Women who are beaten by a husband or partner, or are emotionally or financially dominated, are much more likely to be infected than those living in a non-violent household. Abused women have limited abilities to negotiate their sexual activity or safe sex practices, and are vulnerable to even more abuse if they are the first to learn of their infection status and have to tell their partners.
Any effort to bring down HIV infection rates also needs to reduce violence against women—and women need to take the lead in pushing governments to deal with the problem. However there is little pressure to provide better protection for women. Social norms in southern Africa (and many other parts of the world), discourage women from speaking out about such "private matters."
In southern Africa, this silence is proving deadly. "Organizations of people affected by AIDS are weak," said Mark Heywood, head of the AIDS Law Project at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. "Women are centrally affected, but the response is limited to services to orphans and other areas," he said.
The gender violence situation is particularly serious in South Africa, a country of 47 million people where more than 5 million are living with HIV and AIDS. A woman is raped every 26 minutes, and a woman is killed every six hours. More than three quarters of young South Africans living with HIV are females, and more than one quarter say their first sexual experience was unwanted, says a report by the Medical Research Council in South Africa.
Since the end of apartheid, some new and progressive laws have been passed to reduce violence against women, such as the 1998 Domestic Violence Act. But that law is not being enforced, and there is no strong effort to force society to address the problem and to empower women to speak out about gender violence. This would help move the problem out from the shadows of their private lives and into the public realm, where the government must acknowledge violence against women for what it is: a serious human rights issue with significant social and economic implications for fighting poverty.
As a first step in helping organize the critical mass needed to oppose gender violence in South Africa and across the region, Oxfam America is funding the Johannesburg-based People Opposed to Women's Abuse (POWA) organization's work to document all the groups providing services to abused women, as well as those engaged in advocacy and public information campaigns on women's rights.
All across South Africa, small, community-based organizations help women victims of domestic violence. They provide safe housing, counseling, legal and medical assistance, and other services. But there is no strong, political effort to deal with violence against women. Women's organizations are not linked to speak with one voice about the problems of domestic violence and push for legal reforms and changes in policies and traditions that will protect women. This means they are treating the symptoms, but not the root causes of the problem.
"We need to maintain the service delivery, but we feel we need to stop reacting and help these community-based organizations speak out as well," explained Delphine Serumaga, Director of POWA. "We need to push from underneath."
Oxfam partners in southern Africa are also participating in the global "16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence." The Center for Global Women's Leadership at Rutgers University in New Jersey is organizing the campaign, which starts on November 25th, the International Day Against Violence Against Women, and ends on December 10th, International Human Rights Day. The campaign also coincides with International AIDS Day in December 1st. This year's theme for the 16 Days campaign is "For the Health of Women, for the Health of the World." It is designed to highlight the connections between violence against women and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, as well as the unmet commitments made by governments to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis.
South Africa: POWA is working with Amnesty International South Africa to host an international "cyber-dialogue" on the subject of trafficking of women and violence against refugee women in southern Africa. This public information campaign is building on a Listserv set up by the 16 Days campaign to promote dialogue and organizing around violence against women. POWA hopes the electronic discussion will help activists in all the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries build joint efforts to combat violence against women, another goal of Oxfam America's HIV/AIDS program in the region.
Interested participants in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence cyber-dialogue in southern Africa can visit www.genderlinks.org.za
Zimbabwe: The Women's Action Group (WAG), an Oxfam America partner since 2000 and a member of a coalition promoting new domestic violence legislation in Zimbabwe, is leading a campaign to educate women about their rights and HIV/AIDS. WAG is participating in a number of events marking the 16 Days campaign around the country. First will be the national launch of the campaign by the Zimbabwe Ministry of Women's Affairs, followed by events to raise awareness of child abuse, HIV and AIDS, and domestic violence in Macheke, where there have been recent reports of abuse at a primary school. WAG will also be working with the National AIDS Council to commemorate International AIDS Day on December 1st in Chiramanzu, and will then host a series of discussions on cultural practices that increase women's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS from December 2nd through the 9th in Marondera.
]]>His words were spoken at a gathering to mark the beginning of a new collaboration to expand efforts to improve the situation of women's rights as a precondition to overcome the deadly HIV/AIDS epidemic ravaging the sub-region. Oxfam America's Southern Africa program kicked off the new program area with a convening of key organizations in the region culminating in the press event on Constitution Hill.
The HIV/AIDS crisis is the most significant obstacle to development in southern Africa. Recent studies by UNAIDS and a special task force appointed by the UN Secretary General studying women, girls, and HIV/AIDS in southern Africa show some staggering statistics: 30 percent of the world's people living with HIV/AIDS (about 11.4 million) are in nine countries that contain only two percent of the entire earth's population. Women and girls are sharing a disproportionate burden of infection and death from the insidious disease. The task force study estimates that three quarters of the young people 15 to 24 years old in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Zambia that are currently living with HIV/AIDS are young girls and women.
These reports acknowledge one key reason women and girls are so vulnerable: their legal rights are not respected. Unequal laws on divorce and inheritance, as well as weak domestic violence legislation are leaving women vulnerable to abuse and poverty in an insecure environment. In some cases, women are considered legal minors, and are not allowed to make important decisions about their own lives, even if their husbands die.
Infected women, and those simply affected by the crisis, are missing out on employment and education opportunities as they fall ill or have to care for sick family members. Societal tolerance of sexual violence and harmful traditions frequently prevent women from controlling their sexual activity and discourage legal recourse in abuse cases.
Beyond wasting the potential of women in southern Africa, the resulting social dislocation, heavy health care and burial costs, and shortened life spans from the HIV/AIDS epidemic threaten the future for an entire generation. "We have crossed the threshold between the potential impact on women's development," said Mark Heywood, Director of the Aids Law Project of South Africa, speaking at a two-day conference sponsored by Oxfam America. "We are clearly experiencing the epidemic's impact on women's rights, which is a crucial aspect of what HIV/AIDS is doing to society."
Oxfam America has concentrated resources in the area of legal reform in Zimbabwe and Mozambique over the last eight years. Grant funds have supported research, advocacy, and popular campaigns designed to improve the legal framework to support women's rights in family laws, land ownership, domestic violence, and other key areas that directly affect women's welfare and livelihoods.
The new program area titled "HIV/AIDS Policy, Law and Women's Rights Partnership Program" builds off of the legal reform work in ways designed to help reduce the vulnerability of women to the disease, and eventually eradicate it. "Oxfam America must have a strong HIV/AIDS program in southern Africa,"" explained Regional Director Julio de Sousa. "In concentrating on these essential human rights issues, we will further women's rights and contribute to the fight against the epidemic."
Staff in Oxfam America's office in southern Africa consulted with a wide range of organizations with expertise in the areas of women's rights and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Together they developed a program that will include grants to organizations working on strengthening laws and policies designed to promote respect for women's rights, and challenging the social norms and values that condone violence against women and girls and contribute to their lower social status. Of equal importance will be looking at ways to improve the social support services essential for assisting women, including law enforcement, access to health care, and counseling.
The expanded program focus is building on fruitful collaborations with women's rights coalitions in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and constructing similar partnerships in South Africa and Namibia.
At the press event in Johannesburg, Justice Van Westhuizen challenged Oxfam America and its partners in this new program area to think big, to even dream. "We must be able to dream—because without dreams we will not exist." As one of the framers of South Africa's constitution, considered one of the world's most progressive, he was well aware of the power of a dream, as South Africa enters its 10th year under majority rule.
Equality for women and a stronger southern African society free of HIV/AIDS is still in the future, but the ideas are coming into place to make it a reality. As South Africa has shown, a dream is just the start of big things.
]]>The new Family Law that took effect in 2005 addresses a common injustice: when a husband dies, tradition says his house and fields go to his brother or parents, which can leave his wife and children without a home or an income.
But passing a law in a distant capital won?t change traditional practices like this--Mozambique is a vast country of 19.5 million in 10 provinces, speaking six languages. Teaching all citizens about the new law, and building respect for it in places governed primarily by local cultures and traditions, is a serious challenge.
After funding a coalition of five organizations to get the law passed, Oxfam is now supporting a grassroots campaign to make the Family Law a reality. The coalition is using workshops, radio programs, and outreach to local leaders to get the message about the law out to all sectors of society. Last year their training sessions included 50 judges, 180 grassroots activists, and 45 radio journalists from every province.
Traditions don't change overnight, but the effort is making progress. As one local activist in Mukudo put it, "People now know that women have rights to their land. It is one of the ways new laws are changing the community," said Jonah Dzanza, a 26-year-old farmer.
]]>Here in central Illinois, three farmers from Surin province were face-to-face with one of the major threats behind the US-Thai Free Trade Agreement: subsidized US agribusiness.
"Fifty years ago this whole area used to be small family-operated farms, now mostly all of the land is either owned or leased to large agricultural corporations," said Thomas Spaulding, a farmer at Angelic Organic Farm, which stands as a small reminder of traditional agriculture in a sea of monocropped and chemically farmed fields.
"This is what we're afraid of happening to our farms in northeast Thailand," replied Kanya Onsri, a small-scale rice farmer from Surin province.
Phakphum Inpaen, Onsri, and Arat Saengubon exchanged hardship stories with Thomas Spaulding as part of a speaking tour of the US organized by the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE), a US-based non-profit and Oxfam partner organization started by former students of a study-abroad program based in Khon Kaen.
During the three-week tour, they spoke tomore than 1,000 people about the threat the US-Thai FTA negotiations hold for Thai small-scale farmers. They told audiences that the US-Thai FTA is poised to allow unnaturally cheap products to flood Thai markets drowning out Thai production, endangering Thailand's biodiversity, and forcing Thailand to accept the importation and production of unlabeled genetically modified food products.
According to the Alternative Agriculture Network, approximately 400,000 farming families have been affected by cheap imports of corn and soybeans since Thailand joined the World Trade Organization in 1994. Thai farmers are worried that the US-Thai FTA will worsen this problem by increasing imports of US-grown corn and soybeans which can sell at artificially low prices because of the approximately $50 billion dollars the US government uses to subsidize corn and soybean production from 1995-2003.
While in Washington DC, the Thai delegation spoke with two Mexican farmers who were raising awareness about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which illustrates the impact of signing a free trade agreement with the US. Pedro Jose Torres Ochoa, a Mexican corn farmer, said that since Mexico signed NAFTA in 1994 more then two million Mexican farming families have migrated from their farms as a result of artificially cheap corn imports from the US.
Inpaen, Onsri, and Saengubon also expressed Thai farmer's opposition to the intellectual property rights (IPR) package favored by the US, which allows life forms, such as plants and seeds, to be patented by multinational corporations. The IPR system favors technologically advanced countries without requiring companies to secure prior approval for experimenting on another country's biodiversity or to share benefits with the country of origin.
"This allows US companies to profit off of the rich biodiversity of Thailand," said Arat Saengubon.
Thai farmers are worried that the IPR package put forward by the US will weaken Thailand's ability to protect its most prized plant and seed varieties including Jasmine rice.
"If we lose Jasmine rice then we are losing the most important resource of the poor, we'll lose our livelihood," said Phakphum Inpaen.
The tour participants also worry about the spread of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in Thailand due to pressure from US negotiators. Thai farmers fear that the two laws currently prohibiting commercial production of GMO seeds and requiring the labeling of GMO food products in Thailand are in danger of being repealed in exchange for increased market access for Thai-produced chicken and shrimp. An increase in GMO foods, argue the farmers, will not benefit small-scale farmers, but instead will give large agribusinesses more ability to control the food chain.
During the tour, the Thai farmers met with various American groups resisting free trade agreements.
"Free trade is destroying communities in Thailand just like it is destroying communities here in Maine," said Laura Millay, Project Coordinator for Food and Medicine, a US-based workers rights organization campaigning against free trade agreements. Millay estimates that approximately 20,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Maine since 2000 as a result of free trade policies.
Oxfam America provided funding to ENGAGE to support the farmer's tour and their work educating Americans about the US-Thai Free Trade Agreement. The goal was to encourage a free-flowing exchange of information about shared experiences.
Throughout the six-city tour, Americans asked how they could help Thai farmers. Onsri, Inpaen, and Saengubon urged students, consumers, religious groups, non-profit organizations, and elected officials to call for a more democratic negotiation process for both Thai and US citizens. Currently free trade agreements can be ratified in Thailand by the Prime Minister without ever passing parliament.
]]>Dhara Botara, a mother of eight in the remote community of Gura in Ethiopia’s Oromiya region, used to spend more than three hours each day walking to fetch water, sometimes accompanied by some of her children. The surface water she collected was often dirty and sometimes contaminated with parasites, which sickened her children.
Today, Dhara gets clean water twice a day from a new pump located just minutes from her home. In the morning and again in the afternoon, she visits the pump to haul back one or two five-gallon water containers. The water, from an aquifer 200 feet deep, comes out pure and cool.
In addition, she and her family now have access to a private bathing shed and a concrete washstand where they can wash their clothes and dishes.
The water project is one of three developed in the past year by the Oromo Self-Reliance Association with support from Oxfam America. Oxfam’s $42,000 contribution also underwrote the cost of the wells, pumps, bathing sheds, and laundry stations in two other communities besides Gura—Qamaxo and Alanqa—some 50 miles southwest of Addis Ababa. Altogether, some 1,800 people are benefiting from the water projects, which were inaugurated recently in separate ceremonies in the three communities.
"Clean water is just part of the equation," says Abera Tola, Oxfam America's regional director for the Horn of Africa. "Women now have more time to spend with their families, children can spend more time in school—the whole community benefits from these projects."
So popular are the water projects that neighboring communities have sent delegations to local authorities asking for the installation of similar facilities for their use.
Dhara and other beneficiaries in Gura pay 1 birr (about 12 cents) a month toward the upkeep of the washstand and pump, which is surrounded by a fence and open for six hours a day. But it’s clear from the smile on her face that the change it has brought to women in the community has been priceless.
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Born and raised in Kutum, one of the last small towns on the edge of the hundreds of miles of vast desert that sweeps north toward Libya and Egypt, Mohammed Ibrahim has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the dozens of different tribes and communities scattered across the region. Today he heads the agency's livelihoods program in northern Darfur, and visitors to Oxfam and the many international staff working on the program regularly turn to him for information on intricate local customs and history. Such local knowledge has helped shape Oxfam's work there over the past 20 years.
Oxfam has traditionally worked in partnership with rural communities throughout Darfur, building local capacity and providing technical know-how to help improve water supplies, sanitation, and agriculture in what has always been one of the poorest and most isolated parts of Sudan. When the current conflict escalated in 2003, up to two million people were uprooted from their villages and crowded into towns or settled into camps for displaced people. The emergency needs of the people of Darfur were clear and Oxfam responded by providing water and sanitation to around 400,000 displaced people.
But many hundreds of thousands more remain in their villages, often in highly volatile rural areas where various groups still vie for control. Many have seen their crops burned, their animals stolen, and their villages looted of assets like irrigation pumps, engines and cooking pots. The violence has prevented villagers from trading in local markets or from going out to harvest their fields. The traditional livelihoods with which they previously sustained themselves have been destroyed.
The local knowledge Oxfam has accumulated over the last two decades is essential in helping such communities. As Mohammed Ibrahim points out: "Oxfam has a long and successful history of working with communities in Darfur. In the current conflict, which continues to devastate the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, these villages have lost everything. Together we can help them along the path to recovery, to strengthen their food security and to rebuild their livelihoods."
Many villagers have had virtually everything they owned taken from them. So the Oxfam livelihoods team is first focusing on helping to replace what has been lost. Working initially in villages to the west of North Darfur in the areas of Kebkabiya, Saraf Omra, and Birka Seira, Oxfam is providing around 30,000 people with a wide range of goods and resources.
Grain and vegetable seeds have been distributed and villages will be carefully restocked with donkeys and other animals. Livestock are an important source of milk and meat and can also be sold to buy grain. Donkeys in particular are integral to the livelihoods of rural Darfur, being used for transport water, firewood, and other essentials.
Before the conflict, many villages had communal mills, which provided an income for the village and also reduced household expenditures, since families did not need to take grain to a private mill. Most such mills have now been destroyed, so Oxfam is working to replace them. Community health committees from each village have planned for the income obtained from these new mills to then be plowed back into rehabilitating schools and health centers that have also been destroyed in the conflict.
Mohammed Ibrahim and the rest of the team consult such community-based committees, women's groups, and other vulnerable sectors of Darfur society at every step to discuss the needs and concerns of each village. "These public forums have enabled Oxfam to tailor our projects to meet villagers' precise needs," he says. Such needs include not only food and farming but also protection and security. With the security situation in Darfur showing no sign of improving, it remains an extremely dangerous place, and communities expressed concern that being re-equipped with relatively valuable tools would only increase their vulnerability to looting and attack. So the livelihoods project is working in tandem with Oxfam's protection team to ensure that communities are not exposed to additional risk. The agency is providing only what is most urgently needed, including blankets, cooking utensils and tools such as donkey plows—relatively low-cost items that should not attract the attention of bandits.
Even the animals' gender can affect a village's security. Only female donkeys are distributed: They can haul firewood, food, and water every bit as well as males, but have significantly less market value and so are less likely to be stolen.
After restocking it is essential to ensure that the animals are kept healthy. Selected local villagers are to be trained as "paravets," assistant veterinarians who will be equipped with toolkits and drugs to ensure that animals are vaccinated against disease.
Mohammed Ibrahim and the team are also spearheading a new initiative to conduct research at key regional markets in North Darfur, mapping out the different production and food security patterns in different areas. Prices of animals, cash crops, and sorghum and millet (the staple grains of the region) are being compared, as well as prices of non-food items such as charcoal and firewood, which, in addition to their practical uses, provide a vital source of income for rural communities. The information gathered will be passed on to other NGOs working in the area to help shape other livelihood and food security programs.
]]>But, he adds proudly, he does know how to wash his hands properly after going to the latrine—something he rarely did just a few weeks ago. And he proceeds to demonstrate to the group of children, who—like Osman—have started attending Oxfam's child-to-child educational programs that aim to equip the children of Kalma camp with knowledge that could save their lives.
Football matches, songs, volleyball tournaments, and playground games are just some of the innovative ways in which the Oxfam Public Health Promotion (PHP) team here is teaching children how to stay healthy.
Kalma is one of the largest camps in Darfur—mile after mile of tightly packed shelters and rapidly constructed sanitation systems currently home to around 89,000 displaced people. As in most camps, the vast majority of residents are women and children. Two years ago there were just 19,000 people here, but rapid growth since then has created an abundance of health risks, to which children are the most vulnerable.
"Children everywhere need to be taught to wash their hands and keep clean," says Khaled Suleiman, one of Oxfam's PHP officers in the camp. "But here especially so, as the consequences can easily be fatal."
To make sure the messages sink in, Khaled and the team try to make them as fun as possible. Oxfam has built a series of community shelters where child-to-child interactive classes and activities are held.
Songs are enthusiastically sung about how to prevent malaria and diarrhea ("Our food should be washed, our water should be covered," the children sing, accompanied by stomping of feet and clapping of hands).
Other songs encourage children to participate in community clean-up campaigns, and explain how to set up mosquito nets and use the latrines properly. Oxfam has installed around 9,000 family latrines and 1,500 communal latrines in Kalma.
The children in Kalma love to make noise. The merest glimpse of a new Oxfam worker elicits a chorus of hundreds of voices shouting in unison, "OK, OK"—the nickname the children of Kalma have given to foreign visitors and the first English word every child in the camp learns. The welcome is followed by mischievous smiles and laughter all round, and the children's enthusiasm for loud, energetic fun extends into the classroom.
"My favorite is the singing and dancing," says Osman of the child-to-child activities, his arms waving frantically about his head as he mimes the actions to a song about swatting away flies. "And I like to learn new things." He has spent most of his short life in the camp after arriving here with just his mother. Nobody is sure what happened to his father and brothers.
Nine-year-old Hawa also likes to sing. "I enjoy the classes as I can make friends with lots of other children and learn at the same time. We sing the songs when we go home as well. I would like to go to school but so far I have not been able to," said Hawa, who has been in the camp for two-and-a-half years since her family fled their village of Shataya, nearly 100 miles to the west.
The PHP team works with community volunteers to come up with new songs that they think the children will find both educational and entertaining. "Kalma is as big as a city, so it is divided into eight 'sectors,'" says Khaled. "Recently we heard children from sectors 7 and 8—the only parts of the camp where Oxfam does not work—singing our songs! The children at our classes had been singing at home and gradually the songs spread around the entire camp."
The programs have proved extremely popular—almost too popular. The teachers—themselves displaced people living in the camp—say they often have 400 children trying to cram into a single room at the community shelter. "Every time we open the door, another dozen or so burst in," says Khadija, who teaches children in Sector 3 of the camp.
"Having such large classes can make it very hard for us to get the message across successfully," she says. "So we have split them into groups. Group 1 comes between 8:30 and 10:30 and Group 2 between 11 and 1 pm. Of course, some children try and come to both!"
"We are trying to ensure that the children are exposed to our messages at every possible opportunity," says Khaled. "The songs are just a part of our activities and it is clear that children's health has improved since the programs began."
Cartoon drawings explaining how food can breed germs, and how failing to clean latrines will spread disease and attract rodents, are pinned to the walls of the community shelters. Football matches and other events are organized for children to attend, where health-related information is disseminated.
The PHP team is also coordinating its efforts with the four primary schools in Kalma camp. A number of children from each class are chosen as supervisors and join teachers for training in hygiene promotion. The skills and facts they learn are then passed on to their classmates and pupils.
]]>Coldplay has established a deep commitment to Oxfam America and its causes. In 2003, Oxfam volunteers gathered 10,000 Big Noise signatures during Coldplay's 14-date US tour. In 2005, Oxfam gathered 63,600 signatures. We delivered them to US Trade Representative Robert Portman in December.
Worldwide, the Big Noise petition has gathered 17.8 million signatures, many of them from poor people living in developing countries such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Zambia. Oxfam delivered the Big Noise to world trade ministers in December at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong.
Coldplay front man Chris Martin has seen firsthand the crippling effects of bad trade rules on small farmers after traveling to both Ghana and Haiti with Oxfam.
"How on earth could anybody stand in a field with these people and say that it's the right thing to do to dump their excess produce cheaply on a third world country? It's beyond me. But the truth is, the people responsible haven't talked to the farmers in the areas affected."
]]>On Dec. 12, the eve of the World Trade Organization's week-longMinisterial meeting, a delegation of celebrities including Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, singer Angelique Kidjou, from Benin, and Chinese rockstar Anthony Wong handed over the petition to Pascal Lamy, Director General of the WTO.
The group of celebrities reflect the diverse originsof Big Noise signatures, which have poured in from around the world, with large numbers coming from developing countries such as India, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Zambia.
Rich countries have made a significant contribution as well. Through a variety of grassroots methods, in almost every state in the country, Oxfam America helped gather about 220,000 signatures within the US.
Organizers in California, Kansas, Chicago, Virginia, and Boston gathered signatures as part of their work promoting a cap on US agriculture subsidies, which could help reduce poverty for millions of small-scale farmers.
About 1,000 volunteers gathered signatures while talking with audience members at Coldplay, REM, Youssou N'Dour and Habib Koité concerts, and conferences and expos such as the Green Festival and Fair Trade Futures conference.
Student activists at universities around the country, including Oxfam America-trained CHANGE leaders established fair trade clubs on their campuses, participated in a traveling fair trade Road Show, and staged talks and teach-ins this fall and during the Global Week of Action in April.
And roughly 85,000 online activists signed up to the Big Noise, either by logging onto www.maketradefair.com and through e-mail actions from Oxfam.
These efforts supported trade campaigns around the world.
Just this month, actor Colin Firth met with European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson in Brussels. He, along with Oxfam campaigners and a Chinese dragon, reminded the commissioner of the upcoming World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong, where development represents a key issue on the agenda. More than 70 journalists turned up for the event.
Firth said: "What is an actor doing here? There are millions of people more qualified than me—the 10 million names on the Big Noise petition ... I'm here as a name, a European, and a consumer. These are the voices I give to Mr. Mandelson to take to Hong Kong."
And in West Africa, where small-scale farmers have been devastated by US overproduction of cotton crops, campaigners reported gathering more than 2.7 million signatures for the Big Noise—an extraordinary achievement.
Oxfam will keep a steady drumbeat going throughout the WTO meeting Dec. 13 to 18.
"For millions of people, trade is a life or death issue. This is the first opportunity many have been given to voice their concerns," said Brian Rawson, Trade Campaign Organizer at Oxfam America.
The Make Trade Fair team also plans on presenting the petition to US decision-makers gathered in Hong Kong.
"The delivery of the Big Noise in Hong Kong will bring the collective power of these voices right into the negotiating halls of the WTO."
]]>The U.S has taken some steps in the right direction. The President spoke unequivocally about the need to cut trade distorting agricultural subsidies during his speech to the UN General Assembly this past fall and Secretary of Agriculture Johanns and US Trade Representative Robert Portman have echoed the President's position. American negotiators have put new proposals on the table attempting to restart the stalled negotiations. But, it is still not enough to deliver on the promises of a "development round" and lift millions of people out of poverty.
The Doha Round of trade negotiation was supposed to change the dynamics on trade. Launched in 2001, negotiators announced that this trade round would put the interests of developing countries at the heart of the effort. But four years later, the negotiations have stalled and development concerns are sliding to the bottom of the agenda.
For the more than 2.5 billion people in the world that rely on agriculture for their livelihood, Hong Kong is more than a meeting of diplomats - it is an opportunity to meaningfully improve their lives. Throughout the world, poverty is concentrated in rural areas, with more than a billion people living on less than $1 a day. The average cotton farmer in Mali earns about $400 a year from the entire cotton crop. Between 2001 and 2003, Oxfam estimates that West African countries, including Mali, lost over $400 million dollars because US subsidies depressed global cotton prices. The backbone of Mali's economy, providing employment for more than 3 million people, falls victim to rules that have permitted rich countries to benefit for decades from dumping subsidized cotton. By leveling the playing field, we could have a massive impact on poverty reduction.
The Doha Round promised developing countries that it would do things differently, that the development of poor nations would occupy center stage. What that means is drastic cuts in agricultural subsidies and offers of market access for developing countries. But this will require that leaders of the U.S., EU and Japan see a greater good for both developing nations and their own citizens. In the US, it means envisioning a new era for American farmers that shifts subsidies from anachronistic, trade distorting support payments to new programs that support sustainable rural livelihoods and stewardship.
President Bush has delivered the right message on cutting subsidies. But the opportunity to lift millions out of poverty through fair trade rules still lies far out of reach. The US should take the lead and demonstrate to the rest of the world that we believe in the power of trade to change lives, and that we care about the lives of farmers in the US and abroad. Two and half billion people are watching and waiting.
]]>But then the Family Law coalition, five groups funded by Oxfam America that helped create and promote the new law, turned to the next phase of their mission: To ensure the new law is understood by a diverse population in a vast country of 19.5 million in 10 provinces, speaking six languages (with 16 dialects).
The new Family Law contains a number of revolutionary concepts for a country like Mozambique, which is struggling to emerge from poverty, conflict, colonization, and illiteracy.
A complete overhaul of marriage laws: The new law recognizes customary or non-formal traditional marriages, and allows widows to inherit land and other property. It also raises the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18, which will help encourage the next generation of females to gain secondary education. Women now have the right to seek divorce in the case of domestic violence or infidelity, and to create and enforce prenuptial agreements.
Redefining the status of women in society: Putting women on an even footing with men is essential for fighting poverty, in any country. "The old law increased poverty for women," said Maria Orlanda, secretary general of the Mozambique Women Lawyers' Association in Maputo. "They depended on husbands for assets and there was no way for them to accumulate wealth of any kind." Under the new Family Law, men are no longer the de facto head of a household. This authority is now shared with women, who also have the right to work outside the home without the permission of a husband or male relative, and to buy, own, and manage property or other financial assets.
"You have to understand the problems of grassroots people to really help them," says Rafa Machava, executive direct or Muleide, a women's rights and development organization that is part of the Family Law coalition in Mozambique. With funding from Oxfam America, Muleide is reaching out to people—particularly traditional leaders—in small communities, training them and promoting the new law in ways that do not create conflict with their concepts of family life, and the role of women in society.
Muleide targets traditional leaders as the key for real change in communities. "They are the voice that is trusted," Machava says, "and they open doors for you, as respected people in the community."
One of Muleide's central missions is to provide assistance to women who are in danger of domestic violence. "Many perpetrators of violence claim that there is a traditional basis for the conflict in their household, based on their beliefs," Machava said. "A man may say his wife is a witch, or has been cursed by ancestors, because she can't have children. Or the wife may say that the husband did not pay enough lobola, a dowry or bride price, and this makes her unable to have children. And if for any reason a child dies, you can have these sorts of conflicts. A wife can be sent back to her family, and they will consult a traditional healer for a solution."
Muleide's activists work with the traditional healers. "Our activists ask the healer to tell the couple about the new Family Law," Machava said. "We teach them in their local language, because they don't speak Portuguese, so that there will be no conflict between the advice from a traditional healer and the law. This is a way of showing that domestic problems can be resolved without violence, and people can learn that they can seek legal help from Muleide and other organizations." The organization trained 250 traditional healers in Maputo province in 2005.
Working with a traditional healer trained in the new Family Law helps people resolve problems based on traditions with which they are comfortable, while at the same time learning to respect the new law and avoid solutions that violate women's rights. This added expertise in the new law is of great interest to traditional healers, says Machava. "They openly say they work with Muleide because it brings them more customers," she said.
]]>The camp is only about nine miles from their village of Abu Hamra, which once was home to about 500 families. But after Janjaweed militia tore through the community burning dwellings and looting, Omar's family fled, as nearly two million other Darfur residents have done since conflict erupted in the region in 2003.
Omar's family was among the lucky ones. They survived the attack, but lost many of their belongings, including about 110 sheep. They arrived at Shangil Tobai with just a donkey, a bed, and a few clothes. There, they have joined nearly 20,000 other people, many of them from surrounding villages, who have squeezed into Shangil Tobai and a neighboring camp, Shadad, seeking safety from the violence that has shattered their communities.
Oxfam is helping about 400,000 displaced people scattered in camps like Shangil Tobai. The agency is supplying them with clean water and sanitation facilities as well as with essential household goods like soap and water containers. At Shangil Tobai, families have received two cooking pots, a cup, a bowl, a bucket, two jerry cans, a sleeping mat, and blankets.
But while people's basic needs are being met and Omar's youngest children are in school, there is little to fill the lives of camp residents at Shangil Tobai. In their two years at the camp, Omar's family has had no opportunity to earn an income, nor have they been able to plant their fields or harvest a crop. At the end of each month, there is rarely enough food left from the rations provided by international aid groups to feed everyone in the family sufficiently. And it has been nearly two years since any of them have eaten meat—a regular part of their diet back at Abu Hamra.
Danger circles the camp. Leaving its security to collect firewood for cooking is necessary—but risky. In recent weeks, raiders on camels attacked a small group on the edge of the camp, killing three people and stealing their animals. People are increasingly worried that such attacks will take place within the camps themselves.
Omar and his family long to go home, but they find it hard to envision any improvement in their situation in the near future. Talks aimed at a political solution that would bring long-term security to the region have progressed only haltingly.
"We miss our homes. We miss our village, our furniture, our animals, and also our privacy," said Omar. But until a political settlement is reached—and safety for civilians is guaranteed—it is simply too dangerous for Omar and his family to leave Shangil Tobai.
]]>The domestic violence bill is an attempt to thrust domestic violence out from behind closed doors and into the public realm, a difficult task in Zimbabwe and other African countries where many people do not consider women equal to men, and view abuse of women in the household to be a private matter. According to the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association (ZWLA), one of every four women in the country suffers some form of abuse in her lifetime, and sixty percent of murder cases are related to domestic violence.
Some notable and progressive features of the proposed domestic violence bill:
The Women's Coalition includes three Oxfam America partners: the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association, the Women in Politics Support Unit (WiPSU), and the Musasa Project. In previous years Oxfam America also funded the work of three other coalition members, the Association of Women's Clubs, Zimbabwe Adult Learners Association, and the Federation of African Media Women's Association.
If the bill is signed as expected it will conclude nearly six years of work. The Coalition's first efforts in 1999 were to educate women about a proposed constitution to replace one negotiated at the end of the liberation war in 1982. Critics of the draft constitution said it discriminated against women based on customary law. The Women's Coalition led a public education campaign that contributed to a defeat of the proposed constitution in a referendum in 2000.
The Women's Coalition then turned its attention to legislation to help improve the situation of women in Zimbabwe, and began researching and actually drafting a new domestic violence bill. It was first proposed to the Minister of Justice in 2001. In 2004 the Women's Coalition submitted a petition to the Minister with 10,000 signatures. In 2005 the effort gained momentum as Joyce Mujuru was named vice president, and the government established a new Ministry of Women's Affairs, and appointed another woman, Oppha Muchinguri, to this highly placed position. Both were supporters of the domestic violence bill.
The Women's Coalition did encounter some political resistance. First, it had to get approval from a special committee for legislature in the president's cabinet before the bill could be introduced to Parliament.
Emilia Muchawa, director of ZWLA, attended the cabinet committee meeting, and said that there were concerns about the articles that outlaw some traditional practices. "There were seven ministers, only one was a woman," she said. "They talked it over and one said, 'if this goes through, I would be arrested.' They could not look at it objectively. We asked them to separate their public role from their private life." Although the cabinet committee was not enthusiastic, Muchawa said they did feel a sense of responsibility. "They knew that they would have to step out of their personal life and answer for their constituency," she said.
After the cabinet approved the legislation in May of 2006, the Women's Coalition then had to find a way to promote the bill in Parliament, where only 24 of the 150 seats are held by women. The bill successfully passed in the House of Assembly in July. However in debates in the Senate in October, more resistance emerged as one member of Parliament, Timothy Mubhawu, said the bill would degrade the status of men and stated flatly, "Women are not equal to men."
Women's Coalition members protested the next day outside Parliament, and officials of Mubhawu's party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), disavowed his statements and suspended him from party membership. The bill passed the Senate and is now awaiting the president's signature. "I am sure he has a positive interest in signing the bill," Muchawa said.
When it becomes law, Zimbabwe's domestic violence bill will be the latest in a series of important legislative reforms that are helping women claim and defend their rights in southern Africa. It follows two important laws in neighboring Mozambique: the 1997 Land Law, and the 2004 Family Law, both of which help women gain legal title to and inherit land, an essential asset for a secure livelihood in a country dependent on agriculture. The Family Law also established clear laws for divorce, rights for women to hold jobs, and a minimum age for marriage. Oxfam America funded leading members of a coalition of women's organizations in Mozambique that researched, proposed, and promoted these laws.
As in Mozambique, Oxfam America's partners working together in Zimbabwe played important roles in the development, drafting, and lobbying of the domestic violence bill. "Oxfam America was the first organization to invest in the Women's Coalition," Muchawa said, noting that having the Coalition in place helped the work on the domestic violence bill get started. "We had a structure around which we could coalesce on this issue," she said.
Having a variety of groups in the Coalition helped it in three important areas. The first was ensuring the legitimacy of the bill they proposed. "They took the bill out to the public, and made sure there was adequate consultation," said Margaret Samuriwo, Oxfam America's senior program officer in southern Africa. "They also educated women in Parliament, so they understood the bill and could support it. Women in both the ZANU-PF and MDC parties in Parliament worked together to garner enough support." Lastly, Oxfam support for research, which documented the extent of domestic violence in the country and its toll on women, also proved crucial in this advocacy campaign. Having the facts and figures at hand helped members of the Women's Coalition make their case in Parliament and in the media.
]]>Some live along the lakeshore in small shacks built on stilts. Others live on the water in moored houseboats, rafts, and barges. From these simple homes, the fishers hurl out their lines and pull up their baskets, hoping to catch enough to feed their families and satisfy the middlemen in the fish trade.
According to the Fisheries Action Coalition Team (FACT), an Oxfam-funded partner organization in Cambodia, the fishers help support about 1.5 million people.
"The Tonle Sap is very, very important, not only for the people who live on and around the lake, but for all of Cambodia," said Pen Raingsey, project officer at FACT.
Each year, monsoon rains and melting snows from the Himalayas feed the Mekong River, swelling the Tonle Sap Lake. This yearly pattern nourishes a diverse underwater world of flooded forests and more than 100 species of fish.
But because the Tonle Sap is not only a source of food, but also a route for transportation and commerce, it faces increasing risks. Neighboring countries, corporations, and regional finance institutions want to blast rapids, develop hydropower dams, and build harbors on the Tonle Sap and its connecting waterways.
For fishers accustomed to picking up and moving with the changing tides, it's a difficult process to learn about these threats, let alone do anything about them. Water nomads as they are, fishers don't always meet up with their neighbors, or feel comfortable voicing their opposition to the government.
That's where the Fisheries Action Coalition Team comes in. The group navigates the Tonle Sap, networking with fishers and bringing them to shore to meet, exchange information, and tell decision-makers what effect their developments will have. Then FACT compiles the research into a database and uses it to refute claims that certain developments would have no negative impacts.
Because of this work, fishers on the Tonle Sap say they feel empowered to protect their way of life.
Sitting on a small motorboat in the middle of the muddy waters of the Tonle Sap, Ly Saloeun, 53, said FACT trained him to write reports, and work with his neighbors to advocate for change.
He is one of many key fishers, each learning how to protect their community.
"We want to encourage the local community to raise their concerns to the decision makers," Raingsey said. "Before, people had no time or rights. Now, when a problem occurs, they can find a way to resolve that problem."
]]>In the camps for displaced people that stretch along Chad's border and across conflict-torn Darfur in western Sudan, the concept is hard to explain. In a world of want—where violence has forced more than two million people from their homes—how do you describe an abundance so great that it needs a cookbook loaded with directions to keep it all straight?
That experience helped define just one of the jarring truths about the global distribution of food that Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio explore in their new book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. A grand photo essay 288 pages long, the book took the couple on a journey to 24 countries where they got to know 30 families and the intricacies of each family's weekly food consumption. Family recipes accompany every profile.
Brand names and plastic packaging proliferate on some of the pages, testament to the global reach of processed foods and beverages. But on other pages, seeds and raw grains sit in burlap sacks—some more empty than full. A few of those limp sacks belong to the Aboubakars: D'jimia Ishakh Souleymane, who is a widow, and her five children.
The lessons Menzel and D'Aluisio learned from their visits with the Aboubakars are hard to forget, and they hope that readers who consume the stories and pictures in their book won't forget them either.
"What we really wanted to do was help people who didn't have a clue understand what was going on in the rest of the world," said D'Aluisio. "It's important—especially for Americans."
For starters, consider the water situation at the Breidjing camp in Chad where the Aboubakars have now lived for more than a year and a half. Their home is a small tent on a sandy plain crowded with countless others just like it. Oxfam has been providing water to thousands of people in the camp. The minimum provision in emergency situations such as this is just shy of 4 gallons per person a day.
"Water is one of the biggest problems," said Menzel. "Thirty thousand people use a lot of water. There's a big difference between having a faucet and carrying water and standing in line for water."
When the Oxfam water truck arrives to fill an empty bladder—a storage device that looks like a giant water bed—the relief that ripples through the blocks of tents is palpable, added D'Aulisio.
"The water is so precious," she said. "I do not turn a faucet on without thinking of all those people."
D'Aulisio's relationship with her garden has also changed since visiting the Aboubakars. Now, she wastes nothing from it, preferring to invest whatever time it takes to can the extra fruits and vegetables it produces.
D'jimia works hard for the little bit of extra food she buys for her family. She earns about $1.35 a day toiling in the fields of nearby villagers—when she can get the work. She uses the money to buy fresh tomatoes or dried okra. But the bulk of her family's diet—three meals a day—consists of the aiysh she stirs up in a big black pot over a fire outside her tent.
Aid groups provide the rations for the roughly 30,000 people in the camp. The allotments are far from lavish, and amount to about 2,100 calories per day per person in the form of a cereal, such as sorghum or millet, and small scoops of pulses and a corn-soy blend. The rations also include small amounts of sugar and salt.
"Most of everyone looks like they're on the minimum amount of calories needed," said Menzel. The rationing system takes into account only the numbers of people in a family, not the size of their appetites or where they fall on the growth charts.
"If you've got a lot of teen-age boys, you've got some difficulty," added D'Aluisio, speaking from her own experience mothering hungry boys.
D'Aluisio and Menzel learned about some of the ins and outs of camp management during their three-night sojourn in a tent at the Oxfam compound outside of Breidjing.
"Staying in the compound was great," said D'Aluisio. "We got to hang out with the people who were there."
One of the things that became clear to the couple during their stay at Breidjing is how complex the business is of feeding, sheltering, and providing water and sanitation for tens of thousands of people in a remote, arid place.
"Most people who see it from the outside don't see the difficulty," said D'Aluisio of the logistics in just getting enough food to people. "Sometimes there is a disconnect between the giving and the getting, and that disconnect is infrastructure."
For example, the camp was giving food out every 15 days instead of every 30 days—which would have been half the work—because it didn't have enough on hand. Food reserves were far away, and there was no guarantee when new supplies would arrive.
The difficulty in stocking Breidjing—or any of the camps in Chad and Darfur where hundreds of thousands of displaced Sudanese have lived in limbo since early 2003—is just the tip of a problem that affects millions of people around the world every day.
"Most hunger in the world is politics based," said D'Aluisio. "There is more than enough food on the planet to feed everybody. It's just warped in terms of who's getting the food and who already has the food. There needs to be more equality than there is."
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