Category Archives: human rights

Personal Account: A Lifeline Reaches Syrians Amidst Sniper Deaths | UNICEF USA

As we drove, children came out to meet the convoy in the freezing cold, wearing winter clothes provided by UNICEF in a previous mission. I thought to myself: How does it feel after two years of besiegement for your life to depend on what humanitarian convoys bring you? What is it like to wait for almost four months for your only lifeline? How does it feel to not know whether the next meal you give your children will be their last one?During the past four months, the situation in Madaya has worsened drastically. Snipers and shelling have increased and the violence impacts every aspect of people’s daily lives. “I haven’t seen my mother in over a month because last time I tried visiting her, a sniper shot at me. It is not safe anywhere in Madaya,” said the town’s only nurse minutes after leaving a primitive operating room where she had helped a veterinarian-turned-surgeon operate on an injured patient.

Source: Personal Account: A Lifeline Reaches Syrians Amidst Sniper Deaths | UNICEF USA

La despedida de Micaela en fotos – Cosecha Roja

Miles de chicos y chicas llegan al Centro de Educación Física Nº 3 Profesor La Nasa. Todos quieren despedirse de Micaela García. En las calles son casi 30 los micros y casi 20 las combis. Llegaron hasta Concepción del Uruguay desde todas partes del país. Las paredes no están blancas: visten banderas, afiches, pancartas con la cara de Micaela. Y una consigna: “Por vos juramos vencer”.

Source: La despedida de Micaela en fotos – Cosecha Roja

Breast Milk is Exported to the US | Inter Press Service

In a shed made of boards and tarps, one-year old Nune is in deep sleep as his mother Check Srey-Toy gently rocks his hammock. Then she tells me that she sells her breast milk to the US. They have no front door. Privacy is a sheet of cloth drawn across an opening. A gas burner on the ground. A saucepan with leftover porridge. “It’s been three months. Since I started”, Check Srey-Toy tells Arbetet Global.

Source: Breast Milk is Exported to the US | Inter Press Service

 

The demand for breast milk has increased and is now a commodity on international markets. The US company Ambrosia Lab have donators in several different countries. They target US mothers who pay close to 25 dollars for a bag of just under 150 millilitres of milk.

The Most Pernicious Form of Terrorism Threatening the U.S. Is the GOP | Dame Magazine

Women die. The GOP is not content to kill only women on American soil. By reinstating the global gag rule, pulling funds for UNFPA, and choking off funding to fight HIV/AIDS around the world (women make up over half of HIV/AIDS cases globally) will punish women everywhere. The god of the GOP doesn’t like women who have sex.The singular focus on abortion (a symbol of women in control of their sex lives and bodies) as anathema to the god of the GOP allows “pro-lifers” to sleep at night. Targeting “baby-killers” takes the thinking out of it. The truth is more difficult; analysis and empathy are required. Many women’s only contact with a doctor or medical professional is through Planned Parenthood and well-women clinics. Abortion, even when outlawed, does not and will not stop abortion. Women will die without access to safe legal abortion, Planned Parenthood, and other women’s clinics. You may ask, why don’t those women just go to another doctor? Who can afford to have the choice? The GOP hates Medicaid. Though they haven’t explicitly invoked their racist, sexist, classist Welfare Queen-esque statement, the policies are unmistakable, from the drug-testing requirements in the offing to states refusing to expand Medicaid coverage through the ACA. There is a swath of states in the Deep South that didn’t expand Medicaid, which meant women, mostly women of color and women in more rural areas, fell into the Obamacare doughnut hole. Which is to say, these women make “too much” money for Medicaid but not enough to afford health care through the exchange. Of course, fixing this part of the ACA isn’t on the GOP agenda—quite the opposite. Jesus, to their minds, is all about small government. Today’s GOP, the one born from the Moral Majority, embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of the right-wing Christian god they purport to serve. They are carrying out god’s will, very much like the Taliban. If shutting down women’s health clinics and blocking access to abortion doesn’t kill women, especially women of color, guns in the hands of domestic abusers just might. Stand your ground laws across the country will result in brown people dying; these laws are a license to kill. People of color will be swept up in the new war on drugs— the last war on drugs’ only accomplishment was incarcerating young Black and brown men, not only breaking up families, but forever taking away these men’s rights to vote. Voter ID laws targeting people of color along with gerrymandering will ensure reelection of god’s chosen legislators.And if all else fails they have this: You as a woman in this country have a right to speak. The subtext: Only if we dress a certain way, wear our hair just so, don’t cover our heads with scary fabrics, and balance an aspirin between our knees. Otherwise we are asking for it: rape, assault, hate crimes, incarceration, forced birth. The Taliban will blow our heads off. The GOP prefers death by a thousand cuts.

Source: The Most Pernicious Form of Terrorism Threatening the U.S. Is the GOP | Dame Magazine

7 Arrested During NYC Protest Against Syrian Airstrikes: Gothamist

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), said, “While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked.”The protesters were intent on bringing a message of peace. From WABC 7:”All of these humanitarian wars that it has waged for hundreds of years have never brought about peace and democracy,” said Nina Macapimlac, a protester. “So bombing other countries to bring peace is a contradiction.””While Assad is a murderer and doesn’t represent the will of the Syrian people, the United States definitely does not represent the will of the Syrian people,” said Dan, a protester. “And Syria is a question to be answered by the Syrians, not by American imperialists who have devastated the region for decades.”

Source: 7 Arrested During NYC Protest Against Syrian Airstrikes: Gothamist

‘I witnessed the Stockholm attack three years after terrorists killed my brother – we mustn’t give in to fear’ – The Local

The death of my brother made me think. I thought more and more deeply about the reasons behind terrorism, which took him and his family away from us. I reasoned with myself to find if there could really be a purpose their death served. And there wasn’t. It did not serve any purpose. It is not justifiable under any circumstances. In the same way yesterday’s carnage is entirely unjustifiable. It’s systematic madness. And this systematic madness is used to send us a message, a message of fear and hate. I reacted to my brother’s death by not giving in to the culture of fear and hate peddled by extremists. I wept not only for the loss of my brother and his family but I also wept for the perpetrators, because their death was also a senseless loss of life.

Source: ‘I witnessed the Stockholm attack three years after terrorists killed my brother – we mustn’t give in to fear’ – The Local

Women Around the World are being Screwed Over by the US Decision to Cut Support for the UN Population Fund – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Unsurprisingly, public health experts like the International Women’s Health Coalition’s Director of Advocacy and Policy Shannon Kowalsi declared that this decision would have ‘devastating consequences’ for women, particularly those in crisis situations, as for instance in Syria or Jordan, where apparently the US funded maternity wards for women in refugee camps. If the UNFPA’s representation of figures is accurate, the decision means that at least 48000 women seeking support for safe childbirth in Syria will not be assisted this year.

Source: Women Around the World are being Screwed Over by the US Decision to Cut Support for the UN Population Fund – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Germany′s right-wing AfD is ′guarantor of Jewish life,′ Petry says | News | DW.COM | 06.04.2017

‘Racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic’The ex-president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, reacted strongly, saying that the AfD stands for “openly and inconspicuously expressed racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic statements, falsification of history, relativization or even denial of the Holocaust, as well as open closeness to the neo-Nazi scene.”The party distances itself, “if at all, half-heartedly and without lasting consequences from these phenomena and people standing in their ranks and top positions,” Knobloch said.

Source: Germany′s right-wing AfD is ′guarantor of Jewish life,′ Petry says | News | DW.COM | 06.04.2017

VP Pence’s No-Lady-Company Policy Is Not About Respecting His Wife | Dame Magazine

Horn-doggery and separatist prudery are just two sides of the same woman-hating coin. Neither man perceives women as human beings equal to men, they just express their limitations differently. Let’s call them the Goofus and Gallant of misogyny.Because of the feminist movement, we all know that sexual assault is wrong and reflects a hatred of women. But there’s still an unearned amount of respect for the flip side—the cautious avoidance of women, the kind of misogyny that seeks to protect, to put on a pedestal, anywhere but on equal footing. We are sacred or we are profane; we are not commonly understood by people like this to be human in the same way that men are human.Pence’s fear of women, or fear of his sexual impulses when confronted by a woman when he doesn’t have his prayer warrior on hand, isn’t uncommon in conservative Christian circles. I saw a lot of tweets and articles defending his “rule,” including at least two completely inane articles on The Federalist website, which not only defended Pence as a good husband, but also mocked the very idea of friendship between men and women.To put it simply, this is bullshit.

Source: VP Pence’s No-Lady-Company Policy Is Not About Respecting His Wife | Dame Magazine

“True this!” Trump’s change of heart on Syria isn’t reassuring, it’s profoundly disturbing | David Shariatmadari | Opinion | The Guardian – #LoserTrump-#TraitorTrump is just about the tweet, the sale and looking good for the minute of the next thing

All this may just be routine strategic ambiguity. But, as ever with the Trump administration, we are in uncharted territory. No one quite knows whether Haley et al are speaking from a Trump-approved hymn-sheet, or concerned with protecting their own reputations in an administration not exactly known for its message discipline. No one quite knows whether Haley’s statement, only last week, that “Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,” will stand or be overturned. Since the latter would represent a 180-degree turn, however, it’s worth considering in more detail.AdvertisementThose celebrating the possibility of a shift should ask how it may have come about. If there’s one thing we do know, it’s that Trump wants us to see that he cares. This is a president who is obsessed with how he is perceived, griping about unflattering photos and the size of the crowd at his inauguration.It’s not even clear that he has any ideological aims, other than to win, and to be liked. He has, after all, donated to both Republicans and Democrats. He supported the Iraq war, then didn’t, then claimed that he never had.

Source: Trump’s change of heart on Syria isn’t reassuring, it’s profoundly disturbing | David Shariatmadari | Opinion | The Guardian