By Margaret Huang, Amnesty International USA Deputy Executive Director of Campaigns and Programs
Great news! After constant campaigning and unwavering support on the part of more than a million Amnesty activists like you, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman sentenced to death because of her religious beliefs, is free and arrived in Italy with her family yesterday.
I’ve just come from opening week at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), when thousands of women’s rights activists and member state delegations descend on New York to review the current state of affairs for women and girls globally and recommend actions states can take to advance gender equality and promote female empowerment.
Many of the events this week are calling attention to sexual and reproductive rights as a primary barrier to development progress and the enjoyment of rights and dignity for all. The priority theme for the CSW this year is a review of progress for women and girls under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
By Rebecca Landy, Women’s Human Rights Coordination Group
Saturday, March 8 is International Women’s Day – a day marking global recognition of women’s rights. International Women’s Day (IWD) was first celebrated in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland as a day of demanding women’s rights to work, hold office, and vote. It wasn’t until 1975 that it was given official U.N. recognition. Every year, the U.N. designates a theme for the day.
For 2014, the year’s theme is: Equality for Women is Progress for All.
NCBH was regarded as a national model for its innovative and compassionate care practices (Photo By BSIP/UIG via Getty Images).
By Nan Strauss, Former Amnesty International USA Researcher
With just three days notice, the North Central Bronx Hospital (NCBH)’s Labor and Delivery service was shuttered after thirty-six years providing quality maternity care to 1500 women and babies a year. The award-winning midwife-led program at NCBH was regarded as a national model for its innovative and compassionate care practices, meeting the needs of at-risk women in an under-served community.
Eliminating NCBH’s successful program will reduce the quality of care and options available in this under-served community. The woman-centered, midwifery model of care practiced at NCHB is especially effective in addressing the health disparities faced by women of color and low-income women, but will no longer be an option in the area.
The closure will make it more difficult for low-income women to access care, increasing travel time and costs, and will end community-based care in the area. Surrounding hospitals that will be forced to absorb the additional 1500 births each year are already stretched thin.
Activists rally at the state capitol calling for women’s sexual and reproductive rights during a legislative debate on HB2 and SB1 (Photo Credit: Sahare Wazirali).
By Sahare Wazirali, Amnesty International Activist
I have been spending a lot of time in the Texas state capitol these days. Why? Because the state legislature debated unnecessary and dangerous new legislation that threatens to restrict access to our sexual and reproductive rights.
Two Texas bills have achieved significant attention in the national news and if Texas Gov. Rick Perry signs the legislation into law, as he is expected to do, women across Texas will be denied the autonomy to make decisions about their bodies. As a human rights activist, I feel compelled to speak out against legislation that will have devastating consequences for the health of women and girls in Texas.
The bills recently passed by the Texas legislature, House Bill 2 (HB2) and Senate Bill 1 (SB1), violate women’s sexual and reproductive human rights by limiting access to legal abortion and equal access to health services.
Save the Children’s “State of the World’s Mothers” report has named the Democratic Republic of Congo as the world’s worst place to be a mother (Photo Credit: Leon Sadiki/City Press/Gallo Images/Getty Images).
In honor of Mother’s Day, Save the Children released its annual “State of the World’s Mothers” report. I was saddened, but not surprised to see the Democratic Republic of Congo is the worst place to be a mother.
Severe violations of women’s human rights in Congo are, unfortunately, a perennial subject of attention for me and numerous other rights activists. Typically those violations are associated with the long and bloody conflict that has spanned the country and concentrated in its most recent stages in the East.
Indeed, DRC has been plagued by almost two decades of conflict resulting in the suffering and death of millions of men, women and children. Most chillingly, the Congo conflict has become synonymous with rape and other forms of sexual violence, which are committed with impunity by security forces, including the armed forces of the DRC (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, FARDC), and other armed groups. For this reason, it was ranked the worst place to be a woman by the United Nations just last year.
Violence against women and girls and other forms of gender discrimination devastate the lives of millions of women and do not distinguish among nation, culture, or creed.
One in three women worldwide has been beaten, raped, or abused in her lifetime. Maternal mortality rates have actually risen in the US, and remain scandalously high around the world, with a woman dying a pregnancy-related death every 90 seconds. Lack of access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care contributes to maternal mortality, sexually transmitted infections and other ill-health outcomes. Women continue to suffer disproportionately during armed conflict, accounting for 90% of all civilian casualties.
By Kim Lanegran, Amnesty USA Country Specialist for Sierra Leone
It’s been a little over a year since the government of Sierra Leone launched its groundbreaking free healthcare program for children and pregnant women.
While we’re thrilled about the good news — more women now receive pre and post-natal health care, over 39,000 women delivered their babies in health care facilities, and many lives have been saved — there is still a lot to be done.
Amnesty International’s new report on the Free Health Policy finds that free adequate care is simply not being delivered.
(Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
On August 1, 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidelines for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, ensuring that insurance plans cover a wide array of preventive services for women at no additional cost.
Amnesty International has long advocated for the right to accessible, affordable and adequate health care that responds to the particular needs of women. The assurance that women have access to the full range of contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration is a powerful and encouraging statement about the importance of women’s preventative health care.
via Wikipedia
On Saturday, a new nation was born: the Republic of South Sudan.
Formerly a semi-autonomous region within the Republic of Sudan, the new state is the result of a referendum on independence in which roughly 99% of the predominantly African, Christian or animist Southerners elected to split from the largely Muslim, Arab North.
For more than two decades, the two had been engaged in Africa’s longest civil war, a conflict in which staggering numbers of innocent civilians paid the price: 4 million displaced, 2 million killed and 2 million women raped.
A Violent Peace
Although a 2005 peace accord officially ended the war and guaranteed the South the right to peaceably choose whether or not to form its own state, violence continues in disputed territories of Southern Kordofan and Abyei.