Italy biggest donor in "Adopt a Clitoris" campaign
[i-Italians biggest donor in Adopt-a-Clitoris]
The charity "Clitoraid" is the most popular with the Italians, who account for 26.88% of the donations in 2009, according to the organisation's financial statement. This makes Italy the largest donor for the "Adopt-a-Clitoris" campaign.
I am not sure how to bring this news to you, as I don't know how it was meant. Female sexual mutilation is a crime. Punto.
How to react to the name of the charity and their campaign? I hope they actually meant it to be eye -or- ear catching and provocative.
CNN Heroes. Cast your vote now.
[i-Betty Makoni]
"I was raped when I was 6 years old," Betty Makoni, a lady from Zimbabwe, recalls. Her attacker was a local shopkeeper. Her mother would not allow her to report the abuse.
"She said, 'Shh, we don't say that in public,'. I had no shoulder to cry on."
Three years later, she witnessed her father murder her mother. In that moment, Makoni said she realized the potentially deadly consequence of a woman's silence.
"I told myself that no girl or woman will suffer the same again," she says.
Believing an education would provide her the best opportunity and means to speak out, Makoni earned two university degrees and became a teacher. While teaching, she noticed that girls were dropping out of school at an alarming rate. She approached her students with an idea.
"I said to girls, 'Let's have our own space where we talk and find solutions,' " Makoni said. Girl Child Network was born.
By the end of the first year, there were 100 GCN clubs throughout Zimbabwe where girls could find support. Makoni said she was not surprised: "Every woman and girl identified with the issues that we were raising," she said.
In 2000, she quit her teaching job to volunteer with GCN full time. "I decided to become an advocate because I walked my own journey to survival," she said.
The following year Makoni successfully procured a piece of land and opened the organization's first empowerment village, designed to provide a haven for girls who have been abused. Girls are either rescued or referred to the village by social services, the police and the community. The healing begins as soon as a girl arrives.
"In the first 72 hours, a girl is provided with emergency medication, reinstatement in school, as well as counseling," said Makoni.
It is important to her that the girls are in charge of their own healing. "It gives them the confidence to transform from victims to leaders," she explained.
But for Makoni, speaking out came with a high personal cost. In 2008, she was forced to flee her native country. "I left Zimbabwe because my life was in danger as a result of my project being interpreted politically."
Today, she lives with her family in the United Kingdom. She still serves as executive director of her organization and shows no signs of slowing down.
Betty is one of the ten people chosen by CNN as "CNN Heroes". Look at their profiles and choose the one you find the most inspirational here.
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Text adapted from Betty's profile page on CNN. Picture courtesy Davison Makanga/IPS
British children's authors considered potential child sex offenders
[i-stupidity at schools]
How weird a well-intended legislation sometimes goes...
The UK Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) is managed by the Independent Safeguarding Authority, set up after the 2002 murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells by Ian Huntley, a janitor at their school.
All individuals working with children will be required to register with a national database for a fee of £64. And that includes authors of children's books who give presentations at schools.
The new scheme has every individual working in a field that requires more than a tiny amount of contact with children and/or vulnerable adults to be vetted. If they are passed, they will be placed on a register that says they are allowed to work in a regulated field. If they are barred, they will go on a separate register and it will be a criminal offence for them to try and obtain work in a regulated field, carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison. It will also be illegal for anyone to employ them. (Full)
Picture courtesy Matt's Notepad
International Women's Day - Raise hope for the women in Congo
Today, March 8th is International Women's Day. While in the past decennia we witnessed a significant change in attitude both in women's and society's opinion about women's equality and emancipation, there are still places in the world where women suffer greatly.
One of those is Eastern DRC where women are systematically raped as a war strategy between warring fractions. Used as a weapon of war, sexual violence and rape exist on a scale seen nowhere else in the world.
Often successful in its intent to destroy and exterminate, rape is causing the destruction of women, their families, and their communities. While Congo’s women are the backbone of their society, efforts to protect women and girls in the Congo are failing spectacularly.
Here is a video from a shelter for women, victims of sexual assault, in Bukavu in DRC.
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The video was produced by Raise Hope For Congo, a movement aiming to protect and empower Congolese women and girls. You can help them, and the women of Congo by raising awareness and rolling up your sleeves with a toolkit they provide.
News: Nov 25 - International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
drc civil war congo[i-drc civil war congo]
Violence against women is largely unreported. Fear and stigma often prevent women from reporting incidents of violence or seeking assistance.
55 to 95% of women who have been physically abused by their partners have never contacted the police, aid groups or shelters.
Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, motor accidents, war and malaria, according to World Bank data. (Details)
Since 9 years, November 25th has been declared "The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women", calling the world's attention to gender-based violence.
Over 1.3 million people signed the petition supporting the fight for this cause. Make your voice count, sign the petition now:
link[i-link]
Violence of women is also an issue of prevention from the ground up. Aid agencies have been working on better girls' education, and using food aid as a tool to help women out of extreme poverty. (Example)
Picture extracted from Michael's excellent article Congo: The Rape Capital of the World.
More on The Road about sexual violence and emancipation.
News: UN Peacekeepers - sexual misconduct scandals continue...
UN Peacekeepers in DRC[i-UN Peacekeepers in DRC]Although a group of Indian peacekeeping soldiers accused of sexual abuse in eastern Congo have returned home, allegations of misconduct continue to surround the battalion.
The United Nations confirmed last month that an internal investigation had uncovered credible evidence that members of an Indian unit stationed in North Kivu province “may have engaged in sexual exploitation and abuse”.
A UN source said around 100 peacekeepers from India allegedly used children both to work for them and to hire Congolese girls for sex, using the children as domestic servants and to pimp for prostitutes, some as young as 12 or 13 years old.
Peacekeepers are strictly forbidden to socialise with local people, but Mapendo Polepole, a 28-year-old prostitute from Goma, who heads an organisation of women living with AIDS, testified Indian soldiers from the camp in central Goma are regular customers.
“They have sexual intercourse with us, without condoms, in their jeeps, during a patrol and in their camps,” she said, adding that the soldiers pay 20 US dollars for her services rather than the going rate of two dollars. (Full)
More posts on The Road about UN Peace Keepers
Source: International Aid Workers Today
Picture courtesy: AP Photo / Sayyid Azim
News: Aid Shame
link[i-link]A report called “No One to Turn To,” released by U.K. charity Save the Children, highlights the sexual abuse by humanitarian aid workers and UN peacekeepers in impoverished, war-torn countries.
The report is based on 38 focus group discussions with a total of 341 people living in chronic emergencies in Ivory Coast, Southern Sudan and Haiti, and meetings with 30 humanitarian, peace and security professionals.
The interviews revealed instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.
Allegations and investigations into UN peacekeepers’ sexual abuse of international children and teenagers have been circulating for more than a decade, beginning with U.N. soldiers in Cambodia in the 1990s. (Full)
Even though the report is only a fragmentary snapshot, does not distinguish between "factual" and "hear-say" observation, and is a partial repeat of earlier reports (which I quoted before on the Road), abuse of any kind can not be highlighted enough, in the hope consequent repressive and preventive action is taken.
The report should take credit that it also highlighted the internal figures from "Save the Children", the organisation who published the report, noting that allegations of sexual abuse by its own staff went up from 11 in 2006 to 15 in 2007.
The full report, you find here.
UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon promised a UN probe into the abuse. (Full)
Source: International Aidworkers Today
Picture courtesy Council of Europe
News: Where do children sell themselves ten times a day for one loaf of bread?
Zimbabwe Orphan[i-Zimbabwe Orphan]
Zimbabwe goes to the polls on March 29th. Will it be more of the same, or is something really going to change?
The horror stories keep on coming up from a country that used to be the breadbasket of the region:
The Aids crisis, and the creaking health system it has overwhelmed, has left hundreds of thousands of children orphans, struggling to fend for themselves. As once-prime farmland fell back into bush, thousands picked up their few belongings and headed for the cities in search of a better life.
Lina, then 14, had no money for her fare, so the driver took her virginity as payment. Princess, then 13, sold hers for a loaf of bread after the police stole the peanuts she was selling and chased her off the streets. Precious, at 14, followed the others into prostitution, selling herself to strangers on the streets of Harare merely to survive.
The money Princess got for her first client could buy her a loaf of bread. Now it can barely do that. Sex with one of Mbare's street girls costs Z$10 million (25p) — when the customers actually pay. “I'll have about four or five a day,” Princess said. “Out of that, maybe two will pay.” The police do not chase her any more, but they still steal, demanding sex in return for leaving her alone.
Amine, one of the girls who works the streets with Princess, showed a fresh scar on her hand where a customer had stabbed her, forcing her to drop the notes that he had just paid her.
Precious, a tiny 16-year-old, stunning beneath the grime, sees as many as ten men a day. (Full)
More posts about Zimbabwe.
Picture courtesy Times Online. Source: The Road Daily Read the full post...
News: 14,200 cases of rape. With only 287 court cases.
I wonder in which country one would accept a mass of 14,200 registered rape cases in two years, in one province only. Even worse: of which only 287 cases were taken to court. No-one would accept this, right? Right?
link[i-link]Well, this is the case in South Kivu, a province in Eastern DRC (Congo), according to the UN Human Rights Council. (Full)
Amnesty International reports tens of thousands of women and girls have suffered systematic rape and sexual assault since the devastating conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo began in 1998. Rape, sometimes by groups as large as twenty men, has become a hallmark of the conflict, with armed factions often using it as part of a calculated strategy to destabilize opposition groups, undermine fundamental community values, humiliate the victims and witnesses, and secure control through fear and intimidation. It is not unusual for mothers and daughters to be raped in front of their families and villages, or to be forced to have sex with their sons and brothers. Rapes of girls as young as six and women over 70 have been reported. Young girls are also regularly abducted and held captive for years to be used as sexual slaves by combatants and their leaders. (Full)
Help putting an end to violence against women. Sign up:
link[i-link]
Picture courtesy Kevin Sites. Source: International Aid Workers Today
