Tag: Civil Society

"No" to Sex Education Fuels Early Pregnancies in Central America — Global Issues

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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How Nigeria’s Legal System is Failing to Safeguard Widows’ Rights — Global Issues

Nigerian law protects widows, but the reality they face is quite different.
  • by Promise Eze (sokoto, nigeria)
  • Inter Press Service

SOKOTO, NIGERIA, Aug 03 (IPS) – In February this year, Chichi Okonkwo not only lost her husband but was stripped of everything they owned together. Her husband was severely injured in a car accident about a month earlier. Despite being rushed to a hospital in Enugu, where they resided, he succumbed to his injuries weeks later. To compound her grief, Okonkwo’s late husband’s male siblings forcibly entered her home in the city a few hours after his passing, confiscating her husband’s land documents, car, money, clothes, and marriage certificate.

In the wake of these heart-wrenching events, Okonkwo was left with nothing but her six children. The eldest is just 18.

“They took everything my husband and I owned and forcibly evicted me and my children from our home,” laments Okonkwo. “They heartlessly claimed that, as a widow, I had no rights to any of my late husband’s possessions.”

Okonkwo’s children are now out of school because she was a housewife who depended on her husband’s income and is now left with nothing. She revealed that her late husband’s siblings, who seized and were aware of his bank PIN, callously left her with a mere 1 000 naira (approximately USD 2) out of the 2 million naira ($2,600) he had in his account.

Okonkwo said her husband’s relatives swore to drag her to court to challenge her rights, but she cannot afford a lawyer due to her financial situation.

In Nigeria, there are around 15 million widows.

Unfortunately, widows in the country often face the denial of their basic human rights due to traditional and cultural practices rooted in patriarchal beliefs.

According to The World Bank, “In much of Africa, marriage is the sole basis for women’s access to social and economic rights, and these are lost upon divorce or widowhood.”

In a country like Nigeria, where men dominate the economic and political systems, women are often expected to be submissive. The challenges women face are particularly amplified when they become widows, creating a doubly marginalized subgroup. Moreover, this vulnerable position sometimes exposes widows to dehumanizing rituals and harmful practices.

These harmful practices include mourning rites that involve widows sleeping with their deceased husbands’ corpses, shaving of widows’ heads, seclusion, wearing black or white clothes, and being forced to sleep and sit on the floor or mat. Additionally, some widows are coerced into marrying other members of the deceased husband’s family.

Despite laws granting women the right to inherit their husbands’ assets, many widows can still not claim their rightful share of land and property.

Efforts to combat these practices, such as the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act (VAPP) enacted in 2015, have faced challenges in implementation and adoption by all states. According to the law, offenders are subject to a 500,000 naira ($648) fine or two years in prison. But arrests and prosecution of offenders are rare. And gender-based violence has persisted, which includes violence towards widows.

The enforcement of laws against offenders has been hindered by religious and cultural norms that promote silence and suppression of victimization cases. Victims often face threats or pressure from family members, community, or religious leaders whenever they try to report incidents to law enforcement.

Like Okonkwo, Sarah Temidayo’s life took a tragic turn when she lost her husband of four years to lung cancer in 2019. However, her grief was compounded by the actions of her husband’s relatives, who invaded her home in Lagos mere hours after his passing, intent on claiming everything that belonged to him. They even went so far as to take her wedding gown, certificates, and her then-five-year-old daughter’s clothes. Devastated and without recourse, Temitope sought justice through the legal system, but her efforts have yielded no results.

“I did not pick a pin out of my house. I had to start my life all over again,” she says.

Unfortunately, the nightmare did not end there for Temidayo. She was subjected to constant threats from her husband’s mother, who continued to torment her and accuse her of killing her son through witchcraft. These threats escalated to a terrifying climax when assassins attacked her at a bus stop in March 2021. She managed to survive, albeit with six bullets lodged in her leg. Despite reporting the incident to the police, no investigation was conducted, leaving her feeling abandoned by the system meant to protect her.

According to Ifeoma Oguejiofor, a legal practitioner in Southeast Nigeria, widows face challenges in seeking justice due to the understaffed courts, which can cause delays in the resolution of cases. Additionally, the financial burden of hiring a lawyer becomes a significant obstacle for many widows, making it difficult to access proper legal representation to handle their cases.

“There is a significant difference between the laws written in books and the actual pursuit of justice. According to the law, a surviving spouse, whether in a traditional marriage, a long period of cohabitation, or a marriage registered under the act, is entitled to inherit the estate of their deceased spouse. However, achieving justice through the legal system is often a prolonged and costly process, particularly for widows who have already lost a substantial portion of their assets to their husband’s relatives,” she explains.

“It’s high time the government, traditional rulers, and religious clerics enforce laws to protect widows in Nigeria. No woman should be discriminated against because she lost her husband,” says Hope Nwakwesi, the founder of Almanah Hope Foundation, a non-governmental organization focused on supporting Nigerian widows.

Nwakwesi, a widow who lost her police husband in 1994, endured distressing cultural rites, including having her hair shaved and wearing a mourning dress for a year. She faced further hardships as her relatives forcibly took her property, and she was expelled from her workplace and home in the police barracks. Despite seeking help, many, including police officers who offered assistance, demanded sexual favors in return.

Now, Nwakwesi is advocating for a bill in Nigeria’s legislative chamber. The bill aims to eradicate repressive cultural practices against widows and safeguard their fundamental human rights.

“My goal is to get the bill I’m fighting for approved and signed into law by the Senate. The current Violence Against Persons Prohibition Law is too vague and lacks specific clauses for protecting the rights of widows. Once the new bill becomes law, those who discriminate against widows will face arrest and prosecution by law enforcement agencies,” says Nwakwesi.

Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, a civil rights activist and founding director of Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre, noted that “For the government to protect widows effectively, they should review and update existing laws related to widows’ rights to ensure they are comprehensive, enforceable, and in line with international human rights standards.”

“Merely having laws in place is not enough; the government must ensure their effective implementation at all levels of the justice system. This requires training and sensitizing law enforcement officials, judges, and legal practitioners on the rights of widows and the importance of protecting them,” she adds.

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Civil Society Space in Southern Africa Shrinking as Government Repression Rises — Global Issues

  • by Busani Bafana (bulawayo)
  • Inter Press Service

BULAWAYO, Jul 31 (IPS) – Freedom of expression is under threat as governments in Southern Africa have enacted laws restricting civil society organizations, says global rights advocacy organisation, CIVICUS, warning that human rights violations are on the increase globally.

“The state of civil society is unfortunately not improving; civil restrictions continue across the world,” said David Kobe, the advocacy Lead at CIVICUS.

“More than 2 billion people live in countries that are rated as closed, which is the worst rating any country can have – this means that 28 percent of the world’s population are not able to speak out when there is corruption or human rights violations restrictions or cannot write articles as journalists without facing appraisals,” Kobe told IPS in an interview, noting that the organization’s human rights tool is indicating growing suppression of civil space across the world.

The CIVICUS Monitor, a tool accessing the state of civic space in more than 190 countries, provides evidence of restrictions on human rights by governments. The CIVICUS Monitor rates the state of civil space ‘open, ‘repressed’, and ‘closed’ according to each country.

Kobe notes that human rights violations are increasing globally with more restrictions on civil society in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The picture is not different in the Southern Africa region where restrictions on civil space have been continuing, and these have included censorship, violent response to protests and restrictive laws as seen in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe

Closing Civil Society Space

Zimbabwe remains on the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist as attacks on civic space continue ahead of the scheduled 2023 national elections.

Last November, Zimbabwe approved the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Amendment Bill, 2022, known as the Patriotic Act. The law seeks to create the offence of “wilfully damaging the sovereignty and national interest of Zimbabwe” and will essentially criminalise the lobbying of foreign governments to extend or implement sanctions against Zimbabwe or its officials.

Furthermore, the Zimbabwe government gazetted the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill in November 2021, amending the Private Voluntary Organisations Act, which governs non-profit organizations. The main aim of the Bill is to comply with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations to strengthen the country’s legal framework to combat money laundering, financing terrorism and proliferation.

Civil society organizations warn that the Bill could hinder their activities and financing with potential adverse impacts on economic development. Besides, NGOs argue that they are a low-risk sector with no precedence of financing terrorism and money laundering.

Musa Kika, Executive Director of Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, says the PVO will affect the operations of NGOs, including deterring donors from funding PVOs, fearing the money could end up under the grip of the government. Besides, the Bill has a provision giving the Minister of Justice unfettered powers to place under supervision or surveillance, using subjective discretion, those PVOs the Minister deems to be high risk.

“Continued hostility and harassment on the part of the government towards the work of CSOs in the country will thus only result in a hugely detrimental effect on their efforts in advancing the protection of and respect for the basic human rights and freedoms of ordinary Zimbabwean civilians as espoused under Zimbabwe’s Constitution,” Kika said. He noted that civil society organisations were operating in a tough environment in Zimbabwe where the government does not trust them, especially those working in the fields of governance and human rights.

“We have a government that does not want to account,” said Kika. “We have had many human rights activists who have been arrested on flimsy charges…Terrorism finance is being used as a cover, but the motive is to close the democratic space because the government and accountability in human rights and governance are sworn enemies.”

In Zimbabwe, NGOs have, in partnership with the government, supported development, providing a range of services in health, education, social protection, humanitarian assistance, environmental management, emergency response and democracy building.  A research report commissioned by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum in collaboration with the Southern Defenders and Accountability Lab has warned of huge job and financial losses if the Bill is passed into law.

United Nations experts have urged Zimbabwe’s President Emerson Mnangagwa to reject enacting a bill that would severely restrict civic space and the right to freedom of association in the country.

However, President Mnangagwa has defended the passage of the PVO Bill, vowing to speedily “sign it into law once it reaches my desk”. In a commentary in his weekly column published by the government-owned Sunday Mail, Mnangagwa said signing the bill into law will usher Zimbabwe into a “new era of genuine philanthropic and advocacy work, unsullied by ulterior political or financial motives.”

Mnangagwa said the law was meant to defend the country from foreign infiltration.

Engendering Patriotism but Endangering Democracy

Zimbabwe has also recently approved another repressive law known as the ‘Patriot Act’.

“The Patriotic Act is an extremely repressive and unconstitutional piece of legislation that has serious ramifications for citizens’ rights, particularly the rights of freedom of expression in the lead up to the elections,” human rights lawyer, Dough Coltart, tells IPS in an interview.

“There is a very real need to educate the citizens on what the ramifications of this Act are for people’s lives because the Act has far-reaching consequences for the entire country and will essentially stifle any public dialogue around the challenges we are facing as a country.”

“The Patriot law is a bad piece of legislation which is an affront to the practice of ethical journalism in Zimbabwe,” Njabulo Ncube, Coordinator of the Zimbabwe National Editors’ Forum (ZINEF), told IPS. “It stinks to the highest skies as it criminalizes the practice of good journalism. It is anti-media freedom and free expression…civil society organisations have also been caught in the mix; they cannot effectively make government account for its actions.”

Democracy Dimming

The situation in Zimbabwe is echoed in some countries across Southern Africa, where governments are cracking down on CSOs in the name of protecting national sovereignty and the threats of money laundering and terrorism financing.

In Angola, the country’s National Assembly, on May 25 2023, passed a draft NGO Statute, which CSOs have criticized for limiting freedom of association by giving the state excessive powers to interfere with civil society activities.

According to the Movimento de Defensores de Direitos Humanos de Angola (Movement of Human Rights Defenders of Angola, KUTAKESA), the government has targeted civil society with legislation that is meant for terrorists and money launderers, though it has never been proven in any court that a CSO has committed an act of terrorism in Angola.

On the contrary, the rationale of this legislation constitutes institutional terrorism, the target of which are CSOs, said Godinho Cristóvão, a jurist, human rights defender and executive director of KUTEKA in an interview with the CIVICUS Monitor.

“The Angolan authorities should have aligned themselves with the democratic rule of law and respected the work of CSOs and HRDs,” Cristóvão is quoted as saying.

“Instead, there has been an increase in threats, harassment and illegal arrests of human rights defenders who denounce or hold peaceful demonstrations against acts of bad governance and violations of citizens’ rights and freedoms. There have been clear setbacks with regard to the guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the constitution, as well as the rights set out in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other human rights treaties Angola has ratified.”

In Mozambique, a new NGO on Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act, which overregulates CSOs, is seen as the death knell for the civic movement in the country. The Act was approved in October 2022 under the pretext of fighting terrorism. It has further curtailed freedoms of expression, information, press, assembly and public participation.

Paula Monjane, Executive Director of the Civil Society Learning and Capacity Building Centre (CESC), a Mozambican non-profit civil society organisation, said currently, the legislation was being proposed to silence dissenting voices and people fighting for better governance of public affairs and the protection of human rights in the country.

The draft Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Act law establishes a legal regime for the creation, organisation and functioning of CSOs, and Monjane highlighted that it contains several norms that violate freedom of association despite this right being safeguarded by the constitution and international human rights treaties.

“It gives the government absolute and discretionary powers to ‘create’, control the functioning of, suspend and extinguish CSOs,” said Monjane, adding, “If the bill is approved, it will legitimise already existing practices restricting civic space, allowing the persecution of dissenting voices and organisations critical of the government, up to banning them from continuing to operate.”

Monjane said if the bill is passed into law CSOs in Mozambique will push for it to be declared unconstitutional and will ask the African Union, through the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the United Nations, through the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association to urgently condemn it.

On actions to foster human rights and human rights defenders, Kobe said civil society organisations must be supported to hold governments accountable for upholding national and international human rights conventions that they have subscribed to.

The Universal Periodic Review, an assessment of the state of civic and human rights of a country over a four-year period, provides recommendations to governments enabling them to open civic space and remove restrictive laws.

“Governments need to implement the recommendations of the UPR and not treat them as a formality for them to be seen by the international community as respecting human rights when they are not,” said Kobe, adding that encouraging governments to implement the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development was also a way of getting them to see development alongside human rights.

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Nepals Same-Sex Marriage Breakthrough — Global Issues

Credit: Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images
  • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
  • Inter Press Service

LONDON, Jul 28 (IPS) – Nepal is the latest country to join the global wave of marriage equality. On 28 June, its Supreme Court ruled that the government must immediately offer temporary registration of same-sex marriages, pending a change in the law. Around 200 couples reportedly sought to register as soon as the court judgment was made.

Nepal will therefore become the second country in Asia, after Taiwan, to recognise the right of all couples to marry. It’s little surprise that, as in many countries that have achieved marriage equality, it’s civil society that’s making the change happen, having brought the decisive court case.

Civil society’s breakthrough

Each year brings further important steps forward on two crucial fronts: decriminalisation of same-sex relations in the many countries where they’re still criminalised and recognition of marriage equality in countries that have made more progress.

Only last month a landmark was achieved in Estonia, which became the first post-Soviet state to legalise same-sex marriage. Now Nepal should become the 36th country in the world where LGBTQI+ people can marry, and the ninth this decade.

In Nepal, these efforts built on an earlier legal breakthrough, when in 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the government must take measures to guarantee equal rights and end discrimination against LGBTQI+ people. This too was the result of a legal petition filed by several LGBQTI+ rights organisations following the country’s transition from a monarchy to a democratic republic. LGBTQI+ people had been as active as anyone else in demanding democracy but LGBTQI+ rights weren’t immediately recognised in the new Nepal.

The 2007 ruling unlocked significant progress: laws that banned gay sex were repealed that year. In 2015, Nepal’s new constitution recognised the fundamental rights of LGBQTI+ people and forbade discrimination. The court also recognised a third gender – a longstanding identity in the cultures of Nepal and other South Asian countries – and the right to have it registered on official documents.

Nepali schools now offer comprehensive sexuality education to students aged 13 to 15, which includes discussion of LGBTQI+ issues. This came as a result of a campaign by the Blue Diamond Society, a civil society organisation that has led the fight for LGBTQI+ rights in Nepal since 2001.

As further rights were recognised, continuing marriage discrimination increasingly stood out. A bill to legalise it was drafted soon after the 2007 ruling, consistent with the court’s order to guarantee equal rights, but not much happened after that. It fell on civil society to hold the government to account.

There are still challenges ahead. As yet, the government hasn’t responded to the court ruling, which suggests it’s hardly in a hurry to legislate. That means people’s rights remain vulnerable to administrative resistance, leading to uneven enforcement. On 13 July, for instance, the Kathmandu District Court rejected an application from a male couple to register their marriage.

Anti-rights backlash

Litigation has become the key means by which civil society wins change on LGBTQI+ rights, as reflected by a recent string of decriminalisation rulings in Caribbean countries. This strategy has the potential to bring legal and policy changes that are ahead of social attitudes. That’s been the case in Nepal, where there’s still stigma, social bias and discrimination, and in Nepal’s often fractious politics, some politicians seek to capitalise on that.

Globally, progress towards the recognition of LGBTQI+ rights is a much stronger trend than regression. But steps forward are inevitably followed by an anti-rights backlash, combined with politically opportunistic efforts to mobilise anti-LGBQTI+ sentiment.

This backlash is seen in the USA, from which emanates most of the funding that enables anti-rights campaigning around the world, as well as in European countries, including Hungary, Spain and Turkey.

But it’s felt most strongly in global south countries, where forces opposing LGBTQI+ rights spread disinformation that these are some kind of western imposition. This is apparent in several countries in Africa – such as Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda – and Asia – including Indonesia, where a new criminal code effectively criminalises same-sex activity, and Malaysia, where politicians profit from vilifying LGBTQI+ people.

That’s why positive moves in Africa and Asia are so valuable: they offer hope to embattled LGBTQI+ people not just domestically but around the world.

Progress in Nepal should particularly give heart to activists in India, where the Supreme Court is currently considering a case demanding the recognition of same-sex marriage, and Japan, where attempts to win court judgments have encountered setbacks. The good news should also resonate in Thailand, a country with a relatively progressive reputation on LGBTQI+ rights but where same-sex marriage still isn’t allowed.

Shifting attitudes

Evidence from the countries that have adopted marriage equality shows that public attitudes to same-sex marriage tend to shift in the wake of legal change. In the countries that introduced it in the early years of this century, it now has majority support.

That’s also the case in Taiwan, which legalised same-sex marriage in 2019. And there, changing social attitudes have gone hand-in-hand with further reforms: in January, the government recognised same-sex marriages of Taiwanese people with foreign partners. In May, same-sex couples were given full adoption rights.

When it comes to changing social attitudes in Nepal, the annual roster of Pride events – the main Nepali Pride Parade held each June, a trans parade in December and an LGBQTI+ women’s rally that marks International Women’s Day each March – will remain vital spaces to make LGBTQI+ people more visible and assert their right to exist in public space.

Nepali civil society will hope that by the next Pride event, the law will have changed. But they’ll do more than hope. They’ll keep campaigning until the law is changed – and after that, they’ll stay alert to backlash and keep pushing back against discrimination.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report

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

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Vulnerable Women Suffer the Worst Face of Discrimination in Argentina — Global Issues

“Migration is a right,” read the handkerchiefs held by two women at a demonstration in the Argentine capital for migrants’ rights. At left is Natividad Obeso, a Peruvian who came to Buenos Aires in 1994, fleeing political violence in her country. CREDIT: Camilo Flores / ACDH
  • by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
  • Inter Press Service

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 27 (IPS) – Remi Cáceres experienced gender-based violence firsthand. She struggled, got out and today helps other women in Argentina to find an escape valve. But because she is in a wheelchair and is a foreign national, she says the process was even more painful and arduous: “Being a migrant with a disability, it’s two or three times harder. You have to empower yourself and it’s very difficult.”

When she came to Buenos Aires from Paraguay, she was already married and had had her legs amputated due to a spinal tumor. She suffered violence for several years until she was able to report her aggressor, got the police to remove him from her home and raised her two daughters watching after parked cars for spare change in a suburb of the capital

On the streets she met militant members of the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA), one of the central unions in this South American country, who encouraged her to join forces with other workers, to create cooperatives and to strengthen herself in labor and political terms. Since then she has come a long way and today she is the CTA’s Secretary for Disability.

“The places where women victims of gender-based violence are given assistance are not accessible to people who are in wheelchairs or are bedridden. And the shelters don’t know what to do with disabled women. Recently, a woman told me that she was sent back home with her aggressor,” Remi told IPS.

From her position in the CTA, Remi is one of the leaders of a project aimed at seeking information and empowering migrant, transgender and disabled women victims of gender violence living in different parts of Argentina, for which 300 women were interviewed, 100 from each of these groups.

The data obtained are shocking, since eight out of 10 women stated that they had experienced or are currently experiencing situations of violence or discrimination and, in the case of the transgender population, the rate reached 98 percent.

Most of the situations, they said, occurred in public spaces. Almost 85 percent said they had experienced hostility in streets, squares, public transportation and shops or other commercial facilities. And more than a quarter (26 percent) mentioned hospitals or health centers as places where violence and discrimination were common.

One of the trainings held by the “Wonder Women Against Violence” project. On the left is Remi Cáceres, who escaped domestic violence and today is Secretary of Disability at the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos central trade union. CREDIT: María Fernández / ACDH

Another interesting finding was that men are generally the aggressors in the home or other private settings, but in public settings and institutions, women are the aggressors in similar or even higher proportions.

The study was carried out by the Citizen Association for Human Rights (ACDH), an NGO that has been working to prevent violence in Argentina since 2002, with the participation of different organizations that represent disabled, trans and migrant women’s groups in this Southern Cone country.

It forms part of a larger initiative, dubbed Wonder Women Against Violence, which has received financial support for the period 2022-2025 from the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. Since 1996, this fund has supported projects in 140 countries for a total of 215 million dollars.

The initiative includes trainings aimed at providing tools for access to justice to the most vulnerable groups, which began to be offered in 2022 by different organizations to more than 1,000 women so far.

Courses have also been held for officials and staff of national, provincial and municipal governments and the judiciary, with the aim of raising awareness on how to deal with cases of gender violence.

María José Lubertino, president of the Citizen Association for Human Rights, takes part in a feminist demonstration in Buenos Aires. Lubertino coordinates the project on violence against disabled, transgender and migrant women in Argentina that runs from 2022 to 2025. CREDIT: Camilo Flores / ACDH

Fewer complaints

“Argentina has made great progress in recent years in terms of laws and public policies on violence against women, but despite this, one woman dies every day from femicide (gender-based murders),” ADCH president María José Lubertino told IPS.

“In this case, we decided to work with forgotten women. We were struck by the fact that there were very few migrant, trans and disabled women in the public registers of gender-violence complaints. We discovered that they do not suffer less violence, but that they report it less,” she added.

Lubertino, a lawyer who has chaired the governmental National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI), argues that these are systematically oppressed and discriminated groups that, in her experience, face their own fears when it comes to reporting cases: “migrants are afraid of reprisals, trans women assume that no one will believe them and disabled women often want to protect their privacy.”

Indeed, the research showed that 70 percent of trans, migrant and disabled women who suffered violence or discrimination did not file a complaint.

Many spoke of wanting to avoid the feeling of “wasting their time,” as they felt that the complaint would not have any consequences.

Each group faces its own particular hurdles. Migrant women experience discrimination especially in hospitals. Transgender people, in addition to suffering the most aggression (sometimes by the police), suffer specifically from the fact that their chosen identity and name are not recognized. Disabled women say they are excluded from the labor market.

More than three million foreigners live in this country of 46 million people, according to last November’s data from the National Population Directorate. Almost 90 percent of them are from other South American countries, and more than half come from Paraguay and Bolivia. Peru is the third most common country of origin, accounting for about 10 percent.

Of the total number of immigrants, 1,568,350 are female and 1,465,430 are male.

As for people with disabilities, the official registry included more than 1.5 million people by 2022, although it is estimated that there are many more.

Since 2012, a Gender Identity Law recognizes the legal right to change gender identity in Argentina and by April 2022, 12,665 identification documents had been issued based on the individual’s self-perceived identity. Of these, 62 percent identified as female, 35 percent as male and three percent as non-binary.

Women participate in one of the trainings on gender-based violence in Buenos Aires. The project is carried out by the Citizen Association for Human Rights with financial support from the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. CREDIT: Camilo Flores / ACDH

Different forms of violence

Yuli Almirón has no mobility in her left leg as a result of polio. She is president of the Argentine Polio-Post Polio Association (APPA), which brings together some 800 polio survivors. Yuli is one of the leaders of the trainings.

“Through the trainings, those of us who participated found out about many things,” she told IPS. “We heard, for example, about many cases related to situations of power imbalances. Women with disabilities sometimes suffer violence at the hands of their caregivers.”

The most surprising aspect, however, has to do with the restrictions on access to public policies to help victims of gender-based violence.

The Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity runs the Acompañar Program, which aims to strengthen the economic independence of women and LGBTI+ women in situations of gender-based violence.

The women are provided the equivalent of one monthly minimum wage for six months, but anyone who receives a disability allowance is excluded.

“We didn’t know those were the rules. It’s a terrible injustice, because disabled victims of violence are the ones who most need to cut economic dependency in order to get out,” said Almirón.

Another of the project’s partner organizations is the Human Rights Civil Association of United Migrant and Refugee Women in Argentina (AMUMRA). Its founder is Natividad Obeso, a Peruvian woman who fled the violence in her country in 1994, during the civil war with the Shining Path guerrilla organization.

“Back then Argentina had no rights-based immigration policy. There was a lot of xenophobia. I was stopped by the police for no reason, when I was going into a supermarket, and they made me clean the whole police station before releasing me,” she said.

Natividad says that public hospitals are one of the main places where migrant women suffer discrimination. “When a migrant woman goes to give birth they always leave her for last,” she said.
“Migrant women suffer all kinds of violence. If they file a complaint, they are stigmatized. That’s why they don’t know how to defend themselves. Even the organizations themselves exclude us. That is why it is essential to support them,” she stressed.

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

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Biodigesters Light Up Clean Energy Stoves in Rural El Salvador — Global Issues

Marisol and Misael Menjívar pose next to the biodigester installed in March in the backyard of their home in El Corozal, a rural settlement located near Suchitoto in central El Salvador. With a biotoilet and stove, the couple produces biogas for cooking from feces, which saves them money. The biotoilet can be seen in the background. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
  • by Edgardo Ayala (suchitoto, el salvador)
  • Inter Press Service

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador, Jul 25 (IPS) – A new technology that has arrived in rural villages in El Salvador makes it possible for small farming families to generate biogas with their feces and use it for cooking – something that at first sounded to them like science fiction and also a bit smelly.

In the countryside, composting latrines, which separate urine from feces to produce organic fertilizer, are very popular. But can they really produce gas for cooking?

“It seemed incredible to me,” Marisol Menjívar told IPS as she explained how her biodigester, which is part of a system that includes a toilet and a stove, was installed in the backyard of her house in the village of El Corozal, near Suchitoto, a municipality in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.

“When the first ones were installed here, I was excited to see that they had stoves hooked up, and I asked if I could have one too,” added Marisol, 48. Hers was installed in March.

El Corozal, population 200, is one of eight rural settlements that make up the Laura López Rural Water and Sanitation Association (Arall), a community organization responsible for providing water to 465 local families.

The families in the small villages, who are dedicated to the cultivation of corn and beans, had to flee the region during the country’s 1980-1992 civil war, due to the fighting.

After the armed conflict, they returned to rebuild their lives and work collectively to provide basic services, especially drinking water, as have many other community organizations, in the absence of government coverage.

In this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, 78.4 percent of rural households have access to piped water, while 10.8 percent are supplied by wells and 10.7 percent by other means.

With small stoves like this one, a score of families in El Corozal in central El Salvador cook their food with biogas they produce themselves, thanks to a government program that has brought clean energy technology to these remote rural villages. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Simple green technology

The biodigester program in rural areas is being promoted by the Salvadoran Water Authority (Asa).

Since November 2022, the government agency has installed around 500 of these systems free of charge in several villages around the country.

The aim is to enable small farmers to produce sustainable energy, biogas at no cost, which boosts their income and living standards, while at the same time improving the environment.

The program provides each family with a kit that includes a biodigester, a biotoilet, and a small one-burner stove.

In El Corozal, five of these kits were installed by Asa in November 2022, to see if people would accept them or not. To date, 21 have been delivered, and there is a waiting list for more.

In El Corozal, a rural settlement in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador, the technology of family biodigesters arrived at the end of last year, and some families are now producing biogas to light up their stoves and cook their food at no cost. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“With the first ones were set up, the idea was for people to see how they worked, because there was a lot of ignorance and even fear,” Arall’s president, Enrique Menjívar, told IPS.

In El Corozal there are many families with the surname Menjívar, because of the tradition of close relatives putting down roots in the same place.

“Here we’re almost all related,” Enrique added.

The biodigester is a hermetically sealed polyethylene bag, 2.10 meters long, 1.15 meters wide and 1.30 meters high, inside which bacteria decompose feces or other organic materials.

This process generates biogas, clean energy that is used to fuel the stoves.

The toilets are mounted on a one-meter-high cement slab in latrines in the backyard. They are made of porcelain and have a handle on one side that opens and closes the stool inlet hole.

One of the main advantages that family biodigesters have brought to the inhabitants of El Corozal, a small village in the Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán, is that the whole process begins with clean, hygienic toilets, like this one set up in Marleni Menjívar’s backyard, as opposed to the older dry composting latrines, which drew flies and cockroaches. To the left of the toilet is the small handle used to pump water to flush the feces into the biodigester. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

They also have a small hand pump, similar to the ones used to inflate bicycle tires, and when the handle is pushed, water is pumped from a bucket to flush the waste down the pipe.

The underground pipe carries the biomass by gravity to the biodigester, located about five meters away.

The system can also be fed with organic waste, by means of a tube with a hole at one end, which must be opened and closed.

Once it has been produced, the biogas is piped through a metal tube to the small stove mounted inside the house.

“I don’t even use matches, I just turn the knob and it lights up,” said Marisol, a homemaker and caregiver. Her husband Manuel Menjívar is a subsistence farmer, and they have a young daughter.

In El Corozal, biodigesters have been installed for families of four or five members, and the equipment generates 300 liters of biogas during the night, enough to use for two hours a day, according to the technical specifications of Coenergy, the company that imports and markets the devices.

But there are also kits that are used by two related families who live next to each other and share the equipment, which includes, in addition to the toilet, a larger biodigester and a two-burner stove.

With more sophisticated equipment, electricity could be generated from biogas produced from landfill waste or farm manure, although this is not yet being done in El Salvador.

Marleni Menjivar gets ready to heat water on her ecological stove, watched closely by her four-year-old daughter, in El Corozal in central El Salvador, where an innovative government program to produce biogas has arrived. With this technology, people save money by buying less liquefied gas while benefiting the environment. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Saving money while caring for the environment

The families of El Corozal who have the new latrines and stoves are happy with the results.

What they value the most is saving money by cooking with gas produced by themselves, at no cost.

They used to cook on wood-burning stoves, in the case of food that took longer to make, or on liquefied gas stoves, at a cost of 13 dollars per gas cylinder.

Marleni Menjívar, for example, used two cylinders a month, mainly because of the high level of consumption demanded by the family business of making artisanal cheeses, including a very popular local kind of cottage cheese.

Every day she has to cook 23 liters of whey, the liquid left after milk has been curdled. This consumes the biogas produced overnight.

For meals during the day Marleni still uses the liquefied gas stove, but now she only buys one cylinder a month instead of two, a savings of about 13 dollars per month.

“These savings are important for families here in the countryside,” said Marleni, 28, the mother of a four-year-old girl. The rest of her family is made up of her brother and grandfather.

“We also save water,” she added.

The biotoilet requires only 1.2 liters of water per flush, less than conventional toilets.

In addition, the soils are protected from contamination by septic tank latrines, which are widely used in rural areas, but are leaky and unhygienic.

The new technology avoids these problems.

The liquids resulting from the decomposition process flow through an underground pipe into a pit that functions as a filter, with several layers of gravel and sand. This prevents pollution of the soil and aquifers.

Also, as a by-product of the decomposition process, organic liquid fertilizer is produced for use on crops.

Most families in the rural community of El Corozal have benefited from one-burner stoves that run on biogas produced in family biodigesters. Larger two-burner stoves are also shared by two related families, where they cook on a griddle one of the favorite dishes of Salvadorans: pupusas, corn flour tortillas filled with beans, cheese and pork, among other ingredients. CREDIT: Coenergy El Salvador

Checking on site: zero stench

Due to a lack of information, people were initially concerned that if the biogas used in the stoves came from the decomposition of the family’s feces, it would probably stink.

And, worst of all, perhaps the food would also smell.

But little by little these doubts and fears faded away as families saw how the first devices worked.

“That was the first thing they asked, if the gas smelled bad, or if what we were cooking smelled bad,” said Marleni, remembering how the neighbors came to her house to check for themselves when she got the latrine and stove installed in December 2022.

“That was because of the little information that was available, but then we found that this was not the case, our doubts were cleared up and we saw there were no odors,” she added.

She said that, like almost everyone in the village, her family used to have a dry composting toilet, but it stank and generated cockroaches and flies.

“All that has been eliminated, the bathrooms are completely hygienic and clean, and we even had them tiled to make them look nicer,” Marleni said.

She remarked that hygiene is important to her, as her little girl can now go to the bathroom by herself, without worrying about cockroaches and flies.

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

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Brazil Back on the Green Track — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Ines M Pousadela (montevideo, uruguay)
  • Inter Press Service

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jul 24 (IPS) – At a meeting with European and Latin American leaders in Brussels this July, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva reiterated the bold commitment he had made in his first international speech as president-elect, when he attended the COP27 climate summit in November 2022: bringing Amazon deforestation down to zero by 2030.

Lula’s presence at COP27 was a signal to the world that Brazil was willing to become the climate champion it needs to be. Following a request by the Brazilian Forum of NGOs and Social Movements for Environment and Development, Lula offered to host the 2025 climate summit in Brazil; it has now been confirmed that COP30 will be held in Belém, gateway to the Amazon River.

At COP27 Lula also said he intended to revive and modernise the 45-year old Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation, a body bringing together the eight Amazonian countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – to take concerted steps to protect the Amazon rainforest.

Four years of regression

In his four years in office, Lula’s far-right climate-denier predecessor Jair Bolsonaro dismantled environmental protections and paralysed key environmental agencies by cutting their funding and staff. He vilified civil society, criminalised activists and discredited the media. He allowed deforestation to proceed at an astonishing pace and emboldened businesses to grab land, clear it for agriculture by starting fires and carry out illegal logging and mining.

Under Bolsonaro, already embattled Indigenous communities and activists became even more vulnerable to attacks. By encouraging environmental plunder, including on protected and Indigenous land, the government enabled violence against environmental and Indigenous peoples’ rights defenders. A blatant example was the murder of Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in June 2022. The two were ambushed and killed on the orders of the head of an illegal transnational fishing network. Both the material and intellectual authors of the crimes have now been charged and await trial.

Reversing the regression

Having being elected on a promise to reverse environmental destruction, the new administration has sought to restructure and resource monitoring and enforcement institutions. It strengthened the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), the federal agency in charge of enforcing environmental policy, and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), which for the first time is now headed by an Indigenous person, Joenia Wapichana.

Bolsonaro had transferred FUNAI to the Ministry of Agriculture, run by a leader of the congressional agribusiness caucus. Instead of protecting Indigenous land, it enabled deforestation and the expansion of agribusiness.

In contrast, Lula’s first political gestures were to create a new ministry for Indigenous peoples’ affairs, appointing Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara to lead it, and to make Marina Silva, a leader of the environmentalist party Rede Sustentabilidade, Minister for the Environment, a position she had held between 2003 and 2008.

Lula also restored the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon, launched in 2004 and implemented until Bolsonaro took over. In February, the government set up a Permanent Inter-Ministerial Commission for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation and Fires in Brazil to coordinate actions across 19 ministries and develop zero deforestation policies.

The strategy establishes a permanent federal government presence in vulnerable areas with the aim of eliminating illegal activities, setting up bases and using intelligence and satellite imagery to track criminal activity.

The newly appointed Federal Police’s Director for the Amazon and the Environment, Humberto Freire, launched a campaign to rid protected Indigenous land of illegal miners. It appears to be paying off: in July he announced that around 90 per cent of miners operating in Yanomami territory, Brazil’s largest protected Indigenous land, had been expelled. According to police sources, there were 19 mine-related deforestation alerts in April 2023 – compared to 444 in April 2022.

But the fight isn’t over. There are still a couple of thousand miners active and the criminal enterprises employing them remain very much alive. The key task of recovering damaged land and rivers can only begin once they’re all driven away for good. And an issue that cries out for international cooperation remains unresolved: violence and environmental degradation continue unabated in Yanomami communities across the border in Venezuela, and will only increase as illegal miners jump jurisdictions.

Achieving the ambitious zero-deforestation goal will require efforts on a much bigger scale than those of the past. And such efforts will further antagonise very powerful people.

Obstacles ahead

With the environmental agenda back on track, the pace of Amazon deforestation slowed down in the first six months of 2023, falling by 34 per cent compared to the same period in 2022. However, numbers still remain high and reductions are uneven, with two states – Roraima and Tocantins – showing increases. Deforestation is also still rising in another important part of Brazil’s environment, the Cerrado, where preservation areas are few and most deforestation happens on private properties.

For the Amazon, a crucial test will come in the second half of the year, when temperatures are higher. A stronger El Niño phase, with warming waters in the Pacific Ocean, will make the weather even drier and hotter than usual, helping fires spread fast. Anticipating this, IBAMA has scaled up its recruitment of firefighters to expand brigades in Indigenous and Black communities and conduct inspections and impose fines and embargoes. To discourage people from starting fires to clear land for agriculture, the agency prevents them putting that land to agricultural use.

But in the meantime, Brazil’s Congress has gone on the offensive. In June, the Senate made radical amendments to the bill on ministries sent by Lula, diluting the powers of the Ministries of Indigenous Peoples and Environment and limiting demarcation of Indigenous lands to those already occupied by communities by 1998, when the current constitution was enacted.

Indigenous leaders have complained that many communities weren’t on their land in 1998 because they’d been expelled over the course of centuries, and particularly during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. They denounced the new law as ‘legal genocide’ and urged the president to veto it. Civil society has taken to the streets and social media to support the government’s environmental policies.

They face a formidable enemy. A recent report by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency exposed the political connections of illegal mining companies. Two business leaders directly associated with this criminal activity are active congressional lobbyists and maintain strong links with local politicians. They also stand accused of financing an attempted insurrection on 8 January.

Against these shady elites, civil society wields the most effective weapon at its disposal, shining a light on their dealings and letting them know that Brazil and the world are watching, and will remain vigilant for as long as it takes. The stakes are too high to drop the guard.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.


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Transgender People Face Growing Violence, Discrimination in Pakistan — Global Issues

Transgender people often entertain at weddings and other events, but they increasingly face violent acts, especially since part of an Act ensuring their rights was recently struck down. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
  • by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar)
  • Inter Press Service

PESHAWAR, Jul 24 (IPS) – “The problems transgender people face start from their homes as their parents, especially fathers and brothers, look them down upon and disrespect them,” says 20-year-old Pari Gul.

Gul, a resident of Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), left her house at 16 when her mother asked her to or face being killed by her father.

“I was born as a boy, and my name was Abdul Wahid, but when I came to Peshawar and joined a transgender group, I got a female name, Pari Gul. Since then, I have been going to weddings and other festive ceremonies to dance,” she says. “Dance is my passion.”

However, she has often been the brunt of discrimination and violence.

“During my five-year career, people have beaten me more than 20 times. Each time the perpetrators went unpunished,” she told IPS in an interview.

Trans people are often targeted in KP, one of Pakistan’s four provinces.

On March 28, a man shot dead a transgender person in Peshawar. It was the third incident targeting transgender persons in the province in less than a week. Despite the violence, violent attacks on transgender people aren’t considered a major crime.

Khushi Khan, a senior transgender person, says lack of protection is the main problem.

“People have developed a disdain for us. They consider us non-Muslims because we dance at marriages and other ceremonies,” she says.

“We had lodged at least a dozen complaints with police in the past three months when our colleagues were robbed of money, molested and raped but to no avail,” Khan, 30, says.

Last month, clerics in the Khyber district decided they wouldn’t offer funerals to transgender persons and asked people to boycott them.

Rafiq Shah, a social worker, says that people attack the houses of transgender, kill, injure and rob them, but the police remain silent “spectators”.

“We have been protesting against violence frequently, but the situation remains unchanged,” Shah said.

Qamar Naseem, head of Blue Veins, a national NGO working to promote and protect transgender people, isn’t happy over the treatment meted out to the group.

“Security is the main issue of transgender persons. About 84 transgender persons have been killed in Pakistan since 2015 while another 2,000 have faced violence, but no one has been punished so far,” Naseem says.

The lack of action by the police has emboldened the people.

“Health, transportation, livelihoods and employment issues have hit the transgender (community) hard. Most of the time, they remained confined to their homes, located inside the city,” he says.

There are no data regarding the number of transgender in the country because the government doesn’t take them seriously, he says.

In May 2023, the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) dealt a severe blow when it suspended the implementation rules of the Protection of Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act.

Farzana Jan, president of TransAction Alliance, says that FSC’s declaration that individuals cannot alter their gender at their own discretion, asserting that specific clauses within the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018 contradict Islamic law, has disappointed us.

The FSC declared un-Islamic sections 3 and 7 and two sub-sections of Section 2 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, five years after the law was passed, the FSC rolled back key provisions granting rights to Pakistan’s transgender community.

Some right-wing political parties had previously voiced concerns over the bill as a promoter of “homosexuality,” leading to “new social problems”.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, is against the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and will cease to have any legal effect immediately, the verdict stated.

Amnesty International said the verdict was a blow to the rights of the already beleaguered group of transgender and gender-diverse people in Pakistan. It said some of the FSC’s observations were based on presumptive scenarios rather than empirical evidence. The denial of essential rights of transgender and gender-diverse persons should not be guided by assumptions rooted in prejudice, fear and discrimination, AI said.

“Any steps taken by the government of Pakistan to deny transgender and gender-diverse people the right to gender identity is in contravention of their obligations under international human rights law, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to which they are a state party,” it said.

The government should take immediate steps to stop the reversal of essential protections, without which transgender and gender-diverse people will be even more at risk of harassment, discrimination and violence, AI added.

On July 12, 2023, transgender representatives from all provinces held a press conference at Lahore Press Club, where they vehemently condemned the recent decision by the FSC against the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018.

Arzoo Bibi, who was at a press conference, said it was time to stand united for justice and equality.

“Militants don’t threaten us, but our biggest concern is the attitude of the society and police,” said Arzoo.
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‘It’s Time UN Turned Ideas to UNMute Civil Society into Action’ — Global Issues

Activists, CSOs and faith-based leaders this week pondered how you get a seat at the table when they couldn’t even get access to the UN building.
  • by Abigail Van Neely (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Jul 21 (IPS) – How do you get a seat at the table when you can’t even access the building? This question loomed as activists, faith-based leaders, and NGO representatives gathered at the NY Ford Foundation. They discussed how to amplify the voice of civil society organizations at the UN Headquarters across the street.

“How to UNMute” was hosted on July 20, 2023, as a side event during the ongoing 2023 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). The event kicked off the creation of a manual to break down barriers to civil society engagement as the first step towards turning ideas into action.

Maithili Pai, the UN advocate for the International Service for Human Rights, illustrated the divide between the UN’s verbal commitments and its actual practices. Sometimes, Pai said, civil society representatives could not enter UN meeting rooms or waited years for UN accreditation. According to Pai, some representatives even faced retaliation for trying to interact with UN bodies.

“We understand very well that civil society is under attack and that there are people pushing you back,” Costa Rica’s Ambassador to the UN, Maritza Chan, told the audience.

Chan stressed that meeting the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) required empowering civil society organizations that provide critical insight.

“We need civil society in the room at all times, providing advice, supporting states, and also calling us when we are not doing things right,” Chan said.

Recommendations for the manual on ‘unmuting’ civil society were developed at a recent workshop. They include better-resourced UN NGO support offices, increased financing for participation in UN events, and more supportive visa processes, especially for delegates from the global south who have been historically excluded. Advocates also called for more systematic flows of information, methods of participation, and pathways into the UN.

Arelys Bellorini, the senior UN representative from World Vision, said she has to go to friendly missions to facilitate youth access to the UN.

Nelya Rakhimova, a sustainable development specialist, said she was asked to pay $1,500 to be at the UN.

Carmen Capriles, an environmental policy expert at the United Nations Environment Program, said she could not attend meetings on climate change because they were closed.

The Ambassador to the UN from Denmark, Martin Bille Hermann, pushed these advocates to present specific action items. “You’re not giving me easy avenues to deliver,” Hermann said. “Develop a toolbox that would allow us to continue to live in an old house.”

“We cannot expect different results by doing the same things,” Chan added.

This is not the first time these issues have been raised.

On the 75th anniversary of the UN in 2020, the General Assembly committed to making the UN more inclusive to respond to common challenges. The following year, a set of steps to strengthen the meaningful participation of stakeholders across the UN was presented to the secretary general by a group of civil society organizations and the permanent missions of Denmark and Costa Rica. The recommendations were endorsed by 52 member states and 327 civil society organizations.

The 2021 letter focused on the use of technology to make UN meetings more accessible. It cited an evaluation survey that found 50 percent of participants during the virtual 2020 HLPF joined for the first time. Most of these new participants represented civil societies in developing countries.

One suggestion for bridging digital divides and incorporating a more diverse range of participants was to host hybrid events and offer internet connection at UN country-based offices. However, Rakhimova pointed out that some events still do not have hybrid options.

The 2021 letter also called for a civil society envoy to the UN and an official civil society day. Neither recommendation has been formally implemented yet.

Mandeep Tiwana, chief officer of CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations with a strong presence in the global south, addressed inequalities in who influences international decision-making. Tiwana expressed concern that wealthy members of the private sector can “come in through the backdoor.” Meanwhile, activists already facing restrictions on their work wait outside.

“The time to open the doors to the UN virtually, online, and in person has come,” Chan said.
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Election with No Democracy on the Horizon — Global Issues

Credit: Eswatini Government/Twitter
  • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
  • Inter Press Service

LONDON, Jul 21 (IPS) – Eswatini heads to the polls soon, with elections scheduled for September. But there’s nothing remotely democratic in prospect. The country remains ruled by King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch, who presides over Eswatini with an iron fist. Mswati dissolved parliament on 11 July, confident there’s little chance of people who disagree with him winning representation.

A long history of repression

There’ll be some notable absentees at the next election. At least two members of parliament (MPs) certainly won’t be running again: Mthandeni Dube and Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza were convicted of terrorism and murder in June. Their real crime was to do what Swazi MPs aren’t supposed to do: during protests for democracy that broke out in 2021, they dared call for political reform and a constitutional monarchy.

Dube and Mabuza could face up to 20 years in jail. In detention they were beaten and denied access to medical and legal help. They were found guilty by judges appointed and controlled by the king. In Eswatini, the judiciary is regularly used to harass and criminalise those who stand up to Mswati’s power: people such as trade union leader Sticks Nkambule, subject to contempt of court charges for his role in organising a stay-at-home strike demanding the release of Dube and Mabuza. Other activists face terrorism charges.

But not every crime is so zealously prosecuted. In January, human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko was shot dead by unidentified assailants. Maseko was chair of the Multi-Stakeholder Forum, a network that brings together civil society groups, political parties, businesses and others to urge a peaceful transition to democracy. He’d previously spent 14 months in jail for criticising Eswatini’s lack of judicial independence. He was also Dube and Mabuza’s lawyer. There’s been little evident investigation of his killing.

There’s plenty more blood on the king’s hands. The 2021 democracy protests were initially triggered by the killing of law student Thabani Nkomonye. At least 46 people are estimated to have been killed in the ensuing protests. Security forces reportedly fired indiscriminately at protesters; leaked footage revealed that the king ordered them to shoot to kill.

In some areas security forces went house to house, dragging young people out for beatings. Hospitals were overwhelmed with the injured. People who survived shootings weren’t allowed to keep the bullets extracted from them, since this would have constituted evidence. Some bodies were reportedly burned to try to conceal the state’s crimes. When a second wave of protest arose in September 2021, led by schoolchildren, Mswati sent the army into schools, and then closed schools and imposed a nationwide protest ban. Hundreds of protesters and opposition supporters were jailed. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was enforced with the army on the streets and an internet shutdown imposed.

To this day, no one has been held accountable for the killings. There’s also been zero movement towards reform.

Farce of an election forthcoming

Following the intervention of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the king agreed to hold a national dialogue. But two years on, that hasn’t happened. Instead he held a Sibaya – a traditional gathering in which he was the only person allowed to speak.

Now the election is going ahead without any constructive dialogue or reform. The chances of reform-minded potential MPs winning significant representation are slimmer than ever. To do so, they’d have to navigate a two-round process that is exclusionary by design, with candidates first needing to win approval at the chiefdom level. No party affiliations are allowed.

To further rein in those elected, Mswati directly appoints most of the upper house and some of the lower house. And just to make sure, he picks the prime minister and cabinet, can veto legislation and remains constitutionally above the law.

It’s a system that serves merely to fulfil a kingly fantasy of consultation and pretend to the outside world that democracy exists in Eswatini. Official results from the last two elections were never published, but it’s little wonder than turnout in this electoral farce has reportedly been low.

With the king unwilling to concede even the smallest demands, evidence suggests that repression is further intensifying ahead of voting. The king has imported South African mercenaries – described as ‘security experts’ – to help enforce his reign of terror. There are reports of a hit list of potential assassinations. Lawyers who might defend the rights of criminalised activists and protesters report coming under increasing threat.

Time for international pressure

People have been killed, jailed and forced into exile, but desire for change hasn’t gone away. After all, people in Eswatini aren’t asking for much. They want a competitive vote where they can choose politicians who serve them rather than the king, and they want a constitutional monarchy where the king has limited rather than absolute powers. If they got that, they might even get an economy that works in the public interest, rather than as a vast mechanism designed to funnel wealth to the royal family while everyone else stays poor.

The pretence of an election shouldn’t fool the outside world. Civil society keeps calling on African regional bodies not to let them down. In May the Multi-Stakeholder Forum urged the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to back an eight-point plan to respect human rights and enable dialogue. The demands were presented by Tanele Maseko, Thulani Maseko’s widow.

Eswatini’s activists also expect more of SADC, and of the government of South Africa, the country where so many of them now live in exile. Governments and organisations that claim to stand for democracy and human rights need to exert some pressure for genuine dialogue leading to a transition to democratic rule. They shouldn’t keep letting the king get away with murder.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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



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