agendas, pronatalism shows up through abortion bans and alarmist messaging that promotes childbirth for certain ethnic groups. The common thread is treating people as reproductive vessels for external agendas.

    Over 218 million women worldwide who want to avoid pregnancy have an unmet need for contraception. This troubling reality is the result of both simple unavailability of contraceptives, and of deep-seated pronatalist attitudes–often held by husbands and other family members- that make it impossible for women to use them.

    When women are expected to produce large families regardless of their own wants, pronatalism not only denies their reproductive autonomy; it also worsens poverty and damages the environment. A new study by the Swedish Research Council debunks the stubborn misconception that population growth has a negligible effect on climate change since it’s concentrated in low-consumption countries.

    In fact, the study finds, population growth is the biggest driver of carbon emissions and is canceling out emissions reductions made through renewables and efficiency. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), population growth is one of the “strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade.”

    Population growth and resultant agricultural expansion drive water scarcity, soil depletion, deforestation, land degradation, and damage to ecosystems that humans depend on. The connection between population growth and environmental impacts is clear, yet frequently denied, and this denial has real consequences.

    Since addressing population growth fell out of favor in the 1990s, international funding for family planning declined 35 percent and falls far short of meeting global need.

    Population denialism is reminiscent of climate denialism in its disregard for science and its failure to acknowledge the suffering of millions. Population deniers invoke Malthus and Margaret Sanger to invalidate population concerns by associating them with infamous sources, while ignoring unimpeachable ones like the IPCC.

    While Malthus’ doomism and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb failed to foresee new agricultural technologies that averted the famine and population crash they predicted, population denialists make the opposite mistake.

    They adhere to a cornucopian faith that technology will magically solve our problems, and assume that new low-carbon energy sources and unproven interventions like carbon capture will fix everything.

    They won’t.

    In fact green tech raises serious environmental and social problems of its own. Solar and wind energy and the infrastructure for transmitting the power they generate requires far more land area than fossil fuel plants, with consequences for wildlife and its habitat. Lithium-ion batteries in electric cars and e-bikes use cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by low-wage workers subjected to toxic dumping and en masse displacement.

    Population deniers are rightly concerned with equitable development of the world’s impoverished regions, but development will mean more emissions, more water use, more habitat destruction.

    If current trends continue, the global middle class is projected to reach 5 billion by 2030. To enable all people to attain a reasonable standard of living without further straining natural systems, we must make access to family planning for all people a matter of urgent international concern.

    The good news is that doing so reaps rewards not only for the planet but for human well-being. In every culture where fertility rates have declined, even staggering government investment in pronatalist incentives is insufficient to compel women to go back to the high birth rates they have left behind – an indication that women have a latent wish for low fertility.

    This suggests that the path forward lies in acknowledging both the human and environmental toll of high birth rates and resultant population growth, and giving women the universal, free access to contraceptives and abortion care that will enable them to realize their reproductive wishes.

    Kirsten Stade is a conservation biologist and communications manager of the NGO Population Balance

    IPS UN Bureau


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    © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Parliamentarians Ask G7 Hiroshima Summit to Support Human Security and Vulnerable Communities

    Parliamentarians Ask G7 Hiroshima Summit to Support Human Security and Vulnerable Communities

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    Parliamentarians attending the Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development Toward the 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit. Credit: APDA
    • by Cecilia Russell (johannesburg)
    • Inter Press Service

    JOHANNESBURG, May 09 (IPS) – Parliamentarians from more than 30 countries agreed to send a strong message to the G7 Hiroshima Summit in Japan later this year, focusing on human security and support of vulnerable communities, including women, girls, youth, aging people, migrants, and indigenous people, among others.

    The wide-ranging declaration also called on governments to support active political and economic participation for women and girls, enhancing and implementing legislation that addresses gender-based violence (GBV) and eradicating harmful practices like child, early, and forced marriages. During discussions and in the declaration, a clear message emerged that budgetary requirements for Universal Health Care (UHC) should be prioritized and the exceptional work done by health workers during the pandemic be recognized.

    In his keynote address, Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio reminded delegates that Covid-19 had exposed the “fragility of the global health architecture and underscored the need for UHC.”

    Kishida said that the central vision of the G7 Hiroshima Summit was to emphasize the importance of addressing human security – through building global health architecture, including the “governance for prevention, preparedness, and response to public health crises, including finance. We believe it is important for the G7 to actively and constructively contribute to efforts to improve international governance, secure sustainable financing and strengthen international norms.”

    Apart from contributing to resilient, equitable, and sustainable UHC, health innovation was needed to promote a “more effective global ecosystem to enable rapid research and development and equitable access to infectious disease crisis medicines … and to support aging society,” Kishida said.

    Former Prime Minister of Japan Fukuda Yasuo, Chair of APDA, and Honorary Chair of JPFP said this conference and its declaration would follow in a tradition of delivering strong messages to the G7 that improving reproductive health was crucial to the development and the future of a planet which now had 8 million people living on it.

    “International Community is becoming increasingly confrontational and divided, and there is the emergence of a national leader who is threatening the use of nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons have been used in the nearly 80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We must work together to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, which can take many precious lives and people’s daily lives. In this instance, I would like you to search for the path toward appeasement and not division. We must keep all channels of dialogue open so as to ease tension,” Fukuda asked of the conference.

    While calling on parliamentarians to work together to address challenges, Fukuda also expressed concern about the widening inequities caused by Covid-19 and climate change and noted: “This network of parliamentarians on population and development has been a vital resource for parliamentarians who share the same concern for not only their own countries but for the entire planet and future generations.”

    Kamikawa Yoko, MP Japan, Chair of JPFP, said that with a world population of 8 billion, it was essential to “realize a society where no one is left behind … and Japan would share its experiences of being on the frontlines of an aging society with declining birth rates. “We are living in an aging society … and given these challenges in Japan, we will try to share with you our experience and lessons through our diplomacy while trying to deepen our discussions and exchanges to seek solutions.”

    Japan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa said it was essential for all to cooperate during the “Anthropocene era, when human activities have promised to have a major impact on the global environment, global issues that transcend national borders, such as climate change, and the spread of infectious diseases, including Covid-19 are becoming more and more prevalent.”

    He reminded the delegates that at the center of Japan’s economic growth post World War II was mainly through health promotion and employment policies.

    Delegates of the Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development Toward the 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit agreed to send a strong message on human security to the Summit. Credit: APDA
    Delegates of the Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development Toward the 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit agreed to send a strong message on human security to the Summit. Credit: APDA

    Director of the Division for Communications and Strategic Partnerships of UNFPA, Ian McFarlane, said it was not about the “numbers of people but the rights of the people that matter. It’s not about whether we are too many or too few, but whether women and girls can decide if, when, and how many children to have.”

    A recent UNFPA report indicated that nearly half of the women across the globe could not exercise their rights and choices, their bodily autonomy, and expressed hope that policies in the future continue to focus on humanity and universal human rights.

    Despite being close to the 30th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), the conference heard that much still needed to be done regarding women’s rights.

    New Zealand MP and co-chair of AFPPD Standing Committee on Gender Equality and Women Empowerment, Angela Warren-Clark, reminded the audience that women still only held 26 percent of parliamentarian seats globally. While women make up 70 percent of the workforce in the health sector, only 25 percent have senior leadership positions.

    “It is women in this pandemic who bore the increased burden of unpaid work at home as schools were closed, and it is girls and the poorest families who were taken out of school and forced into early marriages … We believe that if women had an equal say in decision-making during the pandemic, some of these mistakes would have been avoided.”

    Baroness Elizabeth Barker, MP from the United Kingdom, told parliamentarians their role was to ensure that “no person on earth, from the head of G7 country to a poor person in a village, can say that they do not know what gender equality is. And they do not know what gender violence is.”

    Barker suggested they use international standards, like the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against Women, to compare countries. “And you know that if your country doesn’t come out very well, they really don’t like it.”

    She pointed to two successes in the UK, including stopping virginity testing and tackling the practice of forced marriages. She also warned the delegates that there was a right-wing campaign aimed at destroying human rights gained, and they chose different battlegrounds. The overturning of abortion rights in the United States in the Roe vs. Wade case was an example, as was the anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda.

    Hassan Omar, MP from Djibouti, gave a host of achievements in his country, including ensuring that women occupy 25 percent roles in politics and the state administration and the growing literacy of women numbers in his country.

    Risa Hontiveros, MP Philippines, painted a bleak picture of the impact of Covid in her country.

    Hontiveros said GBV increased during Covid and extended to the digital space.

    “The Internet has become a breeding ground for predators and cyber criminals to prey on children, especially young women, and girls. The online sexual abuse and exploitation of children … has become so prevalent in the Philippines that we have been tagged as the global hotspot.”

    In a desperate attempt to provide for their families, even parents produced “exploitative material of their own children and sold them online to pedophiles abroad.”

    To address these, she filed a gender-responsive and inclusive Emergency Management Act bill, which seeks to address the gender-differentiated needs of women and girls, because they were “disproportionately affected in times of emergencies.”

    Former MP from Afghanistan Khadija Elham’s testimony united many in the conference and even resulted in proposals from the floor to include a condemnation of the Taliban’s women’s policies.

    Elham said GBV had increased since the Taliban took over – women were forced to wear a burqa in public, they were not allowed to work, and those who wish to “learn science or (get an) education are forced to continue their studies and hidden places like basements.”

    If their secret schools are exposed, they face torture and imprisonment. During the last two months, 260 people, including 50 women, were publicly whipped – a clear violation of their human rights. Women’s representation in political life has been banned, and women are no longer allowed to work in NGOs – and it has been “550 days since women could attend high schools and universities.”

    She called on the international community, the United Nations, to pressure the Taliban to restore women’s work and education rights.

    Nakayama Maho, Director of the Peacebuilding Program at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, announced new research on factors contributing to men’s propensity to GBV. The research found that the higher a man’s educational attainment, the lower the level of violence. There were also lower levels of violence with “positive” masculinity – such as a man being employed, married, and capable of protecting his family. Men who experienced violence during times of conflict tended to support violence to instill discipline, or protect women and communities.

    Dr Roopa Dhatt, Executive Director of Women in Global Health, summed up this critical session by saying, “Equal leadership for women in all fields is a game changer, particularly in politics and health.”

    Japan’s Health, Labour and Welfare Minister, Kato Katsunobu, noted during his closing address that the G7 countries “share the recognition that investment in people is not an expense, but an investment… and as you invest in people you can create a virtuous cycle between workers well-being and social and economic activities.”

    He said Japan had a lot to offer concerning aging populations.

    “Japan has been promoting the establishment of a comprehensive community-based care system so that people can continue to live in their own way in their own neighborhood until the end of their lives and is in the position to provide knowledge to the G7 countries and other countries who will be facing (an aging population) in the future.”

    Dr Alvaro Bermejo, Director-General of IPPF, commended the conference and said he was “thankful” that the conference declaration would tell G7 governments to set an example. “Marginalized and excluded populations are at the heart of human security and can only be achieved in solidarity, and that message from this conference is clear.”

    Professor Takemi Keizo, MP Japan, Chair of AFPPD, summed up the proceeding by saying that parliamentarians as representatives of the electorate were vital to creating a “positive momentum in this global community and overcoming so many difficult issues.”

    Takemi elaborated on some issues facing the world now, including climate change and military conflicts, but as parliamentarians, there was the opportunity to “build up the new basis of the global governance, which can be very beneficial.”

    NOTE: Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development Toward the 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit was organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD), and the Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP).

    It was supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (MOFA), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Japan Trust Fund (JTF), and Keidanren-Japan Business Federation in cooperation with the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

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  • Mercury Project Puts Great UNEP Treaty at Risk

    Mercury Project Puts Great UNEP Treaty at Risk

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    Charlie Brown
    • Opinion by Charlie Brown (lome, togo)
    • Inter Press Service

    LOME, Togo, Apr 26 (IPS) – The writer is President, World Alliance for Mercury-Free DentistryThe Minamata Convention on Mercury, a stellar success story to date, has been favorably compared to the prototype success story for a treaty on toxins: the Montreal Protocol. Both had a single focused mission; both gained universal support across the globe; both matched technological innovation with environmental science to discard old polluting methods.

    But emerging after hidden negotiations with the mercury lobby is a GEF project with UNEP endorsement which ignores, if not outright defies, the will of the Parties. As COP5 approaches, here is the test case on whether Minamata continues to move our small planet toward an end to anthropogenic mercury—or become mired in corporate capture.

    For the past decade, the Parties repeatedly rejected the agenda of the dental mercury lobby—the dentists who still cling to the 19th century tooth-unfriendly pollutant amalgam, despite it being 50% mercury and a health risk to their own dental nurses; and the waste industry, whose obvious self-interest is to keep amalgam going into perpetuity to sell their equipment.

    Charlie BrownThe mercury lobby wanted a treaty focused on amalgam waste; the Parties said NO, this treaty is about use, not about waste. The mercury lobby wanted access to implant mercury fillings in all children, especially those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; the Parties said NO, and adopted the Children’s Amendment at COP 4—which enters into legal force on 28 September 2023.

    So, the dental mercury lobby met repeatedly with GEF and UNEP staff in sessions closed to the Parties . . . closed to the Minamata Secretariat . . . closed to the Minamata Bureau . . . closed to the dozens of CSOs who have actively pushed for a treaty to phase out anthropogenic mercury.

    Violating their own standards, GEF and UNEP constructed (or allowed without objection) a project that bypasses the Children’s Amendment entirely in favor of trying to redirect the mission of the treaty from use to waste—the very position repeatedly rejected by the Parties since 2013.

    Separators do not sell well because they do not and cannot eliminate mercury waste; they only catch the mercury in the dentist office—not the mercury implanted in people—and they require a massive infrastructure to ensure that even that partial waste, from dental offices, is properly disposed of. Only one solution ends mercury waste from amalgam: the switch to mercury-free dentistry.

    The #1 beneficiary of this Greenwashing is the world’s only major publicly traded dental products maker expanding sales of amalgam: Southern Dental Industries (SDI) of Melbourne. While its competitors exited or scaled back amalgam—or never made it in the first place—SDI seized their exits as its opportunity to corner the amalgam market.

    Just six weeks ago, in a call to its shareholders, SDI’s CEO boasted about its huge increases in amalgam sales, detailed its entry into new markets to sell amalgam, and affirmed her personal goal of ‘maximizing’ amalgam sales! Wriggling into a GEF-UNEP amalgam “reduction” project while increasing amalgam sales, SDI is the sole dental products company in a project partnership role—hence given market access denied to their mercury-free competitors in nations on three continents. Here is a classic case of Corporate Capture!

    GEF’s requirement of stakeholder participation at the earliest stage was papered over via a legerdemain: a false claim that the NGOs are participating. Falsely listed as participants are the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, Bangladesh-based Environment and Social Development Organization, Germany-based European Network for Environmental Medicine, Philippines-based BAN Toxics, Nepal-based Center for Public Health and Environmental Development, Cameroun-based Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement, and U.S.-based Consumers for Dental Choice.

    Equally troubling, RAP-AL Uruguay, who leads the campaign for mercury-free dentistry for Latin America, is preliminarily assigned to promote separator sales—a goal anathema to its very mission.

    UNEP top brass in Nairobi and GEF top brass in Washington need to act:

      • First, to determine who on their staffs submitted the plethora of false claims of CSO participation;
      • Second, to kill this project, so that the Minamata Convention on Mercury does not become the treaty about corporate capture and greenwashing;
      • Third, to use GEF funding to enact the will of the Parties as stated unequivocally in its 2022 Amendment: stop placing mercury fillings, for all time and all regions, in children and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

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  • During Ramadan Let’s Focus on Solidarity with Future Generations

    During Ramadan Let’s Focus on Solidarity with Future Generations

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    UN Resident Coordinator in Indonesia Valerie Julliand plants trees in Bogor, West Java. Credit: UN Indonesia
    • Opinion by Valerie Julliand (jakarta, indonesia)
    • Inter Press Service

    JAKARTA, Indonesia, Apr 12 (IPS) – As Ramadan continues through next week, the world’s 2 billion Muslims will focus on the core values of the holy month: helping the poor and committing oneself to the service of others.

    These are values that are at the heart of many religions – and also are core values of the United Nations. The UN, including here in Indonesia, works to serve those less fortunate, under the motto to Leave No One Behind.

    Committing oneself to the service of others includes future generations. Taking care of our planet to make sure it remains habitable and can support life on earth as we know it for those who come after us is one of our key responsibilities.

    “Future generations” refers to people who will come after us, those who are not yet born. More than 10 billion people are projected to be born before the end of this century alone, predominantly in countries that are currently low- or middle-income.

    As the global population is expected to grow, we need to ensure that sufficient resources remain available to them. The lives of the future generations, and their ability to effectively enjoy human rights and meet their needs are strongly determined by today’s actions.

    Do we over-exploit the resources of the planet or do we only take as much as we really need and use resources sustainably, bearing in mind the generations to come?

    At a time when millions of Indonesians are going to gather for iftar with friends and family evening after evening, let us pause for a moment to think not only about those who have passed away but also about those not yet with us.

    As the UN Secretary General’s Our Common Agenda policy brief “To think and act for future generations”, released last week, makes it abundantly clear, stopping climate change and pollution ARE our prime tasks when it comes to serving those not yet born. And the world is failing in these tasks – and needs to do more, much more.

    Another UN report, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just last week, points out that we are currently on track to a global warming of 2.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels. That is much above the Paris Agreement’s goal to keep global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. Countries have made commitments to reduce emissions but are not fulfilling them.

    Indonesia is among the few countries that heeded the call to strengthen their Paris Agreement commitments last year. In November, the government announced a new set of targets, with more ambitious climate change mitigation goals than before, including a commitment to generate over a third of the country’s energy from renewables as early as 2030.

    The UN in Indonesia supports the government in its plans to meet climate commitments and balance the needs of current and future generations through development that is sustainable. We advise the government on climate financing.

    We support PLN in modernizing its Java-Madura-Bali power grid, so that it can take in more electricity from intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind. We support Transjakarta in its plans to convert its 10,000-strong bus fleet to electric buses.

    Late last year, the government, the UN and development partners signed the National Blue Agenda Actions Partnership in support of Indonesia’s plans to create a more sustainable ocean-based economy.

    Eight UN agencies and several donors work in tandem with the government to ensure that the sea can provide livelihoods to coastal communities not only today but also tomorrow.

    A sustainable blue economy is vital for Indonesia as it helps boost revenues from ocean-based activities while conserving marine biodiversity and the health of the ocean through the restoration, sustainable use and protection of marine ecosystems.

    The world needs more partnerships like this, so that we can safeguard the planet for those who are not yet born. A UN General Assembly resolution adopted last September calls for a Summit of the Future in 2024, where world leaders are expected to agree on multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow, strengthening global governance for both present and future generations.

    May the values embodied by Ramadan—peace, compassion and generosity—prevail during this holy month, and throughout the year, and the years, decades and centuries to come.

    Valerie Julliand is UN Resident Coordinator in Indonesia.

    This article was originally published as an oped in the Jakarta Post.

    Source: DCO

    The Development Coordination Office (DCO) manages and oversees the Resident Coordinator system and serves as secretariat of the UN Sustainable Development Group. Its objective is to support the capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of Resident Coordinators and the UN development system as a whole in support of national efforts for sustainable development.

    DCO is based in New York, with regional teams in Addis Ababa, Amman, Bangkok, Istanbul and Panama, supporting 130 Resident Coordinators and 132 Resident Coordinator’s offices covering 162 countries and territories.

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  • Platitudes not Enough: Urgent Investment Needed in Health Workforce

    Platitudes not Enough: Urgent Investment Needed in Health Workforce

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    A nurse walks into a hospital ward in Janakpur in Dhanusha District in southern Nepal. Credit: UNICEF/Rupadhayay
    • Opinion by Roopa Dhatt, Susannah Schaefer (washington dc / new york)
    • Inter Press Service

    WASHINGTON DC / NEW YORK, Apr 07 (IPS) – As World Health Worker Week draws to a close on April 7, health organizations from around the world have been celebrating women’s vital role in the health workforce and sharing stories about the enormous value they bring to all areas of health and care.

    But platitudes are not enough. It’s time for global health leaders to step up and turn these words into action.

    Globally, women make up almost 70% of the global health workforce and 90% of the frontline health workforce, contributing over $3 trillion to global health each year. The health systems in which they work play a significant role in remote and marginalized groups’ access to health, especially in times of crisis. Despite this, the challenges faced by community health workers (CHWs) are frequently overlooked.

    CHWs play a critical role in providing care to vulnerable populations, but they are undervalued and accorded lower status in the “informal” workforce. Upwards of six million women are estimated to be either unpaid or grossly underpaid despite working in core health systems roles and just 14% of CHWs in Africa are salaried.

    It is unjust that global health systems rely on the labor of unpaid women who are creating social and economic value that is uncounted and unrewarded. Unpaid work reduces women’s economic security and increases their lifetime poverty.

    It also weakens health systems. The pandemic has demonstrated the need for strong and resilient health systems, but there can be no global health security while health systems are subsidized by some of the world’s poorest women.

    Women health workers continue to make huge sacrifices to work on the frontlines. They went door-to-door educating households on the COVID-19 virus, tracing contacts, and delivering vaccines.

    At last year’s World Health Assembly, India’s one million women community health workers known as accredited social health activists (ASHAs) were honored for successfully protecting the health of millions of people during the pandemic.

    At the start of the pandemic, however, reports were coming out of India about the unacceptable risk faced by ASHA workers who were being sent into communities without lack of infection controls and facing stigma and abuse as perceived vectors of the virus.

    In 2020, they launched widespread street protests and strikes to demand better pay, protection, and working conditions. ASHA workers may have been acknowledged as global health leaders, but they continue to be underpaid with small performance-based honorariums. They are still fighting for a fair and regular salary and the benefits that come with formal sector roles.

    Pre-pandemic the World Health Organization (WHO) projected a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, which COVID-19 now has deepened. Health workers lost their lives to the virus and significant numbers are unable to work, affected by ‘long-COVID’. There have been increased reports of violence towards women health workers during the pandemic–from colleagues as well as patients and their families.

    In a 2018 report on health policy and system support to optimize CHW programs, one of the primary WHO recommendations included fair remuneration for CHWs, but this is still far from the norm. When CHWs are compensated, it often fails to align with WHO recommendations, which call for financial packages that are commensurate with the demands of the job, the level of complexity, the training required, and the hours worked.

    This World Health Workers Week, we come together with our partners to call on global health leaders, governments and policy makers to disrupt the status quo. We believe that every person, regardless of gender, should have access to quality health and care and opportunities to thrive.

    We know a fairly-compensated health workforce–alongside training, supervision, and safe working environments–leads to improved productivity, wider access to healthcare, and better patient outcomes.

    The gender pay gap in health of 24% is one of the largest of any sector. We are calling on leaders to take measures to close that gap. We stand with our partners in calling for and focusing on transformative change, including gender-equal leadership in global health and a new social contract for women health workers centered on the need for fair and equal pay and safe and decent work.

    There is increasing urgency in both high-income and low- and-middle income countries to prioritize changes in guidelines, funding, and policies. After three years of COVID-19, women health workers, who have been the majority in patient-facing roles, are burned out and traumatized.

    Understandably, women are leaving the health sector at all levels in a ‘Great Resignation,’ which threatens to deepen the global health worker shortage crisis.

    Addressing these injustices is a moral obligation and an economic necessity. Investing in health workers is a win-win proposition and will send a message that we recognize and value them as professionals.

    Not only can we restore justice to neglected global health systems, but we can improve the working conditions and pay of health workers, unleashing broader economic benefits.

    We would like to send a clear message that as heads of global health organizations we are committed to building stronger health systems and a more equitable world. Achieving true health equity includes quality care for all–including health workers.

    Dr Roopa Dhatt is Executive Director and Co-Founder Women in Global Health, a fast- growing women-led movement with 47 chapters worldwide.

    Susannah (“Susie”) Schaefer is Executive Vice Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft-focused organization with a sustainable and local model of supporting surgery and other forms of comprehensive cleft care.

    IPS UN Bureau

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  • US Lagging Behind on Funding International Family Planning & Reproductive Health

    US Lagging Behind on Funding International Family Planning & Reproductive Health

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    A group of children smile in Ismail Bhand village in Pakistan’s Shaheed Benazirabad district, Sindh province. Credit: UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani
    • Opinion by Maniza Habib (washington dc)
    • Inter Press Service

    WASHINGTON DC, Mar 28 (IPS) – International family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) are critical to achieving gender equity, but U.S. investment in them is not nearly sufficient to meet the moment.

    The Biden-Harris FY2024 budget request proposes to invest $619.43 million for bilateral FP/RH programs plus $57.5 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)– a total of $676.8 million. That’s 11% more than Congress appropriated last year, and it’s one of the only proposed funding increases in the global health sector this year, yet it’s still just a fraction of what’s needed.

    The fair-share U.S. contribution, i.e. what it would need to contribute proportionately to ensure the all women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have their modern contraception needs met, is calculated to be $1.736 billion.

    Family planning gives people control over their own bodies and futures. At its core, it’s about empowering individuals to make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives, including if, when, and how many children to have, and how far apart to space births.

    Access to family planning enables women to pursue their education and participate more meaningfully in economic and political life.

    These are all necessary components of gender equality. Yet U.S. funding for international FP/RH has stayed flat for a decade while global population, reproductive health needs, and barriers to access have been growing. It is high time for the U.S. to meet its responsibility to help close the gap.

    A group of children smile in Ismail Bhand village in Pakistan’s Shaheed Benazirabad district, Sindh province. Credit: UNICEF/Shehzad Noorani

    There are 923 million women of reproductive age in LMICs who want to avoid pregnancy. About a quarter of those (218 million) have an unmet need for modern contraception. They want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a modern method. Reasons for this vary from government restrictions on accessing contraceptives to service providers refusing to distribute them to having to travel daunting distances to the nearest clinic.

    These hurdles are compounded by gender-based discrimination. For example, stigma surrounding contraceptives and sex make it particularly difficult for young, single women to access services.

    Marginalized groups face discriminatory attitudes in clinics, including in the U.S., where members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, and Black, indigenous, and other people of color are often denied services and resources to meet their family planning needs.

    The world needs much more robust support from the U.S. to overcome these obstacles and pave the way to achieving global gender equality. Due to the lack of sufficient investment to dismantle barriers to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) worldwide, U.S. support for overarching gender equality goals will inevitably be weakened, a new Population Institute report finds.

    Some governments are showing they understand this problem and are changing policies accordingly. For example, President Xiomara Castro of Honduras just lifted a 14-year ban on emergency contraception, which will revolutionize access to FP/RH services. Beginning April 1, the provincial government of British Columbia will provide prescription contraception at no charge.

    The U.S. has a responsibility to lead on global SRHR but ceded its leadership in recent years and is getting left behind. U.S. bilateral and multilateral FP/RH programs have been under attack, especially in the wake of Trump-era restrictive policies.

    The modest increase in FP/RH funding in the current budget proposal shows the Biden-Harris administration recognizes the importance of global SRHR. But it doesn’t reflect the urgency or level of commitment needed.

    At the same time, it undercuts SRHR by including the Helms Amendment, an outdated prohibition on using U.S. foreign assistance funding for abortion as a method of family planning. In practice, implementing the Helms Amendment has meant denying abortions even in instances of rape or incest, or in cases where it would save a woman’s life.

    Failure to aim at U.S. fair-share levels of FP/RH funding in the latest budget proposal is a missed opportunity. Let’s not miss any more. Global population recently passed the 8 billion mark, and the need is growing.

    We can meet the moment by recognizing the fundamental connections between SRHR, gender equality, and sustainable development, and accepting the obligation of the U.S. to lead on achieving them.

    Maniza Habib is Research Associate at the Population Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that supports reproductive health and rights.

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