Refugees » Feminist Peace Network

The following provides more information ( see also Providing Gender Responsive Aid in Haiti) about addressing the needs of Haitian women in the aftermath of the earthquake:

Donations to the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Profamil program will help them get their clinics and mobile health units in Haiti back to being fully operational.

Since 1984 PROFAMIL has provided low-cost, quality sexual and reproductive healthcare. As a leader in the field, PROFAMIL meets regularly with the Minister of Health to develop strategies for increasing access to sexual and reproductive healthcare.

Programs that Profamil offers include:

* Sexual & Reproductive Health Services: PROFAMIL clinics provide family planning, early detection of breast and cervical cancers, high-quality sexual and reproductive health clinical services for men and women, and pre-and-post natal services.

* Mobile Health Clinics: PROFAMIL brings health providers directly to the rural communities where the people are totally isolated. Approximately 200 men, women and children are provided with basic health care services at each visit.

* HIV/AIDS Prevention: PROFAMIL conducts voluntary testing and counseling for HIV/AIDS, educates the public about prevention and ensures widespread access to condoms.

* PROFAMIL Youth Program: PROFAMIL provides youth-friendly clinical and educational services to young people aged 10-25.

* Health Education: PROFAMIL covers issues such as promoting family planning and presenting various methods; cervical cancer and the need for routine pap smears; relationships; gender issues; domestic violence; HIV/AIDS prevention with regular condom demonstrations. In 2006, PROFAMIL educated over 225,000 people.

Peacewomen has a list of numerous organizations that are working with women in Haiti here.

The UNFPA has launched a flash appeal to fund programs that will allow them to:

Refurbish maternity wards to handle emergency obstetric care and other life-saving health services;

Deploy skilled health professionals, such as midwives, obstetricians and nurses, to affected areas to provide maternal health and emergency obstetric care;

Provide emergency safe delivery and reproductive health medicines and supplies to temporary clinics and health facilities being set up;

Help safeguard the personal hygiene and dignity of women and girls by providing related sanitary supplies;

Facilitate access of affected populations, especially young people, to psychosocial counselling and other services; and

Carry out interventions to prevent gender based violence.

The Women’s Refugee Commission has a list of the ten most pressing needs that must be met to ensure the well-being and safety of those displaced in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Amnesty has issued a statement regarding the need to protect women against sexual violence and exploitation in the wake of the earthquake.

The Global Fund for Women is asking Haitian women to help them formulate long-range responses and to inform the fund of their perceptions of need. (Note–while this perhaps sounds non-specific, I particularly like that they are asking what is needed, rather than telling those whose lives have been impacted what they see as the needs. Given that women are hugely under-represented in the organizations that organize aid in response to disasters, this is a very important shift in formulating response policy.)

AWID has an excellent piece by Masum Momaya on the role of women in the Haitian Economy, a subject that is the basis for the film Poto Mitan:

And WomenArts has this wonderful page about Haitian women in the arts including a poem entitled Mud Mothers by Lenelle Moise, here are just a few lines from the poem which I urge you to read in its entirety.

Mud Mothers

the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay

because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests

what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)

Please also see Providing Gender Responsive Aid in Haiti. H/t to Change.org for pointing to many of the links provided here and Sue Katz for pointing to the WomenArts link. Also, although not women-specific, h/t to Global Voices for providing updates from independent voices on the ground in Haiti.

Via the Women’s Refugee Commission:

GENDER ASPECTS OF STATELESSNESS
excerpted from a talk by Ada Williams Prince on International Migrants Day

Statelessness, or the lack of effective nationality, impacts the daily lives of some 11-12 million people around the world. Although the exact numbers are not known, it is estimated that half of these people are women. All displaced women and girls face extreme levels of risk to their safety and well being. This is exacerbated when Women and Girls become stateless.How do women become stateless? This can be as a result of political change or when states deliberately write laws excluding minority groups from citizenship, such as in the Dominican Republic, Myanmar/Burma, Estonia and Latvia.

Gender discrimination is another crucial factor in statelessness. Gender discrimination in nationality means that a woman can lose her right to citizenship by virtue of marriage because she has to denounce her nationality when she gets married. And Women often cannot pass on their citizenship to their children.

Other ways of becoming stateless: People may lose access to their birth records and citizenship documents when the state systems linked to registration and citizenship are destroyed during conflict or disasters. Also, families forced to flee their homes and leave their possessions during conflict and natural disasters may leave without identification, or lose proof of citizenship documents, or have them stolen.

As a result of being stateless, refugee women and girls are also frequently unable to obtain passports, to travel freely, or acquire jobs in the formal sector. This puts them at risk of using smugglers to remove themselves from difficult situations or in hopes of supporting themselves and their families.

But, there are some solutions to these problems. For example, it is important that refugees receive individual ID cards, that women’s names appear on ration cards, and that births, marriages and deaths are registered. This kind of documentation and registration has an impact on refugee return, nationality and inheritance. For example, having an individual identity card can help facilitate movement, stop
the use of detention and offer protection against refoulement.

Statelessness has innumerable consequences on children, particularly girls. Those who suffer most are stateless infants, children and youth. Though born and raised in their parents’ country of residence, they lack formal recognition of their existence.

First, refugee mothers give birth outside their home countries and in most cases cannot pass on their nationality to their children. Countries that determine citizenship exclusively by the father’s nationality create problems for children born out of wedlock, separated from their fathers, or whose fathers are stateless.

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Abigail Disney, producer of the phenomenal film, Pray The Devil Back to Hell along with Gini Reticker have a new project, Women, War & Peace, a mini- television series for Thirteenwnet.org. Here is what they posted on the PDBH Facebook page about their new project:

As we found ourselves immersed in the making PDBH, we realized time and again that this story about women’s centrality in war, peacemaking, and post-conflict rebuilding was at once both ancient and strikingly contemporary, crucial to understanding local context, yet truly global in its contours. And yet, this story hasn’t been told.

These thoughts followed us into the edit room for PDBH – we found that there was a stunning lack of relevant archival materials for us to work with. If we had been making a film about child soldiers, about combat, about warlords, or even about the heroics of the journalists themselves, there would have been no shortage of material. Despite the fact that every eyewitness to the events confirmed, in strikingly similar language, what the women had told us they had done, it appears that mainstream media wasn’t interested, or the footage resulting from those days was not deemed important enough to archive. Ultimately, most of the footage we used that showed the women in action came from private sources.

The difficulty of getting relevant footage from credible public sources highlighted an important reality for us. Everyone we spoke to, from regular citizens to policy leaders, credited these women with enormous influence on the outcome of the peace process and ensuing events, including the disarmament process and the election of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and yet that influence was nowhere in the journalistic or official record. And so their accomplishments, however stunning, were doomed to become part of an easily dismissed “mythical” narrative, and not included in history’s document of record. The women, in other words were being erased – and right before our eyes.

In order to make sure that this erasure of history doesn’t continue to happen to women in conflict zones around the world, we have joined forces with Pamela Hogan at the New York PBS station THIRTEEN/WNET.ORG, to create Women, War & Peace.

Here is a trailer for the series:

You can contribute to making this project happen here.

Alternet has a list posted of urgent issues that need action. While I’m very pleased to see helping the women of Afghanistan at the top of that list, their suggested action–signing a petition to the President and Congress “to support laws and enforcement of women’s rights in Afghanistan”–leaves a tad to be desired. We need to be very clear that we elected Obama despite his stating very clearly that he planned to escalate U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and that women’s rights are not a priority for Congress or the President. Sending petitions, forgive my cynicism, isn’t going to accomplish jack.

If you truly want to help the women of Afghanistan, the best way to do so (in addition to demanding an end to U.S, militarism which is a significant contributing factor to the current situation) is to directly support their efforts to address the issues they face. There are many organizations raising money in various ways to support these efforts. I am particularly impressed with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan RAWA. In the U.S. you can make a tax-deductible donation to help their work via the Afghan Women’s Mission. Another excellent way to help is the Madre Afghan Women’s Survival Fund.

Ending military aggression is crucial, but to create real, sustainable peace, we must empower women.

To learn more about the impact of militarism on Afghan women, check out the following:

Trading Afghan Women’s Rights For Political Power by Sonali Kolhatkar

Malalai Joya: The Killing of Women is Like Killing a Bird Today in Afghanistan

and the Brave New Foundation’s Re-Think Afghanistan has an excellent series of videos.

From the Working Women Organization via e-mail:

Dear Friends,

As you know how alarmed things are here in Pakistan. For getting absolute control on world resources, American Government has imposed war and internal conflicts in several parts of the world. Pakistan is one of them that is compel to play front line state against alleged “War on terrorism” Pakistani ruling elites never ever bother welfare of general public while they constantly defend personal privileges and profits, no matter they have army background or “elected” status. They work for single agenda “follow American instructions”.

We women and workers are forefront victims of these policies and
suffering from massive unemployment, poverty, war, hunger, forced
immigration and terror attacks.

75% people live under poverty line, due to load shading and unlimited power cuts 1750 factories and industrial units has shut down. In last> six months just in one city Karachi, 250, 000 daily and temporary workers has lost their livelihood. Law & order situation is worse than ever, in Karachi and Lahore just in a week 50 people were killed in target killings, just in a month 10 bomb blast has occurred in different cities which took hundreds’ people lives and made thousands badly injured and disable. War in Sawat and other Northern areas pushed 2 million people leave their areas.

Violence against women are shamefully increasing, women re torched and killed by their own uncles, bothers and fathers. Social and legislative system does not give women any protection or prosecute their killers. Police got free hand to kill any one on the name of terrorist. (my note–that last sentence could also be a description of U.S. foreign policy as well.)

We women workers strongly condemn all devastation imposing in Pakistan and all around the globe on the name of religion, race, color, recession and terrorism.

In this glooming situation we believe just workers and general people’s consciousness and real understanding about social, cultural, economical and political facts will make difference. We must learn actual and hidden realities of national, regional and international policies and on different levels we must expose and resist against those who are behind all destructions, horror, clashes and oppression.

Just our hard and united resistance against imperialist and fascist forces will stop and defeat them. We “workers (women & men)” must support each others and strengthen international solidarity for brining peace and justice in our own respective countries along with globally.

Long live international workers unity!!

In solidarity,
Simy Zafar
General Secretary
Working Women Organization

The Women of Haiti--Beyond The Immediate

The Gendered Aspects Of Statelessness

Women, War & Peace--A New Project From The Producers Of Pray The Devil Back To Hell

How To REALLY Help The Women Of Afghanistan

Women Speak Out About Crisis In Pakistan

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